Chapter 8: The Abandoned Hospital (4)

January 10th. If I didn't see it for myself, I would not have believed the things they say this child can do. Without any external influence, the spoon floated up just like that, and it was twisted into different shapes based on his desire.

January 13th. He said he felt someone observing him. No, there were many people, and he was afraid.

January 16th. He stopped being afraid, and occasionally, he might smile, but most of the time, he's quiet.

January 17th. All the test results were normal. There are six of us here, but none of us can explain what has happened to the child.

January 19th. He's started to draw. Even though his parents said he's shown no interest or talent in the arts, he was able to draw incredibly realistic portraits.

January 22nd. He would not stop asking for paper and pencils for his endless drawing exercise. He only drew human faces, and the faces turned from initially normal faces to those that were creepier and scarier.

January 25th. Human faces painted in blood appeared on the wall, and we found the body of a parrot inside his room. But his hands were clean. This made me worried because it reminded me of the spoon.

January 26th. All the windows in the corridor disappeared, and only a solid wall remained. The camera video from the night before only showed a flickering image. Should I ask for help, but from whom? The police? They will think I'm crazy and lock me up with the rest.

January 30th. Richard has gone missing, and this has made the remaining five of us very unsettled. More blood faces appeared on the wall, but this time, we couldn't find… I don't know… his dead body?

January 31st. I have to leave this place… I should ask for a sick leave, claiming the child is sick… No… I will quit the job and never come back!

February 1st. I think there is no escape for me. The building has turned into a maze with no exit. If someone reads this notebook, then remember this—he is afraid of [This spot has been covered by blood]! You have to kill him if you have a chance! Do not hesitate or you will die!

…

Feng Bujue and Wang Tanzhi turned the corner at the same time. The corridor ahead was still bright, but this time, there was no door. The walls on both sides were snow white, and they walked another ten meters before they reached a T-junction.

The pair moved ahead cautiously. Feng Bujue relayed what he had read in the notebook, trying to make it as commonplace as possible, but it still made Xiao Tan's face go completely white, and goosebumps rose all over his body.

"We are facing not a ghost but a child with psychic powers who became mentally disturbed after his serious illness," Feng Bujue concluded. "At least that is the set-up behind this scenario."

"How is that going to help us?" Wang Tanzhi's tone showed the great pressure that he was still under.

"First, mentally, since you know that our enemy is a living person, I think the degree of your fear will be slightly lowered," Feng Bujue answered. "Secondly, the actual meaning is, now that we know he has a corporeal body, we can injure him physically."

"Hey, don't you think the person who wrote the notebook and the other victims in this scenario… would have tried that before?" Wang Tanzhi was shivering with fear. "There should be more than two of them, right?"

"Do you think they know Explosive Fist?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Brother Jue, I have a question. If we did not find that skill card, neither of us had unlocked the fighting mastery, or we skipped the puzzle altogether, what would have happened?"

"Then, there would come a choice when we reached the child," Feng Bujue said. "It would be a fight or flight situation.

"If we did not solve the puzzle, we would need to base our decision on how our encounter with him goes. For example, how many Life Points will we lose from the encounter? Threatened by both fear and death, the difficulty would be much higher.

"But based on the understanding of the scenario, even without the encounter, I can now confirm… based on our fighting ability, the only choice is to escape. Going tooth for tooth is certain death. So, I believe… the way to clear this scenario is to find an exit."

"Then, our danger situation is similar to those who have skipped the puzzle!" Wang Tanzhi said.

"No, there's a difference. At least you obtained a skill card in the second room," Feng Bujue added. "Furthermore, in the third room, we discovered that he has a weakness. Now, whether we choose to escape or fight with the child, our success rate has increased quite a bit."

"The skill with twenty percent success rate aside, didn't you say that the child's weakness inside the notebook was covered up by blood?"

"The system requires us to do some simple analysis here, concluding all of the records inside the notebook to analyze the child's series of action. Taking away the parts that are there for dramatic effect, the content of the notebook is basically no different from a monster profile."

As Feng Bujue said that, they turned another corner. Before them was a large hall. The ceiling was higher, but the lighting was still very good. Regardless, they were still surrounded by walls.

"January 1st, telekinesis; January 16th, change of character; January 19th, the awakening of psychic power; January 25th, he discovered that he could use his mind to influence living things; January 30th, his influence increased to be able to influence bigger organisms, in other words, human beings; February 1st, the massacre began." Feng Bujue analyzed it calmly. "The hint for his weakness is the entry on January 26th and the situation that we have been witnessing so far."

After a pause, Feng Bujue announced, "He is afraid of sunlight."

"But this place is so…" Before Wang Tanzhi could say the word 'bright', Feng Bujue interrupted him.

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"Sunlight, electric light," Feng Bujue explained. "When we entered the first room that looked like a sickbay, I've thought that the place felt off. The bloody situation aside, the corridor that was outside the room and the room itself had no windows. That's unlike normal architectural structure. At the time, I even suspected we were underground.

"However, after visiting the second and third rooms, I realized that they did not have windows either. Why?

"It can be understood as something to make the game creepier. After all, this is a horror game. Perhaps, this place that I believe is a hospital has experienced some sort of spatial distortion. But after reading the notebook, I got it—those were all hints."

