Last-Place Elimination System

Last-Place Elimination System

Mu Sichen walked over quickly and saw Cheng Xubo writing on the supplementary regulation: "Family members may not load patients, hospital bed and all, into handcarts and move them around."

Mu Sichen: "..."

The image conjured by Cheng Xubo's supplemental rule was far too vivid.

A red light flashed over the words Cheng Xubo had written. Then they imprinted themselves onto the paper, one character at a time. Looking at those words, Mu Sichen immediately felt a sense of being restrained.

Cheng Xubo tilted his head, as if seriously listening to something. Then he nodded in satisfaction and hung the pen back on the wall.

There was a hook on the wall, and the pen was tied to it. As soon as Cheng Xubo let go, the pen disappeared.

Only after finishing all this did Cheng Xubo notice Mu Sichen standing behind him. Delighted, he said, "Bro, I finally found you! This game is way too messed up. Can we form a party?"

Mu Sichen's gaze fell on his name badge. As expected, it read, "Family Member: Cheng Xubo."

At the same time, Mu Sichen noticed that Chi Lian had called him "Benefactor" at first, while Cheng Xubo called him "bro."

Without a Self Sticker, even with sufficient favor and trust, Cheng Xubo was still not his Follower.

Mu Sichen nodded slightly, pointed at the supplemental rule, and asked, "What did you do?"

At the mention of this, Cheng Xubo's face instantly went white. Still shaken, he said, "As soon as I entered the sanatorium, the broadcast told me I had to look after a patient. I went to the assigned ward to find the patient I was responsible for, and then I saw this... oh my god, it was terrifying. I don't even dare describe it. The worst part was that the illness was contagious."

Cheng Xubo held out his hand for Mu Sichen to see. "Look. My hands are covered in blister-eyes!"

His contamination was even worse than Mu Sichen's had been at first. Blister-eyes covered half his arm.

"And then?" Mu Sichen asked.

Cheng Xubo said, "It was a contagious disease! And that patient was yelling from the bed about how he wouldn't accept treatment, wouldn't accept it even if he died. He said he wanted to die, to return to the Lord of Night Splendor's realm and cast off this filthy body. Then who knows where he got a knife from, but he stabbed it straight at his neck.

"The broadcast immediately prompted me to protect the patient's life and assist the doctor with treatment. I knocked the knife out of his hand right away, but he kept screaming and thrashing.

"I pressed the call bell, but no one came. I couldn't wait any longer, so I used my skill and stuffed the patient, bed and all, into a pushcart. I was going to push him to find a doctor.

"Who knew that as soon as I got into the elevator, that volunteer with antennae growing out of his head and eyes growing out of the antennae chased me out.

"The broadcast told me that before discharge, patients must remain bound to their hospital beds. I didn't technically break the rules, but directly taking the hospital bed out was unprecedented in the sanatorium.

"The broadcast said this was a loophole in the rules. It could let my rule violation slide this time, but I had to write a supplemental rule. Once the rule was in place, if I did it again, I'd be punished."

"I thought you'd managed to add a regulation the moment you arrived at the sanatorium, and I was actually impressed. Turns out you violated the rules!" Chi Lian leaned in and said.

"Chi Lian, you're here too? I thought I'd gotten separated from you guys." Seeing a familiar face, Cheng Xubo immediately relaxed quite a bit, and the blister-eyes continuously growing up his arm also stopped spreading.

"Yeah. We're really lucky. Even with all that fog, we still ended up at the same sanatorium," Chi Lian said happily.

"Right? I thought I'd never see you again," Cheng Xubo said.

Mu Sichen said with certainty, "It wasn't luck. This sanatorium was summoning us."

Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo exchanged a look. Their experiences along the way flashed through their minds, and they suddenly felt Mu Sichen's words made sense.

The joy of reunion gradually faded, and unease once again shrouded their hearts.

But Chi Lian's mental state was clearly better than Cheng Xubo's. She glanced at Mu Sichen and immediately felt at ease. She said to Cheng Xubo, "It's okay. Captain Mu is very smart. Trust him, and everything will definitely be fine!"

"Captain Mu? Isn't his surname Sha?" Cheng Xubo said, clearly not holding out much hope.

Chi Lian explained Mu Sichen's name to Cheng Xubo. Cheng Xubo smacked his forehead. "So you could write a fake name. I actually wrote my real name. What a loss!"

Seeing that Cheng Xubo understood nothing, Chi Lian dumped everything Mu Sichen had told her earlier onto Cheng Xubo all at once.

Cheng Xubo nodded again and again. "Oh, so you can do that. So that's how it is. Good thing I ran into you guys. This sanatorium is so dangerous."

