Cooperation

Cooperation

At this point, Mu Sichen finally understood the underlying logic of the town and Big Eye.

First, although he did not know why, Big Eye needed enough Followers to proclaim His name. That was the reason Followers and Apostles existed.

Second, Big Eye needed the souls of the Fallen to strengthen His power: free souls that did not believe in Him. The stronger the soul, the greater the benefit to Big Eye.

Third, to avoid being attacked by other god-class monsters, Big Eye had to keep this town running as a way to protect Himself. In this, the "Pillar" was vital to the town. Keeping the "Pillar" running required negative emotions from ordinary people: despair, sadness, and the like.

Once he had figured out this logic, finding the "Pillar" became relatively simple.

As Mu Sichen thought, he listened to Shen Jiyue tell the story of what had happened after he arrived at the sanatorium.

Shen Jiyue had found the sanatorium with a companion. The two of them became patients at the same time, then disagreed over whether to become doctors.

Shen Jiyue was determined not to hurt other people. Whether it meant contaminating family members or driving a clear-headed patient insane, he refused to do it.

His companion, however, believed sacrifice was necessary.

So Shen Jiyue stayed put in his room, while his companion successfully became a doctor.

Although Shen Jiyue did not agree with his companion's methods, the two of them still discussed a strategy. The companion who had become a doctor would search for the "Pillar" inside the sanatorium, while Shen Jiyue, as someone who could be sacrificed at any moment, remained in the ward.

"Be sacrificed?" Mu Sichen asked.

Shen Jiyue was ugly, but his smile was composed. "The place where despair converges most heavily is where the "Pillar" is located. So we analyzed the situation and concluded that the B1 office where patients handle their discharge procedures is very likely where the "Pillar" is."

"Why do you think so?"

Shen Jiyue explained, "This hospital never provides a way to leave for good. The so-called contribution points are only the condition for temporarily leaving the sanatorium each day and returning to one's lodgings to rest. The next day, you still have to enter the hospital and repeat everything from the day before.

"When do you think people feel the most despair?"

"When hope is about to be achieved, only to be destroyed," Mu Sichen answered without hesitation.

Shen Jiyue's frog eyes shifted, as if he had glanced at Mu Sichen in approval. He nodded and said, "Exactly. Our analysis was that in this hospital, there is one and only one way to leave for good: discharge."

Mu Sichen understood what he meant, but at the same time, he raised a question. "I understand. You think that when patients are discharged, they believe they have finally been freed, only to discover when they handle the discharge procedures that what awaits them is not discharge but, very likely, destruction.

"But the prerequisite for a patient being cured is faith in Big Eye, turning them into a madman. Under those circumstances, patients should become willing to sacrifice themselves for Big Eye. How would they feel despair?"

Shen Jiyue's eyes filled with suspicion. "You really do have no common sense. Don't you know that faith and selfishness do not conflict, and madness and the desire to live do not conflict either?"

"Everything has a price. Followers believe in Great Beings only because they are seeking protection, looking for someone to protect them.

"No matter how mad they become, the core of their faith is that following a Great Being lets them survive. The firmer that faith is, the more despairing they become when they face a threat to their lives.

"Patients were already people with firm wills who refused to submit to Big Eye. If they yielded, they must have paid a tremendous price. Under those circumstances, when a patient discovers that even after violating their own principles and believing in Big Eye, they still cannot leave the hospital in the end, what kind of despair do you think they face?

"These are common sense after the Cataclysm, things everyone knows. What kind of freak are you, and where did you come from? How have you survived until today?"

Mu Sichen could only smile awkwardly.

He did not want to explain players or transmigration to Shen Jiyue. Besides, in such a mad world, there was no real point in talking about it.

Players had no special privileges in this world. No matter what kind of player came here, they faced the same danger as the town residents.

Seeing that Mu Sichen did not want to explain, Shen Jiyue considerately said, "Forget it. In any case, you have the totem on you, and He trusts you. Then I will trust you too."

Mu Sichen let out a breath of relief.

Spending time with Shen Jiyue was comfortable. He was intelligent, calm, resourceful, quick-witted, and considerate. As long as Mu Sichen ignored the blister-eyes on him, he was very willing to chat with Shen Jiyue.

