Chapter 165 - 152: Prison Cell

Yin Zhen’s eyes snapped open.

Her vision was filled with white. She propped herself up on her arms and sat up. The injection site on her neck, where the anesthetic had been administered, still throbbed with a dull ache. Reaching up, her fingers brushed against a cold collar.

Before her was a cramped space of less than three square meters. The ceiling and three of the walls were covered in thick, white padding. Directly in front of her was an extremely thick pane of transparent glass, densely covered in talismans drawn in red pigment!

Yin Zhen looked down at herself. She was wearing pure white clothes that resembled a hospital gown, completely devoid of any text or patterns.

She immediately checked the countdown and found that it had returned to normal. Six hours had passed. There were indeed some memories in her mind that didn’t belong to her, but they weren’t of much use.

The furthest memory she had was of Qiao Mu waking up in her own home, holding a knife, with her parents hacked beyond recognition in front of her. Immediately after, the police had broken down the door. Qiao Mu was arrested, followed by interrogations and a psychiatric evaluation.

Qiao Mu had refused to plead guilty, insisting that someone had followed her home and murdered her parents. Unfortunately, there were no security cameras in the alley leading to her tutoring classes, and the cameras in her residential complex and stairwell hadn’t captured anything useful.

That was until yesterday, when the Abnormal Investigation Bureau stepped in and used a ghost to interrogate Qiao Mu.

In the end, Yin Zhen had pleaded guilty on Qiao Mu’s behalf.

"How is this any different from extorting a confession through torture?" Yin Zhen grumbled inwardly. She hadn’t had a choice at the time and could only plead guilty.

Therefore, the true escape was to break out of this prison without being discovered, and without anyone realizing she wasn’t Qiao Mu. Her abnormal behavior at the slaughterhouse and Qiao Mu’s home shouldn’t have been noticed by the Abnormal Investigation Bureau, otherwise the escape event would have already been deemed a failure.

Despite feeling somewhat speechless, Yin Zhen saved her game first.

Waiting for the dizziness in her head to subside, Yin Zhen huddled her body and stood up, carefully inspecting the cell—especially the talismans on the glass in front of her. Without exception, they were all typical Ghost Suppression Talismans, and there was more than one type.

Yin Zhen slightly withdrew her gaze. Through her reflection on the glass, she saw the collar around her neck, which was also engraved with red Ghost Suppression Talismans.

Did they really need to use talismans to imprison a mental patient?

Through the glass in front of her, Yin Zhen saw that the opposite side was lined with identical cells—tiny cubicles, each housing a single prisoner. Some were huddled in the corners of their beds, muttering to themselves. Some stood before the glass, bashing their heads against it. Others alternated between laughing and crying, pulling their hair into a messy tangle.

They were all making a commotion, but not a single sound reached Yin Zhen’s side. The soundproofing Effect was excellent.

Was this a cell block exclusively for mental patients?

Yin Zhen turned back to scan the interior of her cell. In the corner, a half-height wall partitioned off an area just big enough to squat in, serving as a makeshift toilet. Aside from that, there was only an extremely narrow, hard bed fixed to the wall.

On the ceiling above, in addition to the recessed overhead light, there was a square metal hatch that could be opened. It was likely an access port used for delivering food or performing certain operations.

She pressed her hand against the wall’s padding. Threads of blood silk silently seeped through, touching the hard inner layer. There were probably talismans arranged inside the walls as well.

There were no cameras inside the cell; they were all distributed along the ceiling of the outer corridor. Every cell had a camera pointing directly at it to record the mental patients’ behavior. Yin Zhen narrowed her eyes, noticing that talismans were even drawn on the camera lenses.

Recalling Qiao Mu’s later state of deadened despair and mental instability, Yin Zhen turned her back to the hallway camera and leaned against the front glass. She secretly equipped Character Card 717, but to her surprise, the moment she did, an intense burning sensation flared up on her back. Yin Zhen immediately jolted away from the glass she had been leaning on and stared at the talismans.

