Chapter 126 is empty, correction, a red mark "My [Key]..."

After completing this "guided tour," Fu Ze and Yuan Jianxing returned to Maple Leaf Hospital in L City just as it was time for their shift to change.

The two successfully entered the hospital following the first twelve characters of their previous twenty-character plan: "Take advantage of the shift change, change identities, blend in, complete the investigation, and retreat separately."

Pushing up his gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, Fu Ze, dressed in a white coat, looked at Yuan Jianxing, who was disguised as a nurse, with a half-smile.

"Chief, your nurse's uniform looks a little small."

Yuan Jianxing manually secured the nearly broken button on his chest, his face expressionless. "Then we can change it."

Fu Ze, having gotten the better deal, feigned innocence and said, "Oh, that won't do. How could a hospital possibly hire a male nurse like me who looks so frail?"

Just then, other hospital staff walked by, and Fu Ze immediately became serious, turning to Yuan Jianxing to instruct him on the arrangements for the subsequent experiments.

He used various professional terms in his speech with great fluency, which did not arouse any suspicion from the staff.

At first, Yuan Jianxing was slightly surprised, but then he realized that Fu Ze's teachings were completely learned from the welcoming banquet.

Commonly known as: learning something new and applying it immediately.

Sometimes Yuan Jianxing wonders if it's a great loss to the performing arts industry that "the letter writer Fu Ze" didn't choose to become an actor.

But then he thought, thankfully the other party didn't make that choice, otherwise he might not have met Fu Ze.

And so, the two arrived at Du Yang's ward without incident, and then used an access card they had taken from the cleaning room to open the door.

Sometimes, the biggest problems can be solved in the simplest way.

Perhaps because Du Yang's situation was so special, his ward did not look like an ordinary nursing room, but rather like an isolation ward under a cutting-edge research laboratory.

In the unlit room, all sorts of high-end instruments that are not usually seen are placed all around him as if they were free, and the various connectors corresponding to these instruments are covering his body in rows.

The instrument data showed that Du Yang's various vital signs were very stable and within normal range.

Standard to...

In the darkness, Fu Ze glanced at the textbook that some student had left there, and then noticed that Du Yang's test data at this moment was exactly the same as the charts in the textbook.

Walking to the bedside, Fu Ze managed to find a patch of skin on the other person that he could touch, and then placed his hand on it, trying to detect Du Yang's identity as Long Ji had instructed.

As Fu Ze had expected, he indeed only detected nothingness.

He then used the remaining power of the [Special Key] within his body.

The moment that power was awakened, Fu Ze's "vision" suddenly changed.

Accompanied by a familiar sense of detachment, his consciousness seemed to be dragged into a vast and cold space.

Fu Ze had actually entered and exited this space many times during the process of "death and rebirth".

However, each time he could only glimpse a small part of this space through the gaps in the cocoon silk, and could not see the whole picture.

Once he had completely calmed down, Fu Ze realized that he was standing on a huge flat surface with a metallic texture and a dull gray-white luster.

The sheer size of the plane made him, standing on its edge, appear as insignificant as an ant.

To Fu Ze's surprise, the plane was not intact. Instead, it seemed as if a piece had been ripped away from somewhere by an unimaginable, violent force, leaving behind a huge and hideous crater.

Judging from the faint traces visible at the bottom of the pit, this surface should have been covered with crisscrossing, intricate, and dazzlingly precise patterns in the past.

That must be the specific content of the [key], which is the unique data used by the [Center of All Things] to identify the player's identity.

With a sigh, Fu Ze thought helplessly: If he had the complete [special key], perhaps he could try to read the remaining content above.

However, just as Fu Ze was about to withdraw his consciousness from Du Yang's body and pull his hand away from Du Yang's body, the space around him suddenly began to shake violently.

Immediately afterwards, a blinding red light suddenly appeared from left to right, tearing through almost the entire dome of the space.

The next second, a torrent of scalding metal poured down from where the red light had passed, crashing into the crater.

As the liquid metal surged, the overwhelming heat almost overwhelmed all of Fu Ze's senses; his vision became distorted, and his skin became scalding hot.

Just as he was about to be set ablaze, Fu Ze's consciousness was forcibly expelled from this space.

