At this point, Mu Sichen thoroughly understood the underlying logic of the town and the Big Eye.
First, despite not knowing what the reason was, the Big Eye was in need of enough believers to proclaim himself, and that was the point of the existence of followers and favorites.
Second, the Big Eye needed heretical souls to enhance his power, souls that didn’t believe in Him, souls that were free, and the stronger the soul, the better it was for it.
Thirdly, the Big Eye needed to keep the town running in order to protect himself from other god-level monsters. This was where the “Pillar” was crucial in the town. In order to keep the Pillar running, normal people needed to feel negative emotions such as despair and sadness.
After figuring out this logic, it would be relatively simple to find the location of the Pillar.
Mu Sichen pondered while listening to Shen Jiyue tell the story of his arrival at the sanatorium.
Shen Jiyue was with a companion to find the sanatorium, both became patients at the same time, and disagreed on whether to become a doctor.
Shen Jiyue was adamant that he didn’t want to hurt anyone else, whether it was contaminating a family member or making a sane patient crazy, he refused to do it.
His companion, on the other hand, believed that sacrifices must be made in order to do so.
So Shen Jiyue pressed on in his room while his companion was well on his way to becoming a doctor.
Despite not agreeing with his companion’s approach, the two agreed on a countermeasure. The doctor’s companion searched for “pillars” within the sanatorium, while Shen Jiyue stayed in the ward as an existence that could be sacrificed at any time.
“Sacrificed?” Mu Sichen asked.
Shen Jiyue still looked ugly, but he calmly smiled: “The place where the most despair converges is where the ‘pillar’ is located. Therefore, we analyzed that it’s highly likely that the first floor office where the patients are being discharged from the hospital is where the ‘pillars’ are located.”
“Why do you think so?”
Shen Jiyue explained, “This hospital, does not give a way to leave completely at all. The so-called contribution value is merely a condition for temporarily leaving the sanatorium every day and returning to the residence to rest, and then entering the hospital the next day, repeating what happened the day before.”
“In your opinion, under what circumstances do people despair the most?”
“When hopes are about to be reached but dashed.” Mu Sichen answered decisively.
Shen Jiyue’s froggy eyes turned as if he was giving Mu Sichen an appreciative glance as he nodded, “Exactly. We analyzed that in this hospital, there is and only one way to leave completely, and that is to be discharged.”
Mu Sichen understood what he meant, but at the same time questioned, “I understand what you mean, you think that when the patient was discharged from the hospital, he thought he had finally gotten relief, but he didn’t realize that when he went through the discharge procedures, what he got wasn’t discharge, it was most likely destruction.”
“But a prerequisite for the patient’s healing is faith in the Big Eye and becoming insane. In this case, the patient will become willing to sacrifice for Big Eye Boy, how can they despair?”
Shen Jiyue’s eyes were filled with skepticism, “You really do have no common sense, don’t you know that faith and selfishness are not in conflict, and insanity and thirst for life are not in conflict?”
“Everything has a price, the followers will go to believe in the Great Being, and it’s just to seek refuge and find someone to protect them.”
“No matter how crazy one becomes, the core of their belief is that they can live by following the Great Being, and the stronger the belief, the more desperate they become when it comes to life threatening situations.”
“The patients are by nature strong-willed people who are not willing to give in to the Big Eye. They must have paid a great price for giving in. In this case, what kind of despair should the patients face when they realize that even if they believe in Big Eye against their principles, they still cannot leave the hospital in the end?”
“These are common knowledge known to all after the Cataclysm, where on earth did you come from, how did you survive until today?”
Mu Sichen could only smile awkwardly.
He didn’t want to explain to Shen Jiyue about players and transmigrating, there was no point in saying it in such a crazy world.
Players didn’t have any privileges in this world, no matter what players came here, they were subject to the same dangers as the townspeople.
Seeing that Mu Sichen was unwilling to explain, Shen Jiyue thoughtfully said, “Forget it, anyway, you have a totem on you, and if He trusts you, then I also trust you.”
Mu Sichen was relieved.
Getting along with Shen Jiyue was a comforting thing, he was a smart, calm, witty and considerate person, as long as he ignored the blister eyes on him, Mu Sichen was very willing to chat with Shen Jiyue.
