The vegetative patient’s pale eyes rolled upward as his body lurched upright. His trembling hands reached toward the Blood Lingzhi spreading across the hospital bed.
Mu Ke backed toward the door, keeping as much distance as possible between himself, the bed, and the patient. He retreated slowly until his spine struck ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ the door behind him.
Outside in the corridor came the sharp, rhythmic click of a nurse’s high heels patrolling the floor.
The moment Mu Ke stepped out, the night nurses would catch him immediately and drag him back into confinement. Patients were forbidden from leaving their rooms after dark. Monsters that preyed on patients wandered the hospital at night.
That was one of the hospital’s rules.
And if tonight’s disturbance in the ICU spread among the nurses tomorrow morning, Miao Feichi and the others would inevitably hear about it. If that happened, the trap Bai Liu had painstakingly constructed would collapse completely.
Mu Ke slowly turned his gaze back toward the patient and the Blood Lingzhi growing across the bed.
It wasn’t a complete dead end yet.
The monsters here all had weaknesses, and they were surprisingly obvious. According to the materials Mu Ke had gathered, the Blood Lingzhi was the patient’s “true body.” If the Lingzhi remained alive, the patient could not die. But if the Lingzhi died, the patient would die as well.
The problem was that the Blood Lingzhi was not merely the patient’s weakness.
It was also its buff.
—
[“Love Welfare Home Monster Book” refreshed — Vegetative Patient (2/3)]
[Monster Name: Vegetative Patient (Blood Lingzhi Activated Version)]
[Characteristics: Movement speed 500. Growth requires a large amount of moisture. Prefers humid environments.]
[Weakness: ??? (To be explored)]
[Attack Method: Suction Body Fluid (Upgraded from A to S- grade due to Blood Lingzhi buff), Toxic Mist Pollution (Upgraded from A to S- grade due to Blood Lingzhi buff).]
[The monster (Vegetative Patient) has obtained (Blood Lingzhi) as an auxiliary buff, providing it with blood energy replenishment. The monster’s comprehensive rating has been upgraded from A-grade to S- grade. Instant kill for players below B-grade.]
—
Mu Ke’s panel rating was only C+.
At first, he had intended to rush over and interfere with the Blood Lingzhi somehow, but after reading the monster’s updated evaluation, he looked down at the paper in his hand and abruptly stopped himself.
He still hadn’t passed the information to Bai Liu.
Gritting his teeth, Mu Ke took another step backward.
The patient still seemed to be in the middle of recovering. It crouched atop the bed, devouring the Blood Lingzhi in huge mouthfuls while blood smeared the corners of its mouth. For now, it had no interest in Mu Ke.
But only for now.
Once it had consumed enough of the Blood Lingzhi and fully recovered, Mu Ke would be the next thing it ate.
Items native to the game instance could not be stored inside a player’s system backpack. Notes, books, documents—none of them could be transferred.
And there was far too much information to send through the keyboard alone.
But if he used a more direct method and died here tonight, whatever he carried would definitely drop after death. If Miao Feichi’s group entered the ICU tomorrow and discovered the communication device, Bai Liu’s identity would be exposed instantly.
What now?!
Mu Ke bit down hard on his fingernail, forcing himself to think.
How was he supposed to send the information to Bai Liu?
His eyes landed on the bookshelf nearby, then shifted toward the torn pages in his hand.
Slowly, his breathing steadied.
Bai Liu was currently inside his room.
And Mu Ke remembered the exact arrangement of every book on his bookshelf.
That was enough.
—
Bai Liu’s panel suddenly chimed.
He was currently logged into Mu Ke’s player panel, so if the system activated without his input, it could only mean one thing—Mu Ke was operating it from the other side.
Bai Liu had been leaning against the door with his eyes closed while waiting for news. The instant the notification sounded, his eyes opened completely clear, without the slightest trace of drowsiness.
He opened the system backpack.
Sure enough, the keyboard inside had been moved.
“Y, F5.”
Bai Liu fixed his gaze on the keyboard.
A few seconds later, four more keycaps disappeared.
“X, 45.”
Then:
“Z, 678.”
And finally:
“Enter.”
One complete sequence.
A successful transmission.
Bai Liu narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.
XYZ.
Three-dimensional coordinates.
And the shape of the letter “F” looked suspiciously similar to—
His gaze snapped toward the bookshelf in the room.
One eyebrow lifted slightly.
...Did Mu Ke’s memory really border on this level of insanity?
