Pillar

Pillar

While Mu Sichen was busy, Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo were not idle either.

They were carrying out the second step of the plan.

Chi Lian ran back to the fourth-floor office and brought the eleven patients left there up to the seventh floor.

These patients had not yet been registered or assigned wards. As long as a doctor led them, they could move around inside the hospital.

The ten converts were very obedient. Carrying the unconscious Ke Yi, they squeezed into Shen Jiyue's ward.

Inside the ward, Cheng Xubo waited with his pushcart for Mu Sichen to return.

Although Shen Jiyue had a rough understanding of Mu Sichen's plan, he still did not understand where Cheng Xubo's pushcart had come from, or what exactly Mu Sichen meant to do.

He simply transferred the blister-eyes on Cheng Xubo's body onto himself in silence.

When Mu Sichen returned to Room 704 and saw that Cheng Xubo's contamination had already been transferred, his gratitude toward Shen Jiyue deepened.

But at this point, there was no need to say thanks. He would prove through action that Shen Jiyue had not been wrong to trust them.

Mu Sichen casually beckoned, and a pickaxe appeared in his hand. He nodded to Cheng Xubo and said, "Let's speed up. Smash as many as we can."

"Got it!" Cheng Xubo said, rolling up his sleeves.

Mu Sichen swung the pickaxe and brought it down hard against the ward wall. A huge hole was smashed through it, and the falling dirt and stone were perfectly caught by Cheng Xubo's pushcart, then carried outside the ward and dumped away.

Once the wall was broken open, the shocked faces of the patients in the neighboring ward were exposed.

Mu Sichen and Cheng Xubo rushed into the next ward as if no one else were there and said to the people inside, "Ward expansion. Make way."

The two of them smashed through more than a dozen wards in a row. Cheng Xubo laughed and said, "You know, when I started playing this game, I thought it was a base-building game. The kind where you could drive excavators. I never expected to come in and find this rotten world instead. No excavators, no drilling machines, no base building.

"Only now am I finally enjoying the fun of construction."

"There is no construction. Only demolition." Mu Sichen tore down the walls without the slightest politeness.

Mu Sichen did not consider the issue of load-bearing walls at all. This was the top floor anyway. Even if they knocked down one wall, the building would not collapse for the time being.

He was only using his starter tool for demolition and had not used any special skill, so he was not consuming any Energy Value at all. His stamina, however, was dropping quickly.

Because the two of them were attacking the physical structure of the sanatorium and had not shaken the sanatorium's rules, for a while, no one actually came to stop them.

Mu Sichen opened up every room on the same side as Room 704. This side was entirely wards, more than twenty rooms in all.

Every hole in every wall was large enough for a hospital bed to pass through.

After smashing through the walls, the two of them each pushed a hospital bed through the big holes in the walls and charged into Room 704, pushing them straight into Shen Jiyue's ward.

Hospital beds were already movable. The only reason they could not leave the wards was that the patients were tied to the beds, and the ward doors were especially narrow, allowing only one person to pass through.

Cheng Xubo's pushcart had a spatial ability. No matter how large an object was, as long as it was stuffed into his pushcart, it could be taken outside.

That was how he had been able to bring the hospital beds out of the wards.

Now, however, they were not taking patients out of their wards, nor were they using the pushcart to load hospital beds. They were only letting patients move between different wards.

Shen Jiyue watched as more than twenty hospital beds were suddenly piled into his ward. Mu Sichen disliked the fact that his ward was not large enough, so he smashed through the walls of four or five wards in a row, expanding Shen Jiyue's room until it could fit that many beds.

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Shen Jiyue asked.

"Gather as many patients together as possible and leave the sanatorium no time to amend or supplement its rules," Mu Sichen said, revealing a somewhat unruly smile.

At that moment, Chi Lian also charged into the ward with eleven patients. "Here, here!"

The expanded Room 704 suddenly held more than thirty patients, along with the family members who had chased after them.

"What... what are you doing?" the family members said in shock. "I'm going to find a doctor!"