Chi Lian said, "Yeah, but you're pretty impressive too. You actually managed to add a supplemental rule. That's exactly the clue we were looking for. Captain Mu, what exactly is the principle behind these supplemental rules?"

While the two of them were talking, Mu Sichen had already figured out the method behind supplemental rules.

He explained, "It's actually very simple. The broadcast already prompted Cheng Xubo just now. It's a loophole in the rules."

The reason Cheng Xubo could add a rule was that he had done something the sanatorium did not permit, but had not expressly forbidden in writing. This created a program bug in the sanatorium's own operation, so it needed a supplemental rule to patch the loophole.

Simply put, the fact that patients were locked to their hospital beds meant the sanatorium did not allow patients to leave their wards.

But because the sanatorium had already locked the patients up, it had not expressed this rule in written form. It was a fact everyone tacitly understood.

Yet as long as something was not explicitly forbidden, it meant it could be done.

Cheng Xubo had carried the patient out of the ward along with the hospital bed. He had not violated the regulations, but he had done something the sanatorium did not allow.

Because Cheng Xubo's actions exposed that loophole, he obtained the qualification to add a supplemental rule.

After hearing Mu Sichen's explanation, Cheng Xubo scratched his head too and asked, "Then why did it let me add the rule? I'm just a family member. What about the sanatorium's leadership? The director?"

"Yeah. This sanatorium doesn't seem to have any leadership," Chi Lian said. "It seems like the Feather-Eyed Apostle appears in the sanatorium, but we haven't seen him."

Their conversation reminded Mu Sichen of something.

He thought of Yao Wangping. Earlier, Yao Wangping had rummaged through different rooms without restraint, not caring at all whether anyone discovered him. In fact, no one had come to stop them either.

Whether it was Chi Lian using her skill to swap name badges, or Mu Sichen using his skill to turn ten volunteers into patients, no one had interfered. There had not even been a warning.

By contrast, Cheng Xubo had merely carried a patient out of the ward, and the broadcast had issued a warning, forbidding him from continuing that behavior.

Only triggering a loophole in the rules, only violating an implicit rule, would earn a warning. Chi Lian's earlier actions had not received any warning. Did that mean those actions were actually allowed by the rules?

"Just carrying a patient out of the ward draws a warning. Then why is there no warning when doctors and volunteers are turned into patients?" Mu Sichen asked.

"Right. No one warned us," Chi Lian said, not understanding either. She tilted her head and said, "By all rights, what we did was worse, wasn't it?"

"Exactly," Cheng Xubo said too. "You guys were really harsh to the doctors and volunteers. I only helped a patient a little and got warned. I even felt like I hadn't done anything."

Cheng Xubo's words gave Mu Sichen a flash of insight. He immediately said, "There are two differences. First, Cheng Xubo was being kind to a patient, while we were being cruel to doctors and volunteers. Second, the target of Cheng Xubo's action was a patient, while the targets of our actions were other people."

Chi Lian thought for a moment and said, "So either we can't be kind to other people, or we can't be kind to patients. This sanatorium is so twisted."

"And it doesn't seem very intelligent either. There's no human management," Cheng Xubo said, looking at the rule he had written.

"That's exactly it!" Mu Sichen said. "It's not intelligent enough!"

Based on his understanding of Big Eye, if Big Eye knew Mu Sichen had undermined the Town of the Eye's foundation and sent Qin Zhou ten Followers, Big Eye would definitely fly into a rage on the spot, sweep a slicing glare over them, make all of them collapse and die, then absorb their souls.

Yet that behavior was permitted inside the sanatorium.

Cheng Xubo said, "I kind of understand why this situation happened."

Mu Sichen and Chi Lian both focused their gazes on Cheng Xubo.

Cheng Xubo looked a little embarrassed. He hid the arm covered in blister-eyes and said, "Here's the thing. I'm a programmer, but not a very good one. Sometimes when I write a program, the result it produces does meet my requirements, but the way it runs is completely different from what I imagined.

"My requirement for the program is to go from A to B, but the program goes from A to C to D to C and then to B. The result is the same, but the process is a lot more roundabout. Even I don't know how it managed to run. But I won't touch it, because in the end, it's still running."

Following Cheng Xubo's analogy, Mu Sichen realized that the sanatorium was essentially a program Big Eye had written to run automatically after He fell asleep.

But Big Eye's skill level was average. He could only write a program with such low intelligence, one that frequently produced bugs, which was why the supplemental rule system existed.

"Then what is the final goal of the sanatorium, this program?" Chi Lian asked.

Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo did not know that the "Pillar" was the support pillar of a town domain, and Mu Sichen was not sure whether their minds could withstand the truth of the "Pillar."

So he did not explain it to them. Instead, he calmed down and thought through Chi Lian's question.

