There are a total of six participants in this trial. So far, three people have appeared in the hospital, including Song Qingxiao.

In the interference sound of the ticking clock, a ringing sound came from the elevator door. After the door opened, a flash of inspiration came to Song Qingxiao’s mind. She vaguely felt that she had caught a clue. Just as she was about to think carefully, someone suddenly patted her shoulder heavily.

“Hey!”

Her shoulder felt a sharp pain. After being attacked by Number Six earlier, Song Qingxiao instinctively turned her foot and moved away from the person. She leaned against the edge of the operating table, tilted her upper body back, and turned to face the person who had patted her shoulder.

The person who patted her shoulder was a nurse, not one of the six trial participants. She was around thirty years old and wore soft-soled shoes, making no sound when she walked. Song Qingxiao, who had just evaded someone, felt a little embarrassed. She raised her hand and saw the nurse. She couldn’t help but say, “Oh!”

“Are you new here?” After asking this question, she muttered to herself, “There seem to be a lot of newcomers recently.”

The nurse’s words were intriguing. The moment Song Qingxiao heard this, she narrowed her eyes.

Under the ticking countdown, she noticed the nurse’s name tag hanging on her chest, which read “Tu Xiaoyun”.

Knowing that she had reacted strongly to being patted earlier, causing Tu Xiaoyun to be unhappy, Song Qingxiao, who had not yet understood the content and tasks of this trial, was still hoping to build a good relationship with these “colleagues” in order to gather more information and facilitate the progress of the mission.

She needed to gain the goodwill of others, so when she noticed the frown on Tu Xiaoyun’s face while she was speaking, Song Qingxiao quickly thought of a response in her mind. She raised her left hand and rubbed her shoulder, showing a look of suppressed pain on her face, while looking at Nurse Zhang.

“What’s wrong?”

Seeing Song Qingxiao’s actions, Nurse Zhang asked with concern.

“It seems like my shoulder was injured when I was kicked earlier.”

After Song Qingxiao said this, Tu Xiaoyun looked puzzled, and Nurse Zhang explained, “A new patient suddenly attacked Qingxiao and injured her neck.”

While Nurse Zhang was speaking, with Song Qingxiao’s permission, she prepared to open her collar and check her injured shoulder.

Song Qingxiao was 1.68 meters tall, but the nurse who worked in this mental hospital was not short either. After Nurse Zhang opened her collar and took a look, she exclaimed, “Oh, there’s some bruising.”

Number Six had been rough. At that time, he grabbed the rope of Song Qingxiao’s work badge with both hands and kicked her shoulders, leaving red and swollen marks on both sides of her shoulders.

After learning about the situation, Tu Xiaoyun looked guilty. She took a cotton swab and dipped it in iodine to apply it to Song Qingxiao’s injured shoulder, while saying, “By the way, we might have another newcomer in the hospital. Dr. Zhou is currently preparing to meet him. If he stays, we will have one more doctor in the hospital.”

The skin on her neck was broken by the rope, and it stung a bit when the iodine was applied, but these sensations were nothing compared to the news Song Qingxiao heard from Tu Xiaoyun.

She remembered what Tu Xiaoyun had said earlier, “It seems like there have been a lot of newcomers recently.” Tu Xiaoyun did not specifically specify whether these “newcomers” were medical staff or patients. It was highly likely that it could be both, like herself, like Number Five and Number Six that she had seen before.

Now another doctor has arrived at the hospital, which inevitably made her speculate about the identity of this new “doctor”.

If the people participating in the trial entered the same scene, except for the three people who have already appeared, there are still Glasses Man, Gunman, and Number Four, the woman with the red whip who have not appeared.

The new doctor mentioned by Tu Xiaoyun should be one of these three.

This building has five floors of wards. According to what Nurse Zhang said earlier, there are a total of twenty-seven patients. Song Qingxiao wondered where the other two trial participants were among these patients.

With her mind occupied, a cold and crisp sound suddenly came, echoing in the hospital. Not only did it startle Song Qingxiao, but also Nurse Zhang and the others who were talking. Tu Xiaoyun’s hand trembled, and the cotton swab poked Song Qingxiao’s injured neck, causing her to make a gasping sound.

“What’s going on?”

Wang Xiaoli was confused, but Song Qingxiao’s eyelids kept twitching, feeling that something was wrong! She had personally experienced how good the soundproofing was in this hospital.

Clearly, it was the same building, with twenty-seven patients on one side and the offices and dormitories of the medical staff on the other side. However, when she entered the task scene and was being interviewed by “Liu Yixun,” she had not heard any sound from the patient area.

It wasn’t until she changed into the nurse’s uniform and followed Nurse Zhang to open several iron doors that she heard the crying of the patients on this side.

The loud sound just now seemed to come from the other side of the building where the medical staff’s office was located. What kind of sound could travel so far?

Moreover, that sound did not sound like something falling or an object being broken. It sounded more like the sound of a gunshot.

In that instant, Song Qingxiao thought of the Gunman. She licked her dry lips!

Tu Xiaoyun mentioned that a new person was coming, and the Gunman, Glasses Man, and Number Four, who had not appeared yet, were all possibilities for the new doctor. Now it seemed that the Gunman was the most likely.

