Life Game In Other World
Chapter 565: Playing the Role (Extra Long - , Seeking Monthly Pass)

Chapter 565: Chapter 565: Playing the Role (Extra Long Chapter, Seeking Monthly Pass)

Through He Ao’s briefly activated Super Memory vision, these mental patients and nurses, whose figures were originally clear, became blurry, transforming into three-dimensional shadows.

The Mysterious Person was a very cautious individual, he always had contingency plans for his actions, strengthening them down to every last detail.

If it hadn’t been for He Ao’s appearance, Jess would have died in that alley assault.

Even after He Ao appeared, his arrangements basically had no issues. The Gene Potion and weapons equipped for the mercenary team that came to ambush He Ao, if fully prepared, were capable of killing any ordinary C-level Transcendent.

Sufficient to deal with He Ao’s demonstrated strength in the alley ambush.

Only, he was dealing with He Ao.

In the countering and recounterings of both parties, He Ao revealed one trump card after another that the Mysterious Person had never known, causing his arrangements to be repeatedly destroyed.

But this didn’t mean the Mysterious Person’s calculations were shallow.

Many times, his designs were exceptionally meticulous.

For example, the arrangement within this mental hospital.

In this building, the fourth and fifth floors were the main body of the Array, while the sixth floor and above consisted of treatment rooms and storage areas for ’mental patients.’

The third floor was an equipment storage room.

What about the first and second floors then?

There were maintenance areas, the Ritual Array, and the ’patients’ cultivated as a cost.

Theoretically, this Array could operate continuously, seemingly lacking no other elements.

But what if there were no more ’patients’?

These patients were the paid ’price,’ the few bottles of Sacrifices.

They also served as the energy supply for the entire Array to operate. Once these patients vanished, the energy supply disappeared, and the whole Array would stop functioning.

An important reason why the Deception Array on the wooden box could be effective was that a continuously operating Ritual Array truly existed outside, constantly channeling energy to sustain the Array on the box.

Theoretically, once the external Array stopped functioning, the Deception Array would not be supported either; the power within the box would become uncontrollable, erupting outwards, destroying everything in the vicinity, leaving the Mysterious Person’s efforts in vain.

Of course, the designer of this Deception Array had considered this point, so he added some intricate structures to the Deception Array. When the external Array stopped, it could sustain itself by ’absorbing’ the stored power within the wooden box.

Although this structure was cleverly designed, allowing the power inside the box to remain stable in a sustained manner.

However, the energy stored within the box was inherently filled with madness and volatility, which would damage the Array on the box during operation, eventually completely destroying the Array’s structure.

According to He Ao’s estimate, after losing the major Array’s energy supply, the Array on the wooden box could hold up for at most seven to eight hours.

This could handle a brief transfer of the wooden box, but it wouldn’t account for unexpected situations like this mental hospital suddenly losing ’patients’ due to some investigations or destruction.

After all, ’assimilation’ of the patients required time. If the original patients disappeared altogether, even if new people were immediately captured and assimilated, it would still take time.

And during this time, there would be no energy input into the Array.

Therefore, for these kinds of unexpected situations that might arise, this was the function of the first and second floors.

The first and second floors of this building were interconnected, as was the lobby He Ao entered. In this lobby, ’stored’ were the ’items’ the Mysterious Person kept as a ’backup price.’

These items were the patients and nurses in front of He Ao.

These people had actually died long ago; what remained here were only their incomplete Souls.

From their mental state, it seemed they might have been killed immediately after assimilation was complete, and their Souls were then confined within this lobby.

Like stored ’grain.’

The Mysterious Person had never regarded these people’s lives as lives, just as cannibals view their food.

In this mental hospital, the patients were mostly Prisoners, or homeless, unsupported vagrants.

They lived in the corners of the city, unnoticed and uncared for by anyone.

The Mysterious Person took these people from the corners, threw them into this seemingly grand, but in reality, bloody and brutal slaughterhouse, and operated their lives and Souls without any scruples.

It was as if he and these people were no longer the same species at all.

In some sense, the Mysterious Person treated Jess and his family the same way, exploiting them when useful, and killing them directly when they were of no use or even posed a potential danger.

Just like ’livestock.’

