The rice cooker was thoroughly dead.
Regarding this outcome, Zhou Qi’an, with his ruthless heart and hands, was very calm.
The rice cooker was a special milestone in his life. It was the object of his forced marriage, the beginning of his first instance on his wedding day, and the first time he realized that his old mother’s problem might be unsolvable.
Zhou Qi’an calmly realized that he could even write a parallel-structured essay for the rice cooker as a eulogy.
This was also one of his mother’s reasons for wanting to kill him.
If he was dead, he could be joined in a ghost marriage, and their species would match.
It would also satisfy the series of requirements he had stated, such as being presentable in public and good in the kitchen. His old mother likely thought she was doing him a favor.
Her life motto was to be an enlightened parent.
So whenever he saw his mother buying a rice cooker, Zhou Qi’an knew it was a signal that she was going to kill him. After his mother released the signal in Huagu City, he had fled without a second thought.
Of course, the essence of it was still a fear that his mother would completely lose control.
The word ‘mother’ was Zhou Qi’an’s sole reason for traveling back and forth between the game and reality.
“You young people have never suffered the bitterness of a rice cooker,” Zhou Qi’an said with a deep expression.
“?? “
He said it so seriously that the other players, while doubting their own sanity, genuinely considered for a moment if perhaps they were the ones who were wrong.
Han Li: “Could it be that the rice cooker is the true culprit behind the world’s destruction?”
Almost every household has one. They have been lying dormant in the shadows. Is Earth not entering a water age, but a rice cooker age?
Mu Ge and the others felt this explanation was quite on point.
Ying Yu silently pushed up his glasses upon hearing this.
Science… had been insulted.
The group set off again.
The burly Wang Cai was responsible for carrying the unconscious youth, while Zhou Qi’an walked at the very front.
The rule Mu Ge had discovered through personal experience was very useful. The game designers were too eager to corner all the players; the Dream Parasite Worms would always parasitize the person walking at the front.
Now, this bug was being exploited by Zhou Qi’an.
As long as he kept walking in front, the path ahead was a smooth, wide road.
Although the surrounding environment had become relatively safe, the players still didn’t dare to relax. In fact, their nerves were even more taut.
Mu Ge’s expression held a trace of gravity, “Is this the difficulty of five and a half stars?”
Just one passage had nearly been the end of them.
If you couldn’t overcome your fear, you could only gain a moment of respite by killing others. The last person remaining would also face death brought on by their own fear. Unless the timing was perfect, and they could reach the exit of the passage just before killing all their companions.
Everyone thought of this point, their faces turning ugly.
Shen Zhiyi’s expression remained unchanged throughout.
The Dream Parasite Worms transmitted fear, and with the assistance of the illusion-inducing floral scent, it was like another dreamscape. In a dream, the monster’s strength had infinite possibilities, but as long as it was a dream, a way to wake up could be found.
He strode to Zhou Qi’an’s back, “Be wary of all hallucinogenic factors.”
Zhou Qi’an nodded and used the last of his [Roly-poly Potion]. This would greatly reduce the interference from unknown factors.
From the outpatient building to the inpatient department, a journey that would take a few minutes in the outside world, took them nearly twice as long in the secret passage.
The disgusting blood-red walls around them finally disappeared, and ahead were flights of stairs. Winding up along the stairs gave the illusion of struggling up a narrow tower. The space was very tight, and towards the end, it was almost a turn at every step, forcing everyone to spread out a little.
“There’s light,” the University Student exclaimed in amazement.
Inside the secret passage, daylight shone in from an unknown source. The light on their bodies was not warm at all; it seemed to be drawing out their body heat instead.
Mu Ge: “This light isn’t right!”
In fact, everyone felt the abnormality of the light, but there was no way to avoid this light that could penetrate walls.
“Ugh… where is this?” The knocked-out youth slowly came to at this moment. Wang Cai barked, “If you’re awake, walk on your own.”
Heat seemed to be rapidly draining away, along with a weakening of cardiopulmonary function. His head was dizzy, not to mention the burden of carrying a person.
To make matters worse, the higher they went, the more exaggerated the turns became, like a three-dimensional version of a nine-bend, eighteen-turn road. Each turn only allowed one person to pass.
When walking with a hand on the wall for support, they could feel lifelike cyclamen carvings.
After a few more turns, even Zhou Qi’an, who had excellent balance, felt a bit dizzy.
A cold wind kept blowing from behind. He shook his head, trying his best to stay awake, “Let’s do a roll call…”
In this environment, you wouldn’t even know if someone was missing.
“One,” he spoke first.
As his voice fell, another sound quickly followed:
“One.”
“One, one, one…”
The sound of his own voice echoed endlessly in the winding secret passage.
Zhou Qi’an’s eyelid twitched. He turned his head but couldn’t see anything. Because the turns were too steep and tight, he had to back up a little, but still saw no one.
Where did everyone go?
In the narrow space, Zhou Qi’an lowered his voice, “Mu Tianbai, Ying Yu?”
No one responded.
On the contrary, such a small sound still attracted an echo, carrying a creepy, strange laugh, mixed with the eerie daylight, tightly surrounding him.
