Only Player

Chapter 70 Reality Bender?
Zhou Yuan's thumb trembled, and he quickly typed a reply:

"No, don't open the door!"

A few minutes later, Chen Guangxi sent a message: "This thing is really weird. The sound, heartbeat, and breathing rate are exactly the same as yours. If I hadn't known in advance, I would have opened the door. And this thing has a built-in silent barrier. The knock on the door was so loud, but no caregiver or patient heard it."

Chen Guangxi: "It has been chased away by the nurse. I will come back to find you after I finish checking the room at 12 o'clock."

Zhou Yuan: “Okay.”

The lights in the ward are turned off at 10 o'clock, and the nurses will check the ward twice every night, once at 12 o'clock and once at 2 o'clock in the morning, so they have plenty of time to act after the rounds.

However, looking at the message on the screen, Zhou Yuan couldn't help but fall into deep thought.

Chen Guangxi inadvertently revealed one of her abilities - she can remember subtle features of each person, such as heartbeat and breathing rate, and use these features to identify their identity.

This ability is so terrifying that it means that most disguises are useless in front of her.

For example... a one-time transmogrification card.

"A one-time transformation card can only change your appearance, but cannot change your heartbeat, breathing rate, or other internal physiological states..."

Zhou Yuan frowned deeply, "Could it be that she has figured out my identity, and that's why she keeps appearing beside me? Was she deliberately trying to target me by posting this?"

Zhou Yuan pulled his hair with a headache. If Chen Guangxi had seen through his disguise, then his performance during this period would have been quite a show.

After some thought, Zhou Yuan decided to find an opportunity to hint at it. Maybe he was overthinking it...

It was soon 12 o'clock, and there were sounds of footsteps outside. The nurses began to make rounds.

Zhou Yuan pretended to be asleep, lying on the bed with his eyes closed, listening to the caregivers' actions.

Click, the fingerprint lock opened, and a nurse gently pushed open the door and walked in quietly.

"Without turning on the light, how does he know whether I'm asleep or not?" A trace of doubt flashed through Zhou Yuan's mind.

And he soon learned how the nurse confirmed whether the patient was asleep.

His extraordinary perception allowed him to simulate the nurse's actions in his mind without even seeing them - the nurse on rounds walked to the bedside, gently leaned over, and just stared at him quietly.

Oh shit... Zhou Yuan cursed in his heart. He could hear faint breathing sounds, only a few centimeters away from his face, almost sticking to his face.

He remained calm and continued to pretend to be asleep.

Time passed by little by little, and the room and the corridor were completely silent, giving Zhou Yuan the illusion that the ward rounds were over.

But he kept reminding himself that the nurse was still standing by the bed, with his face still close to his!

After an unknown amount of time, the nurse straightened up, tiptoed out, and closed the door gently with a click.

Zhou Yuan breathed a sigh of relief, opened his eyes carefully, looked around, and confirmed that the nurse was not hiding in the ward.

Just now he was really afraid that when he opened his eyes he would see a calm and strange face right in front of him.

A few minutes later, the phone in the bed vibrated.

Chen Guangxi: "The nurse who was making rounds just now stared at me by the bed for a long time. What about you?"

Zhou Yuan: "I'm here too...Would you like to come over here?"

Chen Guangxi: “I’ll be there soon.”

A few seconds later, Chen Guangxi appeared in the dark ward without any warning.

Zhou Yuan was stunned and whispered, "What kind of magic is this?"

"Teleportation." Chen Guangxi said as a string of spells lit up at his fingertips and floated into Zhou Yuan's body.

Then, her voice rang in Zhou Yuan’s mind: “Now we can communicate directly through our minds.

This ghost place is really weird. From the current point of view, it is an undiscovered rule-based weird anomaly area.

Did you break any rules?

"I didn't take my medicine."

"I didn't eat either, and I didn't keep the room clean. I guess it's because we broke the rules that the abnormal creatures knocked on the door."

With Chen Guangxi's physique, he could easily take truckloads of drugs to treat mental illness, but it would be better not to take anything in the abnormal area.

But now it seems that I have to take this medicine.

Chen Guangxi once entered a rule-based ghost story-type anomaly area with the task force and successfully contained it. Her experience was that one must never break the rules in such a place, otherwise even she would have a chance of failing.

"Sister, you have a lot of experience, can you tell what that abnormal creature is?"

Zhou Yuan said, “It can completely imitate voice, heartbeat and breathing rate… Could it be a [fake person]?
Also, you can record my heartbeat and breathing rate so accurately, isn't that a bit too exaggerated?"

