Chapter 219 Frog Hospital (Part 11) – Medical Records

On the way back, Qi Si casually shifted his gaze, scanning the surroundings.

Overlapping dense thickets formed natural walls; deeper in, white mist churned.

The only usable path connected the concrete hospital wall; even with a guide one could only loiter between pond and hospital—never far, never out.

The hospital stairwell was dilapidated and lifeless. On the first three floors every landing that should have led to a fire exit was blocked by huge iron sheets, cutting off players’ sight and steps.

Throughout the building, only the fourth floor was accessible.

Cheng Xiaoyu slipped through the wide-open doorway of the fourth floor, man and shadow vanishing together.

Qi Si and Sun Dekuan returned, single file, to the far end of the corridor that split into the morgue and the kitchen.

The iron bed that had stood in the corridor was gone; the morgue’s iron door glowered shut, occasional metallic screeches of wheels scraping from within.

Qi Si walked straight into the kitchen, rinsed his hands under the tap, then unhurriedly washed the pendulum that had touched Cheng Xiaoyu.

He glanced at the time: the Pocket Watch of Fate showed six in the evening, just shy—visiting the pond seemed to devour hours.

Sun Dekuan, hard-pressed, followed Qi Si into the kitchen, watching the young man finish washing, then pull a candy jar from his backpack and pour every sweet out.

Unable to hold back, he asked, “Brother Cheng, what are you doing?”

Qi Si set the empty jar on the counter, lifted the lid of an iron pail with one hand, and with the other took a long-handled ladle, scooping a spoonful of tadpoles. He let the blood-water drain against the pail’s rim, then rinsed them under the tap.

Watching Qi Si’s calm movements, Sun Dekuan was seized by a terrifying guess.

Lin Chen—clearly on familiar terms with Qi Si—had a task demanding someone swallow a thousand tadpoles. With five instance days in total, only 140 had been eaten on day one; at least three hundred more were needed.

Lu Zimo owned a jar of tadpoles—clearly more than three hundred. Normally such needs could be aired openly; resorting to private schemes meant… Sun Dekuan’s gaze sharpened. “Brother Cheng, level with me—are you planning to secretly feed people tadpoles?”

Knowing Qi Si loathed tadpoles—this morning he’d risked raising the failure rate by dumping tadpole soup—these freshly scooped creatures wouldn’t enter his own mouth. Qi Si gave an affirmative hum, eyes fixed on the water running clear off the ladle. Once every trace of red was gone, he tipped the half-dead tadpoles into the candy jar.

Sun Dekuan, torn between alarm and relief, watched Qi Si’s matter-of-fact attitude.

That the man revealed such plans meant he was already counted as one of their own.

He lowered his voice. “Brother Cheng, you may not know—Huang Xiaofei isn’t simple; she seems to have lethal trump cards. If you’re dosing someone, wait till the final day, then run right after…”

He looked up to find Qi Si regarding him with puzzled amusement. “What are you thinking? I’m not feeding anyone.”

The young man tightened the jar’s lid and sighed. “Tadpoles are likely tainted; I doubt the Director doesn’t know. His home-field and information advantages are too great. To keep from being passive, we must drag him into the mire.”

Sun Dekuan felt he half-grasped something, yet remained foggy.

Not daring expose his wits, he hastily raised a thumb. “So that’s it—gotta say, brilliant move!”

“Just an idea; results depend on execution.” Qi Si smiled cryptically, stowed the jar, returned the ladle, and headed for the doorway.

Sun Dekuan couldn’t leave the kitchen fast enough; he spun on his heel and stepped out.

Whether illusion or not, the corridor seemed dimmer, its gray tinge like a cloudy afternoon.

The instant Qi Si crossed the threshold, a familiar dizziness surged like a tide, as though sailing a storm-tossed sea.

Colors twisted into a vortex; within seconds the world flashed from mottled white to utter black.

Qi Si fell backward, yet did not crash to the floor as expected.

His back met a cold, hard plank; limbs lay neatly at his sides—as if he had lain on this bed for ages, not just fallen.

A mix of mildew and disinfectant flooded his nostrils; a bad premonition sprouted from the unknown.

Qi Si opened his eyes to a familiar ceiling; from the corner of his vision he saw a white coat draped over him and clutter in the corner.

He had returned to the abandoned operating theatre from a day ago—the very moment he entered the instance—posture and sensations identical.

The Pocket Watch of Fate read six in the evening; the 【Failure Rate】 in the upper left of his vision still showed 25%, proving this wasn’t simple time reversal.

Perhaps the instance had reset, everything reverting to its state a day prior; or some mechanism had teleported him to a fixed location; worst of all—

he had inexplicably died once, but because the failure rate hadn’t maxed, he hadn’t stayed dead and had respawned.