"It seems you gathered a full grasp of the intelligence over this past week. In that case, why did you still come looking for me as a teammate?" Mu Sichen asked. "You are already a patient. As long as you believe in Big Eye, you can find the "Pillar," can't you?"

Shen Jiyue said, "You forgot. Once I believe, I will go mad. At that point, it will be impossible for me to destroy the "Pillar."

"Also, destroying the "Pillar" requires a totem. If I want to be discharged, I have to erase this totem first. By then, I will no longer have the ability to destroy the "Pillar."

"I need a teammate with a firm will, strong adaptability, intelligence, calm, and resourcefulness. You fit my requirements perfectly."

Mu Sichen felt a little embarrassed by the praise.

Following Shen Jiyue's line of thought, Mu Sichen understood his plan. "Your final goal is for me to accompany you when you are discharged. We face the "Pillar" together, and I destroy it."

"Talking to a smart person saves so much trouble," Shen Jiyue said.

Mu Sichen frowned. "But if we do that, you will..."

Shen Jiyue smiled calmly. "I have never feared sacrifice. I only fear sacrifice without value."

In that moment, through Shen Jiyue's terrifying exterior, Mu Sichen seemed to glimpse a handsome, graceful, upright man sitting in the ward.

Even though he had long since ceased to be human in form, Shen Jiyue still lived up to his name, a man of clear moonlight and open wind.

Mu Sichen clenched his fists. He did not want Shen Jiyue to be sacrificed like this.

"Do you know what you need to do?" Shen Jiyue asked.

Mu Sichen nodded. "Find a way to add a rule, add this one: 'Family members may accompany patients through discharge procedures.' Then we act according to our plan."

After hearing this, Shen Jiyue smiled in relief. "It seems heaven truly has not abandoned me, letting me meet you, the best teammate I could ask for, before I stand on the brink of madness. If luck is on our side, we can complete the mission during this 'Night,' right?"

"I will do everything I can," Mu Sichen said, silently clenching his fists.

According to the intelligence Yao Wangping had provided, Mu Sichen knew that before 2:00 p.m., the doctors were not inside the sanatorium. They would search the Town of the Eye for new patients to avoid being demoted to family members tomorrow.

From 2:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. were the doctors' treatment hours. It was said that Apostles would come from time to time to assist the doctors' treatments.

Before 2:00 p.m., Mu Sichen had to find a way to add a supplemental rule as quickly as possible and add the rule, "Family members may accompany patients through discharge procedures." After 2:00 p.m., Shen Jiyue would actively accept treatment, and then Mu Sichen would send him to B1.

After they set the plan, Mu Sichen left the ward. It was now eleven o'clock. He did not have much time left, only three hours.

Aside from adding the rule, Mu Sichen had another plan.

He wanted to save Shen Jiyue.

Call him naive, ignorant, or a useless student from an age of peace; Mu Sichen was going to do it anyway.

Shen Jiyue had made Mu Sichen understand that in this bizarre world, protecting the convictions in one's heart mattered more than anything else.

Mu Sichen was someone who had grown up in a peaceful world. He could not accept this world's underlying logic. That was his stubbornness.

He decided to keep that stubbornness. It was the only way he had left to remain different from this world.

With the pickaxe and Qin Zhou's Totem, Mu Sichen's idea was not a castle in the air. He had a real chance of pulling it off.

Mu Sichen pressed a hand to his chest and silently made up his mind.

......

All the ward doors inside the sanatorium were tightly closed, but aside from the patients locked in their rooms who could not move freely, family members, volunteers, and doctors could all move around the sanatorium. Their permitted ranges were simply different.

Doctors could leave the sanatorium before 2:00 p.m. Volunteers had to travel strictly between the sanatorium and their lodgings according to their work hours. Family members could only move around the first floor, the floor with the attending physician offices, and the ward floors.

Mu Sichen wanted to go downstairs, but a mass of fog blocked him. He could not even find the stairs.

There were elevators in the sanatorium, but the only buttons he could press were for floors 1, 4, and 7.