The small sound of his shoe soles rubbing against the dusty stone steps as he went upstairs was now infinitely amplified.
He took a few steps back and found no one.
There were several footprints on the ground, all with the toes pointing backward.
It was as if everyone had tacitly turned their backs on him and left this place on tiptoe.
Zhou Qi’an hesitated for a moment, then chose to brace himself and continue forward. In this environment, he always had the illusion that something was following him. The light was like a shadow, forcing him to speed up.
Towards the end, he was almost jogging up the stairs.
A seemingly endless ascending passage, after countless life-or-death turns, finally came to an end.
The height ahead became increasingly narrow, returning to the feeling of the initial secret passage. A small door blocked the end.
Click.
With a swipe of the universal key card, the door opened.
A large area of light poured out. The interior was a vast expanse of white, the light刺得 Zhou Qi’an’s eyes extremely uncomfortable.
He barely managed to raise his eyes. The surroundings were empty, as quiet as a snowy plain.
The feeling of stepping on the ground was strange, an excessive smoothness.
Zhou Qi’an lowered his head, his expression changing. Under his feet was a disguised transparent glass walkway. Standing on it, he could clearly see the situation below.
Below, countless cyclamen and patients immersed in sweet dreams were scattered and ‘planted’ in various areas of the terraced fields.
When Zhou Qi’an was in the greenhouse before, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Unexpectedly, looking from above presented a completely different scene.
“It’s just like a…” Zhou Qi’an’s throat moved. He thought of the beds in the special ward, “A giant petri dish.”
And he was currently standing on the lid of the petri dish, able to overlook everything.
In the gaps between the numerous flowers in the terraced fields was a medicinal liquid. Each gap was connected by dense, fine threads, as if the liquid was being injected into the greenhouse through these threads.
The translucent threads extended upward. Zhou Qi’an’s gaze followed them, searching for the source, until he finally tilted his head back. Above his head, a sun hung in the sky.
“What’s going on?”
How could the sun appear inside a building?
Zhou Qi’an endured the discomfort in his eyes and looked closely. The sun seemed to be sometimes near, sometimes far. Its overall color was very strange, a yellowish-brown. This color and the strange patterns on the sun’s surface gave Zhou Qi’an a strange sense of familiarity.
He felt he had seen it somewhere before, but he just couldn’t come up with an answer.
Zhou Qi’an waited patiently for a moment, but no other players came up.
He had no intention of turning back to look for anyone. Turning back now would most likely be a futile effort, and also very dangerous.
Currently, Zhou Qi’an was fully focused on the final main quest.
The tenth-floor intensive care unit had the most NPCs, and the pharmacy, the only place guarded by Mr. Si, was of utmost importance. All the patients, including Dr. Z, couldn’t live without medicine. If there was no more medicine, everything would be solved.
Destroying Dr. Z’s secret garden was crucial; this was the purpose of their risky venture.
Now, it seemed this strange sun was providing a constant temperature for the petri dish, or more accurately… nutrients.
Countless fine threads were connected to the sun.
It was the source.
The corner of Zhou Qi’an’s mouth twitched, “Am I supposed to shoot down the sun?”
What a joke. Not even a reincarnated Hou Yi could do that.
[Please note]
The system prompt suddenly appeared. The self-deprecating smile that had been on his lips a moment ago vanished.
Zhou Qi’an’s eyelids kept twitching. For it to come at this time, it seemed this sun had to be destroyed.
[You have successfully discovered the ‘heart’ of Cyclamen Hospital]
[Hint: Sealing the heart is equivalent to pronouncing Dr. Z’s death sentence]
This was the first time the game had stated the rules for clearing the instance so clearly. If the object he had to seal wasn’t the high and mighty, bizarre sun, perhaps Zhou Qi’an could have feigned some gratitude.
As a last resort, he looked around again, confirming that there was no sign of other players.
Zhou Qi’an’s expression turned grave.
The disappearance of the players was definitely related to the strange daylight in the secret passage, and it was an irresistible force. Otherwise, there was no reason for Shen Zhiyi, Ying Yu, and the others to all fall for it.
The fact that he could still ‘hang on’ here was most likely related to taking the [Roly-poly Potion] in advance, which helped him immunize against all mysterious elements, preventing him from falling for the trap in the secret passage.
“I must hurry.”
Once the nurses discovered that all the nursing assistants were gone, they would most likely come to catch them. As time passed, the dangers in the instance would also increase. Aside from that, Ying Yu and the University Student couldn’t last much longer either.
Time is life, a concept vividly demonstrated in this instance.
So how on earth could he shoot down the sun!
Using the white silk banner as the string, the cane as the bow, and the Holy Artifact as the arrow to shoot it out?
White Silk Banner: …
Cane: …
Holy Artifact: ?
Zhou Qi’an stood there, accompanied only by a deathly silence.
The bizarre sun above his head was like a dull knife grinding flesh, easily driving a person mad.
Not long after, Zhou Qi’an, who had felt the urgency of time just a second ago, seemed to notice something was wrong and muttered to himself, “Complete immunity has its pros and cons.”
The pro was that it helped him identify his target: the sun.
The con was that, to a certain extent, he was now separated from the main group.
Just like in Huagu City, he was the only one who got on the bus.
