Chapter 62
Lin Yi immediately got down from the narrow bed. Patient 203 hadn’t woken up yet. He looked to the door where through the gap at the bottom, a faint blue light was coming through.
The comb jelly’s rows of comb plates had the same iridescent sheen. When the creature hunts, it wraps its serrated tentacles around its prey before cutting off a chunk of flesh.
And now, similar tentacles were slowly sliding in from the crack at the bottom of the door.
Lin Yi took a few steps back, staring closely at the tentacles. Fortunately, the comb jelly’s tentacles were not long enough to make it completely into the room.
It only made it in halfway. It used the sensory nerves on its tentacles to swing back and forth, tasting the air.
Lin Yi stared at the tentacles.
If Shi Xuan appeared at their door to hunt for prey…
Just who was she trying to eat? In other words, who was it that she could eat?
Was it Patient 203 or him?
NPCs can only kill at night and the premise is that the participant has to have violated a Rule of Death. But was Shi Xuan an NPC now? She died but didn’t die; her body lived on. When Lin Yi brought her bread, she was breathing.
A participant cannot kill another participant nor can they kill an NPC. But can Shi Xuan still be considered a participant? Most probably not. She was no longer concerned about leaving the Rule World. She was no longer afraid of the night and even goes around looking for food because she’s hungry.
Shi Xuan was like the living dead. Lin Yi wasn’t sure what she was now. But one thing was certain — this was the 16-8 Rule World and the things that exist in the Rule World must be beneficial to 16-8 Monster.
For example, in a situation where all the participants know that it is dangerous to leave the patients’ company, the 16-8 Monster hiding among them would definitely not leave the patient’s side either.
Therefore, the greatest value of the existence of the living dead to the 16-8 Monster is as a tool to help kill the participants who try to destroy the order of the Rule World.
The 16-8 Monster knows everything about the Rule World. Therefore, it also knows the habits of these regenerating animals. With a little trickery, it could easily get rid of troublemakers.
For example, throwing a piece of meat in front of Room 203 could have attracted Shi Xuan, who was in the comb jelly state to Room 203.
The ones who’ll be eaten were probably the participants of the 16-8 Rule World.
However, Lin Yi didn’t feel like he’d been targeted by the 16-8 Monster. Since entering the 16-8 Rule World, Lin Yi and Qin Zhou have only been able to communicate with each other through notes and they’ve had no contact with the other participants. Qin Zhou had even done away with the self-introductions at the begining.
Just like Lin Yi didn’t know the other participants, the other participants also didn’t know him either. They might not even know Lin Yi’s name.
Because they’ve had no contact with the others, even using the Rule of Death as a basis, he and Qin Zhou couldn’t guarantee that the 16-8 Monster was Patient 202’s Wen Xiaoxuan. The 16-8 Monsters hiding among the participants couldn’t possibly know that they’ve already found multiple clues.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Lin Yi guessed that he must have picked up some scent in the morgue and that’s why Shi Xuan, in her comb jelly state, came to Room 203 to ask him for food.
Moreover, when Lin Yi saw Shi Xuan’s appearance, he thought that Shi Xuan must not have completely transformed into her jelly comb form yet. It took Zheng Anjian a day and a night before he became a bit like an earthworm. Shi Xuan had just died last night.
Lin Yi breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn’t relax completely.
If Wen Xiaoxuan was the 16-8 Monster, the patient she’s taking care of, Patient 202, was right next door to him. Lin Yi and Qin Zhou had left the patients’ building tonight. They barely made any noise, but Shi Xuan came.
Shi Xuan’s arrival at Room 203 had made noise. If Wen Xiaoxuan was the 16-8 Monster, she must know that meat can attract Shi Xuan in her comb jelly state. She would have also heard the noise made by Shi Xuan outside his door.
Wen Xiaoxuan would definitely become suspicious.
Lin Yi looked at the tentacles constantly swinging in the air. He then turned and went back to his cubicle.
If the living dead only prey on the participants, he can’t get too close to those tentacles. The comb jelly basically relies on the sensory system on its tentacles. If Lin Yi stays in front of the door, the tentacles that Shi Xuan stretched into the room will be able to catch his scent and she’ll refuse to leave for a long time.
Lin Yi sat on the narrow bed. For the time being, he wasn’t worried that Shi Xuan would break through the door. If that were a possibility, Shi Xuan would have done so right away when he opened the door for her.
His guess was that Shi Xuan was still so very hungry that she kept using her tentacles to probe. Once his smell dissipates, Shi Xuan would leave.
Sure enough, it didn’t take long after for Shi Xuan to leave.
Hearing the sound of Shi Xuan’s departing footsteps, Lin Yi lay down.
Their situation was getting progressively worse and also urgent. Each night, the dead participants will mutate into regenerating animals. The longer the time since their death, the more pronounced the mutation. What would happen when the participants completely mutate into their regenerating animals? Lin Yi has seen something similar in horror movies.
He thought back to the ten kinds of regenerating animals that Qin Zhou had mentioned. The most terrifying of these was the salamander, which had tetrodotoxin in its body, making it very poisonous. It was also a carnivorous animal.
Lin Yi lay on the bed and turned over gently.
He had to warn Qin Zhou about the mutation but he was afraid that Patient 203 would suddenly wake up and stand behind him secretly like the previous two nights. The only thing Lin Yi could do was to wait for Patient 203 to wake up and then fall asleep once more, before writing this on a note and finding a way to hand it over to Qin Zhou the next day.
Lin Yi closed his eyes, recalling the clues he had obtained so far.