Chen Guangxi grinned: "It may be a bit exaggerated for others, but Sister Long is a real dragon, so it's not difficult to remember some physiological characteristics.

Let me tell you this, once I see someone, I can memorize all their physical characteristics and behavioral habits, comparable to the Skynet system."

Zhou Yuan: “…”

“As for that thing, it is not a pseudo-human, but an abnormal creature born under abnormal rules.

In fact, what I care more about is that thing actually knew that we were going to take action tonight."

She paused, "Either the content of our conversation leaked out, or that thing was born from our 'thoughts' and 'impressions'.

This is quite interesting..."

Zhou Yuan thought for a moment: "Do you think they will appear again?"

"Hard to say."

Chen Guangxi is not sure either, “They are penalties for breaking the rules, and as long as we don’t break the rules, they shouldn’t appear.

Hmm... The rules mention that there is a special mezzanine in the mental hospital. Maybe Qin Youwen is hiding in there. Let's explore it first."

Chen Guangxi raised his hand and cast a spell again. A faint light flashed and the two of them became invisible and silent.

Zhou Yuan immediately turned into a shadow and crawled out from under the door. Chen Guangxi used shadow magic and also turned into a shadow and followed closely behind.

The corridor was dark and silent, with only a faint white light coming from the nurses' station in the distance.

The two of them continued to move forward in shadow, and after a while they arrived at the nurses' station.

There were three male caregivers on duty, all of them were looking down at their phones, two were playing games, and one was watching videos.

[The three nurses on night shift were ordinary and there was nothing unusual about them.]

Were they the ones doing the ward rounds just now? Zhou Yuan was a little confused. If there was nothing unusual about these three people, how could he explain their strange postures during the ward rounds?
After passing the nurses' station, the two decided to go upstairs. Since the rules stated that those special mezzanines could not be reached by the "elevator", the only way left was to take the stairs.

Every time they went up a level, the two would explore the current floor, but until they reached the top floor, they did not find the so-called special mezzanine.

"Don't be anxious. There are three buildings in the mental hospital and this is only the first one. Let's go to the second one and take a look." Chen Guangxi said.

The two walked along the corridor to the second ward. At this time, Zhou Yuan looked out the window and his steps suddenly stopped.

"Look out the window." He reminded Chen Guangxi.

I saw two figures running happily on the playground, holding net bags in their hands.

[These two mentally ill patients thought they were SpongeBob and Patrick, so every night they would sneak out of the ward and happily catch jellyfish on the playground.] "Are they...catching jellyfish?" Chen Guangxi immediately saw the clue.

"How did you know that?" Zhou Yuan asked puzzledly.

"I watched all twenty seasons of SpongeBob when I was bored, I know it all too well."

Chen Guang looked at the figures running happily on the playground, and suddenly had a question, "How long do you think they have been running here? Did they miss the nurse's rounds?"

Zhou Yuan shook his head: "I don't know."

Chen Guangxi stroked his chin and thought for a while: "Tomorrow we will find time to ask other patients if they know these so-called rules, and by the way, observe their wards to see if they are clean and tidy or dirty and messy."

Zhou Yuan's mind moved: "You mean..."

“It’s possible that we’re contaminated.”

Chen Guangxi explained, "Maybe there are no rules or weird stories in the mental hospital at all, it's just that Dong Jie thought there are rules here, so there are rules here, and everyone who has heard the rules will be infected, while those who haven't heard the rules will be safe.

If the conjecture is reasonable, then this Dong Jie is very likely a [Reality Twister], and the abnormality of this mental hospital was caused by him!"

Reality Benders...

They can distort reality at will and change the laws of reality. Many level 4 and level 5 abnormal events are caused by reality warpers.

"But Dong Jie is just an ordinary person... Can an ordinary person become a reality warper?"

Chen Guangxi nodded: "Reality twisters don't have to be Beyonders."

Shit, if Dong Jie is a reality warper, why didn't the Eye of Appraisal remind me? Zhou Yuan was a little puzzled, or was Dong Jie not a reality warper?
Or does the other party have some power that can avoid the detection of the Eye of Identification?
"Let's go and continue investigating." Chen Guangxi called out.

The two then walked from the top floor to the bottom floor of the second ward, and then walked back to the top floor from the bottom floor. They then walked along the corridor back to the first ward and walked from the top floor to the first floor.

Nothing gained.

So they decided to go to the third building.