Perhaps in that alley, in the ending without He Ao, Jess would have died, and his body and Soul might have been taken to support the Array’s operation as material.

Just as the body of dead livestock would be reused.

However, although these Souls were still here, bound by some force, it seemed that people who were not strong enough in Soul, or whose inspiration was not high enough, could not see them.

Like that front desk nurse.

At first, He Ao thought she was ignoring these people, but it was when he greeted the Soul of that patient who reminded him to ’hurry up and leave.’

She asked, puzzled, why He Ao had stopped; by that time, He Ao had already realized something might be wrong.

However, he hadn’t fully grasped the situation, so he did not use Super Memory to scrutinize the patients and nurses. It was only after that black-haired receptionist nurse mentioned again that there were hardly any nurses in the hospital.

But as soon as He Ao entered the lobby, he saw nurses walking about, many appearing to be idle.

At that moment, He Ao knew that there was something peculiar about the nurses and patients in the lobby, but it wasn’t until he saw those Arrays that he could be sure these people were in a state of soul.

More precisely, they were in a transitional state between soul and physical form, mutated evil spirits created by the Mysterious Person to serve as a reserve food source.

He Ao didn’t know how the Mysterious Person managed to achieve this—perhaps with the help of that still slumbering secret entity.

However, he was certain that the method trapping these soul entities here had to be connected to the Arrays above; maintaining the existence of these souls also required energy, and in this psychiatric hospital, only those Arrays had a stable energy source.

Thus, as long as the Array was destroyed, these soul entities could gain their freedom.

From this angle, He Ao and these soul entities shared a common interest; he could seek the help of these souls.

But the premise was that the thought processes of these soul entities hadn’t been fully assimilated; amid their aberrated and fragmented souls, some semblance of self-aware emotion still existed.

Given that the ’patient’ previously sitting outside the elevator had managed to break free from the mental assimilation to warn him to leave, it was possible that other souls still retained some self-consciousness.

He Ao gazed at the soul entities, glancing at his bracelet to check the time—it had been fifteen minutes since he had entered the building.

If everything went as he expected, in at least another fourteen minutes, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would arrive.

He returned his focus to the soul entities before him.

Without their help, executing his plan would prove somewhat difficult.

If all else failed, he would have to try extending his soul power through Super Memory to see if he could forcibly awaken the self-awareness of these soul entities.

An eerie silence spread throughout the lobby, broken only by the boisterous noise coming from a large television.

In the midst of this silence, a slender figure in patient garb, head held high, slowly stood up and approached He Ao.

His cloudy eyes fixed on He Ao.

As if waiting for He Ao’s next words.

Subsequently, these souls approached He Ao one after another.

He Ao breathed a sigh of relief; the leader of the souls was the person who had urged him to hurry earlier.

The figure in front of him appeared to have suffered severe torture; his neck was twisted, forcing his head to tilt back, and his cheek was deformed, obscuring his original appearance.

He Ao observed his face and mentally corrected it to its normal appearance.

He then turned his attention to the other spirit entities, knowing they could understand his speech. "You go to the ninth floor, you go to the tenth floor..."

...

As his commands were uttered, one by one, the spirit entities drifted upward, entering the elevator shaft and floating upwards through it.

The last to remain was the soul that had always shown goodwill to He Ao, the one with the tilted head.

He Ao watched the gaunt figure and, comparing him to someone from Jess’s memory, he spoke softly, "Stay here. If anyone tries to enter later, can you help me block them?"

The soul stared back, and a flicker of emotion seemed to pass through his cloudy eyes. He nodded gently and slowly moved towards the entrance.

He Ao watched his retreating figure and breathed a sigh of relief; he then dove into the elevator shaft and climbed rapidly upwards.

First, he reached the sixth floor and opened all the closed doors.

Those who theoretically should have lost their sanity from full assimilation instinctively left their rooms the moment the doors opened.

Among them, two Transcendents who had become entirely insane due to mental assimilation attempted to attack He Ao, but He Ao split them in two with an ax.

After ensuring everyone had left their rooms, several ethereal souls appeared behind He Ao, helping him push and shove the fully assimilated individuals into the elevator.

He Ao did not stay there; after sending the first wave of people up in the elevator, he took the fire stairs directly to the ninth floor—by then, it was the twentieth minute of his infiltration of the hospital.