“It seems that you have fully grasped the main point, if that’s the case, why are you still looking for me as a teammate?” Mu Sichen asked, “You are already a patient, as long as you believe in the big-eye, you can find the ‘column’, is not it?”
Shen Jiyue said, “You forget that once I believe, I will become crazy, and it will be impossible to destroy the ‘pillar’ at that time.”
“Moreover, destroying the ‘Pillar’ requires a totem, and if I am to be discharged from the hospital, I must first erase this totem, at which point I will no longer have the ability to destroy the ‘Pillar’.
“I need a teammate who is strong-willed, resilient, intelligent, calm, and resourceful, and you fit my requirements perfectly.”
Mu Sichen was a little embarrassed by his praise.
Following Shen Jiyue’s train of thought, Mu Sichen understood his plan, “Your ultimate goal is for me to accompany you out of the hospital, and we’ll face the ‘pillar’ together, with me doing the damage.”
“Talking to a smart person is a relief.” Shen Jiyue said.
Mu Sichen frowned: “But by doing this, you will ……”
Shen Jiyue smiled calmly: “I have never been afraid of sacrifice, only afraid of worthless sacrifice.”
At this moment, through Shen Jiyue’s ghastly appearance, Mu Sichen indistinctly saw a person born handsome and dashing, with a high moral character, sitting in the ward.
Even if he had long been non-human form, Shen Jiyue was still as his name suggests, a person who was clear and bright.
Mu Sichen clenched his fists, he didn’t want Shen Jiyue to be sacrificed like this.
“Know what you want to do?” Shen Jiyue asked.
Mu Sichen nodded: “Find a way to increase the rules, add a clause ‘when the patient is discharged, he can be accompanied by a family member for the procedure’, then, act according to our plan.”
Shen Jiyue smiled with relief after hearing this, “It seems that the heavens really did not fail me, letting me meet you, one of the best teammates, before I was on the verge of insanity. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to complete our mission on this ‘dark night’, right?”
“I’ll do my best.” Mu Sichen finished, secretly clenching his fists.
Based on the information provided by Yao Wangping, Mu Sichen learned that before 14:00, the doctors were not inside the sanatorium, they would be looking for new patients within the Town so as not to descend into family members tomorrow.
Between 14:00 and 19:30, it was the doctors’ treatment time, and it was said that from time to time, there were also dependents to assist the doctors’ treatment.
Before 14:00, Mu Sichen must find a way to increase the supplementary rules as soon as possible, coupled with the rule of “when the patient is discharged from the hospital, can be accompanied by a family member to complete the formalities”, after 14:00, Shen Jiyue would take the initiative to accept the treatment, and then Mu Sichen would send him to the first floor of the first floor.
After finalizing the plan, Mu Sichen left the ward, it was now 11 o’clock, he didn’t have much time, only three hours.
In addition to increasing the rules, Mu Sichen had another plan.
He wanted to save Shen Jiyue.
Call him naive or ignorant, a useless student in the age of peace or not, Mu Sichen was going to do it.
Shen Jiyue let Mu Sichen understand that in this bizarre world, guarding the persistence of the heart was more important than anything else.
Mu Sichen was a person who grew up in a peaceful world, he couldn’t identify with the underlying logic of this world, this was his stubbornness.
He decided to keep this stubbornness, it was the only way he could differentiate himself from this world anymore.
With the crossaxe and Qin Zu’s totem in place, Mu Sichen’s idea wasn’t in the air, he had a certain chance of doing it.
Mu Sichen covered his heart and secretly made up his mind.
All the doors of the wards in the sanatorium were tightly closed, but in addition to the patients who were locked in their rooms and could not move freely, no matter whether they were family members, volunteers, or doctors, they could all move around in the sanatorium, just with different scopes.
Doctors were allowed to leave before 14:00, volunteers had to strictly follow the start and end times to and from the sanatorium and their residence, and family members were only allowed to move around on the 1st floor, the floor of the attending doctor’s office, and the floor of the ward.
Mu Sichen wanted to go downstairs, but he was blocked by a mist and couldn’t even find the stairs.
