Chapter 537 "The Wailing Madman"
“Huff, huff, huff~”
The scorching fireball was at the forefront, providing a long-range "vision" for the fully-armed Colin.
However, the stairs leading to the next floor did not seem unusual except that they felt a little more eerie than usual.
Colin and the others went up all the way to the third floor, and found that there was another mirror-like downward turn after the third floor.
He looked around in the light of the fire. From the turning point down, he saw patches of black moss-like patches appearing all around.
"Go down from here and go back to the first floor, and you will reach the second floor of the hospital..." The voice of Orange Cat came from behind.
Colin nodded, sensed it to make sure everything was alright, and continued on his way.
At this time, the Holy Body of Ashes took a look at the spots and said, "It's best not to touch these things directly. They are very corrosive to things like flesh and blood. Direct contact with the skin is almost like touching strong acid..."
"Will it still be like this?" Orange Cat asked in surprise.
The last time they came here, they just avoided it and didn't notice this...
"Yeah." The Ash-beating Saint added, "We've tested it, but it only reacts to the flesh and blood of living things. If a corpse has been dead for a while and is completely dead, it won't react at all..."
"Will it trigger something if we clear them out?" Colin asked casually.
"It's okay. This thing can't be destroyed. Brother Shunzi, if you don't believe me, you can try it." said the Holy Body of Gray.
"Can't be destroyed?"
Hearing this, Colin flicked his finger and a flame flew out, landing on the black spot on the wall and igniting it in an instant.
"Isn't this easy...huh?"
Just as Kelin was about to speak, his face suddenly darkened.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t burned?
After the flames died down, the black patches in the original area reappeared.
Nothing has changed since before the fire...
He didn't believe it and tried a few more times, but there was still no difference.
Even after it burns down along with the wall, it will return to its original state in a few seconds.
"There's something anomalous that even a 'bonfire' can't burn."
This was the first time Colin had encountered such a situation.
However, he didn't bother to figure it out. After making sure that nothing would happen as long as the skin didn't come into direct contact with the black patches, Colin led the team downstairs.
Colin and the other two walked down the mirror-like staircase on the third floor without any danger and returned to the lobby on the first floor.
To be precise, it is the first floor lobby of the consultation department on the second floor of the hospital!
"I originally thought each floor referred to a building, but now it seems that's not the case. Every time you pass a floor, you reach a world 'inside'. Each floor has a 'non-existent hospital'..."
Colin realized this as he felt the changes around him.
At this moment, the scene before him looked similar to the first floor, except for the dark patches around him.
Even the female employee standing at the front desk was still there.
And the difference from just now was that the female employee had to wait until I looked at her before she would react and turn around. This time, I didn't need to look at her, she had already turned her gaze...
Colin did not avoid the question, but looked directly into the other person's eyes.
I saw that on the face with a professional smile, a pair of black and white eyes became more and more ferocious as they looked at each other.
"Hello, do you need help? Hello, do you need help?!"
"Hello? Hello?..."
“You, you, you…”
The soft and polite female voice suddenly became hoarse and sharp, like nails scratching on a blackboard, making one's teeth ache.
Colin suddenly felt a strong sense of falling.
He did not panic. Fire surged in his eyes as he broke free from the weird feeling caused by the eye contact and came back to his senses from a moment of "distraction" .
The voice in my ear disappeared instantly and returned to its original gentle voice: "Hello, how can I help you?"
Colin ignored it. The flames on his body burned, completely severing the connection. "Pay attention, make sure you're in good spirits. Don't look directly at these things, otherwise you might run into some unexpected trouble."
Boss, we have always been timid, okay? How could we dare to look around like you... The two of them complained in their hearts at the same time when they heard this, but still nodded.
Seeing this, Colin looked past the female employee who seemed to have become a part of the anomaly and looked at the LED screen behind.
After reaching the second floor, the above rules have undergone certain changes.
For example, the first sentence, "Our outpatient department has only three floors...", disappeared and became "1. Our hospital has been thoroughly disinfected and no unclean objects are present. If you find anything dirty, please do not touch it. If the situation is serious, please call our nurse loudly for help..."
"Are you referring to those black patches?"
