The apocalypse begins with a dungeon game.

The person who arrived was wearing a white coat, and his body was covered in sticky human tissue fluid and blood plasma that emitted a strong, fishy smell.

Li Can turned her head and saw that it was Wu Xiuyuan.

The two of them made eye contact the moment they met.

The next second, a disheveled Wu Xiuyuan roared and rushed out, "You beast, stop! Let go of my disciple!"

Immediately, he staggered over, muttering incantations, and began to make hand seals in preparation for casting a spell.

A faint, wisp of energy materialized in the void, its arrowhead aimed at Li Can, and it was launched.

Li Can belatedly realized that he seemed to be considered less than human by others and even by monsters.

However, he couldn't reveal his true state right now, so in a flash, Li Can leaped away from Wu Xiuyuan's attack and quickly took several large steps backward.

The arrow was stuck very shakily into Wang Qing's hospital bed.

When Li Can turned around and saw this scene, he realized that Wu Xiuyuan's supernatural energy seemed to be getting weaker and weaker, and it looked like he had been injured again.

He himself doesn't have much ability to fight or protect himself, and now he's actually no threat to Li Can at all.

Now that Wu Xiuyuan is back, does that mean things have completely fallen apart in the basement?

If the accomplice "Dr. Wu" in Fang Yi's diary is indeed Wu Xiuyuan, then the mastermind behind this laboratory turmoil may be the two of them.

As I found myself in the midst of it all, the more I looked at it from an outsider's perspective, the clearer it became.

Thinking of this, and knowing that Wang Qing was temporarily protected by his master, Li Can ignored Wu Xiuyuan's menacing warning and walked past him directly out of the ward.

Only the old Taoist priest remained, petrified and bewildered.

"Let's see if there's anything good left in the lab that we can take." Li Can quickened his pace, weaving through the dwindling number of fleeing people.

As the number of puppet eggs accumulates, with this foundation in place, the path to upgrading will become increasingly smooth.

The sky outside had completely darkened, and although it was the warmest time of the afternoon, it felt like falling into an ice cave.

As Li Can passed by the window, he looked out and saw the moon peeking out of the sky, with twinkling stars shining brightly beside it.

The hospital lights flickered on and off, and in the dark corners, every inch of the room contained pieces of torn human body tissue.

It was as if the monsters' attacks were not driven by bloodlust, but rather by a form of venting and emotional release.

Only in this way can they express their inner pain and gain pleasure.

"Strange, I can actually empathize with them. Wolf skin has this function..." Li Can thought to himself as he strode into the space on the second basement level.

In just a few hours, the place we met again was completely different from what we had imagined.

The place has transformed from its original orderly disguise to its current state of complete exposure of the bloody truth behind the scenes, all because of the escape of the experimental subjects.

"Even though all the patients who were captured had been dismembered, they were still able to come back to life. It seems that Dean Wang Yaxiang's research is indeed quite remarkable..."

The hidden embedded experimental door was blocked by a mountain of corpses, which were pushed back and forth and side to side with each opening and closing.

It was very quiet inside. It seemed that most of the resurrected monsters that could be mobilized had already fled. Only a few people could be heard speaking in hushed tones.

As the distance closed, Li Can finally heard the conversation clearly.

"How many times has this happened?" the little girl's voice rang out first.

Then, a more mature female voice said, "The thirtieth time..."

"..."

After a few seconds of silence, the boy's childish voice, accompanied by a sob, said, "It seems like we'll never get out of here."

The people talking all sounded dejected, as if they had lost all hope.

"Only the five of us have been injected with the [Resurrection] drug, and only the five of us can be resurrected and die endlessly here, losing our memories and regaining them. What is the point of this endless cycle?"

"I don't know, maybe we've already become NPCs in the game... Even if we now know the whole truth about Tang's mystery, we've already lost the right to answer the questions, so what's the use?"

"Hey, you two little devils, so young yet so wise. What's the big deal? At least we're still alive. As long as we retain our original memories, we'll find a way out," a mature woman's voice gently comforted us.

"Solutions can be found by thinking them up."

But Li Can could tell that she herself wasn't very confident.

"Sister, our total number of players has remained at eight, but new people from outside always join. Is the variable you mentioned only going to happen to them?"

"This time, one of them died right after arriving. Next time the game starts, a new person will take his place. As for the remaining two brothers..."

"It's impossible for a player to beat the game on their first try. This game..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

The two children chimed in, one after the other, while the mature woman fell silent.

Li Can hid by the door and listened for a while. She knew that the three people were Chen Qixiang, who had been missing for a long time, and Xiaoyu and Xiaomo were talking.

The information they were discussing made him feel somewhat dizzy.

Especially the sounds that came later, which sounded completely encrypted to him, like the static on an old-fashioned television.

It seems there are game mechanics within the instance, preventing veteran and new players from sharing information unequally.

After covering his ears, he tried his best to calm himself down.

Li Can thought from their perspective.

What does it mean to die and be reborn thirty times in a row? During this time, they have no memory of it and have completely lost the ability to answer the questions. For them, all that remains is torture.

Li Can knew that this was his first time entering a dungeon game, so his situation was very different from theirs, and he had a chance to get out.

Based on the information they conveyed, I should be considered a substitute.

If the player whose ID number is associated with dies without receiving a [Resurrection] potion, the system will automatically match a new player to fill the vacancy when the game restarts.

In fact, since this dungeon opened, not a single player has been able to answer the soup base question correctly on their first attempt...

Those who are declared dead and do not receive the potion will naturally be completely eliminated, while those who have received the potion will end up like them.

After such a large cycle, the worst possible outcome is:

All eight players were eliminated after answering the questions incorrectly. However, because they had all been injected with the "Resurrection" potion, they were repeatedly reborn, lost their memories, regained their memories, died, and were reborn again...

The game then became a complete dead end, and the system crashed.

If there's a chance for a change in circumstances, it's that the new player in the substitute position can complete the game in one go and end the process.

"Just how hellish is this?" Li Can calmed down, silently retreated to a corner, and began to meditate on the clues and information he had gathered.

After self-examination and self-correction, he extracted several pieces of information that he felt were abnormal, placed them on the table one by one, tore them up, and reset them, repeatedly scrutinizing them.

"Why didn't Dean Wang Yaxiang, who had turned into a monster, attack Lin Wanyan in Fang Yi's office? Even his eyes looked strange before he escaped."

Why did Fang Yi kill Lin Wanyan in the end? Wasn't he there to avenge her? What was his motive for killing her?

"Who exactly is 'she' in the mystery of Tang? It seems now that it might not be Lin Wanyan, but more likely Wang Yali..."

"But the NPC grandmother's face is indeed an older version of Lin Wanyan."

"That would mean there are more than two possibilities."

"First, these two people are actually twins, which requires finding Wang Yali's photo as a clue to confirm this."

"Secondly, is it a skin change, a face change, a head change? Wearing Lin Wanyan's appearance, but actually being Wang Yali inside, we need to find evidence to confirm that."