"Elevator going down. Which floor?" There was a volunteer in the elevator. He looked very strange. His eyes were tightly shut, but two antenna-like things grew from his forehead, with two eyes hanging from them.

If another family member saw this volunteer's terrifying appearance, they would probably be frightened half out of their wits, and the contamination in their body would become even more severe.

But after looking directly at Shen Jiyue, Mu Sichen found the volunteer's appearance still bearable. At least he did not have a fishy stench, and he still kept a human shape.

"Fourth floor." Mu Sichen thought for a moment, then decided to go to the fourth floor to look for clues.

The antenna-eyed volunteer pressed the elevator button.

Mu Sichen watched him for a while, then took the initiative to strike up a conversation. "Your eyes are very distinctive. How did you manage that?"

Most volunteers were normal in appearance. Few were bizarrely shaped, so Mu Sichen's question was not abrupt.

Judging by volunteers' tastes, Mu Sichen really should have praised the volunteer's eyes as "pretty" or "cute." But he truly could not bring himself to say something like that against his conscience, so he could only choose "distinctive," a word that was relatively objective while still carrying a hint of praise.

"Right!" Hearing Mu Sichen praise his eyes, the volunteer was delighted as expected. He touched the eyes on top of his head and said, "I used to be blind. My eyes wouldn't open from birth, and I didn't know what the world looked like. After I helped the Feather-Eyed Apostle cure a patient, the Feather-Eyed Apostle rewarded me with that patient's eyes!"

No wonder this pair of eyes looked so similar to Shen Jiyue's frog eyes. They had come from a patient.

"You can take the eyes of a patient who has already been discharged?" Mu Sichen asked.

"Sure. They have plenty of eyes anyway," the volunteer said naturally. "The Feather-Eyed Apostle often steals patients' eyes too. If you want eyes as beautiful as mine, you can do more things within your power for the Feather-Eyed Apostle. Maybe if he's in a good mood, he will bestow a pair of eyes on you. Look how inconvenient your eyes are. You can only see in front of you, not behind you. You should install a pair on the back of your head too."

Those words nearly made Mu Sichen lose SAN. He pressed a hand to his chest and continued asking, "Is that why the Feather-Eyed Apostle has so many pairs of eyes?"

"Maybe." The antenna-eyed volunteer leaned to Mu Sichen's ear and whispered.

At that moment, the elevator arrived at the fourth floor. Mu Sichen walked out of the elevator and did not forget to say to the antenna-eyed volunteer, "Let's chat next time I take the elevator!"

"Great! It's so boring here. No one ever chats with me," the antenna-eyed volunteer said warmly.

The elevator doors closed, and Mu Sichen's warm expression instantly went cold.

He had always felt that the Feather-Eyed Apostle had far too many eyes and had assumed Big Eye had bestowed them on him. Now that he thought about it, the Feather-Eyed Apostle's eyes might all have been taken from patients.

This sanatorium, aside from being the location of the "Pillar," might also be using strong-willed patients to breed demons.

Aside from doctors' offices, the fourth floor also had quite a few wards. Mu Sichen passed by those wards and headed straight for the office of Shen Jiyue's attending physician.

He remembered that Yao Wangping had once added a rule beneficial to himself, and had once searched for something in a doctor's office. Perhaps there were clues about supplemental rules inside the doctor's office.

Mu Sichen had read the medical record, so he knew Shen Jiyue's attending physician was named Ke Yi.

He found the office with Ke Yi's name written on it and knocked on the door.

At this time, there was a high probability that doctors were not in the sanatorium. As long as no one answered, Mu Sichen was going to force his way in.

To his surprise, after he had knocked only twice, someone opened the door from inside, and it was someone Mu Sichen knew.

The girl who had once been influenced by Big Eye, hallucinated, and nearly dug out both her eyes.

Mu Sichen lowered his head to look at the name badge on her chest and saw, written on it in bold, "Doctor: Ke Yi."

--------------------

Author's Note:

Qin Zhou: Mu Sichen touched his chest today. Rounding up, that means he touched my totem. Round up again, and that means he touched me!

Mu Sichen: As long as you're happy.