One humanoid mushroom seemed to grow into the palm of Shen Yu’s hand, instantly merging with his skin. Shen Yu instinctively tried to pull it out—but the moment his fingers touched it, the mushroom simply sank back beneath his palm as if it had never been there.

"Tch... so this thing can only be understood by the eerie side."

He tried to grab a few more humanoid mushrooms, but every time his hand passed through them, it was as if they didn’t exist at all.

"...So only one person can obtain one?" he muttered.

Helplessly, Shen Yu withdrew his hand.

He didn’t bother waiting for Yuji and the others still hiding in the coffins. After confirming the corpse had moved far away, he leapt down from the cabinet, stepping across the coffins like stepping stones, and headed out of the morgue.

Outside, Yuji finally noticed.

"That kid... he seems to have gotten something."

Yanbing frowned, watching Shen Yu leave, but said nothing.

Yuji, however, silently pushed open the coffin lid and stood up.

"Let’s go."

After pressing the elevator button again, this time it worked.

Ding-dong.

The elevator arrived normally.

Shen Yu rode it back to the ward area, his eyes constantly scanning the surroundings, trying to judge whether his pollution level was still rising.

Fortunately, aside from the walls occasionally bulging with blood-like blisters, nothing new appeared. No extra hallucinated text. No sudden distortion events.

But the hospital itself still felt... wrong.

In the ward, everything looked almost normal.

Except—

Shen Yu’s gaze landed on the nurse bell beside the bed.

He hesitated.

Then—

Ding-dong.

Footsteps approached.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Yang Jin entered, followed by three strange nurses.

Her eyes immediately locked onto Shen Yu.

Shen Yu also looked at her.

But this time, his attention shifted past her.

The nurses had changed.

Under the -15 pollution state, their bandage-covered bodies had completely decayed into something darker—gray, writhing flesh textures. Their faces were no longer visible.

Instead, each nurse had a single massive circular mouth, jagged like a leech’s maw, opening and closing slowly as dark blood dripped from within.

Shen Yu’s first thought was simple:

Leeches.

Drip. Drip.

The nurses stood obediently behind Yang Jin.

Yang Jin narrowed her eyes and walked straight to Shen Yu, grabbing his left hand.

Their palms overlapped.

"I really didn’t misjudge you," she said softly. "You can find the medicine."

Ding.

Yang Jin favorability +10.

Current favorability: 40.

Shen Yu’s fingers tightened slightly around her hand.

Ding.

Yang Jin favorability +2.

Current favorability: 42.

Her brows twitched faintly, but she didn’t pull away.

"No time to waste," she said. "Let’s make the medicine."

Snap.

At that moment, Shen Yu’s palm pressed down—on the humanoid mushroom he had brought back from the morgue.

It suddenly ruptured.

A drop of eerie blue liquid seeped out between their hands.

"Gush... gush..."

Yang Jin reacted instantly, pulling out a test tube and collecting the liquid carefully.

After it filled, she shook it once and handed it to Shen Yu.

"Here. Your medicine."

"Hurry up and take it. You’re already close to losing control, aren’t you?"

Shen Yu stared at the test tube.

Then he casually put it away.

Yang Jin’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"You’re not taking it?"

"If you don’t take it, you’ll go insane sooner or later."

Shen Yu let out a quiet laugh.

"At least I’m not crazy yet."

He tilted his head slightly.

"This mental hospital... it seems to need crazy people, doesn’t it?"

Yang Jin paused.

Then she smiled faintly again, a strange mix of amusement and warning.

"...You really are interesting."

She released his hand.

"Don’t die too easily."

And with that, she turned and left, glancing back several times as she walked away.

Shen Yu lay back on the bed.

His fingers tapped lightly against the edge.

He was thinking.

Different pollution levels didn’t just corrupt perception—

They revealed different "layers" of the world.

If he could control it without dying...

Then this hospital wasn’t just a dungeon.

It was a multi-layered map.

And the optimal strategy was clear.

One person observes the clean world.

One person observes the polluted world.

Only then could the truth be fully seen.

If I can maintain pollution and not get killed, perhaps I can see more secrets of this hospital.

Of course, this copy is best handled with a partner—one responsible for observing the world without pollution, and one responsible for monitoring the world with pollution. That way, the problem becomes much clearer.

Shen Yu tapped the edge of the bed, pretending to relax.

At the ward door, Yuji and the others hurried back.

They pressed the nurse bell again in a panic.

Ding-dong.

After a moment, several strange nurses appeared and helped them process the humanoid mushroom, crushing and extracting it.

Yanbing and the unconscious Poor almost immediately drank the medicine, their expressions easing slightly as if something inside them had been stabilized.

Only Yuji hesitated.

He stared at the medicine in his hand.

Then he glanced at Shen Yu’s headband.

After a long pause—

He put the medicine away without drinking it.

At the same time, in the City Safety Defense Bureau of Jiu City, chaos was unfolding.

Since the arrival of the horror copies, people across the world were being randomly selected every moment, forced into these survival instances. To prepare, every district had established a defense bureau, monitoring copies around the clock.

On the central screen, four live feeds were displayed:

Shen Yu. Yuji. Yanbing. Poor.

"Report! Report!"

"In neighboring Heshir City, all participants in the S-class copy have been wiped out!"

"One-third of the city has already been assimilated into the eerie burial zone!"

"What?! Didn’t they have three S-class talent users in that instance?!"

The office erupted into panic.

"Six participants already dead from our side... If Yuji also falls—"

"Silence!"

A sharp command cut through the noise.

All eyes turned to the main seat.

Mayor Ho Yong stood with a cold expression, staring at the live feed.

"Analyze everything we currently know about this instance."

"Once only one survivor remains, activate the communication artifact and contact them immediately."

A metal cabinet in the center of the room slowly opened.

Inside was an old rotary telephone.

Evil Telephone.

A relic recovered from a previous instance—capable of contacting participants inside a copy. Extremely valuable. Limited to one use per day.

It was meant for the most critical situations.

And this was one of them.

Mayor Ho Yong spoke again.

"The Qing Shan Mental Hospital instance exists in both inner and outer worlds."

"Disobeying hospital staff increases contamination and forces entry into the inner world."

"The hospital staff’s instructions contain both true and false directives, triggered under unknown conditions."

"And the initial behavioral pattern resembles... a student personality."

A researcher frowned.

"Why would a mental hospital have a student pattern?"

Silence followed.

Everyone kept analyzing.

Then another voice cut in.

"The ones expected to survive were Yuji, Yanbing, Poor, and Fuja..."

The analyst hesitated.

"...We didn’t expect Shen Yu to survive this far."

Ho Yong exhaled slowly.

"He’s S-grade?"

"No," someone replied.

"E-grade."

A pause.

At the side of the room, a woman with golden wavy hair adjusted her suit and observed the screen quietly.

Luen.

She finally spoke.

"Nothing is absolute."

"A gift only defines a lower bound of strength."

"It never defines the upper limit."