Chapter 32

Chapter 32

As a player, Bai Fuling felt zero guilt.

When you're playing a game, what even counts as a dick move? After all, it's just a game. A player can do *whatever it takes* to solve a puzzle and get the reward.

With a strict 'mission first' mindset, Bai Fuling lifted the child NPC high, shouted "Fire in the hole," and chucked the kid as a handy weapon.

The two pixel sprites slammed into each other, both falling to the ground stunned, with stars popping up on screen from the impact.

Thus, Bai Fuling killed two birds with one stone: first, the white-haired youth wouldn't go out and blab about the player being a stranger, triggering a trespass alert. Second, he got the doctor's outfit, which let him sneak around better.

Absolutely perfect!

Bai Fuling was quite pleased with himself. He made his character bend down to strip the clothes off the doctor on the ground.

Theoretically, in a decent all-ages game, you can't strip an NPC completely bare... they'd always be left with at least their underwear.

Bai Fuling originally wanted to test how far he could go to confirm if this game was truly all-ages, but the commotion in the background made him drop the idea fast.

No, there's no time. Better to retreat first. Didn't want to get chased by red-name NPCs again.

All Bai Fuling needed was the white coat. Wearing it would change his identity to that of a doctor.

So he hurriedly stripped off the doctor's white coat and clicked to equip it. Then, using the key, he opened the nearest door—just as he'd suspected, it was a master key—and grabbed one of the bodies off the floor and tossed it in.

His last bit of gamer conscience had him put the adult down first and toss the kid on top. Call it his good deed for the day.

Bai Fuling thought lightly to himself.

Alright, the scene is cleaned up. It shouldn't be discovered for a while. Now to check out the upper floors.

Bai Fuling remembered what the child NPC said earlier: the fifth floor and up were for the more severe cases, ones they didn't let out much. And there was talk of monsters or something... Might as well start on five.

Dressed in a white coat, Bai Fuling climbed up to the fifth floor looking the part and started with the first room near the staircase.

Key in the lock, turn, push the door open. On screen was a hospital bed. A patient in a hospital gown was restrained on the bed. Seeing someone enter, the patient started yelling wordlessly.

Bai Fuling ignored the yells and searched the room, but after looking around, he found nothing useful... it could even be described as empty.

Basically, there were only large items like the bed, medical stands, cabinets, etc.

So Bai Fuling's gaze fell back on the yelling patient NPC on the bed.

Maybe the point of the room wasn't the stuff, but the person? What should he do now, try to calm the patient down?

Thinking about how to shut up a screaming psych patient, Bai Fuling's first thought was: Hey, I have pesticide in my bag.

But he immediately dismissed that hellish idea.

Sure, pesticide would shut them up, but then the NPC would just poof out of existence!

If his guess was wrong, making the NPC disappear could softlock him.

So, Bai Fuling didn't go for the permanent solution of pesticide. Instead, he chose to take a hamburger from his backpack and stuff it into the patient's mouth.

The patient's noise stopped. But only for a moment. The hamburger was spat out, and he started yelling wordlessly again.

—To be more precise, what was spat out were the bun and lettuce leaves. The chicken patty inside had been eaten.

NPCs can separate food with their mouths?? That's wild!

Amused and curious, Bai Fuling kept at it, continuing to stuff hamburgers from his backpack into the patient NPC on the bed, trying to study the NPC's weird food-filtering mouth.

After stuffing two or three times, the patient still spat out the buns and lettuce like a bill-spitting machine, then yelled loudly. Looking at the buns and leaves on the floor, Bai Fuling understood.

So the patients in the mental hospital are food separation processors! Stick food in, it gets separated, and the NPC beeps (by screaming) when it's done.

...It's just that this method is pretty nasty. Unless absolutely necessary, Bai Fuling didn't want to consider using it for processing.

He opened his backpack, wanting to try some more.

If hamburgers are excluded, and you can't feed them pesticide or rat poison, then the only other edible thing left is the Cat Stick.

Bai Fuling pulled out a Cat Stick from his backpack and tossed it into the NPC's mouth.

The pixel NPC on the screen sprouted a cloud of black lines above its head. After a few seconds, it spat out the flattened Cat Stick wrapper—having eaten the paste inside.

Wow. Bai Fuling was amazed. Besides the player, there really are humans who eat Cat Sticks.

To rule out chance, Bai Fuling took out a few more Cat Sticks to feed. The patient NPC in front of him ate the filling and spat out the wrapper every time.

They really eat it. Bai Fuling mused internally. Eating meat and Cat Sticks, feels just like animals. This place is practically a paradise for Liao Zhiqiu's cats!

Liao Zhiqiu wouldn't want to leave if he came here. He'd check right into the mental hospital as a VIP client.

But with just one sample, the experimental target is too small to draw a conclusion.

Bai Fuling checked the quantities of Cat Sticks and hamburgers in his backpack and decided to sample a few rooms on each floor, testing in each selected room.

