A Survival Game Where You Have to Fall in Love with a Madman - Chapter 7

Outside the Pediatric Ward, a stray wheelchair rolled down the empty corridor entirely on its own. Suddenly, loose bandages dangling from the ceiling dropped down, wrapping tightly around their ankles.

The moment a flashlight beam illuminated the darkness.

A cluster of plaster child statues came into view, their hollow eye sockets staring fixedly ahead as their mouths slowly split open all the way to their ears.

【Experimental Subject No. 47 | Survival Window: Infinite】

The interior walls of the ventilation shaft were thoroughly coated in a thick, viscous slime. As He Yanqing crawled forward, the wet, squelching sound of a dense organism writhing echoed from the space directly beneath them.

The live chat interface cast a faint, rhythmic glow against the darkness:

[User ID: Perfect Synergy]: This tactical synergy is absolutely flawless!

[User ID: Hidden Beast]: That NPC is completely sandbagging; he’s 100% hiding his true capability metrics.

[User ID: Watch Your Six]: God He, watch your six! Something is tracking you from right beneath the floorboards!

Suddenly, You Yan came to a dead halt.

He Yanqing nearly collided with the heel of the youth’s boot. Just as he parted his lips to speak, a cold, necrotic hand clamped firmly over his mouth.

You Yan raised his left index finger to his lips in a sharp gesture for absolute silence, using his right hand to point toward the ventilation grate below.

Peering through the narrow iron slats, they could see a massive cultivation capsule occupying the center of the subterranean chamber. Floating inside the liquid medium were dozens of stitched-together anatomical figures, each carrying a perfect replica of Ciyu and her dead teammates’ faces.

Submerged deep within the cultivation fluids were two glass test tubes distinctly labeled “Antidote.”

“A trap,” You Yan whispered, his voice barely carrying a vibration through the air.

He pointed toward the deep shadows stretching behind the cultivation apparatus. Crouched within the darkness was a silhouette clad in a pristine white lab coat, actively injecting a strange, violet fluid directly into the test tubes.

He Yanqing’s eyes gleamed with an erratic light against the darkness. He silently drew a pair of short blades, using silent lip movements to communicate: “I’ll take the left; you take the right.”

You Yan shook his head. Without a fraction of a second of warning, he delivered a violent kick to the grate, dislodging the iron structure before dropping straight into the room.

He Yanqing let out a low curse and dove after him. However, to his surprise, You Yan didn’t charge toward the cultivation capsule at all; instead, he hurled himself straight toward a fire extinguisher mounted in the corner.

“Close your eyes!” You Yan bellowed, instantly pulling the safety pin.

He Yanqing shut his eyes out of sheer reflex. An explosive boom resonated through the chamber, immediately followed by the agonizing, shrill shriek of a monster anomaly.

When He Yanqing reopened his eyes, the entire chamber had been thoroughly blanketed within a dense cloud of dry chemical powder. Before the mist could settle, You Yan had already hurled one of the antidote test tubes across the room, straight into his grip.

“Inject it,” You Yan commanded tersely. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked directly toward the figure in the white lab coat.

He Yanqing noted that the necrotic rot across the youth’s skin had already migrated to the side of his throat, yet his posture remained as flawlessly straight and unyielding as ever.

The live chat exploded in a frantic blur:

What kind of macro-level operation is this?!

Using a fire extinguisher to counter a sulfuric monster anomaly?!

Who the hell is this NPC? The system calculations are bugged beyond belief.

He Yanqing let out a wild laugh, plunging the needle straight into his forearm. The exact millisecond the antidote surged into his bloodstream, the mechanical system announcements chimed in his mind:

【Player He Yanqing has successfully acquired the “Serum Antibody” agent. Operational window: 3 hours.】

【Player Ciyu is confirmed deceased.】

【Current Surviving Player Count: 1.】

【Remaining Instance Timeframe: 1 hour.】

The cultivation capsule suddenly shattered with a violent explosion, unleashing dozens of Ciyu’s clones as they wriggled and crawled onto the floor.