"Ghosts!!!"

The ninth floor was in utter chaos; these ghostly spirits flitted through the rooms, unlocking the doors of the locked wards.

The patients, real or imagined, confined in the wards instinctively burst out of their rooms.

These people were ordinary and could not see the spirits.

However, He Ao had instructed the spirits to interfere with the physical world as much as possible, to manifest their presence—like shaking beds, toppling vases, flickering lights.

To coordinate with the actions of these souls, He Ao had Eve take control of the building’s central air conditioning system, switching it to rapid cooling.

Consequently, a chill breeze wafted throughout the hospital.

The corridors were filled with panic-stricken people rushing towards the elevator and fire stairs.

Among them were a few night shift nurses who watched over these ’patients.’

These nurses may not be aware of the true nature of this hospital, for they were in fact the hospital’s ’livestock’ themselves.

In the lobby on the first floor, many of the souls were that of nurses.

The chaos was contained after He Ao’s arrival.

Following a series of killings, the terror emanating from He Ao, the Terrorist, was extremely intense. To powerful Transcendents this might not be felt, but to ordinary people, such fear was akin to a fearsome tiger opening its saliva-drenched jaws right above their heads.

Some patients were scared witless on the spot.

The rest ran frantically towards exits where they could leave the floor.

Watching the situation develop in the direction he had hoped for, He Ao breathed a sigh of relief.

After roughly driving these people away, He Ao went down to the next floor and continued to spread the seeds of fear.

In this process, he felt his mastery over the ’Terrorist’ Talent Sequence rapidly improving; he could even selectively control the intensity of fear induced in individual targets.

Indeed, the essence of the Terrorist’s power lay in ’bestowing fear’.

After having ’intimidated’ the patients on the thirteenth floor away,

He Ao glanced at the time.

Twenty-seven minutes had passed since he had entered the hospital.

He leaned against a window on the thirteenth floor and looked outside, where a vehicle with black and white color and bearing the emblem of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was slowly pulling up in front of the hospital’s dilapidated iron gate.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrived two minutes earlier than he anticipated.

They must have been on duty nearby and were dispatched directly here.

Two agents dressed in the uniform of the Federal Bureau of Investigation got out of the vehicle, pushed open the iron gate, and quickly made their way toward the building.

At that moment, He Ao had already withdrawn his gaze and leaped into the elevator shaft, swiftly sliding down to the void between the fourth and fifth floors.

He passed over Arent’s body and once again entered the space shimmering with purple radiance.

As the ’sacrifices’ assimilated on the sixth floor were rapidly removed, the purple Array began showing signs of instability.

He Ao walked to the far end of the space and placed his hand on the wooden chest.

The clamor was faintly heard coming from above, the sounds of people being driven out of the hospital by spiritual entities.

······

"Ghosts! There are ghosts!"

The two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had just reached the entrance when they saw a large crowd of patients and nurses running frantically out of the psychiatric hospital, escaping outward.

The two agents exchanged a glance, drew their pistols from their waists, and moved forward quickly, making their way against the stream of people to the elevator door.

And the moment they crossed the threshold of the door, the bright lights in their view suddenly turned blood-red,

Distorted instruments of torture continuously emerged along the blood-colored walls.

Shadows spread from beneath the instruments.

The younger of the two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents instinctively raised his gun to shoot but was stopped by the older agent beside him, "Don’t panic, it’s an illusion. There’s an Evil Spirit in this building."

After saying this, he took a silver cross out from under his clothes, holding a gun in one hand and the cross in the other, he advanced slowly, "Stay close behind me, be careful not to get separated by the crowd."

The younger agent nodded and followed behind the older one.

A faint, hazy radiance spread from the cross, enveloping the older agent and the space around him, keeping the blood-red shadows at bay for the moment.

"Odd, this Evil Spirit isn’t strong," the older agent furrowed his brow as he looked at the people running out in a panic, "Could there be other Evil Spirits?"

"It looks like fewer people are running out now."

The young agent following behind him remarked with some confusion.

"Yes," the older agent nodded, "these Spirits seem to be intentionally driving people out of the hospital."

He frowned, "What are these Evil Spirits trying to do?"