Bai Liu immediately understood what Mu Ke was trying to communicate, but even so, he found it difficult to believe.
Mu Ke’s memory was absurd.
“F” represented the shelf level.
“X” represented the specific book.
“Z” represented the page number.
After reading through the books in the lower ward, Mu Ke had somehow memorized the precise position, shelf layer, and page number of every important piece of information in the bookshelf inside his own room—and then thought to convert that information into coordinate form to transmit it to Bai Liu.
Even if someone else had discovered the clues inside the ICU, they would never have been able to pass the information this way using nothing but a keyboard.
Memorizing the exact locations of pages across two entirely separate bookshelves and correlating them through a coordinate system was not something an ordinary person could do.
No wonder Mu Ke’s father had exhausted every possible method to keep him alive.
For a genius like this, even one additional year of life could create immeasurable value.
Bai Liu immediately crossed to the bookshelf and began flipping through the books.
Once he located the specified pages, he didn’t bother folding corners or marking them. That was too slow.
He simply tore the pages out.
To muddy the trail, he casually ripped out several unrelated pages as well.
The hospital strictly forbade damaging books, but at this hour no one would catch him—and besides, this was Mu Ke’s room. Bai Liu felt absolutely no guilt whatsoever.
After tearing out the pages, Bai Liu removed another Enter keycap to signal completion.
The response came almost instantly.
Another string of coordinates.
Bai Liu found the books, tore out the pages, and continued.
Their communication speed was frighteningly fast.
Less than five minutes later, Mu Ke removed the End keycap, signaling the end of the transmission.
Bai Liu lowered his eyes and rapidly skimmed the pages in his hand.
Then his expression darkened.
“If the Lingzhi does not die, the true body does not die...”
If that sentence meant what Bai Liu thought it meant—
His gaze abruptly froze.
Mu Ke was in trouble.
That patient had never been dead to begin with.
Bai Liu immediately glanced at Mu Ke’s panel. Among the stable attributes, [Mental Value] suddenly began dropping at an alarming speed. A line of scarlet system text flashed violently beside it:
[System Warning: Player Mu Ke is being attacked by the monster (Vegetative Patient)’s (Toxic Mist Pollution) S- grade skill. Mental Value will reach zero in one and a half minutes! Please leave the range of the monster’s toxic mist attack immediately!]
—
Mu Ke curled beneath Bai Liu’s hospital bed, one hand clamped tightly over his mouth as he struggled to suppress his coughing.
The patient on the opposite bed sniffed slowly.
Like a spider, it spread its limbs wide and hooked them around the iron rails on both sides of the bed. Its torso arched unnaturally upward. Lowering its head, it exposed rows of sharp teeth before tearing into the Blood Lingzhi growing across the mattress.
The enormous Lingzhi—nearly the size of a millstone—rapidly disappeared beneath those serrated teeth.
The patient’s abdomen swelled grotesquely, bloating like the abdomen of a feeding spider. Through the stretched skin, Mu Ke could see clumps of writhing mycelium squirming inside its stomach. The flesh wrapped around it resembled a thin, blood-red membrane, stretched so tightly it had become almost translucent.
As it devoured the Blood Lingzhi, thick crimson mist poured continuously from its mouth.
The fog spread rapidly through the ward, dyeing the entire room a strange, pale pink.
Even hidden beneath the bed, Mu Ke could not avoid inhaling it.
His head quickly grew heavy.
His mental value began dropping at an abnormal rate.
At first, Mu Ke considered forcing himself to buy a bottle of Mental Bleach. But then the thought passed through his mind—
The information had already been delivered.
This identity line only had six HP remaining anyway. It no longer held much value. Even if he died now, it would actually help cement Bai Liu’s disguise as “Mu Ke.”
There was no need to waste points saving himself.
His eyes gradually lost focus. His breathing turned uneven as he curled tighter beneath the bed Bai Liu had once occupied, instinctively searching for some shred of security.
Right.
That’s how it should be.
Bai Liu had calmly discarded his own identity line before. A useless identity line could be abandoned.
If Bai Liu could do it, then he could do it too.
Mu Ke shut his eyes and continued forcing the thought into his head, over and over, despite the faint trembling in the hands clutching the torn pages.
But as his mental value continued to fall, and as the monster patient finally finished devouring the Blood Lingzhi, letting out a grotesquely satisfied burp before climbing down from the bed to sniff through the room in search of him—
Mu Ke still began trembling uncontrollably.
He pressed a hand over his mouth, trying desperately not to make a sound.
