CHAPTER 28

In the lounge on the second floor, there was a light red sofa. Xiang Chenxi sat on the sofa, while He Ran stood at the doorway for a moment before turning and leaving.

Xiang Chenxi scratched her slightly itchy arm and resisted the urge to scratch further. She closed her eyes slightly.

This time, she didn't take off her shoes or lay down. The lights remained on, and she simply closed her eyes to rest.

She reminded her body not to fall into a deep sleep, but it felt like there was some kind of soothing medication at work. Every time she closed her eyes, drowsiness took over, and the fatigue from the arduous journey overwhelmed her. Her shoulders relaxed, her back slouched slightly, sinking into the soft sofa. The joints in her arms felt like they were dispersing. She kneaded herself against the sofa like dough, tilting slightly and falling asleep.

She didn't know how long it had been when her instinct jolted her awake.

She didn't open her eyes, but her consciousness snapped back. Light seeped through her thin eyelids, and there were no indications of her mental value dropping in her ears.

However, the sofa on her right sank as if someone had sat down.

In this weather, sitting so close to someone would surely bring a wave of heat, but there was none of that. There was only a sense of "presence" without warmth or tactile sensation, no breathing, just weight.

Xiang Chenxi kept her eyes closed, maintaining her sleeping posture while remaining alert. How did she fall asleep again? Just how skilled was this outpost at making people relax and feel at home?

The mass of weight next to her slowly shifted, just a fist's distance away from her thigh, and now it was only two fingers wide.

Xiang Chenxi felt something grabbing her shoulder. She abruptly opened her eyes and pressed down on the thing in the light.

She was clutching... jelly?

It was a transparent jelly-like figure deeply embedded in the sofa, refracting dim light.

In a state of mental tension, Xiang Chenxi heard a sound: Mental value 52.

After she grabbed the jelly, it flowed away slowly when she didn't move. She could judge the transparent figure, like a divided jelly, through the refraction of light and the indentation on the sofa. It reassembled itself a bit further away.

Remembering He Ran's words about staying normal, Xiang Chenxi didn't quite know how to put it into practice, so she decided to act as if nothing had happened and sat back in her original position.

The jelly slid over again, pressing against her.

She squinted, paying attention to the changes in the light. The transparent jelly figure appeared blurry to her eyes, and she could only roughly discern its movements.

The figure extended its hand, placing it about two feet away from its own chest, and stopped there.

What in the world did it just extend?

Xiang Chenxi was still contemplating when suddenly her left hand stung. She turned her head and saw a bl*odline inexplicably appearing at the base of her thumb. Then, her thumb, as if it were tofu sliced open, slid slowly sideways along the bl*odline.

Xiang Chenxi looked at the transparent figure in shock and quickly grabbed the severed thumb. Bl*od gushed out from the severed part.

She immediately lifted her left hand and let the bl*od drip onto the extended hand of the transparent figure.

One drop, two drops, the bl*od seemed to seep into the droplets, quickly spreading out, revealing the shape of the transparent figure's fingers.

The transparent figure bent its five fingers, forming a claw-like gesture.

Then, the transparent figure retracted its fingers, forming a fist and pulling it back.

That hand shook in the air before slowly descending.

She watched as the fist extended its thumb, index finger...

Rock-paper-scissors? The other side would either show paper or scissors. She couldn't make a fist, so she could only show scissors, either resulting in a tie or a win.

Clutching the severed left thumb in her right hand, she was unwilling to test it with her intact right hand, which could fire a gun. She extended her bl*od-soaked left hand and made a scissor gesture. The bl*od soaked through her pants, dripping down.

However, the transparent figure only extended its thumb and index finger, forming the shape of an "eight."

In an instant, Xiang Chenxi's mental value was on the verge of instability. This wasn't rock, paper, scissors. Could it be numbers? She bit her tongue, realizing that her severed finger was the thumb, and the other side would show "eight."

The other side paused, seemingly a bit puzzled. Then, Xiang Chenxi saw two bl*odlines appear at the base of her index finger and middle finger.

She silently withdrew her hand, picked up the severed finger, and quickly wrapped it with a bandage. Looking at her left hand with only two fingers left, she tried to deduce what this silent game was all about.

The arm of the figure that had been extended was now stained even more vividly red with bl*od, revealing the texture of the fingers.

If this inexplicable game were to continue, she would have to use her right hand.

Because the figure extended a thumb and an index finger, and she no longer had those two fingers.The figure had made two moves... Wait a minute, she desperately tried to remember, recalling an ancient children's game, a variation of rock, paper, scissors called "Little Man, Tiger, Gun."

Little man represented a thumb, tiger was the claw the transparent figure initially showed, and gun was the "eight" the transparent figure just displayed.

