Clearly, Li Bei Shan had something to do with the school-bus fusion case. There was a very real possibility that he had orchestrated the whole thing himself.
Using a module carrying residual interference to preserve the reality-baseline deviation and match a positional-overlap target was a deliberate attempt to spread Xianlu Hotel’s anomalous influence.
Why Li Bei Shan had done this was something Shang Lu still needed to investigate in depth.
This was no longer a simple fusion-disease case.
Shang Lu told Zhou Jia Ying to keep digging along the Li Bei Shan lead and apply to their superiors for assistance if necessary. Right now, they had to find a way to rescue the people who had been swept into the other space.
They really were short on manpower. Zhou Jia Ying asked, “Brother Lu, where’s the new Xiao Fang? I haven’t seen him at all today.”
Shang Lu’s head ached. All he could say was, “He’s with me.”
He just couldn’t see him either, that was all.
The new intern had no sense of organization or discipline, but Zheng Xiao Yu didn’t dare misbehave. Instead, he worked even harder and had already rechecked how the school scene had been handled.
“Team Leader, the Containment Center has already removed the school bus and placed it under sealed management. After continuous monitoring, the school’s RG value returned to normal once the module was removed. There haven’t been any new anomalies, and no interference space has appeared.”
That was strange.
Shang Lu fell into thought, then looked toward Tao Ran in intensive care.
Since the module had deliberately screened for a target and then selected Tao Ran… a thought occurred to Shang Lu. What if bodily positional overlap was the real objective?
Could someone be deliberately creating fusion disease?
Regardless, Tao Ran had already entered stage three of fusion disease.
Judging from the current situation, the positional overlap had not succeeded. The Tao Ran from another reality had failed to completely seize the uniqueness of reality; whoever was behind this seemed to have failed.
But would the part of Tao Ran’s body still competing for positional overlap continue to react to the same baseline deviation?
Shang Lu acted immediately to test it. “Xiao Yu, load the reality-baseline data extracted from the module into the phase regulator!”
They got to work at once. After loading all the data into the phase regulator, Shang Lu operated the device, making its enormous horn begin moving as it ran comparative scans.
The phase regulator, worth tens of millions of dollars, had been newly purchased the year before. Production was limited and the machine was extraordinarily expensive; only five existed worldwide. No one knew who had bankrolled Hua’s Anomalous Case Department, but it had acquired two of them at once, causing quite a sensation at the time.
The hospital floor had already been cleared, with the doctors and patients all remaining inside rooms.
The machine rotated slowly and silently, sweeping over every room and every human body without a sound. Then it turned toward the intensive care unit where Tao Ran was, and at last a red human figure appeared on the screen as the device issued a prompt.
Zheng Xiao Yu stared in shock. “T-Tao Ran is the interference source?”
“No. What he has on him is a reality-baseline deviation with fixed parameters. The module may have been removed, but the result it planted in him won’t change. In other words, whenever his condition flares up, the nearby reality baseline is continuously pulled toward that fixed set of data. Between those two baselines, an unstable space forms.”
Zheng Xiao Yu understood, and his expression changed dramatically. “Then if Tao Ran dies, Xiao Fang, Captain Xie, and the people in the hospital—”
Shang Lu’s expression darkened too. “No matter what, whether Tao Ran pulls through or not, we have to preserve his subjective consciousness and maintain his vital signs. Right now, he’s the only person who still allows the phase regulator to track the enclosed space.”
Zheng Xiao Yu immediately nodded and went to speak with the doctors and Tao Ran’s father.
This interference space that was still “in progress” couldn’t be seen or touched and remained in a constant state of change, but Shang Lu knew it was somewhere on this floor.
What was inside that space? Could there be fusion entities—even a Reaper?
He was starting to feel anxious. He made a circuit of the area, studying the hospital’s furnishings and equipment, until finally his gaze landed on the signage on the wall.
In a hospital, people, equipment, medicines, and other objects in reality did not remain continuously fixed at the same spatial coordinates over long periods. They were highly likely to be changing; even the slightest movement meant they were in a state of being pulled.
The only things that remained unchanged were the building and its fixed facilities themselves.
Could he use that fact to find a way to contact the people in the other space?
Shang Lu looked at the bilingual medical-information display mounted on the wall in raised lettering.
The three of them stood behind the glass, watching the faceless nurse push its little cart out of the nurses’ station yet again.
At the other end, the printer clack-clacked out a new wristband. The faceless Tao Ran crawled out and, outside the intensive care unit, adhered to the corpse from the previous cycle until the two completely fused together.
Crunch, crunch.
The sound came from right beside them.
Captain Xie and Xiao Huang felt chills run over their skin. They turned their heads. “…”
It was Fang Huan Xing eating the chips he had just swiped from the staff room.