He used his finger to point at the light above them. "Actually, these lights are a hint as well. He is afraid of sunlight, but why does he keep all the lights on? There are two possibilities. One, he needs light for his movement. In the dark, he is as blind as we are. Two, he is both afraid of sunlight and darkness because there are things watching him in the dark…"

Suddenly, the girl's giggle that they had heard at the beginning began again, and it came from not far ahead of them. By then, they knew that the source of the giggle was actually a boy, and he was not a ghost, just a child who liked to paint with blood.

However, even though the concept had been made clear, Wang Tanzhi could not help his heart from racing. His breathing became heavy, and as he gripped the fruit knife, his palms started to sweat.

"Put your knife away," Feng Bujue said. "It is useless before him."

"Brother Jue, Jue, Jue… Do, do… Do you…"

"Yes, I have an idea." Feng Bujue pointed at a direction down the hall. "Use your skill to break the middle part of the wall."

Before he finished, the boy who was the scenario's boss suddenly materialized about three meters in front of them. He was wearing a patient's garb, and even under the light, his face and body were shrouded in shadows. When he appeared, the walls of the hall, above them and below them, were covered with many blood faces. Even the lights turned red.

This was enough to make any man scream, but Feng Bujue was unfazed. He did not hesitate for a second and darted forward at the boy that was just over 1.2 meters tall. "Quick, aim at the wall!"

Wang Tanzhi jumped and headed in the direction that Feng Bujue had pointed toward earlier. Actually, that jump was due to him being scared. He only took few steps when his legs started to give. He turned back to look and saw Feng Bujue being bounced back by an invisible force before he even got close to the boy. He was like a moth running into a speeding vehicle, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Even though it looked dramatic, this was ultimately just a game. The player did not experience that pain in real life. When they were in Thriller Paradise, no matter how heavy the damage was, even if they were run over by a train, there was an upper limit to the player's pain threshold, and it was about as painful as being hit heavily by a hammer on one's hand.

When Wang Tanzhi saw this, he ran even faster toward the wall. The boy naturally noticed him, but this time, the boy did not teleport, instead chasing after him. The speed was not what a normal boy could have achieved, and the way he ran was very strange, like a puppet that was pulled along by strings.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed the boy's ankle. The level's boss lowered his head to look and realized that it was Feng Bujue, who had crawled up from the ground and charged forward to stop him. After all, Feng Bujue had the physical advantage. The boy was just a boy. As fast as he could run, the distance that he could cover was limited by his short limbs.

At the same time, Wang Tanzhi activated his skill. His right fist was covered by an orange glow, and he hit the wall. Even though the skill only had a twenty percent success rate, his target was an immovable wall, and apparently, he was luckier than Feng Bujue—the skill was a success.

There was an explosive effect on the wall, and a hole about one meter wide appeared in it. A surprisingly strong ray of light shot into the room. In that moment, all the blood faces in the hall disappeared, and the boy retreated in panic. He tried to stay away from the sunlight as much as possible, but he was unable to run… because Feng Bujue was still holding his ankle.

"That one hit took out eighty-four percent of my Life Points. Now it's my turn." Feng Bujue stood up, and with a tug, he yanked the boss to the ground. Now, exposed to his weakness, the boy was unable to put up any resistance.

Feng Bujue used his free hand to wipe the blood from his lips. He grabbed the boy by his leg and dragged him all the way to the hole. "This should be quite a powerful boss. Even if you hit him directly with your skill, I don't think you can one hit KO him."

Wang Tanzhi sighed in relief. "If I was unable to break the wall or if the wall led to another corridor, then what would we have done?"

"If it was dark beyond the wall, you would've run into the darkness; if it was another corridor, you would've run down it to escape; if you failed to break the wall… I guess, you'd need to find another way." Feng Bujue walked and talked. "In any case, I told you to use the skill because I had the confidence. This is a hospital lobby. By looking at the layout, you can pretty much tell the location of the entrance. Look, we are bookended by corridors on both sides, and the space behind me, even though it's now sealed off, should be some kind of dispensary…"

He lifted the boss up and dangled him through the hole in the wall.

"Hey, Brother Jue… don't you think that is a bit cruel?" Wang Tanzhi saw the boy's eyes that he tried desperately to shield, and his body was curled into a ball.

"You're right. This is a bit much," Feng Bujue said, but he did not show any sign of stopping. That was how he had been since he was a child. He accepted criticism from others, but that did not mean that he was going to change.

"I can let him go now and allow him to hide back in the hospital while we escape from this hole. That should complete the scenario as well," Feng Bujue said. "But like I said, this is a very powerful boss. Even if we have completely explored the scenario, beating him in a fight is going to be very difficult. So, clearing the scenario by killing him should grant us more EXP than just escaping."

"Eh? When did you start to care about EXP?" Wang Tanzhi asked in shock.

Feng Bujue pursed his lips and pushed the boss several more inches out into the light. "Now I have at least three reasons to treat this Thriller Paradise game seriously.

"One, it is a monetary investment. I want to earn back the money that I've invested into the gaming hub. Two, the game itself is really not bad. Based on the official website, the system has a very large database, and it is pieced together from many players' memory fragments. In the survival mode, there will be even more complicated stories and settings, so I can use this game to collect inspiration for my writing. Third, it is to attempt to regain my sense of fear…"

At that point, Feng Bujue snapped his finger and extended his palm. Wang Tanzhi understood his meaning and handed him the fruit knife.

"Now let's see… how much EXP you'll give me." Feng Bujue accepted the knife and stabbed the boy's vitals.

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