He walked out, sampling from the fifth floor all the way to the eighth. Fifth-floor NPCs would eat hamburger meat and Cat Sticks. Some on the sixth and seventh floors wouldn't eat hamburger meat, only reluctantly eating a bit of Cat Stick. And the eighth floor—

Bai Fuling pushed open a room door on the eighth floor and saw the NPC inside wearing something like a metal mask over their mouths, resembling a human-style muzzle.

When the door opened, the NPC inside started making guttural, heavy "hrrr hrrr" sounds from their throat, their thrashing causing the restraints on the bed to creak.

A line of small text appeared on the screen.

"There seems to be a smell of blood in the room..."

Oh? Bai Fuling raised an eyebrow. He controlled his character to take two steps forward and found what looked like an unfinished meal tray on the bedside table, with red pixel dots on it.

"Bloody Tray: A tray stained with bloody water. Whose blood is this?"

There it is, the classic horror game trope!

Since this isn't reality anyway, Bai Fuling calmly put the tray into his backpack.

Just collect anything that might be a clue first.

After taking the bloody tray, Bai Fuling switched to another room. Slipping into several rooms on the eighth floor in a row, he gathered more information.

"Raw Meat: A small piece of raw meat with bite marks on it."

"Torn Scrap of Expired Newspaper: An old newspaper torn to shreds and soaked in water. Apart from the header date from 13 years ago, nothing else is legible."

"Empty Syringe: A used syringe that was discarded. It's unknown what was inside before."

Bai Fuling proceeded like this until he reached the innermost room on the floor. He pushed the door open.

—Unlike the previous NPCs strapped to their beds, this NPC wasn’t restrained. This was a long-haired female NPC wearing a checkered hospital gown, sitting on the bed.

Oh! A special NPC. Bai Fuling’s eyes lit up. In that case, the next clue was probably here.

It felt like a little “spot the difference” game—players had to find the one that stood out.

So Bai Fuling steered his character forward and delivered the classic quest-accepting line: “Hello, I’m Farmer Detective Fresh Cabbage. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Above the long-haired woman NPC’s head floated a string of ellipses.

The NPC ignored the player, but Bai Fuling wasn’t fazed. He turned and began searching the room, trying to find something different in this different NPC’s room.

—Sure enough, he found something.

Tucked away in the very back of the bottom drawer of the nightstand was a photo, which Bai Fuling picked up.

It was a family portrait. In it were the long-haired woman, a man who looked awfully familiar, and a child.

Bai Fuling stared for a few seconds before it suddenly clicked.

Hey! Isn’t that the kind NPC who gave him a car on the first day he logged into the game??

Of course, after learning that the red bar represented anger, Bai Fuling realized the NPC probably hadn’t willingly handed over the car—it was more like the player had stolen it.

Still, whenever he thought of that guy, his first impression was still: the nice car-giving NPC.

Now, looking at the somewhat familiar child, Bai Fuling had him pegged—that’s Pang Chengyu! Just much younger and without the dyed blond hair yet.

At this point, Bai Fuling finally connected the dots.

No wonder Pang Chengyu’s attitude toward this mental hospital was so strange—there really was a storyline related to him here!

If he wanted to trigger the follow-up plot, he’d need a key item. Just like last time when he brought the corpse to the police station.

Bai Fuling figured that to make Pang Chengyu automatically trigger the related plot, he’d have to bring the woman NPC out to meet him.

—Actually, the key item might be the family photo. But just in case, it’s better to bring both.

The long-haired woman NPC was a living being and couldn’t be stored in the backpack. But Bai Fuling had another old trick up his sleeve: making her a back accessory.

Unlike the other eighth-floor NPCs, this woman NPC didn’t seem hostile. Bai Fuling gave her a couple of experimental pokes, and she just sat there blankly.

Good, she didn’t suddenly turn hostile and start a battle mode. What a relief!

Bai Fuling decisively slung the long-haired woman onto his back and prepared to run out of the mental hospital. As he stepped out, he ran right into several doctors.

“Hey, why are you taking an eighth-floor patient out?—Wait, who are you? Why are you wearing a hospital gown underneath?!”

He’d almost forgotten—his pants were still the checkered hospital gown. Bai Fuling mused. Just wearing a white coat over it wasn’t enough to hide it; this game paid attention to detail.

Without wasting words, Bai Fuling chose to run while carrying the long-haired woman NPC. Since she was selected as a back accessory, the player wouldn’t suffer a speed debuff.

He carried the woman NPC all the way to the rooftop—where it all began—and skillfully slid down the drainpipe!

The pursuing NPCs sprinted after him but stopped at the edge of the rooftop, left to shout and scream.

Outside the building. Liao Zhiqiu and Pang Chengyu were still waiting in the same spot.

Pang Chengyu kept his head down, avoiding looking at the opposite building.

It wasn’t until he heard the chaotic noise and Liao Zhiqiu’s cheerful “The kitten’s back from hunting” that he finally looked up.

From a distance, he saw the transfer student running toward them, carrying someone on his back—someone who looked familiar.

Then he heard Bai Fuling’s loud shout.

“Hey!!! I brought your mom!!!”

Pang Chengyu: ???!

Author’s Note:

Bai Fuling: Reuniting mother and son—I’m such a good person.