Colin thought thoughtfully, the information he had observed so far, which was input into the LED screen, seemed to be from the friendly side?
Then who could it be?
The mission didn't mention it, so Colin couldn't guess much.
He took a breath and looked at the other two, and found that the "garbled code" of the third one had changed a little.
But it is still a bunch of garbled characters. Except for the disappearance of a few rare and complex characters and the addition of the character "帮", the rest is completely incomprehensible.
"I'd better not guess at the above things."
Ke Lin pursed his lips and didn't look any further: "What should we do next?"
"It's still the stairs. The first few floors are accessed through the stairs. There will be some changes after every three floors. However, starting from the second floor, the range of the special stairs will expand. It may be in every building. It is starting to become a little difficult to find..." said the Holy Body of Gray.
"Every three levels change..."
Colin muttered in his heart, remembering that many things in the company were in similar situations.
"Don't you remember the stairs you took the last time you came here?" Colin asked. He wondered if the hospital built by Bonfire Company was so large that it would take forever to find it if they searched for it building by building.
Hearing this, the Holy Body at the side shook his head: "I remember it, but it doesn't mean much. We only came here two or three times, and its location changed every time. The first time I came, it should have been in the Oncology Department on the seventh floor of the fifth building. The second time I came, it was in the Gastroenterology Department of the thirty-first building. It also changed the two times after that..."
"Yeah, we've been here twice, both times to different locations."
The orange cat echoed, paused, and continued, "But no matter what, we can definitely find it. After all, it won't move. The real trouble will come later when we have to find the 'stairs' on the fourth floor...
"It moves and can appear anywhere, perhaps behind a ward door or a toilet door. It's extremely hard to find..."
They hadn't come here just once, and just figuring out the key to the "stairs" had taken them quite some time...
"Is that so?"
Colin nodded, said nothing more, and continued to act.
This time, after the scope was expanded, the search speed was obviously slowed down a lot.
"It's a pity that I can't observe it with the 'bonfire'. I can only find it with the naked eye. Otherwise, I would just fly out a pile of flames, and the speed would be greatly increased..."
Colin sighed secretly.
There's no time limit for this mission, but there are only two days left for the Fifteen Rings mission, so we can assume it's two days...
If he fails to complete it, the mission may be in vain, or it may be that his previous mission had a high score, so he is given a chance to make a mistake.
But no matter what, it’s better to be able to complete it.
Fortunately, it was going smoothly. We were only on the second floor, and there weren't many abnormalities. There was only a female employee in the outpatient department hall who was suspected to have become part of the abnormality, and some special black spots.
So there is no need to worry too much about safety...
After more than an hour, after Colin and the others had walked through almost a quarter of the hospital corridors, they finally saw the special abnormal staircase in an area marked as Building G Inpatient Department.
It has more of those dark spots than the second coat.
And it's increasingly like the patches of mold on the walls of a house during the rainy season, emitting a musty smell...
Fortunately, the trouble is still not too big.
Colin left a bonfire, letting the flames cover everyone, and continued to lead the team upstairs. After only a few minutes, they successfully arrived at the third floor area.
The location we came out of was still the inpatient building...
But compared with the previous level, the whole world has become more difficult to describe, as if there is some kind of indescribable feeling of oppression.
"Let's go back to the outpatient department lobby and see if there are any changes to the rules..."
Colin had just made this decision and hadn't finished speaking when he suddenly heard something while beating the Holy Body and interrupted his words with a "Fuck".
He and Orange Cat looked in the direction he was going and saw that he was looking at the balcony window of a nearby inpatient building...
The room behind the window, which should have been a two-person ward, now turned into a dark and steep staircase leading downwards.
"Oh shit, it's the stairs to the fourth floor!" The orange cat screamed when he saw this.
Compared to the two people's surprise, Colin couldn't help but raise his eyebrows:
"What a coincidence?"
"What a coincidence! We were so lucky to have bumped into it! It won't be easy to find it later!"
As they were talking, the strange corridor in the room began to fade...
It seems that it will disappear immediately after a while.
"Walk!"
After hesitating for a moment, Colin first took out a "firewood" that he had prepared long ago from his pocket, lit it and threw it on this floor. Then he reached out and grabbed the two people, dragged them and shot out like a cannonball. In less than half a second, he crossed the distance between the two buildings and fell directly into the passage leading to the fourth floor.