This building is not a hospital ward, but a comprehensive building that integrates a canteen, bathroom, nursing dormitories and other facilities.

The cafeteria was on the first floor. As soon as Zhou Yuan stepped into the darkness, an eerie chill crept up his spine.

Bang, bang, bang… bang, bang, bang… rustle…

There was a sudden unusual noise coming from the ceiling above my head, as if something was crawling, running, and wriggling.

"Did you hear that?" Zhou Yuan asked Chen Guangxi in his mind.

“Hmm…Rule 5: [If you hear strange noises coming from the ceiling and someone counting down, run away immediately].

There are only strange noises now, no countdown, don’t worry.”

Chen Guangxi is a skilled and bold man who has seen all kinds of situations. At this moment, he was very calm and called Zhou Yuan to go to the second floor.

The second floor was also the cafeteria, and the strange and unusual noises followed.

"Can you sense what that thing is?" Zhou Yuan wanted to take a look with his Eye of Identification. After all, the rules didn't say that he couldn't look up.

"It's just a corpse." Chen Guangxi looked up.

Seeing Chen Guangxi looking up, Zhou Yuan also looked up and saw a corpse with its back pressed against the ceiling.

The corpse was a male, about thirty years old, wearing a blue and white striped hospital gown. His eyes were filled with an eerie paleness, staring straight at the two of them.

[Congratulations, you found an unlucky guy who died for not following the rules. However, he is not a threat. The real threat is the thing that killed him - the woman who can count down.

The woman is now in the second ward. You just avoided her perfectly, so you can explore without worries now.

By the way, on the third floor, you can find a mezzanine. 】

You finally made an effort!
This mental hospital seems to have an unknown power that can affect the Eye of Identification, and it has not provided much useful information before.

"Look at that! Get out of the way." Chen Guangxi glared at the corpse on the ceiling.

The corpse immediately propped itself up with its hands and feet, and crawled away on the ceiling as swiftly as a spider.

"Sister Chen is awesome." Zhou Yuan quickly flattered her.

Chen Guangxi snorted twice and said calmly: "We are now in stealth mode, but that thing can see us, which means that invisibility has no effect on anomalies. Be careful."

They went up the stairs to the third floor, and as soon as they landed, their movements stopped at the same time.

The scene changed. The lounge that was dark just now turned into a brightly lit study room.

The reading room was huge, surrounded by rows of bookshelves, with a few people in white clothes reading quietly inside.

"It's a mezzanine." Chen Guangxi knew that they had come to a mezzanine space.

At this moment, a man in a white coat passed by, holding a mug filled with steaming coffee.

[A medical worker trapped in the mezzanine, he is already lost, so don't stimulate him. He likes to read romance novels and is obsessed with CP. ]

The man was stunned for a moment, then turned to look at the two of them: "What are you two patients doing here in the middle of the night?"

Zhou Yuan's mind raced, and he smiled a little embarrassedly: "Let's come here to relax, hehe..."

"God damn it, just relax in the early morning." Chen Guangxi was speechless. Can your excuse be any more perfunctory?

Unexpectedly, the man in the white coat smiled knowingly: "Oh... just relax, then you can relax slowly."

After saying that, he left, returned to his seat, sat down, picked up the half-finished romance novel and continued reading.

Chen Guangxi: “???”

Did you really get away with it?
At this moment, a prompt popped up in front of Zhou Yuan:
[Mezzanine space 1: reading room.

As a scene born under rules, the reading room also has some rules that cannot be violated.

1. Please keep quiet in the reading area, otherwise you will attract the wrath of the administrator.

2. You must finish reading a whole book before entering the reading room and can move freely.

3. Do not stay in the reading room for more than 3 hours, otherwise you will get lost.

4. The reading room is safe. Staying in the reading room can eliminate negative states and restore sanity.

After introducing the rules, it's your turn to play. Let me tell you a secret: you can find clues about Qin Youwen here. 】

"Shall we go in?" Zhou Yuan looked at Chen Guangxi.

Chen Guangxi pinched his chin and thought seriously: "I think the reading room must have some rules. It's very dangerous to rush in without knowing the rules..."

"This is easy. Just ask someone."

Zhou Yuan whispered to the medical staff, "Brother, come here."

The medical staff looked up, then stood up and walked over. He waited until he was out of the reading area before speaking: "What's the matter?"

"We both want to go in and read some books. Can you tell us some rules?" Zhou Yuan asked sincerely.

The medical staff was very cheerful:
"Oh, then listen carefully..."

(End of this chapter)