Shen Jiyue had told him before that what maintained the "Pillar" was the energy produced by negative emotions like despair and sadness. By the same logic, the sanatorium needed these negative emotions.

The sanatorium's method for obtaining those emotions was the last-place elimination system.

The ones in last place were naturally the patients. Everyone could see how miserable the patients were. No one wanted to become a patient, so they worked hard to avoid becoming one or to escape the patient identity. Once they fell into that logic, their minds would be contaminated, producing inescapable negative emotions, until they ultimately became sustenance for the "Pillar."

Based on this elimination mechanism, everything that had happened before became reasonable.

Patients occupied the bottom rung. An increase in patients would make everyone else more terrified, thereby generating more despair. The sanatorium needed a constant supply of patients. That was why Mu Sichen had wantonly turned volunteers into patients, yet the sanatorium had allowed his actions and had not stopped him.

Patients had to be the most miserable ones, the ones without freedom, the ones who made people recoil in fear at the mere sight of them. They absolutely could not be allowed to become comfortable. So Cheng Xubo's act of pushing a patient out the door had to be forbidden.

Mu Sichen avoided the truth of the "Pillar" and relayed his analysis of the sanatorium's rules to the two of them.

"Perhaps as long as this last-place elimination system exists, the sanatorium doesn't need anyone to manage it. Its own energy is enough to keep it running, so our actions will be relatively free," Mu Sichen said.

"So no matter who enters the sanatorium, they have to turn others into patients, squeeze patients dry, brainwash patients, make patients sincerely like this body full of blister-eyes and feel moved and happy about it?" Cheng Xubo rolled up his sleeve, pointed at his arm, and said, "This thing is disgusting. It doesn't look good at all!"

"You even get warned for being a little nice to patients. How cruel," Chi Lian said. Remembering how she had been identified as a patient the moment she entered, she immediately felt a chill.

She rubbed her shoulders and said in a tearful voice, "I want to go home. Can I still go home?"

"Me too. I'd even go back to overtime and turn into a balding middle-aged guy if I had to." Cheng Xubo lowered his head as well.

"I don't know whether we can go back either." Mu Sichen smiled bitterly.

Low spirits surrounded the three of them, and despair gradually wrapped around them.

At that moment, Mu Sichen suddenly felt as if someone had glanced at him out of the corner of their eye.

He immediately stood up and looked around, but he found nothing.

"Do you feel like someone is watching us?" Mu Sichen asked.

"Yes! Ever since I entered the game, I've felt like someone was watching me," Chi Lian said. "It was especially obvious during 'Daylight.' After 'Night,' that feeling eased a lot. But just now, someone really was watching us."

Cheng Xubo nodded. "Me too. Normally, I'm not this sensitive to other people's gazes. After coming here, I've become unusually sharp about it."

"It should be Big Eye's power causing those of us inside the Town of the Eye to gain this ability. After all, this is a town that places far too much importance on eyes," Mu Sichen said.

He suddenly thought of Qin Zhou. If he had not been inside the Town of the Eye, perhaps no matter how many times Qin Zhou looked at him, he would not have noticed.

"Then why did someone glance at us out of the corner of their eye just now?" Chi Lian was extremely frightened, and she hugged her arms protectively.

"It might not be a person," Mu Sichen analyzed. "Big Eye has His eye closed and can't see us during 'Night.' Could the one watching us be the sanatorium?"

"Did we do something worth the program's attention?" Cheng Xubo asked.

Mu Sichen recalled the conversation the three of them had just had and abruptly understood. "It was despair!"

The three of them had produced negative emotions at the same time, attracting something's attention.

But because the three of them were not in too terrible a state emotionally, only temporarily dejected, they had not drawn too much attention. It had ended after a single glance.

"Then I have to cheer up." Chi Lian patted her own chest. "Chi Lian, you are the prettiest patient in the whole sanatorium!"

Cheng Xubo: "...If that's the comparison, then you really do outshine them all."

The two of them tried hard to joke with each other and raise their spirits, pulling themselves out of the vortex of negative emotions as quickly as possible.

Mu Sichen, however, had a flash of insight and came up with a bold idea.

Whether it was Yao Wangping's idea to search the entire sanatorium, Shen Jiyue's idea that the "Pillar" could only be seen when a patient was discharged, or Mu Sichen's earlier idea to gather all four identities and use the discharge method to find the common room, all of them were wrong!

Could it be that the real "Pillar" was not in any room of this sanatorium at all?

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Author's Note:

Qin Zhou: What a joke. I have such a powerful presence. Even without Big Eye, I'd still be the most dazzling guy in the crowd. Chenchen would spot me at a glance.

Big Eye: Without me, Mu Sichen wouldn't even know you existed!

Mu Sichen: Big Eye is right.