Hidden Map, The Vase Patient

"Doctor Yang, are you going out?"

"Don't do anything rash! It's very easy to violate the rules for an intern to wander around the hospital at night, especially since the internship period is so sensitive. If your medical mentor catches you making a mistake, you're finished!"

Seeing Ji Yan roll out of bed and stand up, the female nurse ghosts hiding in every corner of the room crawled out one after another.

Their earnest and well-meaning advice made them look just like mothers worried about a rebellious child...

The blood-red paper figure leaped to the front and emitted a burst of intimidation.

Although only about the size of a palm, it possessed an extremely terrifying deterrent effect on these female nurse ghosts. Shrinking their necks, they immediately stopped crying out...

"I'm feeling stuffy and have insomnia. I'm going out to get some fresh air and will be right back."

Dropping these words, Ji Yan put on his white coat, pinned the sheep-head badge to his chest, and walked out of the room.

The Netherworld Hospital in the deep of night appeared even more dead and gloomy.

The empty and desolate corridors occasionally echoed with crisp footsteps and the sound of rolling marbles, yet not a single person was in sight.

"Where are we going?"

Ji Yan asked.

The blood-red paper figure did not reply, merely darting straight ahead to lead the way for Ji Yan.

Passing through a long corridor, they finally arrived in front of a tightly shut iron door.

Although it was unlocked, a warning panel popped up right in front of Ji Yan.

"Player Notice! You have unlocked the hidden map area of the dungeon—[Morgue]. There are a large number of dangerous NPCs in this dungeon map. Please choose carefully whether to enter."

"The morgue?"

The female nurse ghosts had just mentioned this place, and he hadn't expected to find it so quickly.

According to what they said, medical staff who had lost their value to the hospital and patients who had given up on treatment would be sent to the morgue.

It was somewhat akin to a garbage disposal station in a game dungeon.

Even in the real world, such a place would be hair-raising, let alone within a horror game.

Why was the blood-red paper figure in such a rush to come here?

For safety's sake, whenever he entered a dangerous place, Ji Yan would take out [Edward's Human Skin Mask] obtained from the previous dungeon to mask the scent of a player on his body first.

The bone spurs of the facial skin mask pierced into his flesh, stitching themselves onto Ji Yan's face.

Ji Yan pushed the door open, and the blood-red paper figure immediately burrowed back into his hair parting. Behind the door was not a passageway, but an elevator. Operating the elevator was a monster wearing medical attire...

The reason it was called a monster was because every single part of its body was held together by stitches, and every body part was utterly uncoordinated.

It was as if the body parts of several men, women, old people, and children had been severed and randomly pieced together!

Upon seeing Ji Yan, the entity showed no vigilance, instead staring fixedly at the sheep-head badge on his chest and speaking like an old acquaintance: "Doctor Yang, why are you back?"

"Aren't your surgical duties for tonight already finished?"

Ji Yan paused for a moment. "Left something behind."

The elevator-guarding ghost did not suspect anything, nodded, opened the elevator door, pressed the button for Basement Level 2, and then handed Ji Yan a set of keys. "Doctor Yang, thank you for your hard work."

With a calm expression and maintaining his composure, Ji Yan stepped into the elevator.

As the elevator slowly descended, Ji Yan breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the keys in his hand. There was only a single number, "8", engraved on them.

"8... According to the order of the Chinese zodiac, the sheep ranks right at eighth. It seems each of the twelve zodiac animals has its own territory in the morgue."

"That gatekeeper ghost clearly mistook me for the other Doctor Yang."

"I am wearing an intern doctor's uniform, so logically I shouldn't be mistaken for the sheep-headed ghost doctor. Could there be a second intern?"

"But didn't the dungeon state at the very beginning that each medical mentor is only assigned one intern, and that at any given time in the dungeon, there are only 12 players?"

Ji Yan could not help feeling a creeping sense of dread.

Ding-dong!

The elevator descended to the second underground level, and the chime interrupted Ji Yan's thoughts.

The elevator doors opened, revealing a passageway leading into the dark depths. The rooms on the left and right sides were marked only with numbers.