Tears rapidly welled in his eyes.
Panting unevenly, he struggled to pry three keycaps off the keyboard and sent one final message to Bai Liu.
[Delete] [M] [E]
Delete me.
Abandon me.
Empty my storage before I die so nothing drops that could expose you.
Don’t come save me.
That was the message Mu Ke was trying to convey.
Mu Shicheng’s skills had already been exhausted. The Siren’s Bone weapon was in Miao Gaojiang’s possession. Bai Liu had nothing left that could save him.
Coming here now would accomplish nothing.
It wasn’t worth it.
Mu Ke forced himself to think rationally.
His usefulness was gone. The information had already been passed on.
If he died, then he died.
But Bai Liu had to survive.
There were still too many things Bai Liu needed to accomplish.
Ever since he could remember, Mu Ke had feared death more than anything else.
But no matter how terrified he was, death remained unavoidable.
His illness had been congenital. From the very beginning of his life, he had existed beneath death’s shadow, struggling against it in a miserable, graceless way.
He had never imagined there would come a day when he could face death this calmly.
Perhaps it was because he knew death would not truly end things.
Or perhaps it was because the trust and security another person had given him finally allowed him, for a brief moment, to escape the terror of dying.
Mu Ke had been born with things most people could never possess in their entire lives.
Talent.
Status.
Wealth.
From the moment he opened his eyes, he had been surrounded by the finest luxuries in the world.
If society truly was divided into classes, then whether in terms of ability or background, Mu Ke had stood at the very top since birth.
He should have become exactly what he appeared to be—
An arrogant, unbearable, high-and-mighty Shàoyé.
But that was only what should have happened.
Death was the fairest thing in the world.
In an instant, it dragged Mu Ke down from the top of the pyramid.
After that, this pampered young master became no different from the ordinary people he once could have looked down upon—struggling desperately through the mortal world, doing anything humiliating necessary just to survive.
He begged his father to spend enormous amounts of money searching for doctors.
He knelt and kowtowed before livestream audiences for tips.
He even sold his soul to Bai Liu.
And after all that, death still refused to let him go.
Even if the probability of death was only fifty percent, the terror of it was absolute.
Mu Ke’s breathing shortened painfully.
A sharp ache spread through his chest, forcing him to curl tighter into himself.
His mental value continued plummeting, rapidly dropping below forty.
Hallucinations flooded his vision.
His eyes gradually unfocused. The hands covering his mouth slowly slid downward. His chest rose and fell violently as tears slipped soundlessly from the corners of his eyes.
Mu Ke’s memory was too good.
Normally, it allowed him to remember events from years ago with terrifying clarity.
Now, with his mental value collapsing, it only forced him to relive every fear buried deep in his subconscious.
He saw his father standing outside his room, sighing and shaking his head with hesitation in his eyes before eventually seeking out other women—staying out all night because he needed a healthier heir.
His mother silently accepted it.
Everyone doted on him, but only in the way one might cherish a pet destined to die young. No one dared place too many expectations on him. No one dared hand him real authority.
He saw doctors shaking their heads one after another.
He remembered curling beneath his blankets night after night, unable to sleep, praying desperately for tomorrow to arrive more slowly—
Because he never knew whether he would even live to see the next morning.
Mu Ke had always been forbidden from strenuous activity.
Sometimes, after only slight exertion, he would have to crouch down and gasp for breath while monitoring his heartbeat.
Some ignorant classmates used to imitate that posture behind his back and laugh at him for it.
Mu Ke always had his father deal with them afterward.
But because of that, no one ever wanted to become his friend.
His father noticed this.
So in order to make the other children understand Mu Ke’s condition—and hopefully be kinder to him—he paid the teacher to play a documentary during class.
The Bubble Boy.
The documentary followed a child born with an immune deficiency disease. Because he lacked a functioning immune system, he had spent his entire life trapped inside a sterile bubble.
After the documentary ended, the teacher explained that student Mu Ke suffered from a similar congenital illness, and that everyone should protect him instead of excluding him.
Then one classmate asked, not maliciously but with sincere confusion and pity:
“Living like that is so miserable. If it were me, I’d rather die.”
The Bubble Boy had only lived to twelve years old.
And twelve-year-old Mu Ke had lifted his chin proudly and replied with vicious sharpness:
“I just want to live. What does that have to do with you?”
The high-and-mighty Xiao Shàoyé Mu Ke grew up fragile as an ant.
And just as lonely.
He was like an ant desperately lifting its head to preserve the last scraps of its pride.