All of this happened so suddenly that he didn't immediately notice that something on the back of his neck seemed to have been burned away.

However, when Fu Ze came to his senses again, he found that his vision was still filled with red, and his ears were filled with a sharp, alarm-like machine buzzing.

“…Fu Ze? Fu Ze!” Yuan Jianxing’s anxious voice was muffled by the buzzing, sounding somewhat indistinct, as if through a thick membrane.

"Chief, are you there?" Fu Ze reached out his hand, his hand trembling slightly, following the direction of the voice.

The moment he made that movement, his hand was caught by another hand.

Yuan Jianxing's voice came again: "I'm here."

This time his voice became clear.

Taking this opportunity, Fu Ze's other senses gradually returned to normal.

Seeing that Fu Ze had reacted, Yuan Jianxing breathed a sigh of relief and then forcefully pulled the other person back two steps.

As he stepped back, Fu Ze's field of vision opened up.

He then realized that the spot where Du Yang had been lying was now—

It's empty.

-

"What happened?" Fu Ze asked in a hoarse voice.

Just as Yuan Jianxing was about to explain, a series of rapid footsteps suddenly came from the corridor outside the ward.

It was clear that the system had notified the night shift staff of the emergency situation in the room, and they were on their way to Li Shang.

If the two could previously get away with things by improvising, they will definitely be caught red-handed this time.

In a moment of urgency, Yuan Jianxing immediately made a decision: "Hide first."

Before he finished speaking, he led Fu Ze into a storage cabinet on the side of the room.

Although this cabinet looks big, it's still too small to accommodate two adult men.

Therefore, the two had to press their chests and backs together, trying to keep their breathing flat and avoid squeezing each other.

To make better use of the space, the slightly taller Yuan Jianxing had to wrap his arms around Fu Ze's waist from the side, while his other hand rested lightly on the cabinet wall, forming a semi-protective posture.

The moment they hid, the ward door was slammed open, and a flurry of footsteps rushed in.

However, the expected gasps or commotion did not occur.

Almost as soon as the door was pushed open, the machines that had been making noise stopped automatically.

The nurses, who had been rushing around just moments before, seemed to have become calm and composed.

They began to skillfully and silently tidy up the scattered cables, remove the IV stands, and make the beds.

It was as if they had received some unified command.

The sudden turn of events, seen through the narrow gap in the cabinet, left Fu Ze and Yuan Jianxing somewhat taken aback.

As the nurses tidied up, they chatted in hushed tones, their tone as casual as if they were discussing what to have for breakfast.

"It's such a pity that the young man passed away at such a young age."

"Oh dear, this patient held on for so long, but unfortunately, he still couldn't make it through in the end."

"Fortunately, he is an executive officer, and all his expenses are reimbursed by the government. No ordinary family could afford such expenses."

Listening to these conversations, Fu Ze suddenly remembered a question he had once pondered—

What should player login and logout look like in this world?

In a typical game, logging in and out is a matter of a single moment.

In other words, from the perspective of others, the player appears and disappears suddenly.

But in this world, he had never heard of such a thing, either before or after the hacker allowed the virus to infiltrate.

This indicates that the [Center of All Things] must have taken some corresponding action to eliminate the abruptness of players logging in and out.

Looking at the scene before me, everything became clear:

To enhance the realism of this world, players' logout actions will be modified by the [Center of All Things] to resemble normal behaviors, such as working overtime temporarily or going home for dinner.

The logout caused by Du Yang's "continuous death" was corrected to "an executive officer eventually succumbed to his injuries."

Only then did Fu Ze slightly pull himself out of the shock and tension to examine the changes in himself.

If it can be said that since switching into Koi's body, the [Key] belonging to Koi has been at odds with the power of its own [Special Key], and they rub against each other from time to time.

At this moment, Fu Ze felt that his body was completely empty, with only the wisp of power he had obtained from the snake's eyes drifting arrogantly and forlornly.

Suddenly, he had a bold guess that he needed to verify.

After the nurse finished packing up the equipment and left the room, Fu Ze and Yuan Jianxing came out from their hiding place.

After the violent movement, the button on Yuan Jianxing's chest finally died.

He quickly took off his clothes and began planning their next move. "It's about time. We need to evacuate."