The numbers 1 through 12 corresponded to twelve digits!

Ji Yan soon stood in front of the door to Room 8, inserted the key, and smoothly heard a click as the door unlocked.

The blood-red paper figure burst out from the top of his head, appearing very excited, like an unruly child about to enter an amusement park...

Ji Yan's curiosity was also piqued.

Every dungeon contained numerous hidden easter eggs and rewards, and he had a premonition that going out tonight would yield unexpected gains!

The door opened, and the air inside was bone-chillingly cold.

Much like a morgue in the real world, cold stretcher beds were lined with corpses covered in white shrouds.

However, such an environment had become as bland as plain water to Ji Yan. As soon as they entered the room, the blood-red paper figure felt liberated.

It darted swiftly down onto a corpse, displaying extreme excitement and affection.

As if that corpse were its living father, and Ji Yan mere humble foster parent...

"Why would this corpse make the blood-red paper figure so emotional?"

Ji Yan was quite astonished.

The blood-red paper figure was a ghostly item rewarded from the previous apartment dungeon, and according to the rules of the horror game, each dungeon existed entirely independently without the slightest connection.

The blood-red paper figure from the apartment shouldn't have any scripted plot in the hospital dungeon!

Pulling back the white shroud from that corpse, the body was horrifying—not in its outward appearance, but because it was extremely shriveled, as though all the internal organs inside had been completely hollowed out.

Yet, not a single trace of any incision could be found on the body...

The blood-red paper figure continued to nuzzle and cuddle affectionately, completely ignoring the existence of Ji Yan, its true master.

This left Ji Yan speechless.

He had thought the blood-red paper figure would guide him to some hidden surprise reward, but instead... he was just watching this fellow flirt with a cold, lifeless corpse?

"Doctor... Doctor Yang..."

A voice suddenly rang out. Ji Yan turned his head, the corners of his eyes twitching involuntarily.

On a horizontal display stand, several vases were placed.

Terrifyingly enough, the "fruit" growing out of the vases was a head—a lifelike head. Through the transparent glass of the vase, one could see that beneath the head there was no body, but rather a dense mass of branching roots. Those roots were entwined around internal organs, every single one of which was pulsating with vitality, delivering nourishment to the head through the writhing of those roots.

Nourishing a person inside a vase...

A human-pig?

This was the first thought that flashed through Ji Yan's mind.

"Doctor Yang, has my surgery been scheduled yet?"

"What about mine? Doctor Yang, is it almost my turn?"

"We are all waiting to go home. We've been waiting for so long..."

These vase patients spoke one after another, scrambling to ask questions, their eyes filled with supplication and longing.

It seemed the internal organs of those corpses had been transplanted into these vases, but what was the point of such surgery?

Could it be, just like the oil painting he saw outside the operating room doors, they were simply used as decorative ornaments to add local flavor to the hospital dungeon?

At that moment, movement came from outside the door.

Ji Yan turned to look at the blood-red paper figure. "We should leave."

The blood-red paper figure leaped onto the corpse, and unexpectedly tore itself right down the middle into two halves. Half of it burrowed into the corpse, while the other half darted back onto Ji Yan's arm.

Ji Yan was dumbfounded. "What are you doing?"

The half-sheet blood-red paper figure still gestured vividly: "Job done, let's roll!"

Ji Yan couldn't help asking: "So, why on earth did you stuff your other half into that corpse?"

The blood-red paper figure gestured: "...Cause and effect."

"By planting the cause here tonight, you'll see just how sweet the fruit is later on!"

Ji Yan didn't understand what the blood-red paper figure meant. What kind of cause and effect could that corpse possibly have?

Without explaining, the blood-red paper figure burrowed back into his hair parting and went offline.

"..."

Ji Yan glanced sidelong at the shriveled corpse before deciding he had better exit the morgue first.

Closing the door, the incessant chatter of the vase patients abruptly ceased. Then, the moment Ji Yan turned around, he found himself staring face-to-face with a terrifying visage.

The entity possessed the head of a black-furred sheep and was wearing the exact same intern uniform as Ji Yan...