With that, several dumbfounded family members rushed out to find someone to help.

But it was not yet 2:00 p.m. The doctors were all busy looking for patients outside, while only Yao Wangping was inside the hospital rummaging through every corner in search of the nonphysical "Pillar." Who would pay attention to them?

The family members had no choice but to inform the volunteers, who would notify the gate guard and have the gate guard contact the Feather-Eyed Apostle to restore order.

This was also the sanatorium's emergency plan. When a patient showed violent tendencies, the Feather-Eyed Apostle would be invited to intervene.

But because the Feather-Eyed Apostle was not stationed inside the sanatorium, the family members had to notify the volunteers, the volunteers had to run to the first floor to find the gate guard, the gate guard had to contact the Feather-Eyed Apostle, and the Feather-Eyed Apostle then had to hurry over...

It would take too long.

Mu Sichen had gathered the patients together precisely to exploit that time lag. By the time the Feather-Eyed Apostle arrived, they should have already drawn out the "Pillar."

"Next, I am going to take a bit of a risk." Mu Sichen handed a Self Sticker to Chi Lian. "You are responsible for monitoring my mental state. As soon as you feel that I am on the verge of madness, put this sticker on me."

"What counts as the verge of madness? How do I confirm it?" Chi Lian asked.

Mu Sichen said, "For you, it is simple. When you feel that I am no longer worth trusting, that means I am not far from madness."

Chi Lian was his follower, and what she believed in was him in a state of Self. Once his mind collapsed, Chi Lian's faith as his follower would collapse as well. No one could detect the limits of his mind more easily than Chi Lian.

"All right!" Chi Lian accepted the task, but still asked worriedly, "What are you going to do?"

Mu Sichen said seriously, "I am going to make the rules of this sanatorium contradict themselves."

Once all of this was done, Mu Sichen dragged the pickaxe over to Shen Jiyue and said, "According to the original plan, transfer the contamination on you to me. Also, I want to take a look at the mirror that recorded the reflected light from Big Eye."

Shen Jiyue sighed. "You look so gentle and proper. How can you come up with such a mad plan? One careless move, and you will fall into madness."

"There is no way back. In this world, you either go mad or you win," Mu Sichen said solemnly.

Ever since entering the sanatorium, Mu Sichen had been cautious, low-key, and steady as he gathered intelligence. Every step had been like walking on thin ice.

He had wanted to protect himself and the people who trusted him. He feared losses and feared becoming mad, but that had left his every action constrained.

At this moment, Mu Sichen understood one principle: to fight madness, what one needed was not absolute rationality.

Yao Wangping possessed absolute rationality. To achieve his goals, he could disregard people who had fallen into madness and ignore whether his companions lived or died. But that absolute rationality had caused him to lose his humanity and move toward another extreme.

SAN did not represent strength. It represented a state of mental balance.

SAN could neither fall below zero nor rise above one hundred.

SAN could only move between zero and one hundred, maintaining humanity in the narrow space between rationality and madness.

That was what made a human: small, yet strong.

He would not be thoroughly contaminated. Even if he had only 1 SAN left, he would rely on that 1 SAN to destroy the "Pillar"!

He was going to cause a huge scene inside this sanatorium!

Shen Jiyue said gravely, "I will control it carefully."

Patients could actively transfer contamination to family members. Otherwise, Yao Wangping would not have become a doctor so easily.

Although Mu Sichen wore a volunteer name badge, his true identity was family member, so he could receive the transferred contamination.

Shen Jiyue placed his palm over Mu Sichen's eyes and warned him, "Do not close your eyes."

With his eyes open, Mu Sichen watched that hand covered in blister-eyes press against his eyes.

A strange sensation came over him. Mu Sichen only felt as if his eyes had been wrapped in warm water. The feeling was not unpleasant. On the contrary, it felt strangely comfortable.

Very soon, his eyes bulged outward, and his body became covered in terrifying blister-eyes.