By now, they had figured out the situation in this place. There were three faceless nurses in total. Aside from the one pushing the cart, there were two more in separate patient rooms, one wiping down a patient and the other giving a massage.
Outside the restroom was a cleaner wiping down the counter. It kept repeating the same sequence: look for a mop, wipe the counter, then go looking for the mop again.
Captain Xie helped Xiao Huang move the real patients’ tags, IV fluid bags, and other items out of the way, while Fang Huan Xing went off by himself to investigate several possible exits.
The interference space contained only this one floor. When the elevator doors opened, there was nothing but pitch-black darkness beyond them. Going down the stairs only allowed them to make it halfway before they encountered the same black void.
Fang Huan Xing had checked every room. Aside from finding a fire axe and conveniently chopping down two monsters that got in his way, his biggest haul was a pile of food he discovered inside a cabinet in the staff room.
To keep his temporary teammates from becoming deadweight, Fang Huan Xing endured his own hunger and shared some of the food with each of them. For some reason, however, neither of them ate.
“I’m telling you, Xiao Fang, you’ve got a great mentality,” Captain Xie said. “With nerves like yours, you’d have no problem working homicide.”
After saying it, Captain Xie thought about it again and decided maybe not. This young man’s attitude was terrible. He’d probably spend all day getting complaints.
“You really aren’t panicking at all, are you?”
Fang Huan Xing blinked and opened his third bag of food.
Good grief. His appetite had really kicked in.
Xiao Huang couldn’t help asking, “We can’t get out right now. If the people outside can’t find us either, do you think they might just give up?”
“I don’t think so,” Captain Xie said. “First of all, the Anomalous Case Department serves the public too. They definitely won’t abandon us. Second, I don’t think Team Leader Shang is that kind of person either. Right, Xiao Fang?”
Fang Huan Xing thought about it.
What kind of person was Shang Lu? He didn’t know.
Still, he didn’t disagree with what Captain Xie had said.
The strange thing was that he simply felt Shang Lu would come looking for him.
“I’ve heard a few things about Team Leader Shang,” Captain Xie said. “All kinds of rumors get passed around. But I’ve worked several cases with him, and I found out he isn’t some spoiled rich kid at all. In fact, he’s exceptionally good at enduring hardship. Honestly, with a family like his, what could he possibly lack? Why would he need to come do this kind of dirty, exhausting work?”
“You mean that Shang Lu, Team Leader Shang?” Xiao Huang asked. “I’ve heard some gossip about him too. Isn’t his family that one?”
Once gossip came up, neither of them seemed nervous anymore. They both looked at Fang Huan Xing.
Fang Huan Xing stuffed a piece of food into his mouth and asked indistinctly, “Which one?”
Xiao Huang hurriedly said, “I saw people online saying Team Leader Shang’s father is Shang Hong Hui.”
Fang Huan Xing: “?”
Captain Xie figured they probably shouldn’t keep gossiping and had only brought it up to distract themselves anyway, so he changed the subject. “You haven’t been at the Anomalous Case Department for long, have you? I hear the work there is intense. What’s it like graduating from university and immediately joining such an exciting organization?”
Fang Huan Xing said expressionlessly, “I didn’t go to university.”
Captain Xie froze, somewhat surprised. “Were you one of those special recruits from the military?”
“No.”
Xiao Huang said sheepishly, “Actually, when I first saw you, Xiao Fang, I thought you were a high-school student.”
Fang Huan Xing’s face grew slightly warm. “I didn’t go to high school either.”
Captain Xie: “…”
Fang Huan Xing was taller than both of them, with a lean build and a face that carried none of the wear of society, as though he had never been contaminated by the outside world. But aside from his appearance and the way he dressed, there was actually nothing student-like about him. After all, what kind of student would be ruthless enough to beat a monster to death with a stick?
Captain Xie asked, “How old are you, exactly?”
Was he really high-school age? Was the Anomalous Case Department this desperate for staff?
Fang Huan Xing had already been preparing to tell them that he hadn’t even finished elementary school, but they didn’t ask.
He thought about his age for a moment, then answered, “I don’t know.”
The two of them: “…”
Xiao Fang was messing with them.
Fang Huan Xing somehow finished an entire bagful of the blurry food he had scavenged from the staff room, along with two boxed lunches. Watching him eat, Xiao Huang found herself wanting to go find him another lunch.
After eating, Fang Huan Xing no longer felt quite so uncomfortable. Dragging his fire axe behind him, he said, “Tao Ran’s bed might be the only exit.”
Captain Xie understood immediately. “You want to try?”
“Mm.”
Xiao Huang said worriedly, “What if that monster really gets onto the bed? Wouldn’t the Tao Ran outside have his body taken over?”