Anyone at all was stronger than him.
Yet because he lived inside a crystal cage built from money, he had somehow continued lingering at death’s door until now.
Every single day, he wondered:
Will I finally be buried in that crystal cage tomorrow?
And so he began trying increasingly bizarre things.
Like suddenly parachuting into a gaming company on a whim.
That was how Mu Ke met Bai Liu.
In truth, Mu Ke had recognized him immediately.
The instant he saw Bai Liu inside the game, he remembered perfectly that this was the employee whose computer he had once thrown away.
Mu Ke’s memory was so sharp it almost felt cruel, as though fate had compensated for his short life by forcing him to remember everything in perfect detail.
But he had been terrified Bai Liu would refuse to save him.
So he pretended to be harmless.
Weak.
Foolish.
Yet Bai Liu merely looked at him with calm eyes that seemed to see through everything, without exposing his awkward performance.
Then Bai Liu reached out his hand and said softly:
“Then let’s pretend this is our first meeting.”
“My name is Bai Liu.”
“The owner of your soul.”
“I’ll save you and help you survive. But you’ll have to work for it yourself.”
“And I believe you’re capable of surviving through your own efforts.”
Bai Liu had dragged him out of the “bubble” he had lived inside for more than twenty years.
For the first time in his life, someone had entrusted their survival to a person as fragile as him and calmly told him:
Before it happens, I assume you can do it.
And if you can’t—
Then we’ll die together, Mu Ke.
You don’t have to depend on anyone.
Even I can depend on you.
You’ll keep all of us alive.
I believe in you, Mu Ke.
—
With vacant eyes, Mu Ke was dragged out from beneath the bed by the patient’s long, skeletal limbs.
His mental value had fallen too low. His mind remained trapped inside those fragmented memories.
He rolled limply across the floor like a corpse, showing no reaction whatsoever as the patient lowered its head, exposing two rows of jagged teeth aimed directly at his throat.
Warm saliva dripped from the monster’s mouth onto Mu Ke’s collarbone, making his body twitch involuntarily.
A tear slid from the corner of his eye.
In his hand, he still clutched the three keycaps:
[Delete] [M] [E]
His lips moved faintly.
“Bai Liu...”
So this is what death feels like.
...It didn’t seem quite so unbearable after all.
Mu Ke thought dazedly.
Perhaps what he had feared all along was never death itself.
Perhaps what he feared was dying without value. Dying without ever being acknowledged by anyone.
And if his death could create something more valuable than death itself—
“...If my death can create something more valuable than death itself, then death isn’t unacceptable.”
Bai Liu smiled faintly as he wrapped his hand around Mu Ke’s trembling fingers, guiding them to tighten the Siren’s Bone around his own throat.
“If my death can let you enter the ICU and obtain the Life-Saving Remedy from the main quest...”
“If it can allow both you and my remaining fifty percent to survive...”
“Then I’m willing to die for you.”
“And for myself, Mu Ke.”
“...I’m willing too, Bai Liu.”
Mu Ke looked at the monster opening its massive jaws before him.
Then, trembling, he closed his eyes.
He inhaled sharply, clenched his fists, and prepared himself.
At the final instant before the patient could sink its teeth into Mu Ke’s shoulder—
The ICU door exploded inward.
Bai Liu stepped over the shattered remains, his expression cold and sharp.
Behind him, a dark shadow flashed across the walls several times before landing directly on the back of the roaring patient.
The figure raised a dagger high—
And drove it down viciously.
[System Hint: Player Liu Huai used personal skill (Blink Strike). A+ grade skill crit caused 1.5 minutes of stiffness to the monster (Vegetative Patient).]
The patient froze instantly.
Its blood-smeared jaws remained hanging open. Its rolling eyes bulged wildly while its elongated claws stopped midair, completely motionless.
Liu Huai leapt down from the monster’s back, breathing hard.
Wiping sweat from his jaw, he snapped coldly:
“Hurry up! The nurses are coming!”
The rapid clatter of high heels was already rushing toward the ICU.
Without hesitation, Bai Liu grabbed the dazed Mu Ke from the floor. While hauling him upright, he uncapped a bottle of Mental Bleach and forcibly poured it down his throat before dragging him toward the exit.
Mu Ke remained half-conscious.
Only after swallowing half the bottle did he finally begin understanding what was happening.
He stared blankly at Bai Liu’s cold, expressionless profile as the other man pulled him forward.
Bai Liu had come for him again.