Just as Mu Sichen began to feel unbearable pain, Shen Jiyue released his hand.

Mu Sichen's eyeballs rotated in a full circle. He saw that Shen Jiyue's eyes had returned to normal. Only the left side of his face and his neck still had blister-eyes. The rest of him had become humanlike again.

Shen Jiyue was indeed an extremely handsome man. From the intact right side of his face, one could see that his temperament was quiet and composed, giving others a reassuring strength.

He was like the moon deep in the night, its gentle moonlight spilling over people and illuminating the road ahead through the darkness.

Shen Jiyue sighed. "This feeling is truly unpleasant. I hope you can return to normal as soon as possible."

Mu Sichen, now scarcely human in shape, reached out and tapped the mirror Shen Jiyue had nearly been "cured" and discharged by after only a single glance.

Shen Jiyue picked up the mirror and flashed it at Mu Sichen.

In just that instant, Mu Sichen's left eye turned blood red. He seemed to see countless rays of light pouring into his eye, and every ray of light looked like Big Eye.

Mu Sichen's mind suddenly reeled. The choir voices that had already disappeared echoed in his ears once more, and before his eyes, it was as if Big Eye had already appeared bathed in holy light, beckoning to him.

At this moment, he did not find Big Eye ugly or terrifying at all. Instead, a surge of the urge to worship rose within him.

His SAN had definitely fallen below 10. His mind was full of mad thoughts, and his expression had become fierce.

"Good. I can still stay a little clearheaded." Mu Sichen knocked his head.

A dense, needle-like pain came from the totem on his chest, as if it were trying to wake his mind.

Mu Sichen pressed a hand to his chest and threatened in a low voice, "Qin Zhou, if you dare stop me from acting, I will dig you out."

The stabbing pain gradually disappeared. Qin Zhou seemed to have given up on stopping Mu Sichen.

He dragged the pickaxe toward the converts and the real doctor, Ke Yi, who were lined up behind Chi Lian, then laughed somewhat crazily. "Big Eye... no, 'Eye of the Sky,' I can just about count as your follower now, right? Lend me a little power, will you?"

When he spoke the words "Eye of the Sky," a totem appeared over his left eye. The totem showed a pupil reflecting three celestial bodies: sun, moon, and stars, as if all heaven and earth lay beneath that eye.

A beam of blood-red light enveloped the pickaxe.

Mu Sichen swung the pickaxe at one convert, and the blood-red light covered the convert like a gaze.

Contaminated by Shen Jiyue and having seen Big Eye's image in the mirror, Mu Sichen was now already extremely close to being a patient on the verge of recovery, and he was also Big-Eye's follower.

The blister-eyes on his body and the contamination in his mind produced an effect similar to Qin Zhou's Totem. As long as he prayed sincerely, he could obtain a totem by gazing upon Big Eye through his left eye and ask Big Eye for power.

Borrowing this power, Mu Sichen turned the convert who had just become Qin Zhou's follower back into Big-Eye's follower.

The follower's name badge also changed back into a volunteer name badge.

At the same time, a Self Sticker flashing with blood-red light appeared in Mu Sichen's hand.

This time, Mu Sichen had undermined Qin Zhou again, turning Qin Zhou's follower into Big-Eye's follower.

As expected, red light immediately flared throughout the entire sanatorium, and the broadcast alarms rang nonstop.

Because a patient had disappeared.

Whether it was the identity swap between patients and family members or Chi Lian's Cut-and-Paste skill, the total number of patients would not decrease.

Under the sanatorium's rules, there was only one way for the number of patients to decrease, and that was discharge.

But Mu Sichen had used the Undermine skill to turn a patient who had originally belonged to the Fallen into Big-Eye's follower. This was not treating a patient at all. He had directly used Big Eye's power to dig over a follower.

As long as someone was a follower, they were a volunteer inside the hospital.

A patient had decreased in an extremely bizarre way, yet it was not discharge. This completely violated the sanatorium's rules.