“I’m guessing Xiao Fang doesn’t actually plan to let the faceless monster lie down on the bed,” Captain Xie said. “He only wants to let it get through the door. I want to see what happens at that exact moment too. We can’t just sit here waiting to die.”
Captain Xie’s guess wasn’t entirely correct.
Fang Huan Xing could leave whenever he wanted. As long as the exit opened, no matter how briefly, he would always be able to seize an opportunity to get out. The reason he hadn’t done that, and had instead gone looking for other exits, was that there were other people trapped in here too. He had to get them out with him.
The Anomalous Case Department… was probably supposed to do things this way, just like in Xueping, when Shang Lu always came back.
An intern making eight thousand a month had to do this too.
Neither of his two temporary teammates was deadweight, so once they decided, they got to work.
This time, Captain Xie beat the faceless monster to death with a steel pipe. Xiao Huang stayed in the patient room to observe the situation, while Fang Huan Xing entered Tao Ran’s room first.
When the printer spat out another wristband, Fang Huan Xing opened the patient-room door to welcome their guest.
The faceless Tao Ran rapidly crawled into the room. At that instant, everything around them began to fluctuate. The walls, floor, and empty hospital bed all became clear, and even the monitoring equipment began emitting a distinct hum.
The monster sprang up and was about to pounce onto the bed when Xiao Huang and Captain Xie shouted from outside.
“Stop! Xiao Fang!”
“The other monsters have started wandering around!”
In the corridor and the patient rooms, all the faceless monsters turned at the same time. They seemed to have lost their fixed routes and began wandering aimlessly. Whenever they encountered an obstacle, they attacked it. Chaos erupted.
In the blink of an eye, Fang Huan Xing made his decision and brought the axe down. The faceless monster split in two, blood splattering across the floor.
The fluctuation stopped, and everything fell quiet again.
So this test showed that even if they could deal with this particular faceless monster, there was no way to eliminate all the others outside quickly enough. A single mistake could cause someone else in reality to be subjected to positional overlap.
Captain Xie had already run over. Panting, he suggested, “Xiao Fang, we could find a way to gather all these monsters together! Damn, if we had a gun, we could take them out a lot faster!”
But Fang Huan Xing’s attention had shifted to the wall outside the intensive care unit.
Hospitals had far too many words everywhere, especially the raised bilingual lettering on this wall. Every time Fang Huan Xing passed it while fighting monsters or searching for an exit, his gaze was uncontrollably drawn toward it.
It was part of a fixed structure, just like the wall itself, so it appeared much clearer than everything else and was largely unaffected by the anomalous space.
Now some of the letters had changed.
Blurred halos had appeared around the originally clear lettering. Looking closely, the colors were different. Pigment was being pulled toward the letters, stretching into thin threads.
toilet.
That was one of the words appearing in blue.
man.
That one was a conspicuous red.
Fang Huan Xing read them aloud. Someone was using this method to pass along information.
The message was telling them to go to the men’s restroom.
Captain Xie noticed it too and immediately perked up, hurriedly going to call Xiao Huang.
Fang Huan Xing was already striding toward the restroom.
The faceless cleaner had returned to its position and was wiping the counter. Then it straightened and began searching for its mop again.
Fang Huan Xing entered the men’s restroom, with Captain Xie right behind him. Captain Xie immediately began searching every stall. “Nothing. Still nothing. Xiao Huang, hurry and help!”
“Oh.” Xiao Huang began searching the other side.
Fang Huan Xing stared at them woodenly. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for the exit,” Captain Xie said. “That’s how it always works in movies.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
The kind where you crawl in through the toilet? No thanks.
Clearly, the exit from this space was not inside a toilet.
The two people searching for an exit were bitterly disappointed, while Fang Huan Xing merely remained standing in the middle of the restroom, his thumb hooked through the strap of his backpack and his dark eyes fixed on a stainless-steel paper-towel dispenser built into the wall.
Like the wall itself, the dispenser appeared comparatively clear and unaffected by the anomalous space.
Fang Huan Xing walked over and flipped it open.
A gun lay inside.
There was also a note.
On the front were the words:
Don’t be afraid.
The handwriting was bold and sweeping, and very handsome.
On the back was another line:
Get ready to write a self-criticism, kid.
Captain Xie immediately understood that the people outside had found a way to send them a weapon and communicate with them. Delighted, he hurriedly asked, “What does the note say?”
Fang Huan Xing quickly stuffed the note into his pocket without changing expression. “Nothing.”
He wished he could put some distance between himself and that paper-towel dispenser immediately.
He had only taken a few steps when the dispenser suddenly gave a crisp knocking sound.
Knock. Knock-knock.
Fang Huan Xing stopped and backed up several steps.
With a cold expression, he raised his hand and tapped the gun barrel against it several times.
Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock.
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