He Yanqing executed a rapid, fluid sweep of his blade, cleanly bisecting the first two copies that lunged his way. As he did, he noticed You Yan standing dead center in the room, remaining entirely motionless.

“Theoretician!”

You Yan slowly raised his hand, executing a crisp, resonant snap of his fingers.

Every single clone froze solid on the spot. In the next fraction of a second, as if being forcibly manipulated by a network of invisible marionette strings, they turned on one another, tearing their fellow replicas apart in a feral frenzy.

The figure in the white lab coat let out an inhuman, high-pitched scream, spinning on its heel to ram through the emergency exit door to escape.

“To the third floor,” You Yan stated calmly, walking over to He Yanqing. To the man’s surprise, the necrosis across the youth’s skin had actually begun to recede at a visible pace. “The heart is located at the nurse’s station.”

He Yanqing’s eyes narrowed into a dangerous slit. With an explosive burst of movement, he grabbed You Yan by the collar, slamming him hard against the nearest wall. “Who the hell are you?” The tip of his short blade anchored firmly against the youth’s Adam’s apple. “The system metrics explicitly stated that I am the sole remaining player left alive.”

You Yan stared back at him with absolute tranquility. Suddenly, a small smile broke across his features—the first genuine smile he had displayed since the instance began. It was cold, indifferent, and carried a faint trace of absolute exhaustion.

“I told you before—I’ve worked here for two years.” He reached out, casually pushing the sharp edge of the blade away from his throat. “A charity hospital always stands in need of a janitor, doesn’t it?”

Before He Yanqing could process the response, the floor beneath their boots suddenly collapsed entirely. As the two men plummeted into a pitch-black abyss, a final, blood-red notification flashed across the screen:

【Warning: Subterranean Level 1 has been successfully accessed.】

【Current Instance Exploration Metric: 70%.】

【132 deceased entities are currently awakening.】

The free fall felt entirely infinite, making the key they had retrieved feel like nothing more than a useless decorative prop. He Yanqing could hear the violent rushing of wind echoing in his ears; the light from the live chat had long since vanished, and the system interface had dissolved into an absolute, dead silence.

He subconsciously reached out to anchor himself onto something, but his fingers met nothing but empty, frigid air.

—CRASH!

He slammed heavily into a damp, freezing floor surface, his combat boots sending a spray of thick, viscous liquid into the air. He Yanqing propped his upper body up, his fingertips registering a slick, sticky texture against the ground it was blood.

“Little crow?” he called out in a low voice, his words generating a hollow echo that rippled through the massive subterranean expanse.

No one answered.

He Yanqing narrowed his eyes, waiting for his vision to adjust to the absolute darkness. The air down here was choked in a suffocating blend of formalin and decomposing flesh; a dark-green slime seeped steadily from the walls, resembling the secretions of a massive, living organism.

He felt his way up, pulling himself into a standing position. Suddenly, from the far depths of the chamber, the rhythmic sound of dripping water broke the silence drip, drip, drip.

He tracked the audio cue, his boots generating a wet, squelching echo with every step he took through the standing liquid. Without warning, a hand shot out from the dark, clamping around his ankle with an iron grip.

He Yanqing lowered his gaze, locking eyes with a rotting face. It was an entity clad in a tattered patient’s uniform; its eye sockets were completely hollow, and its mouth was violently torn open all the way to its ears, its fingers anchoring onto the cuff of his trousers with desperate force.

“…Save… me…”

He Yanqing’s lips curled into a dark smile.

“Sure thing.” He raised his foot with sudden, explosive force, driving his combat boot straight down into the entity’s face. The crisp, clean crunch of fracturing skull bone resonated beautifully through the quiet room.

Yet, in the very next second, hundreds of figures began to crawl out from the surrounding darkness. They wore identical, decayed patient uniforms; their flesh was completely necrotic, and their limbs were twisted into impossible angles, yet every single one of them extended their arms toward him, a broken, fractured plea rattling through their throats:

“…The experiments… please, save us…”

He Yanqing drew his short cleaver, the metal surface reflecting a sliver of silver light against the dark.

“Well, aren’t we popular down here?” he chuckled softly, a manic, volatile fire igniting deep within his eyes. “Too bad for you lot—I absolutely loathe being touched.”

