After being poisoned by mushrooms, all the strange creatures became fascinated by me.

"Gu Xiaomei...?" Tang Li called softly.

The last time she saw Gu Xiaomei was this morning, when they shared the breakfast Gu Xiaomei brought in the hospital room.

During breakfast, Tang Li asked Gu Xiaomei some questions about Gu Xiaoying, but accidentally turned her into a nonsensical AI with completely black eyes and a dignified smile like a plastic mannequin.

A day has passed, and I don't know if she has recovered yet.

Tang Li took another step closer, unaware that she had involuntarily tensed up: "...Xiao Mei?"

"Gu Xiaomei" suddenly grabbed her ankle.

Tang Li almost instinctively backed away—no, no!

That hand wasn't Gu Xiaomei's hand; it was cold, stiff, and firm, like an iron clamp.

"Gu Xiaomei" looked up and grinned at her: "Sir, where are you going?"

A pair of blood-red, smiling eyes; an unusually large mouth with corners of the mouth hanging on the cheekbones; and hands stained with blood.

Her body was hunched over, and her neck was almost bent at a right angle. No wonder, no wonder she sat in that position.

—Strange personnel matters, Liu Dan.

"Release the master!" came the spider's angry roar from behind.

However, the last note vanished at the last moment, greenish-white foam spilled from the spider's mouth, and its massive body crashed to the ground, its countless densely packed legs curled up stiffly in front of it.

It really looks like a dead spider.

Director Cao's younger brother, a strange middle-aged man with three noses, slowly plucked his body from one of the spider's legs.

His abdomen had a large hole, from which oozed grass-green blood.

"I don't have much strength," he coughed softly, bending over and pressing his hand against his wound, his large mouth beneath his three noses twisting into a malicious arc, "but my blood is poisonous."

An alarm blared behind Tang Li's head, and cold sweat seeped down her back without her realizing it. Pressing down on her wildly beating heart, Tang Li forced a cold smile: "What? Don't you want your brother to come back to life?"

"My lord, my lord," Three-Nose whispered eerily and mockingly behind her, "you really aren't a monster, you really aren't our lord—you're just a weak human, you're not ruthless enough!"

"Can't you see? I've absorbed my brother's blood and taken his place!" Ignoring the blood gushing from his chest, he arrogantly spread his arms, excitedly declaring his identity, "Why would I want to resurrect him? I am the new Director Cao now!"

This strange creature, who once knelt at her feet begging her to spare his brother, now sees his brother as an obstacle to his advancement after tasting the sweetness of his brother's death and her own rise to power. So that's how it is. How ridiculous! She actually expected to find some blood ties in these strange creatures.

It was the hospital staff's foolishness and blind obedience that made her careless, and it was Jiang Hui and Spider's protection that made her relax her vigilance. She actually underestimated the eerie presence that the players were constantly wary of.

"So," Tang Li dropped the pretense, a slight smirk playing on her lips, "what do you intend to do to me?"

She reached into her pocket, where a piece of paper with slightly frayed edges pressed against her palm.

The rule sheet with the correct answers already filled in still lies there quietly.

—Don't forget, she can leave the instance anytime, anywhere.

This is the source of Tang Li's reckless and adventurous spirit, and also the reason why Jiang Hui and Qiu Wanting support her running around on her own.

However, she cannot act rashly now.

Now that Dean Lei Hong has shifted his attention to her, she needs to keep his eyes glued to her to reduce the pressure on the others who are working on connecting the instance to the original world.

The supernatural beings led by the dean were unaware of the children's existence, let alone predict their current intentions. They probably just thought they were trying to attack the instance by destroying the hospital building, and simply sent doctors and nurses to stop them.

But if these strange occurrences are allowed to continue to be observed, no one can say for sure whether they will be able to see through the true purpose.

"The Dean wants to see you," said Liu Dan, a man with an enigmatic smile, standing before her.

"But before that..."

Tang Li suddenly felt a sharp pain, and she involuntarily hunched over, cold sweat beading on her forehead. At that moment, she seemed to hear her own bones groaning.

Liu Dan gripped Tang Li's ankle tightly, grinning maliciously as she continued to apply pressure. "Let me serve you, my esteemed guest, first!"

She was taking revenge on the time Tang Li stepped directly on her ankle in the bathroom that morning.

"???" "Isn't the streamer supposed to be amazing?" "I told you the streamer was just faking it, hahaha, she got humiliated, so satisfying!" "Didn't the streamer say she was that person's familiar?" "You actually believe that...?"

"What should we do next? Why don't we cut off your tongue, sir? That way you won't be able to lie to the monster anymore!" Three-Nosed Monster excitedly proposed a new idea.

"Hahahahahahaha!" "Hahahahahahahahahahaha!"

Liu Dan and Sanbi laughed wildly. It was exhilarating, incomparably exhilarating!

until……

A cold, hard object slowly and deliberately took advantage of the moment to slip into Liu Dan's wide-open mouth, where her throat was almost completely visible.

It pressed against her palate.

Liu Dan stopped laughing. She tasted the metallic, metallic flavor on her tongue. Her eyes widened in panic, and she dared not close her mouth. Saliva dripped from the corners of her lips in a winding trail.

Tang Li tilted her head, her face pale from the pain, but her lips were bright red: "Why aren't you smiling anymore?"

The three-nosed eerie creature also fell silent, its mouth forgotten to close, its bulging eyes staring intently at the thing in Tang Li's hand.

No, no, no, that's impossible...

If she had pulled out a gun, a knife, a weapon that every player had, or a talisman, they wouldn't be in such a panic.

They were somewhat of the hospital's elite, and fighting players was their primary job.

however……

The metal cube in Tang Li's hand was a bomb she had secretly taken from Jiang Hui.

Even if they are supernatural beings, they will be blown to bits by this kind of bomb.

"You, you, you wouldn't dare!" The three-nosed monster roared, as if suddenly discovering some fatal flaw, "If you dare blow us up, you'll be buried with us!"

Tang Li looked at him as if he were a smug crab that had crawled from the 55 yuan zone to the 45 yuan zone, and her lips twitched slightly: "Idiot."

"—Have you forgotten? It was me who made all the players leave the instance."

"Isn't it possible for me to leave at any time?"

Liu Dan and Sanbi's expressions suddenly changed.

Yes, she could have escaped the instance the moment the bomb exploded. And at that time, only... would have been killed.

Liu Dan trembled all over, making muffled sobs as if she wanted to say something. Sanbi asked stiffly and strangely, "W-what do you want to do?"

The pain still gnawed at her ankle with its sharp teeth. Tang Li had been in the dungeon for so many days, but she had never suffered so much.

A smile bloomed on her beautiful face, and she shoved the metal block she was holding into Liu Dan's mouth again.

"Eat it." Tang Li whispered sweetly in Liu Dan's ear, but her eyes were dark and unyielding.

"Didn't you say that your weird mouths can open really wide? Eat it, swallow it whole."

Desperate tears streamed down Liu Dan's face. She shook her head, trying to refuse, but Tang Li just kept smiling and urging her on.

"What's wrong? Hurry up, hurry up! Otherwise, you'll all be dead!"

In the end, Liu Dan swallowed the bomb. As a result, Tang Li became the "master" whom she worshipped wholeheartedly and obeyed without question.

"Oh right," Tang Li turned around and looked at the strange three-nosed creature, then smiled.

"—Am I ruthless enough now?"

—Am I weird enough like you guys?