Chapter 12: The Asylum Pantomime: 11

Nan Lin withdrew his gaze and walked forward as if nothing had happened.

He found himself assigned to the same row as Ruan Yu. Perhaps sensing Nan Lin’s earlier pause, Ruan Yu turned his head curiously to look.

What he saw was that slender, beautiful figure standing ramrod straight, a shaft of light from the window slanting neatly into the empty waistband of his pants. Only when Nan Lin noticed and turned back did the beam drift slightly askew, falling just behind him.

“What is it?”

Ruan Yu heard his question, parted his lips, and simply offered a smile.

Nan Lin looked back at him with lingering suspicion before abandoning the matter and turning his attention to the towering stack of books before him.

Perhaps because of the excessive dampness, most of the pages in this reading room had sprouted mold. Opening them always released a foul, indescribable stench.

The reading room didn’t actually have many bookshelves. Thirteen rows in total, split into left and right columns.

Though the layout was simple, every shelf was enormous, each holding at least several hundred books. The gaps between volumes were minuscule. A player standing behind the fourth shelf could only see left and right, making it virtually impossible to catch a glimpse of the third row through the spaces between books.

Nan Lin tried looking backward. He was on the fourth shelf on the left side. He could see neither Lin Yi, who was assigned to the first section on the left, nor Qiu Xinxin on the thirteenth shelf to his right.

The shelves here were simply too wide and too tall. The only person he could see was Ruan Yu to his right.

As for Zou Zhiming, if he hadn’t misheard, the man had been assigned to the thirteenth shelf on the left, the botanical encyclopedia section.

Was this a deliberate separation of the instance’s players?

Nan Lin thought this as he placed the book in his hand back on the shelf.

The book he had pulled out was thick with mold, its inner pages badly mottled, the text barely legible.

He looked upward and found that the books on the higher shelves seemed to be in slightly better condition.

Several hundred books and only two hours…

If nothing was hidden in here, Nan Lin would find it hard to believe.

But at that moment, he spotted a strikingly familiar piece of paper drifting off the shelf as its owner moved, fluttering down before being caught by a hand.

Ruan Yu examined the handwriting and discovered it was the latter half of the rules sheet.

Nan Lin realized at the same instant and shuffled several steps closer to Ruan Yu.

At the ends of their respective shelves, separated by only a few meters, Nan Lin quickly scanned the rest of the rules sheet:

[Cartagena Asylum House Rules:

1. No lying in. No crying. Take your medicine like good patients.

2. Don’t fall asleep in the bath. No roughhousing at bedtime.

3. …

…

…

9. Patients are strictly forbidden from removing their wristbands.

10. Patients are strictly forbidden from pulling each other’s hair.

11. Caring for Teresa is strictly forbidden.

12. Bullying Chong Jiu is strictly forbidden.]

There were no signs of tearing past the end. The asylum’s house rules must have stopped there.

So that’s how it was.

It wasn’t that the patients who had replaced the doctors refused to remove their wristbands. It was that it had never occurred to them to take them off.

The asylum’s house rules had taken root deep inside every “patient’s” heart. They obeyed by reflex, even going so far as to actively enforce the rules on others.

Whether it was the real patients before the riot, or the patients who now played the role of doctors.

Everyone in this asylum, doctors, patients, nurses alike, had at some point been forced to follow the house rules for extended periods.

Over the long years, they had spiraled into a vicious cycle.

In such a sealed environment, the process was fundamentally one of servitude and domestication.

It was just that… Nan Lin pulled his thoughts back and returned his gaze to the last two lines of the rules sheet.

But before he could think further, the reading room door was flung open with a bang. The old man stationed at the entrance immediately scrambled trembling beneath the desk. The other patients screamed and scattered.

Nan Lin and Ruan Yu exchanged a glance and ducked behind a bookshelf together to observe.

The intruder was no stranger. It was the same male doctor who had been escorting them to the cafeteria. Only this time, several burly men wielding long blades and rippling with muscle followed behind him, splitting up to converge on Nan Lin and the other players.

When the captors moved on Nan Lin, they found no resistance. But as his hands were wrenched behind his back and he was shoved forward, his body went rigid.

He was fighting his own instincts with everything he had.

His thick lashes trembled. A nearly imperceptible flash of mockery crossed his eyes.

All five players were dragged out without exception. Qiu Xinxin’s expression was grave, her brow creased. Then, as if struck by a sudden thought, her face drained of color.

“House Rule Number One: take your medicine like good patients.”

The male doctor smiled with ill intent, his gaze sweeping from Lin Yi all the way to Nan Lin at the end.

“During this morning’s routine inspection, we discovered that certain individuals failed to take their medicine.”