There was an elevator in the hospital, but the only buttons he could press were for the 1st, 4th, and 7th floors.
“The elevator goes down, to which floor?” Inside the elevator was a volunteer who looked strange, his eyes were tightly closed, but two tentacle-like things grew out of his forehead, with two eyes hanging from the tentacles.
If it were any other family member, upon seeing the horrible appearance of this volunteer, they would only have been scared out of their three souls, and the contamination on their bodies would have become even more serious.
And Mu Sichen, after looking straight at Shen Jiyue, felt that he was still able to look at the volunteer, but he was also maintaining a human form well.
“4th floor.” Mu Sichen thought about it and decided to go to the fourth floor to look for clues.
The tentacle volunteer pressed the elevator button.
Mu Sichen looked at him for a while and took the initiative to speak up and climbed into the conversation, “Your eyes are very chic, how did you do that?”
Most of the volunteers were normal in appearance, and there were few oddly shaped volunteers, so Mu Sichen’s question was not abrupt.
According to the preferences of the volunteers, Mu Sichen should have praised the volunteers for their “good-looking” and “cute” eyes, but he couldn’t in good conscience say such words, so he could only choose “chic” as a relatively objective and objective way of saying “chic”. But he couldn’t say such words in good conscience, so he could only choose words like “chic”, which were relatively objective and carried the meaning of praise.
“Right!” Hearing Mu Sichen compliment his eyes, the volunteer was really happy, he touched the eyes on the top of his head, “I used to be blind, I couldn’t open my eyes when I was born, I didn’t know what the world was like. This is after I assisted the Feathered Eye dependent in curing a patient, the Feathered Eye dependent rewarded me with that patient’s eyes!”
No wonder these eyes looked so similar to Shen Jiyue’s frog eyes, it turned out that they were obtained from the patient.
“Can a patient who has been discharged from the hospital take the eyes?” Mu Sichen asked.
“You can, they have a lot of eyes anyway.” The volunteer said naturally, “The Feathered Eye dependent also often steals patients’ eyes, if you want to get eyes as beautiful as mine, you can help the Feathered Eye dependent often, maybe when he’s in a good mood, he’ll be able to grant you a pair of eyes. You see how inconvenient your eyes are, you can only see the front, since you can’t see the back, install a pair of them in the back of your head.”
These words nearly made Mu Sichen’s san value drop, he pressed his hand against his chest and continued to ask: “The Feather-eyed dependent has so many pairs of eyes, is this the reason?”
“It’s possible.” The tentacle volunteer came to Mu Sichen’s ear and whispered.
At this time, the elevator reached the fourth floor, and Mu Sichen stepped out of the elevator, not forgetting to say to the tentacle volunteer, “Let’s chat next time you ride the elevator!”
“Great, I’m so bored here, there’s no one to chat with.” The tentacle volunteer said enthusiastically.
The elevator doors closed, and Mu Sichen’s enthusiastic expression immediately turned cold.
He had always felt that the Feather-eyed dependent’s eyes were a little too much, and had thought that they were bestowed upon him by the big-eye. Now that he thought about it, the eyes of the Feather-Eyed Dependent might have been taken from the patients.
This sanatorium, in addition to being the location of the Pillar, may also be using the strong-willed patients as tools.
On the fourth floor, besides the doctor’s office, there were also many wards. Mu Sichen passed by those wards and went straight to Shen Jiyue’s attending doctor’s office.
He remembered that Yao Wangping had added a rule in his favor and had rummaged through the doctor’s office for something, so maybe there were clues within the doctor’s office that supplemented the rule.
Mu Sichen had read the case records and knew that Shen Jiyue’s attending doctor’s name was Ke Yi.
He found the office with Ke Yi’s name and knocked on the door.
At this time of the day, the odds were that the doctor was not in the sanatorium. As long as no one answered the door, Mu Sichen was going to break in.
Who knew that just after knocking twice, someone opened the door from inside, or someone Mu Sichen recognized.
The girl who had been affected by Big Eye, hallucinating and nearly digging her own eyes out.
Mu Sichen looked down at the nameplate on her chest and saw that it clearly read “Doctor: Ke Yi”.