His orders from above were that a dangerous Transcendent criminal had infiltrated the building and there were possibly Evil Spirits causing harm and mischief, they hoped he would investigate.

But what he was seeing now seemed different from the orders.

He had seen Evil Spirits, but they didn’t seem to be harming anyone.

The only one that had shown aggression towards him was the Spirit that created the illusions at the entrance, but it seemed mainly to be trying to prevent them from entering rather than harming them.

"Should we go further inside?"

The younger agent behind him asked in a low voice; he was new and had never handled a case involving Evil Spirits before.

If it weren’t for their team already nearby dealing with another case, he would never have been chosen for this one.

"Don’t rush," the senior agent didn’t move forward, but, clutching his cross, he stopped the younger agent and they both took a few steps back to the front of the door, "These evil spirits are driving out the living for a reason. We’re not strong enough, let’s wait for backup to arrive and watch for changes."

During this time, the last few patients ran out of the hospital.

Boom—

A booming noise suddenly erupted from above the first-floor lobby.

The two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents looked up at the same time, the younger agent confused, while the older agent was startled, then immediately grabbed the younger agent and rushed outside, "Run, the building is going to collapse."

The two of them dashed out of the door.

······

On the third floor, He Ao looked at the wooden case in his hand, the purple glow still flickering on it.

The ground shook violently, and the arrays in the entire space began to flash intensely.

With the core of the ritual removed, the array, which was barely maintaining itself without sacrifices thanks to inertia, could no longer hold.

In this building, the fourth and fifth floors had no load-bearing columns at all; theoretically, the building couldn’t possibly remain stable.

But because of the presence of the array, which solidified the walls and the ceiling, it forcibly kept the upper floors intact.

This was when the wooden case was present, and the array operated normally, but once the case was taken, and the array shattered, there was no longer any force to support the high-rise above, and the building would naturally collapse.

This was the last security measure that the Mysterious Person had prepared for the wooden case; if someone indeed entered this space, but wasn’t careful enough and rashly took the wooden case, the entire building could collapse, burying them here.

Of course, everyone in the hospital would be buried with them.

The collapse of the entire building was rapid; the Mysterious Person must have made other arrangements in the structure of the building to bury the person who took the wooden case as quickly as possible.

But He Ao, who was well-prepared, swung his axe directly into the opposite wall.

The sharp axe cut through the purple patterns still flashing on the wall, smashing a large hole through it.

These purple patterns themselves still retained a little power, maintaining the hardness of the surrounding walls to ensure that when the building collapsed, this wall would not be destroyed by the person taking the wooden case.

But this couldn’t stop He Ao, who by now almost certainly understood the principle of the array better than anyone else in the world.

In his recent frenzy, He Ao had nearly deciphered all the fundamental principles of these arrays, and unlike Jess, because he maintained his basic rationality during the frenzy, he retained those memories after returning to his senses.

Although much of the acquired knowledge had become incomprehensible, He Ao still grasped a large amount of information.

Theoretically, after the ’epiphany’ during his frenzied state, He Ao’s understanding of the array should now be second only to Jess’s father’s generation who created it.

But Jess’s father was already deceased.

With the wall now broken, the dark night sky and the city’s dazzling lights appeared before He Ao.

He Ao didn’t hesitate and jumped down.

This was the fourth floor, about ten meters high, not too high for his current physical condition.

His figure crashed to the ground, creating a depression wrapped in a web of cracks on the concrete, then squatting down, he offloaded the force and disappeared into the darkness ahead.

At the same time, a shadow broke free from the constraints of the building, following his figure, similarly disappearing into the night.

—

On the other side of the building.

"What’s that sound?"

The old agent looked up at the towering high-rise.

"It looks like the building is really going to collapse. There are strange noises everywhere."

The younger agent behind him scratched his head, looking at the rapidly collapsing building, "But isn’t this building collapsing too quickly?"

"There’s someone behind the building."

The old agent said softly.

"Is it that dangerous Transcendent? Should we go check it out?"

On hearing this, the younger agent immediately became alert.

The old agent turned back, looking at those still shaken survivors.

If they hadn’t run out, they would be buried forever in this building.

Great clouds of dust splattered out from the collapsing building in front of him,

He shook his head, turned back to the younger agent,

"No need to go, I think I heard wrong."