The pain in her neck intensified, and Song Qingxiao’s breathing quickened. With the gunshot, she keenly sensed the breath of death. It was the strong intuition that came from teetering on the edge of life and death twice.

Song Qingxiao immediately paid attention to the prompts in her consciousness. As expected, the prompt that had originally displayed “Protect the public, failure will be eliminated; complete the mission: 1000 points” had changed in an instant after the gunshot:

Protect the public, failure will be eliminated.

Complete the mission: 950 points.

The reward had changed!

When Song Qingxiao raised her head, her eyes showed a surprised and excited expression. Although it was highly likely that someone had died after the gunshot just now, it was indeed as she had expected. Once someone died, it meant that the trial had truly begun.

She half-closed her eyes, looked past Tu Xiaoyun and the others, and through the glass wall of the ward, she saw Number Five raise his head. He was obviously startled by the gunshot just now and had a look of undisguised fear on his face.

After noticing Song Qingxiao’s gaze, Number Five hugged his head with both hands, slowly lowered his head, and began to tremble.

The people in the ward had not yet recovered from the gunshot, when a sharp and piercing scream came from a distance:
“Ah…”

This scream was sharp and loud, with a hint of despair. It was truly chilling, especially in such a quiet and eerie environment, it became even more terrifying.

Even the patients in the ward were affected by this scream, sensing the unease, and the patients who had been sent back to their rooms by Nurse Zhang started to become restless again. The patients in the same room as Number Five slipped off their beds and walked towards the door with a vacant look.

“Let’s go and see what happened.”

Nurse Zhang was anxious. Song Qingxiao, who had just arrived, was brought along by her, while Tu Xiaoyun and Wang Xiaoli stayed behind with the other nurses to calm the patients.

The gunshot seemed to come from the medical staff’s office area on the other side of the building. Nurse Zhang hurriedly took the keys and opened the triple iron door. In this situation, she still apologized to Song Qingxiao, explaining with some embarrassment, “I’m sorry, Qingxiao. You just arrived today, and I should have familiarized you with the environment.” She explained in a hurry, looking a little embarrassed, “But I don’t know what happened…”

“It’s okay, let’s go and see what’s going on first. We’ll have time to familiarize myself with the environment later.”

When she said this, the sound of ‘dada’ was still ringing in her ears, and the numbers in her line of sight changed to: 119:06:27, as if maliciously mocking the phrase ‘still have time’ that she mentioned.

Song Qingxiao blinked her eyes, swallowed her saliva to suppress the pain in her throat, and tried to ignore this string of numbers as much as possible.

At this moment, she was also eager to verify her deep-seated speculation, to see if the gunshot just now was related to one of the six trial participants who was holding a gun, and also wanted to see who was in trouble, so that she could understand what happened to the fifty points she lost for no reason.

As the two of them came out of the ward, they heard the chaotic noise outside. The sound seemed to be coming from downstairs. Nurse Zhang ran to the elevator and pressed the button. The elevator arrived quickly, and Song Qingxiao followed her inside.

The lights in the elevator were bleak, illuminating this sealed environment with an eerie atmosphere. Neither of them spoke. Song Qingxiao only heard Nurse Zhang’s slightly heavy breathing, showing her deep-seated anxiety.

When she turned her head to look at Nurse Zhang, she found that she was lowering her head. The light shone on her, and her pale forehead, her eyes were shrouded in the shadows cast by her eyebrows. Song Qingxiao faintly saw her tightly pursed lips.

The elevator reached the first floor, and the door opened with a ‘ding’, but she stood still and didn’t move until Song Qingxiao reminded her, “Xiaoyu…”

Only then did Nurse Zhang seem to wake up, and she started running.

The medical office area seemed to have been awakened by the gunshot just now. Outside a doctor’s office, several people had gathered. When Nurse Zhang and Song Qingxiao arrived, there was still a commotion inside the office. Song Qingxiao saw at a glance a man sitting on a chair, leaning back against the backrest, his head tilted abnormally to one side, towards the door.

He had both hands hanging at his sides, and he had already breathed his last breath.

There was a clearly visible bullet hole on his forehead, and the powerful force of the bullet caused purplish bruises to appear on the skin around his wound, like worms crawling all over his head.

His eyes were still open, and the blood from the wound, which had not completely cooled, slowly flowed down his forehead, dripping over his brow, nose tip, and eyes, finally gathering below his cheek, dripping down, staining his pristine doctor’s coat with large patches of crimson blood.

Perhaps unexpected to be suddenly attacked, he still had a smile on his face, with the corners of his mouth pulled up, looking quite eerie and strange. This appearance reminded Song Qingxiao of the photo on the card of the trial participant after their death in the previous trial.

The doctor’s uniform had a name tag on it, showing: Zhou Yu.

The office was filled with the smell of gunpowder mixed with the smell of blood.

Nurse Zhang seemed to be frightened when she saw this scene. Song Qingxiao withdrew her gaze. On the floor of the office, the big man with the gun was being held by several nurses and two security guards. He couldn’t move and his face turned red.

He was still struggling desperately, like a pitiful ant.