Chapter 5: The Madmen’s Pantomime (4)

The meal period was nearly over.

Nan Lin had barely opened the book when its absurdly chuunibyou prose hit him square in the eyes.

He blinked and skimmed down the page.

[In a madhouse cut off almost entirely from the outside world, an unknown riot took place.

The patients rose up under the leadership of a “warrior,” successfully cut off the head of the asylum director, and threw his corpse into a ward.]

The text was a chaotic mess. Calling it a book was generous. It read more like a stream of babble.

But among the printed lines, Nan Lin spotted handwriting worked in between them.

[Free activity time after dinner: 18:30 to 19:30.

Teresa is still looking for someone to play hide-and-seek with her. After the game ends, a few more corpses turn up under the stairs.

The recreation room is closed recently, so I’ve had to spend the whole day playing rock-paper-scissors with the lunatic next door. He invited me to play house with him in the bathroom. I turned him down.

There are more important things that have to be done.

How am I supposed to tell those who come after me that the madmen here have put on the skin of doctors?

But the people here only tell me, again and again, that it is I who am sick…

“How could anyone fail to tell a psychiatric patient apart from a doctor?”

Am I really insane?]

After that came dozens of blank pages. Nan Lin flipped through them roughly, then passed the book to Qiu Xinxin.

A madman claiming he wasn’t mad, saying the doctors here were the very madmen who had once sparked a riot.

Qiu Xinxin spotted that line quickly as well. Her long brows drew together. After a moment of thought she asked, “Nan Lin, do you think what’s written here is trustworthy?”

Nan Lin answered with complete honesty: “No idea.”

Then he turned the question around. “But does it conflict with our main quest of escaping the asylum?”

Qiu Xinxin: ?

No, wait, you… although… but… he actually had a point.

No matter who the madmen really were, the priority right now was staying alive and getting out.

Soon, the cafeteria’s lights began to go out one after another and the voices grew loud and chaotic.

Nan Lin snatched the book straight out of Qiu Xinxin’s hands, lobbed it precisely back into the patient’s lap, and said, “Move!”

On the greasy interior wall of the cafeteria, the clock’s hands rested exactly on 18:30.

Dinner was over. The cafeteria lights were out. Players were no longer permitted to enter.

The group ran out of the cafeteria. Nan Lin looked back and saw that many patients had not come out with them.

Dozens of people sat motionless in the blackness. Some were still shoveling food into their mouths. Thin chewing and swallowing sounds floated through the air.

No. The sound wasn’t right.

Nan Lin leaned in closer. In the dim light, his eyes were startlingly bright.

It seemed that once the lights went out, the food in the cafeteria changed.

Cooked meat had turned raw. Dull-colored meat was slowly welling up with bloody water. The roots of the plants in their mouths had begun to take root and grow again.

He withdrew in silence, and abruptly realized he had become the center of attention for all six people present.

Nan Lin: ?

What are they staring at me for?

Qiu Xinxin covered her mouth and coughed lightly. “Since it’s free activity time, there’s a good chance no doctors will come looking for us.”

Nan Lin looked at her. Not a trace of expression on his face.

Very true. But why did you all stop?

Qiu Xinxin froze for a beat, realizing she had instinctively been asking Nan Lin’s opinion and keeping her guard up around him.

But the man was obviously just a new player. Why did he give her such a… hard-to-name sense of unease?

…

Watching Qiu Xinxin’s self-reflection, the audience spectating from outside wore faces full of things they wanted to say but couldn’t.

“That veteran’s got decent instincts, honestly. This one really isn’t her fault.”

“Fair enough. If I had a time bomb standing next to me, I’d be jumpy too.”

“Hello? File a bug report to hell and back. There’s a humanoid self-destruct device in a new player dungeon. I am not joking.”

…

Fortunately, Qiu Xinxin didn’t agonize for long. In Nan Lin’s calm “accusing” gaze, she quickly found her direction.

“Earlier… the man who stepped on Song De’s hand and told us his ward number, B-301,” Qiu Xinxin said, her pace quickening slightly. “What I mean is, he’s definitely been in this asylum longer than we have. Naturally, he’d know the rules for each time slot far better.”

“He knows it’s free activity time after dinner, and at the same time he told us his ward number. Could that be his way of asking us to come find him?”

Nan Lin nodded and said nothing.

Lin Yi gathered up his loud, multicolored scarf and said lazily: “And if he doesn’t know either? Or what if he does know but has no intention of telling us?”

“So my suggestion is, we split into two groups.”

Splitting up…

Although the man called Lin Yi had given plenty of reason, Nan Lin could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

The sense of wrongness seeped out from countless small details, then wrapped itself back up in heavy gloves and scarves.

He thought again of the past, of the clattering rhythm made by countless running puppets.

Nan Lin’s fingertips curled unconsciously, a dark light flickering through his eyes.

【Player Nan Lin Sanity decreased: 49→47.】

“I’ll go look for the next time slot. Who’s coming with me?” Qiu Xinxin asked.

Song De scrambled over at once. In his eyes, among this whole crowd of “weirdos,” only this girl was relatively gentle and looked like she had everything well in hand.