Fu Ze said, "Wait a moment."

After searching for a while, he opened the drawer and took out an unopened razor blade.

"What are you doing?" Yuan Jianxing frowned slightly when she saw his action.

He had a... bad feeling.

Instead of immediately answering Yuan Jianxing, Fu Ze simply held the razor blade in his right hand and then, with lightning speed, made a cut on the third joint of the ring finger of his left hand.

As the blade sliced, a red mark immediately appeared on the skin at the base of Fu Ze's finger.

Almost simultaneously, tiny beads of blood slowly seeped from the red line, gathered, and hung tremblingly at the edge of the wound.

Fu Ze rubbed it with his thumb, and the moist, bright red color spread out with his movement, staining every corner of his skin.

However, unlike the wounds that healed quickly before, this wound was now open and exposed.

Looking at Yuan Jianxing, who was staring in shock at his self-harming actions, Fu Ze slowly said, "My [Key] ability is gone."

Fu Ze spoke very calmly, as if he were simply stating a fact.

But what he was actually thinking about was something else entirely—while he was agonizing over Yuan Jianxing's true identity, Raven was taking action.

Although it is still unknown how Raven made contact with the outside world, he did ask Dragonspine for the "letter writer Fu Ze's" special key in advance to avoid disrupting the plan.

Even though all of this is still within Fu Ze's acceptable and controllable range, things will be different once these players are released from the game.

The outside world will likely gain a clearer understanding of the situation within the game based on their feedback.

At that time, what they will do to this world will be unpredictable to someone like me who is in the game.

Since they can't contact the architecture manager, in order to rescue the remaining players, they may choose to "reinstall" the world.

The original star might then simply cease to exist.

Thinking of this, Fu Ze felt a sharp pain spreading from the inside out.

no!

Absolutely not!

He wanted to take action quickly, whether it was contacting Dragon Spine or doing something else, at least he couldn't just stand still any longer.

But he seemed unable to take even a single step.

A complex mix of inexplicable emotions—sadness, regret, and self-abandonment—was tightly binding his limbs, rendering him immobile.

Just then, a slight stinging pain drew Fu Ze's attention back.

Fu Ze then realized that Yuan Jianxing had been standing in front of him at some point.

He was holding a roll of bandage in his hand, wrapping it around his bleeding ring finger, again and again.

After the wound was carefully bandaged, Yuan Jianxing took a pair of surgical scissors from the side, cut the end of the bandage, and began to skillfully tie a knot.

"Isn't this ring a bit too shabby?" Fu Ze said casually. "How about the chief takes one of the badges you discarded before and gives it to me?"

Upon hearing this, Yuan Jianxing suddenly increased the force in his hand, tightening the knot considerably.

Startled by the sudden pain, Fu Ze gasped, "Ouch, ouch, ouch!"

Yuan Jianxing said coldly, "You didn't know how to use your strength when you were cutting, but now you feel the pain?"

Faced with Yuan Jianxing's sarcastic questioning, Fu Ze offered a reasoned explanation:

"Well, first of all, I cut my left hand, not my right hand which I usually use."

"Secondly, I cut my ring finger, not any other important fingers."

"Then, I cut the third knuckle, not the frequently used fingertip."

Although he acted very confidently, Fu Ze fell silent under Yuan Jianxing's increasingly intense gaze.

He glanced quickly at Yuan Jianxing and concluded with a remark: "Finally, practice makes perfect. How will I know if the [key] is still there if I don't try?"

Listening to this detailed and progressive analysis, Yuan Jianxing almost laughed out of anger.

Should he praise the other person for not cutting their wrist directly, showing great restraint?

Is there no law left?

Reluctantly withdrawing his left hand and hiding it behind his back, Fu Ze abruptly changed the subject: "I'm hungry. What should we eat when we go out later?"

After observing several times, Yuan Jianxing was completely certain that Fu Ze had something on his mind, something he couldn't tell her.

Fu Ze's self-harming behavior instantly extinguished the anger that had been rising within him.

It's like a pot of charcoal fire that's been doused with water, leaving only warm steam rising slowly, carrying feelings of "concern" and "heartache".

With a sigh, Yuan Jianxing said, "Let's go out first."