But just now, Mu Sichen had already written the supplemental rule: "During a volunteer's procedure on a patient, no one may interrupt the volunteer's actions or harm the volunteer." According to the rules, no one could stop what Mu Sichen was doing.

The sanatorium's rules had come into conflict with one another.

For a time, the automatically operating sanatorium seemed unable to resolve the problem. It only sounded the alarm without presenting any solution.

"Hurry. Next." Mu Sichen's left eye was blood red, and his appearance was like that of an evil spirit.

He kept swinging the pickaxe, striking the ten converts, Doctor Ke Yi, and the more than twenty patients they had brought from the other wards. One blood-red Self Sticker after another appeared on Mu Sichen's body.

"Alarm, alarm. Someone has violated sanatorium regulations. Alarm, alarm!" The broadcast rang through the entire sanatorium, and everyone heard it.

By now, Mu Sichen had already harvested twenty Self Stickers.

Suddenly, the ceiling was smashed open, and a person descended from above. It was the Feather-Eyed Apostle.

After receiving the volunteers' request for help, he had rushed to the sanatorium at once.

The moment they saw the Feather-Eyed Apostle, Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo decisively crawled under Shen Jiyue's hospital bed, not daring to look at him at all.

The Feather-Eyed Apostle had originally intended to immediately kill the rioter inside the sanatorium. All the eyes on his left wing opened, covering Mu Sichen.

But a mass of fog inside the sanatorium gathered around Mu Sichen, protecting him.

Supplementary Rule Three: During a volunteer's procedure on a patient, no one may interrupt the volunteer's actions or harm the volunteer.

Not even the Feather-Eyed Apostle could.

The Feather-Eyed Apostle froze slightly. Looking closely, he also saw that Mu Sichen was continuously adding followers for the "Eye of the Sky," and he immediately stood in place, sinking into deep confusion.

What exactly had happened? Why was he trying to eliminate a devout follower of the "Eye of the Sky"? This follower was outstanding. Look at him turning so many Fallen into followers of the "Eye of the Sky." That was an achievement worthy of reward, the Feather-Eyed Apostle thought seriously.

Even the Feather-Eyed Apostle could do nothing to Mu Sichen, and Mu Sichen had already obtained the twenty-first Self Sticker.

A giant eye grew from his back. His entire body had long since ceased to be human. Only in those bulging frog eyes could a trace of human feeling still be seen.

Who knew how much SAN he had left, or whether it was still enough for him to maintain rationality.

This thought flashed through Mu Sichen's mind, but he already had no energy left to think. All he could do was swing the pickaxe and continue challenging the sanatorium's bottom line, drawing its gaze over.

The twenty-second! Mu Sichen put away the Self Sticker. Just as he tried to swing the pickaxe again, a ray of light released from beneath his feet, enveloping him.

A huge eye appeared beneath Mu Sichen's feet. The eye had three pupils, and the three pupils reflected the celestial bodies of sun, moon, and stars.

This was precisely Big Eye's totem!

Shen Jiyue, who had been sitting on the hospital bed, immediately stood. A rare trace of excitement appeared on his calm face.

It was the "Pillar"!

Mu Sichen had succeeded. He had finally forced the "Pillar" to gather all its gazes on him. Beneath his feet, they converged into a pillar of light formed from condensed sight.

With the appearance of the "Pillar," the broadcast voice echoed throughout the sanatorium. "Error, error! Correction, correction! Delete Supplementary Rule Three!"

On the first-floor Management Rules, the Supplementary Rule Three that had just been written was erased by a formless power.

But that no longer mattered. Mu Sichen's goal had already been achieved.

He stopped continuing to transform the patients. Holding the pickaxe, he stood inside the Pillar, still drawing breath.

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Author's Note:

Qin Zhou, biting his tentacles like mad: Mu Sichen, mine, mine. How could you!

Big Eye: Huh? Who's bringing me believers?

Mu Sichen: I've discovered a perpetual motion machine for getting Self Stickers. Fleece both sides!

(Little Chen, retainer to three masters.)