Playing "Little Man, Tiger, Gun" with an unseen person in the lounge, losing or not following the rules would result in having the wrong finger cut off.

Xiang Chenxi quickly deduced the situation. In the two swing of the transparent figure's lifted hand, she swiftly used a bandage to secure her left hand.But, just like rock, paper, scissors, she didn't know what the transparent figure would choose next.

She thought for a moment and extended a thumb.

If it was wrong again this time, she would only lose a thumb.

The transparent figure extended a tiger.

She lost.

A line of bl*od appeared on her thumb, and she opened her hand, letting the thumb fall off. Her right palm was covered in bl*od, and she clenched her fingers—she had just hidden the thumb of her left hand in her palm, presenting a different thumb. It seemed that the figure didn't care whether the finger was still attached to her hand.

After all, with it being shorter, this thumb couldn't be reused multiple times.

Little Man, Tiger, Gun.

Could she not play? She tentatively asked if it would be okay to stop playing the game: "Can I not play anymore?"

The transparent figure seemed unable to hear and continued shaking its hand.

In the fourth round, the figure extended a little man, and she hurriedly showed a little man as well. It was a tie.

This was truly testing her psychological endurance. She hadn't bandaged her wound yet. Did they have to play like this until dawn? Was it normal to casually play games with an invisible person until dawn?

In the fifth round, luck finally came back. The figure showed a tiger, and she showed a gun. She won.

The transparent figure noticeably paused. Xiang Chenxi looked at the bl*ody hand, waiting to see if the same consequences would appear on the transparent figure.

Unfortunately, nothing happened. She felt it was unfair and grew a little angry. "I'm not playing anymore!"

The hand lifted by the transparent figure fell again. She held her left hand and felt a slight darkness in her vision due to bl*od loss. The light seemed unable to illuminate her surroundings, and there always seemed to be a ring of dark corners like a photo album.

The other party's bl*od-stained hand slowly landed on her bl*ody left hand, as if wanting to pull her back into the game.

She struggled to withdraw her hand.

Suddenly, the figure stood up, but the indentation on the sunken sofa was rebounding at an unusually slow speed. She looked at the imprint left by the transparent figure on the sofa and squinted at the figure.

The transparent figure disappeared.

It seemed that she had to win against the transparent figure once to end the game.

Xiang Chenxi urgently treated her wound. There was a type of adhesive that could reattach the severed finger and keep it active while stopping the bl*eding. However, to restore its functionality, she would need to seek medical assistance.

After bandaging the wound, she put on gloves to prevent any additional impact on the severed finger.

She tapped her wristwatch, and her mental value displayed 51. She wasn't too scared, mostly because the pollution level of the outpost had subtly influenced her. Honestly, the real person who ran towards her and confronted her just now wasn't the scariest.

The scariest was Zhao Xinyan, who would suddenly rush over when she turned around, the bear in the room that would make her mental value drop by twenty if she fell asleep, and the unknown presence downstairs that would fill her mind with crazy, shapeless things when she stared at it.

She immediately suppressed those thoughts. The indentation left by the transparent figure finally rebounded to its normal level. She continued sitting but dared not close her eyes no matter what.

Now, if she followed what He Ran said and did normal things, she could survive... That was not wrong. Although the transparent figure had severed three of her fingers, her mental value remained stable, just like sitting next to He Ran.

The pollution on the second floor wasn't as terrifying as on the first and third floors.

The pain from her wound made it impossible for her to sleep. She kept her eyes open and had a thought in her mind:

If only she hadn't left the work logs in the car, she could determine what had happened at the outpost from the logs.

But it was fortunate.

Those work logs had piled up for too long. Some of the logs from compromised outposts were polluted. After returning, she would have to go through the sealing procedures first and then wait for someone to review them in order. But now, who would bother with such laborious and thankless tasks? The outposts were being abandoned, and dealing with pollution and overcoming it was so costly. Other matters took priority, whether the logs were honest or dishonest, clean or polluted—they would all end up gathering dust and eventually being incinerated.

She suddenly wanted to know what had happened at this outpost.

Each type of pollution had its reasons, but none of them were as insane as He Ran. Insanity shattered the boundaries of normalcy, allowing the fractured mental world to flow into reality while being overwhelmed by the unreal. The lines between what was real and what was fake became blurred.

He Ran possessed a certain calmness and reality to her. She would discuss the pollution itself with people. This calmness should have been the norm, but in this outpost, it became a means to confuse oneself and lower one's guard. What was truly abnormal—the pollution of He Ran or the entire outpost?

Xiang Chenxi rubbed her face to ward off drowsiness and endured until daybreak.

The second floor has a huge floor-to-ceiling glass window that provided a view of the outside scenery. Did He Ran arrange for her to be here specifically so she could witness the sunrise firsthand?

