Chapter 28: Sealed Domain

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“Wei Yu, say… when we first came in, was the ceiling this badly damaged?”

“Hm? I don’t think so.” Su Weiyu frowned. “I didn’t really notice.”

A rustling sound came from the ceiling overhead, and still more powder sifted down.

The light in the hospital room suddenly dimmed. Sunlight slipped away through the gaps in the window blinds, as though the world outside had abruptly turned from day to night. The sound of traffic on the road outside faded as well. Then the last trace of light vanished from the window, and the room was plunged into complete darkness, so black that one could barely see a hand in front of one’s face.

Su Weiyu gripped the hilt of her odachi. Wang Long immediately switched on his phone’s flashlight. Its ghastly white beam illuminated his bewildered face as he walked toward the window, intending to raise the blinds and see what was happening outside. But after he had taken only a few steps, light once again shone through the gaps in the blinds…

It was daylight outside again.

And yet the world beyond the window remained utterly silent.

Standing before the window, Wang Long seized the pull cord beside it and gave it a gentle tug. The entire blind rolled upward, revealing not the ordinary sky outside, but another hospital room!

“What is going on? I really am dreaming! I’m dreaming—I’m still dreaming!”

Liu Guangyao stumbled out of bed. With his healthy left hand, he pulled a fruit knife from beneath his pillow and pointed it at Xia Shou. No one knew when he had hidden the knife there.

“You came to kill me! You’re all here to kill me!”

He slashed the fruit knife wildly in front of himself, trying to intimidate them.

Xia Shou cooperated by raising both hands and taking two steps backward. He said to Su Weiyu, who had moved in front of him, “Don’t hurt him.”

“Don’t worry. I understand.”

Su Weiyu nodded. She raised the hilt of her odachi and struck the back of Liu Guangyao’s hand hard, knocking the fruit knife effortlessly to the floor. Her right foot followed through, pinning the knife beneath her shoe before sliding it backward toward Xia Shou.

“Ah!”

When Liu Guangyao saw the knife come to rest at Xia Shou’s feet, terror immediately spread across his face.

The moment Xia Shou picked it up, Liu Guangyao collapsed to his knees with a thud. His entire body began to tremble as though he had gone into shock. Tears and mucus streamed uncontrollably down his face. He raised one hand to shield his face and forced broken pleas from his throat.

“No… Don’t kill me… Please, don’t kill me.”

“Mr. Liu! I’m your attending physician! Calm down! We—”

While Wang Long tried to soothe the screaming Liu Guangyao, he kept staring fixedly at the hospital room on the other side of the window, not daring to look away for even a moment.

Wang Long’s mind was in total disarray. He had no idea how to deal with the chaos unfolding before him.

He completely understood Liu Guangyao’s emotional breakdown. Any sane person would feel that something was terribly wrong upon seeing not the sky and the street outside a window facing the road, but another utterly unfamiliar space.

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What was more, Liu Guangyao’s dreamscape bore an uncanny resemblance to this strange environment. His reaction was perfectly natural. If he had thought this was normal, that would have been the real cause for alarm.

“Mr. Xia, what do we do?”

Wang Long looked at Xia Shou with a deathly pale face. His position in the Control Bureau belonged to the administrative division. Aside from possessing a basic understanding of anomalies, he had no specialized ability to deal with them.

At a time like this, he could only rely on a professional like Xia Shou.

Xia Shou frowned, his palm beginning to sweat.

The corridor outside was filled with chaotic footsteps. Doctors and nurses were shouting at the tops of their lungs. Judging by the situation, this anomaly was likely the kind that ordinary people could see as well.

“It’s a closed domain,” Su Weiyu said grimly.

“What’s a closed domain?”

“Something like the Blood Demon House, which uses a real-world structure such as a villa to create a passage connected to reality—that is an open domain.

“But we entered this place without passing through any kind of passage. The domain actively pulled us inside. That makes it a closed domain.”

“Which is more dangerous?”

“A closed domain… Because a closed domain cannot draw in anything with a higher anomaly rank than itself. So if you can enter a closed domain, that means your anomalous nature is weaker than its own.”

At those words, Xia Shou understood what entering a closed domain truly meant.

“So this is a hunting-ground anomaly that only selects prey weaker than itself.” Xia Shou’s expression grew solemn.

Su Weiyu nodded emphatically. “That absolute characteristic means that even a first-rank closed domain possesses an extraordinarily terrifying level of threat. That is why closed domains are often called—death domains.”

During their brief exchange, the hospital room continued changing at a rapid pace. The white paint on the walls cracked and peeled away inch by inch. From within the concrete came the creaking sound of rusting steel reinforcement, as though the passage of time were accelerating inside the room.

At last, after several minutes, the room’s appearance stopped changing. By then, its four walls were covered in mottled, crisscrossing cracks.

The fruit knife in Xia Shou’s hand, however, had not changed at all.

Wang Long hurried to the head of the bed and picked up the medical call unit. He fiddled with the back for a moment, then pressed the call button and prayed aloud.

“The phones don’t work anymore. Hopefully this still does. Maybe we can reach the other wardens.”

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“What did he mean by wardens?”

Whenever Xia Shou encountered an unfamiliar title, he asked Su Weiyu beside him.

“Some anomalous phenomena resemble earthbound spirits and cannot move. They can only be contained where they are. The Control Bureau builds disguised structures on-site and assigns wardens to watch over them. Since there are wardens here, it means this hospital was never an ordinary place to begin with,” Su Weiyu replied.

“Doctor Wang, what are you guarding here?” Xia Shou asked.

Wang Long wiped the sweat from his forehead and shook his head in confusion.

“We’re only guarding several benevolent earthbound spirits. They require complicated care to exist for long periods, which is why the Control Bureau built this hospital. There’s no way they possess the power to create a closed domain!”

“So you don’t understand why this is happening either.”

Xia Shou tossed the fruit knife to Liu Guangyao, who was trembling on the floor.

“Here. Take this back. We won’t hurt you, but there’s definitely something more dangerous in this place. Protect yourself.”

Liu Guangyao stared blankly at Xia Shou. Then he quickly picked up the fruit knife, tucked it against his chest, rolled across the floor, and curled up beneath the hospital bed.

Xia Shou paid him no further attention. He walked to the door and gently pulled it open.

The corridor had already descended into chaos. A large crowd of patients’ relatives was blocking the service desk at the far end, shouting angrily at the nurses.

“What kind of hospital is this? You even have ghosts causing trouble? I have a meeting to get to! Are you going to pay me back for the wages they dock?”

“If you don’t solve this right now, I’ll report you as soon as I get out! Damn it!”

“We don’t know what’s happening either. We’re temporarily unable to contact the outside world. Could everyone please remain calm and wait?” the nurse at the desk shouted hoarsely.

But no one paid her any attention. Everyone was venting their own fear and frustration.

“We’re filing a complaint! All of us are filing a complaint!”

On that floor, some people were making a scene, while others ran frantically from place to place. The bolder ones had already climbed through the windows into the unfamiliar space connected to them, determined to investigate.

Some had even gathered around the mottled, cracked walls, marveling over them with clicking tongues, entirely lacking any sense of urgency—as though they were certain they would be rescued in the end.

Just then, Alice’s hand suddenly reached into Xia Shou’s pocket and pulled out the little mirror.

Through the mirror’s transmission, Xia Shou saw a patient with a face of pure yellow climbing in through the window at the end of the corridor.

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