The Strength of these talismans was lethal to the Blood Clan!

Yin Zhen retreated to the bed, sitting down and hugging her knees. She tried once again to trigger a resonance with this body’s memories, but...

[The current bug has been fixed. (You can’t exploit every loophole. Feel the joy of the game with your heart.)]

Yin Zhen cursed under her breath and continued trying to control the shadows to penetrate the glass. However, the shadows couldn’t pass through, as if they had hit an invisible wall. She then tried Magnetic Control and other Superpowers, only to be surprised to find that this glass could actually isolate spiritual power and Extraordinary Abilities.

Even the Universal Key failed to work.

Was the Mysterious World’s setting really this unreasonable?

Yin Zhen looked toward the squat toilet, scenes from several classic movies and American TV shows flashing through her mind. The characters in those stories always started their prison breaks from the toilet. Could she also...

She still had the setting-erasing Residual Sound Blade to try, but once she used it, she had to be prepared to expose her Identity and kill her way out.

Yin Zhen opened the forum and saw that Bai Qiang had replied to her.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: I’m safe for now. Where are you?

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: What are you busy with? Reply to me when you see this.

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Do you know about the Beiling Mental Hospital?

Just as Yin Zhen was about to exit and wait for a response, Bai Qiang replied instantly.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: You’re at the Beiling Mental Hospital too???

Yin Zhen frowned. Just as she was about to ask, a string of messages from Bai Qiang popped up.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Are you a patient or a doctor?

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Do you know who I saw here?

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Zhang Yueqin and Qin Jia, the mother and daughter!

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Oh, I forgot to mention, the dog system treated me pretty well this time. It gave me a professionally relevant Identity. I’ve become an attending physician at the hospital.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Do you think we ruined things for Zhang Yueqin and her daughter? Because they can’t remember the events of that day and a half, they’ve basically been placed under house arrest by the Abnormal Investigation Bureau at the hospital. I bumped into them just today after crossing over, and I feel like they’ve become a bit strange.

[Blossoming Prosperity]: I’m in prison. My current Identity is a high school sophomore named Qiao Mu, charged with murdering her parents. This cell is Special; it isolates Extraordinary Abilities and supernatural power. It has some connection to the Beiling Mental Hospital and the Abnormal Investigation Bureau. Help me look up the specific details.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: (Candle) Sympathizing with you for a second. I’ll go find the hospital director right now and interrogate him using Spiritual Manipulation.

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Be careful. Don’t expose yourself.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: (Cursing) You only know how to care about me when you need to use me? You’re the one in prison, so take care of yourself first!

Yin Zhen closed her eyes to rest, waiting for news from Bai Qiang.

At 4:00 AM, the lights in the entire cell block suddenly went out.

Yin Zhen’s eyes snapped open. Through the darkness, she saw that the patients in the other cells outside had suddenly become extremely agitated. She pressed her ear against the glass and listened closely, faintly hearing various agonizing pleas.

"Don’t come to me! I’m sorry, I was wrong! I’m begging you, please don’t come to me!"

"Help! I really won’t ever do it again! Help—!"

"Mom, Mom save me! Someone save me!"

Immediately after, she saw an emaciated man being lifted off the ground, as if an invisible, giant hand was strangling his neck! A woman with disheveled hair was having her head grabbed by an unseen force and violently slammed against the front glass, splattering blood everywhere.

A noise came from the ceiling. Yin Zhen looked up and saw the metal hatch open. A grime-covered fire axe plummeted from above.

In the blink of an eye, the fire axe vanished, and a bone-chilling wind brushed against the side of Yin Zhen’s face. Her body reacted faster than her brain. She violently twisted to the side to dodge!

BANG!

A rust-mottled fire axe cleaved fiercely into the spot where she had just been standing.

Yin Zhen stabilized herself and looked up, her breath hitching instantly.

The ghost security guard—the very same ghost security guard she had seen at the Renxin Hospital.