Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!
Chapter 293: Does the Game World Really Exist?

Chapter 293: Chapter 293: Does the Game World Really Exist?

Xu Huo reached for a tissue and discreetly wrapped the capsule hidden in his sleeve before heading to the restroom.

After flushing the capsule down the toilet, he returned to his room without going to sleep and instead walked over to the window.

Outside, the sky was dim, and bright streetlights illuminated the expansive lawn. Although the distant wall was five or six meters high, it was still apparent that this was a well-maintained mental hospital.

Now, he was a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia, hospitalized for four months and undergoing drug treatment.

Xu Huo couldn’t be sure whether this was inside a copy.

He had yet to receive any game notifications and, besides, he had lost some of his abilities; he was unable to access the game panel or use any items, and even the evolutionary characteristics of his body had disappeared.

After he and Yan Jiayu were besieged by Aliens and flipped over the wall, he woke up restrained, and Yan Jiayu was missing. Instead, Tang Guangbo, Yu Qingqing, Dai Wenqian, and Zhou Ning, either in person or by name, appeared. Tang Guangbo became a doctor at the mental hospital, and Yu, Dai, and Zhou turned into nurses...If this wasn’t a copy, could it be a hallucination?

He tried the simplest method of pain testing, and he could feel the pain, with no sensation of being detached from consciousness.

He was very lucid now, as clear-headed as someone who had just washed their face after waking up in the morning.

After making sure his Evolutionary Power had indeed vanished by checking the hospital bed, he lay down to rest until late into the night before getting back up.

When he opened the door and stepped out, the on-duty nurse was dozing off on the desk. However, the iron door leading through the rest area to the treatment rooms and the doctors’ offices was secured with a keypad lock.

Without rashly touching the lock, he approached the duty room and, through the railing, helped himself to a hospital brochure and also borrowed the nurse’s cellphone left on the desk.

The brochure described The Seventeenth Hospital as a private mental institution with a fifty-year history. In recent years, it recruited high-paid domestic and international experts and made significant achievements in the treatment of mental illnesses, earning numerous awards.

The Internet platform also had some information about the hospital, including annual promotions, feedback from patients and their families, as well as records of the hospital’s repeated renovations or repairs available online.

Moreover, the outside world seemed peaceful, with no Players, no Evolvers, and no Invaders; discussions about Dimensional Rift were mostly confined to a game forum.

"Do you play this game too?" someone suddenly asked from behind. Xu Huo swiftly turned his head, only to see a gaunt patient with a pale face staring straight at him. The patient then revealed a bizarre smile, touched his index finger to his lips, and then walked toward the wards, beckoning for Xu Huo to follow.

Xu Huo put the cellphone and brochure back and followed the patient to the ward.

There were three other people in the room where the two of them were staying. On seeing Xu Huo, they frowned and questioned the man who led him in, "Why are you bringing a stranger here?"

The patient licked his lips and said, "Do you think just a few of us can escape The Seventeenth Hospital? Let me tell you, I’ve tried before. Each time, before I could even get out, I was caught and brought back—then came the injections, medication, and confinement in the treatment room. It’s no life for anyone."

The Tall Black One among the trio let out a sigh, looked up at Xu Huo, and asked, "Have you received any game notifications?"

"No," replied Xu Huo. "What about you?"

"Neither have we," the Tall Black One said. "And we’ve lost our abilities and items too. I suspect this is the work of the game’s power. We probably need to escape this mental hospital or touch upon the key point of the copy in order to reactivate our identity as Players."

"But we’ve been here for several days and haven’t found anything," another person said, "How can we reactivate it?"

"I’ve been everywhere in the hospital that I can go to. I’ve met everyone except for the dean, and nothing—neither person nor event—can reactivate it," said the Tall Black One. "So the only option is to try to escape, maybe we could leave the copy world."

The gaunt patient kept smiling, "As long as we don’t trigger the copy, we just need to leave the psychiatric hospital, and the outside is a new world."

Xu Huo noticed he was obviously not in the right state of mind and asked, "Where are you from? How long have you been here?"

"Me?" The gaunt patient was stunned for a moment and after some delay, he slowly said, "I am... from Ting City. I can’t remember how long I’ve been here... but the doctors say it’s almost half a year."

The origin of this event was that strange fog. Xu Huo then proceeded to ask a few other people. Although not all of them were from Ting City, they all came in from there. The Tall Black One also described the buildings that appeared in the fog wall.

"That’s not right..." the gaunt patient said again. "Ting City seems like a game sector in the Dimensional Rift, I often log in there. There is no Ting City in reality."

The others in the room fell silent, and the Tall Black One said to Xu Huo, "Don’t take the medication the doctors and nurses give you, I suspect it’s for mind control, designed to make us believe we’re sick."

"I won’t believe a word from those doctors and nurses, and neither should you." The people encouraged each other as if that was the only way to alleviate the unease from losing their Evolutionary Power.

Xu Huo wanted to ask them something, but when he went to speak, he couldn’t remember what it was. He returned to his own room and it wasn’t until he closed the door that he suddenly remembered—he had wanted to ask the other players the names of the hospital and its doctors and nurses.

He had forgotten something so important.

Just as he thought about going out to ask again, he heard footsteps outside, so he immediately lay down on the bed facing the door, leaving a small slit under his eyelids.

The person who came was Zhou Ning, whose familiar face peered in through the window with a small light and quickly walked away.

Xu Huo fell asleep like that until the snoring of the patient in the same room woke him up the next day.

He sat up, his expression grave as he stared at the bulge on the opposite bed, and rubbed his temples hard. Not only had he forgotten something important, but he had also slept soundly.

Was this a hallucination or an effect of the copy?

"Hey," the person in the opposite bed sat up, wrapping the blanket around himself and assessing him, "are you a player?"

Xu Huo did not answer, and the man went on by himself, "I’m not crazy. The Black Player, the Cannibal Player—they are real, it’s just that no one believes it... Haha! Truth is only in the hands of a few, you’re just pitiful frogs in a well, completely unable to understand the world of an Evolver like me."

After talking to himself, he looked at Xu Huo again, "You don’t believe it, do you? I’ll tell you, I can prove it to you, I have very powerful items!"

He raised his hand as he spoke, but it was empty.

There was a momentary stillness in his eyes, but he quickly recovered, "How could I forget, my power is restricted in this copy... I’ll whisper to you, don’t believe the doctors and nurses here, they’re all copy bosses, in charge of killing players."

Xu Huo squinted at the person drawing close to him, finding it all very absurd.