This actor is full of tricks.

This sentence sounds familiar. Back when I was in the school controlled by the dean, that school operated just like a school in the real world. The students and teachers also felt like they were running a program, mechanically attending classes, studying, eating, and resting.

That hospital is in the same state now. Is this something the hospital director did on purpose?
What is the purpose of doing this? Is it to cover up the truth? Or is it to make this bizarre and absurd place seem like the real world?
The director's motives were indeed hard to fathom. He had already made the mental hospital more terrifying than any eerie place, yet he still tried to maintain the facade of normalcy.

"And then?" Lin Jue asked.

"After that, everyone was assigned to a different ward, and there were other patients in the ward. This was indeed a very strange thing. When we went to check, there weren't that many patients, but this time every ward was basically full. The hospital was sealed off by the minister's mysterious device. How did those patients get in?"

The Sanjiang Inspection Division had visited that hospital, and Chen Fu had also been involved. He knew the hospital's situation very well, but after the hospital was sealed off, many more patients appeared.

"Minister Bai even went to check on that mysterious artifact at the time. The artifact was still functioning normally, and the seal was still intact."

After listening to Chen Fu's words, Lin Jue pondered for a moment and then made a startling guess: "Is it possible that the seal was actually ineffective, and those guys in the hospital weren't unable to leave, but rather didn't want to?"

Lin Jue recalled the taxi driver's comment about seeing a patient in a hospital gown holding a shrine. Could that patient have been the one who escaped after the hospital was sealed? After all, if it was a patient who had escaped earlier, so much time had passed that they should have changed their clothes; there was no need for them to keep wearing a hospital gown.

This also explains why there were many more patients in the hospital. The seal actually had no effect on the hospital. The hospital was just pretending to be sealed in order to avoid attracting the attention of the Inspection Department and to secretly and discreetly recruit patients and expand its influence.

"Yes, that's what Minister Bai and I thought at the time. And that's why the danger level at that hospital was rising rapidly. The most dangerous enemy is the one that knows how to lie low."

Chen Fu let out a long breath: "Minister Bai had already sensed that something was not right. He instructed the people inside to be careful and not to act rashly, while he reported the information to headquarters and requested that a fifth-level expert be sent to provide support."

"However, there are very few fifth-tier experts within the headquarters. Most of them are stationed in cities with serious strange and chaotic situations. Unless it is an A-level strange event, it is very difficult to mobilize a fifth-tier expert. Moreover, this is just Minister Bai's unease that arose for no reason. Therefore, the headquarters directly rejected Minister Bai's request."

Lin Jue could only remain silent in response. With the director absent, the danger level of the mental hospital would indeed be greatly reduced. The headquarters was thousands of miles away, and it was reasonable to reject the request because of a lack of understanding.

Putting aside the headquarters, even Lin Jue himself thought that a mental hospital without a director was not very dangerous. But after listening to Chen Fu's few words, he felt that even without a director, a mental hospital was still a very terrifying place.

He trusted his intuition; he was sure the people in the Inspection Department would encounter something terrible, which was perhaps why Chen Fu had become so dejected.

"Damn it! This is the stupidest thing headquarters has ever done!" Chen Fu cursed, crumpling his cigarette butt in his hand. "If headquarters had sent a fifth-tier expert back then, perhaps none of this would have happened!"

"After being admitted to the ward, everything was normal at first. The other patients didn't seem like mental patients. They could even talk to people normally. Doctors would make rounds at specific times. Even the food was what normal people eat, with vegetables and meat. Everything was no different from a hospital in the real world." "At that time, a fourth-level patient questioned whether we had come to the wrong place. But I knew that the place was not wrong. It was just that the hospital had undergone some unknown changes."

Chen Fu's face was very pale; this matter had exceeded everyone's expectations.

"But at night, everything changes."

"When night fell, the air was filled with a very strong stench of decay. It smelled like a grave had been dug up and was coming out of a coffin. Minister Bai and I were hiding a few hundred meters away from the hospital, and we could smell the stench."

"According to the video footage transmitted back, the patients in the hospital also became very strange. Their mental state began to deteriorate, and they shouted and yelled. The doctors and nurses seemed to be alive during the day, but at night they all became eerie, and the environment began to decay and deteriorate, returning to the state it was in when we first went to check."

"The hospital has become a hellish place where a hundred ghosts roam, and this is what a hospital should really look like. Everything we see during the day must be due to some mysterious force affecting our senses. At night, that force disappears, and everything returns to normal."

"But those guys didn't attack our people. Apart from their terrifying appearance, they behaved no differently than during the day. Minister Bai was originally going to order an attack, but seeing this, he held back and told them to act according to the situation and wait until after tonight."

"Nothing happened that night, but by the next day, several people had lost contact. Their signals were no longer coming through the earpieces, and the cameras they had hidden were no longer showing any footage."

"This includes Xu Xiaoqi, as well as a fourth-order individual."

Chen Fu took a deep breath as he finished speaking, and Lin Jue was taken aback: "Xiao Qi went in too, so what about him now?"

The mental hospital has disappeared, and now the Investigation Department of the Inspection Division is empty. Could it be that the group of people who entered the hospital also disappeared along with the hospital?

If that's the case, the disappearance of the four investigation teams would be a huge blow to the Sanjiang Inspection Division. No wonder everyone looks so lifeless.

"They disappeared along with the hospital, and everyone who went in disappeared." Bloodshot veins appeared in Chen Fu's eyes. "At that time, no one expected this to happen. When those people's signals disappeared, Minister Bai immediately arranged for people to check the situation."

“Those people are still in the hospital, but they seem to have lost all their memories. They only know that they are patients in the hospital, and they can’t remember anything else. They are even very resistant to our people.”

"They seemed to have been assimilated by the hospital, becoming true patients." (End of Chapter)