As soon as he stepped onto the stairs, he felt like he had entered another space, and the temperature became cold and gloomy.
The air was filled with the stench of rotting protein...
"The rules usually only cover the content of this level. I only skipped one level, so I shouldn't miss any key information."
Colin looked back and found that the road he came from was covered by gray haze.
"If we want to go back, we can go through this fog now and return directly to the first floor. If we don't go through it, it will become a closed road in a while. Then we can only go back through the mission route."
The Holy Body of Ashes continued to recount the "information" that had exploded from his mind like a landmine: "This staircase goes straight down. After a short distance, we'll reach the fourth floor. There might be over a hundred turns..."
"Is there any danger?" Colin asked casually.
"Just keep an eye on those shadow patches. After the fourth level, there will be some less dangerous anomalies. There are none now..."
"Then let's do it."
Colin waved his hand, still letting a fireball lead the way, and then he and the others followed behind.
Starting from the fourth floor, the shadow patches on the ground began to appear somewhat three-dimensional, and squirmed slightly strangely, as if getting closer to its essence as the layers went deeper.
But the same thing happened: Colin tried to burn it with flames, but it still didn't burn it.
He had some vague judgment on this.
"This thing is a bit like some kind of high-dimensional projection. More accurately, it's like a shadow projected outward from the depths of the 'non-existent hospital'. If we don't eliminate the source of the disease, then killing it several times will be useless..."
"This is probably why we can still see that female employee on the second floor. She looks neither alive nor dead. After all, in a sense, what we see is just a 'shadow'..."
Colin had some guesses about the abnormalities on the surface of this hospital.
It’s not that the “bonfire” cannot be put out, but that the source has not been found.
Thinking of this, Colin's anxiety about the "ineffectiveness" of the bonfire dissipated a little.
Following what the two men said, the three of them continued down the path in silence.
The further down the stairs you go, the dimmer the lighting becomes, and the more oppressive the atmosphere becomes. An average person might feel immensely stressed, but for someone who's done a lot of missions...
Unless there are hidden means such as mental pollution, this atmosphere alone cannot have an impact on their psychology.
The descent went smoothly...
At least that was the case for the first ten minutes or so.
At this moment, Colin paused and stopped, and the two people behind him also stopped when they saw this.
"You guys said before that there was nothing down there?"
Hearing this, the two looked at each other and vaguely realized that Brother Shunzi had something else in mind.
"Well, what's wrong?"
"Is there someone crying down there..." Colin said.
After a few turns, the fireball at the front received some sound feedback, which sounded a bit like the wailing of an adult man.
"No way, back then we..."
"The past was different from the present. From the current perspective, some new changes must have taken place here."
Colin waved his hand. According to them, there shouldn't be a female employee in the outpatient department!
He even felt that there might be some kind of will within this hospital, guiding him deeper and deeper...
"I'm a Fire Bearer in reserve, after all. I've encountered the Red Moon and driven out the Night. I want to see what's playing tricks on me and trying to lure me over!"
As his thoughts turned, Colin became more alert, but he did not stop.
Holding three gold cards in his left hand and a revolver in his right, with a bone spur mounted on it as a bayonet, Colin drove a torrent of flames towards the bottom of the stairs...
The temperature in the originally gloomy corridor space rose sharply.
"Brother Shunzi is really strong..."
The two people behind him felt the power contained in the flames, couldn't help but take a breath, and felt a full sense of security.
After falling about ten more floors, Colin discovered that the crying that had originally been approaching him, with his sudden outburst, began to move further away, moving towards the lower stairs at a speed that surpassed his speed...
And after a few more floors, it seems that we have reached the fourth floor.
"It seems to have been scared away?" The orange cat on the side couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief after hearing the noise.
This kind of experience was beyond their comprehension, so if they could avoid it, they would do so...
However, just when Colin was thinking about whether to let it go, multiple mission events suddenly popped up in his mind .
[Event 1: Capture the "wailing psychopath" and draw 1,000 milliliters of blood...]
[Note: One hundred milliliters of "blood extract from a mentally ill patient" were obtained.]