He flipped open the worn notebook in his hand, his expression exaggerated. “Zou Zhiming, Qiu Xinxin, Lin Yi. Out of three hundred grams of medicine in total, the three of you hid ninety-nine point nine grams each. For this, the director personally ordered that you be confined to solitary for two days.”

“Nan Lin,” the male doctor said, his stiffly turning pupils locking onto Nan Lin. “Hid fifty grams. Punished with one day of solitary confinement.”

“And as for you, Ruan Yu…” He dragged out the syllables deliberately. His dead eyes suddenly blazed with excitement. “You actually hid every last bit of the medicine! Not a single gram taken!”

“You are the most disobedient patient of all!”

The other players all stared at Ruan Yu in shock. Even Nan Lin frowned, a flicker of confusion in his eyes.

All of Ruan Yu’s hidden medicine had been found? That was spectacularly unlucky, and almost… pitiful.

Under the group’s complicated gazes, Ruan Yu became the first player to be dragged away.

Before he could even turn around, a rough hand clamped around his throat and shoved him out the door.

The doctor didn’t say where he would be confined, nor for how long.

Soon, the remaining players were sent to separate solitary cells.

The heavy, solid door swung open. Nan Lin was shoved inside, and the door slammed shut behind him with a dull thud.

Darkness swallowed him whole.

Not a single sound. Not a single ray of light.

As the numbness in his wrists faded, fine threads of pain began to surface.

Nan Lin silently rubbed his wrists, groped along the wall to a corner, and sat down with his arms wrapped around himself.

In an environment devoid of points of reference, people often lose all sense of time.

Nan Lin kept his eyes open in the darkness, but it made little difference from keeping them closed.

His pupils gradually lost focus. But his mind was turning: I think I found the right way to hide medicine.

The note in the hospital room had said, “We tried hundreds of times, but never succeeded.”

When a sample size reaches a certain threshold with not a single success, you have to start questioning whether that probability is even real.

The notes in Qiu Xinxin’s and Zou Zhiming’s rooms had both been teaching players how to hide medicine, but they had overlooked two things.

First: if no one had ever succeeded, why would a player keep using a failed method?

Second: these hiding spots had never once left the hospital room.

If all previous hiding locations were confined to the patients’ original rooms, combined with a hundred-percent failure rate…

Then these nurses and doctors must have absolute knowledge of and access to every room.

No matter how patients and players hid their medicine inside, they would always be discovered.

The only way out was to carry the medicine out of the room.

Nan Lin glanced at the white medicinal powder still clinging to the soles of his feet and lowered his eyes.

He had successfully smuggled half the medicine out of the room. The male doctor’s words had confirmed his theory.

The doctors and nurses didn’t search people’s bodies. Carrying medicine out of the room wasn’t punished. It was the only viable path.

No punishment… and the only viable method.

Next time, he could try telling Ruan Yu and the others about this.

Speaking of Ruan Yu…

Was he really just a poor, unlucky soul?

The difference was barely one gram on average. It was entirely possible that when Qiu Xinxin and the others hid their medicine, some powder had accidentally stuck to their hands and been carried out of the room by pure fluke.

Nan Lin buried half his face in the crook of his elbow, leaving only a pair of beautifully shaped eyes visible.

In the unbearable darkness and confinement, he blinked, tiny points of light glimmering at the tips of his lashes.

How much time had passed?

Was it dark outside?

So sleepy…

The fitful sleep was riddled with fragmented dreams.

In the dream, Nan Lin remembered the first time he had been abandoned.

He had been so young. The voices around him were a chaotic mess. Someone said they hated him. Someone else said they wanted to take him home. Yet another was tugging at the thin blanket wrapped around his body.

But it didn’t even take human hands. Before long, that single source of warmth was soaked through and through by the pouring rain.

Someone shoved him to the ground. Broken glass on the floor sliced his finger.

Blood seeped out. He was frightened and instinctively put his finger in his mouth. The thick, coppery taste choked the breath from his lungs…

Nan Lin’s eyes flew open and he gasped sharply.

It wasn’t a dream. The rich smell of blood really hung in the air around him.

He looked up at the ventilation grate in the ceiling, groped his way to his feet, and knocked on the wall.

That sound… there was another room on the other side. Who was in there?

Unease crashed over him, but Nan Lin forced it back down.

He exhaled slowly, sat back down with perfect calm, and his expression remained placid.

“Leaving a way out isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Nan Lin murmured to himself. But he immediately countered his own words.

What way out? That sounded like a habitual criminal’s self-justification…

Damn it. Could the person locked up next door actually be Ruan Yu?!