Behind him, Zou Zhiming, silent until now, followed as well.

And so the team heading for ward B-301 resolved itself as Lin Yi, Nan Lin, and Ruan Yu.

With no objections raised, Qiu Xinxin led the two new players away at a brisk pace, leaving the remaining three to stare at one another, each deep in thought.

Lin Yi spread his hands. “Let’s be clear from the start. I’m not like Qiu Xinxin. She’ll help new players for the sake of the quest, but that doesn’t mean I will.”

The game would randomly drop a portion of veteran players into new player dungeons to make things more interesting.

On the surface, veteran players could earn rewards by keeping new players alive. But a very small number of people also knew the second, hidden rule:

Push the new players toward a total wipe, and veteran players earned rewards too.

As luck would have it, Nan Lin was one of the people who knew that rule.

So he had never fully trusted Qiu Xinxin or Lin Yi.

“You coming or not?”

Lin Yi turned sideways to ask. The darkness outside the window was deepening.

Nan Lin kept his eyes half-lidded, weighing something, then followed after him together with Ruan Yu.

Ward B-301 was in the main building on the right.

By his observation, all the player wards in this dungeon were in the left main building, and their numbers started with the letter A.

Crossing the abandoned green field, the group drew closer to the right-hand main building. The two buildings shared a broadly similar architectural style, except that a misshapen sculpture stood before the right building’s main entrance.

It looked like a bird with disheveled plumage, both wings folded backward at a bizarre angle.

But the strangest thing of all was the rose stem that had pierced straight out through its chest.

Ruan Yu asked softly, “The Nightingale and the Rose?”

“Perhaps.” Nan Lin looked at the sculpture. Nothing strange in this place seemed capable of stirring his emotions.

Yet he suddenly stopped in his tracks and pulled Ruan Yu to a halt.

Night wind swept across the mottled green field, carrying a scent impossible to name.

Ruan Yu instantly held his breath, feeling with something close to greed the warmth where their skin touched.

“Brother, what is it?”

For some reason, Nan Lin thought he could hear a thread of trembling in those words.

But he quickly convinced himself that Ruan Yu was simply very frightened.

Nan Lin: Normal. Human nature. A common failing of new players. This one is doing well enough already.

“Look at that sculpture. Its wings…” Nan Lin said in a low voice.

“They’re covered in tiny writing.” Ruan Yu finished the sentence for him.

On every single feather was a short passage of text. From a distance, they looked exactly like mottled wounds.

[A-Jiu told me: the fish must be big enough (the carp that leaps the dragon gate), the snake must grow horns (the dragon soaring in heaven), the fox must practice its breathing and worship the moon (paying homage to the Northern Dipper), the weasel must learn to walk like a man (competing for human favor), the rat must become a man (the rat’s wedding)]

[I want to grow up quickly and escape from here.]

[Then become a flying bird. Fly out of this cage, and before your heart breaks, go see the world outside.]

In that instant, the surroundings fell utterly silent. Even the sounds of nature quieted for a few breaths.

“An angel flew past,” Ruan Yu said with a smile. His voice was gentle, yet it brought Nan Lin to a halt. He turned his head in question.

So Ruan Yu explained: “That was a story told to me by the… noble person who once saved me.”

Ruan Yu swallowed back the identity of the man, smiling only in a reserved way, his eyes bright.

Someone had once told him that when everything around you suddenly falls silent, it means an angel has just flown past at your side.

So there was no need to be afraid.

“Though he’s probably forgotten by now. It was just an offhand word of comfort, after all. A great deal of time has passed, and I’m not that important.” Ruan Yu added this in an afterthought.

Nan Lin didn’t care about any of that. He raised his head slightly to look ahead and said only: “Lin Yi is gone.”

Lin Yi, who had been just ahead of them, had vanished from the path.

Apart from Nan Lin and Ruan Yu, there was now not a ghost of a shadow up ahead.

Nan Lin: “…”

I knew it.

He kept moving, picking his way toward the right-hand building. The view opened up slightly once he rounded the enormous sculpture.

Looking up, the right-hand building appeared newer than the one they had spawned in. It had very likely been built as a later extension.

Ward B-301…

Ten wards per floor. The third floor and above had been allotted as patient rooms.

Nan Lin’s gaze settled on the elevator doors. No one knew what might come lunging out from behind those shut, rusted doors.

He swept another glance at the equally unsettling stairwell, then turned and walked toward the elevator without looking back.

Ruan Yu hurried forward and took Nan Lin’s hand. “Brother, I feel like the elevator is dangerous.”

The still-shut iron doors held the particular sheen of metal. Nan Lin did not speak for a moment.

Inside: Of course I know this elevator is dangerous… but I’m far more afraid of what happens if I lose it and kill you myself.

This asylum dungeon wasn’t actually that difficult. It had been rated the most disgusting new player dungeon for one reason only.

A naive and twisted bloodthirsty monster lived here.

The stairwell was its territory.

It was a perfect match for this dungeon’s nature, and it would deal a devastating blow to any player’s mental state.

He could not afford to go insane. Not yet.

Nan Lin slowly closed his eyes, forcing down the roaring clamor inside him.