Because no one knows when Doctor Zhu will use the salamander, the most urgent thing was to find the 16-8 Rule World’s main plot as soon as possible.
He gathered all the clues. — The electrified fence, the nine patients, the ten kinds of regenerating animals, those events in history that Doctor Zhu talked about, the holes on the top of the patients’ heads and the two holes on the top of Shi Xuan’s head…
Slowly, a preliminary outline of the main line gradually emerged in Lin Yi’s mind.
The nine patients in the sanatorium know of Doctor Zhu’s ability and so they came to the sanatorium for ‘treatment’. Doctor Zhu baited nursing aides with an offer of a high salary to be the patients’ new bodies. This process must have taken a long time. After all, Patient 203 has been in the sanatorium for half a year already.
This was the secret Doctor Zhu and the patients shared.
Lin Yi remembered a line from a book. — Transplanting one person’s memory to another person, thus transplanting his cultural knowledge, his emotions, his life experiences, is equivalent to the continuation of life.
So, Doctor Zhu after having found a new body for the patient, before the patient’s body is exhausted, inserts a needle into the top of the patient’s head to extract the ‘memory proteins’ stored in the brain. He then injects these memory proteins into the new body.
Then why did the new body have two holes on the top of their heads? One must be for the injection of memory proteins and the other for the injection of regenerating animal genes.
The carrier of genes is DNA, which is mainly distributed in the nucleus and the human brain has the most cells, reaching 14 billion to 16 billion.
This was the explanation for the two holes on the top of the new body’s head.
Perhaps what the patients wanted wasn’t the prolonging of their life but eternal life. They wanted to use the genes of regenerating animals to change their own genes.
But what the patients didn’t know was that they were actually experimental subjects for Doctor Zhu’s “Eternal Life”.
After forming his prototype of the main line, more suspicious points appeared.
Lin Yi tidied up them up bit by bit.
Judging from his conversations with Doctor Zhu, he seemed to have actually been Emperor Hui and Li Hong. Emperor Hui of Jin was born in 259 and died in 307. Even if Emperor Hui of Jin was the beginning of Doctor Zhu’s eternal life that would mean he has lived for thousands of years.
It was impossible that they had the technology to extract memory proteins then. It was also impossible for Doctor Zhu to have relied on memories to extend his life. That meant that Doctor Zhu had other methods for immortality. But in that case, why was Doctor Zhu using the patients to experiment with ‘immortality’?
And what about the dead bodies in the mortuary cabinets?
And also, before they entered the 16-8 Rule World, they all saw the 16-8 Monster as exact copies of themselves. But this seemed to have nothing to do with the main line he’d formulated.
Lin Yi was about to make some more additional hypothesis using Qin Zhou’s method, when there finally came movement from the main area of the room.
“Xiao Lin!”
Lin Yi continued feigning sleep. He waited for Patient 203 to call him several times before he got up, pretending to have just woken up.
“Mr. 203?” Lin Yi came out from the cubicle, rubbing his eyes. He asked, “What’s wrong?”
Patient 203 stared at Lin Yi sullenly. Lin Yi asked again, “Mr. 203, what’s the matter?”
Patient 203 said heavily, “What did you do to me?”
Lin Yi was at a loss. “What?”
Patient 203 said, “Who knocked on the door? Why am I in bed?”
“Knocked on the door?” Lin Yi was even more confused. He glanced at the door to their room. “Did someone knock on the door?”
Patient 203’s tone was cold. “Are you saying there wasn’t?”
“There wasn’t.” Lin Yi said, “After you fell asleep, I went to sleep after writing my diary. Anyway, I didn’t hear any knocking before I went to sleep. As for why you appeared on the bed, weren’t you on the bed this entire time?”
Patient 203 fell silent, staring at Lin Yi with cloudy eyes.
Lin Yi asked, “Mr. 203, did you having a nightmare?”
Patient 203 lowered his head. “A dream?”
“What did you dream about?” Lin Yi asked him.
Patient 203 thought for a while and said, “I dreamt that someone knocked on the door and you ran out of the cubicle and asked me if we should open it. I refused because I was worried it might be that 303 nursing aide coming to look for trouble. But you suggested opening it a crack to take a peek. I agreed. But you opened the door and closed it immediately and you said there was no one outside. We both suspected that it was a prank by Aide 303, so the two of us decided to go upstairs and ask the Aide 303 for an explanation.”
“But as soon as I got out of bed and walked to the door, I lost consciousness.” At this point, Patient 203 looked up at Lin Yi, “Then I found myself back on the hospital bed.”
Lin Yi sighed, “It’s even a dream within a dream.”
“Yeah…” Patient 203 also sighed and said, “Since I became like this, I haven’t had a dream for many years.”
“It’s okay. It’s just a dream.” Lin Yi asked him, “Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?”
“Now that you say it, I do feel a little dizzy and my body is a little weak.” Patient 203 pointed to the bedside table. “Xiao Lin, help me get the medicine from the second drawer.”
“Okay.”
Lin Yi walked over and opened the drawer. After seeing the medicine in the drawer, his expression froze instantly.
Zopiclone.
Insomnia pills that make you fall asleep faster.
Patient 203’s gloomy voice rang in his ears. “I haven’t taken my medicine tonight. Xiao Lin, why do you think I fell asleep?”
Oh no! Time for Lin Yi to bullshit his way out of trouble… again! This is way too stressful!
Thank you for the chapter~✨
Lin Yi : You can sleep even without taking medicine under my care .. I’m so awesome ..
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
Me in that world, dead in five seconds 😀
Speed running to death