Suddenly, her wristwatch vibrated, and she struggled to press it. Instead of displaying her mental value or pollution level, it showed a distress signal.

Someone was calling for help.

Xiang Chenxi determined it to be pollution.

In the military, each team had different communication frequencies, and equipment would be adjusted accordingly for each mission. This time, she was on a solo mission. Strictly speaking, apart from headquarters, which was completely out of signal range, no one could send her any messages.

But it came through anyway, in the form of a distress call, with her teammate's identity, causing her wristwatch to light up with a red alert.

She ignored it.

After a while, the distress message came through her earpiece: "Mayday, the coordinates have been sent to your location. Please come for rescue!"

"Please come to the rescue!"

"Please come to the rescue!"

She took off the earpiece and held it in her hand, while her wristwatch kept flashing. She tried to switch back to the page displaying her mental value but found that she couldn't move it no matter what.

In other words, she couldn't know the fluctuations in her mental value in real-time now.

Frustrated and silently resentful, Xiang Chenxi stomped her foot, stood up, and followed the distress signal.

The distress signal indicated that it was near her location. She circled around the sofa several times but didn't find anything out of the ordinary.

It could only be on the floor above or below.

The first floor had monsters, and the third floor had Zhao Xinyan. She should stay where she was.

But the voice in her earpiece kept repeating, becoming increasingly frantic. She couldn't hear the distress message clearly anymore, as it was mixed with the broadcast of her decreasing mental value.

On her wristwatch, the flashing red light continued, like a burning flame that no longer flickered.

Her mental value dropped to 40.

"Please come to the rescue!"

"Mental value: 50."

Come rescue...

48...

If Xiang Chenxi were at a mental value of 90, she would not hesitate to discard her earpiece and wristwatch and rely on her combat intuition and experience to confidently endure the situation.

But her mental value was no longer abundant. She anxiously watched the numbers drop, just like how stock traders used to watch the numbers jump, as if her whole life depended on those digits.

She couldn't let go of the earpiece and wristwatch. Her repeated presses on the wristwatch, which were meant to instill confidence, turned into nervous actions. She had to press it, press it repeatedly, to ensure that her mental value wasn't decreasing any further.

But it was still dropping, and at a very fast rate.

When it stopped at 40, she stood up and walked towards the staircase, gun in hand, waiting for Zhao Xinyan to come out so she could shoot him in the head, regardless of whether it would disturb other pollutants or whether she could actually kill Zhao Xinyan.

No, stay calm.

As she stepped onto the staircase, Zhao Xinyan appeared behind her. She knew someone was behind her.

But she couldn't turn back. She was afraid that if she turned back, she wouldn't be able to resist shooting. And the consequences of shooting were uncontrollable. She wasn't at the point of madness yet. Even if her mental value dropped to four, couldn't she find a way to survive? As long as she calmly, steadily, left the outpost.

Surprisingly, Zhao Xinyan didn't catch up. He stopped at the staircase on the third floor, and the distress signals became extremely urgent. She ascended to the fourth floor.

The distress signals abruptly stopped, but her mental value didn't stabilize at 40 because of it.

"Lieutenant, mental value 39."

The corridor in front of her was covered in bl*od-red vines, with fingers growing on the vines. The fingers hung one after another, swaying like leaves.

The red vines spread from the floor to the ceiling, turning the fourth-floor corridor into a cave in the rainforest. On the intertwined vines, bl*od threads of deeper hues constantly pulsated.

The bl*od threads seemed alive, continuously pulsing as if each vine had a heart pumping bl*od. These vines were slowly growing and wriggling outward.

Beneath these vines, several dark, irregular masses grew.

"Mental value 37."

The masses twitched, turned their heads, and all the masses had the same face—a man's face with a serene smile. This man turned his head and looked at her.

She felt an itch in her eyes, but her right hand held the gun, and her left hand, with a severed finger and covered by a glove, couldn't scratch.

Mental value 36.

Mental value 35.

The repeated distress calls echoed in her ears, and at that moment, the plea for help resurfaced. This time, it wasn't a synthesized voice but the voice of an unfamiliar woman.

"Save me, I'm going to die."

"Save me..."

At first, she thought He Ran had finally revealed her true self, after all, He Ran had once said, "Soon, I won't be anymore." But upon closer listening, despite the continuous warning from her mental value, she could discern that this was definitely not He Ran's voice. It was a hoarser voice.

Suddenly, a thought crossed her mind, and she couldn't distinguish whether it came from the transmitted voice or her own judgment. At this moment, she was also somewhat confused:

If she didn't save her, the outpost would be finished.

"He Ran—" she shouted, entrusting her hope to another pollutant amidst the pollution. She wouldn't act this way when she was in a clear state of mind.

She bit her tongue to keep herself alert and raised her gun, aiming at the person on the ground.

Bang—

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