Just as he prepared to execute a clean sweep of his blade, a sharp sound cut through the room—

CLACK!

The fluorescent light tubes overhead hummed to life one after another, illuminating the massive expanse in a blinding, sterile white glare. He Yanqing’s pupils contracted violently.

Subterranean Level 1 was a morgue.

Exactly 134 corpses were lined up in flawless, military precision atop metal gurneys. Every single body had been meticulously eviscerated from chest to abdomen; their internal organs had been completely removed, replaced instead by an intricate array of mechanical machinery. A faint, rhythmic red light pulsed within their open chest cavities, functioning like a network of signal receivers.

Even more bizarrely, the walls were entirely blanketed in a dense matrix of carved symbols. The markings twisted and slithered like living serpents, emitting a faint, spectral blue fluorescence. The patterns were an identical match to the engravings etched across You Yan’s scalpel.

“…So that’s how it is.”

A thoroughly familiar voice drifted in from directly behind him.

He Yanqing spun around. You Yan was standing beneath the very last fluorescent light fixture, his white lab coat heavily stained with blood as he held a yellowed, faded archival folder in his grip. His eyes were terrifyingly calm as his gaze swept across the glowing symbols on the wall, the corners of his lips drawing downward imperceptibly.

“The system has encountered a critical script error,” You Yan remarked flatly.

He Yanqing arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

You Yan walked over to the perimeter wall, his fingertips tracing the path of the engraved symbols. Under his touch, the blue fluorescence flickered faintly, as if offering a rhythmic response to his presence.

“These are system command strings,” You Yan explained casually. “This entire instance… has been illegally modified from the outside.”

He Yanqing kept his gaze pinned tightly to the youth. “And how exactly are you privy to that information?”

You Yan didn’t offer a response.

Suddenly, a violent tremor rippled through the floorboards, causing the metal gurneys throughout the morgue to rattle violently. The red light inside the chest cavities of the 132 corpses suddenly flared with a brilliant, blinding intensity. In unison, the bodies sat perfectly upright, their hollow eye sockets turning simultaneously toward the two intruders.

【Warning: Experimental Subjects have successfully awakened.】

【Target Lock acquired: Intruders.】

He Yanqing tightened his grip on his cleaver, his smile expanding into an expression of pure, unadulterated madness. “Now this is what I call entertainment.”

Without warning, You Yan reached out, clamping his fingers firmly around He Yanqing’s wrist. “Don’t move.”

He Yanqing blinked, momentarily stunned.

You Yan’s palm was ice-cold, yet it carried a heavy, absolute authority that brooked no resistance. He looked directly into He Yanqing’s eyes, his voice dropping into a low register:

“These corpses are not your enemies.”

“——They are the players who were trapped and consumed by this instance during previous runs.”

The exact millisecond the words left his lips, the 132 corpses spoke in unison, their voices overlapping into a jarring, unnatural resonance that vibrated through the chamber:

“…Run… get out of here… fast…”

“…Klein… is here…”

Suddenly, the ceiling fractured open with a deafening crash as a massive, industrial mechanical limb slammed down with apocalyptic force!

You Yan yanked He Yanqing backward, clearing the blast radius just as the mechanical appendage pulverized the floorboards where they had stood a fraction of a second prior, leaving a massive crater in its wake.

Amidst the swirling vortex of dust and debris, a tall, imposing figure descended gracefully from the opening above.

He wore a pristine white lab coat, a pair of elegant gold-rimmed spectacles, and a warm, benevolent smile on his lips.

“Welcome home,” Director Klein stated softly, his eyes locking onto the youth. “Experimental Subject No. 47.”

He Yanqing licked his canine tooth, twirling his blade between his fingers with immense amusement. “Fascinating.”

You Yan, however, kept his gaze pinned dead center onto Director Klein’s chest. There, right where a human heart was supposed to reside, was nothing but a hollow, vacant void.

“The heart is located at the nurse’s station?” You Yan murmured to himself, a cold realization settling into his eyes. “No…”

“——The heart has been inside his own body this entire time.”