Qi Si favored the first explanation; an instant-death trigger relying purely on luck felt too arbitrary.

“My memories remain; the others should be the same. Only question is whether NPCs and Ghosts in this instance retain theirs…”

Qi Si speculated idly, donned the white coat, put on the plain glasses, and pushed open the door.

In the familiar corridor, gaunt patients sat in a row on the bench outside the ward, regarding Qi Si with the same hostile stares as day one.

They seemed utterly unaware this scene had played out before, their expressions blankly assessing—exactly like third-rate online-game NPCs respawning on schedule.

——just like third-rate online games where NPCs respawn on a timer.

This time Qi Si feigned oblivious to the menace, curling his lips slightly: “Have you eaten tadpoles today?”

(404 not found)

Qi Si cut in: “Did you drink tadpole soup this morning?”

At those words every patient turned, eyes fixed unblinkingly on Qi Si.

They buzzed among themselves.

“Tadpole soup? Tadpoles are medicine—how could they be made into soup?”

“We don’t drink soup in the morning, only water—though my old woman does get soup…”

The hospital’s male patients don’t drink tadpole soup in the morning; players, male or female, each receive a bowl and are required to finish it.

Was this special treatment exclusive to player characters, or had someone seen through the players’ roles and begun countermeasures?

Though the Eerie Game’s prompts never mentioned it, such hidden pitfalls could exist.

Qi Si couldn’t shake the feeling that the system’s control over this instance was weak; the failure rate updated in real time, the information given was only what players could deduce, and the main quest advanced step-by-step… almost as though Eerie Game was exploring alongside players, possessing only slightly more knowledge, nudging players toward actions that served some hidden purpose.

To put it vividly, it resembled a web-novelist writing without an outline, usually knowing the plot only two hours ahead of readers… so it made perfect sense the system’s hints might miss certain conditions.

“Doctor Cheng, are you feeling better after your rest? You suddenly fainted on the operating table; we were all worried,” said the nurse in blood-spattered whites, approaching from afar with the exact lines from day one.

Qi Si smiled calmly at the patients, as if the exchange had been a routine consultation.

He turned to the nurse and asked point-blank: “The Director advised I stop work and undergo treatment—my room is still 404, correct?”

Deprived of her lines, the nurse showed no anomaly, continuing conversationally: “Yes, yes, I thought I’d have to persuade you for ages.”

Qi Si offered no comment, heading toward Room 404 as he remembered it. The nurse trotted beside him, chattering non-stop: “Dr. Cheng, the Director says you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. That surgery really wasn’t your fault.”

“You followed every protocol to the letter, even gave your own blood to Wang Ying—utterly above and beyond. She was simply fated to die; her family can’t see straight either…”

Wang Ying?

Qi Si had heard another new name; from the context it had to be the woman he’d seen die on the operating table in the vision.

By elimination, the “Xu Qing” in the hint text must be one of the pregnant Ghosts in the night-time corridor.

But that hardly mattered—knowing this ghost was connected to the Director was enough.

The nurse rattled on: “Those people can’t see straight—this is a policy from above; we just carry it out. How can they blame us?”

“I really feel for you, Dr. Cheng. Grass-roots work is thankless—damned if you do, damned if you don’t…”

Suddenly a blue frog leapt from a wall crevice, its cheeks puffing as it eyed passers-by.

The nurse jumped, her monologue cut short.

Qi Si seized the moment: “I’ve heard those who harm frogs get cursed. Could our string of surgical failures be because patients ate tadpoles and brought the frogs’ curse on us?”

The nurse blinked, then nodded like a pecking chick: “Yes, Dr. Cheng, they must’ve eaten tadpoles and got cursed—that’s why…”

Qi Si cut in: “Some patients say our hospital secretly buys tadpoles from Green Frog Hospital and prescribes them as medicine—any truth to that?”

“Impossible!” The nurse snorted. “That’s just their superstition—thinking fourteen tadpoles prevent pregnancy. We warn them about parasites, but they still sneak off to buy them.”

Qi Si clearly remembered a nurse taking Lu Zimo aside yesterday and handing him a jar of tadpoles and three patient gowns.

He forced a chuckle: “Probably just patient gossip; I’m getting paranoid. Though I’ve heard some places drink tadpole soup—wonder how they cook it?”

He turned to study the nurse’s face.

Her puzzlement looked genuine: “Tadpole soup? Who would drink that?”

Qi Si said nothing more, walking at an even pace. The room numbers changed from “42” to “41”; Room 404 was near the corridor’s end.

The nurse smiled: “I’ll leave you here, Dr. Cheng. Rest well—I’ll be off.”

Qi Si watched her go with a blank face, then headed for his destination.

During the conversation he’d broken the gentle persona he’d tested yesterday, sounding distant and even aggressive.

Yet his failure rate hadn’t budged.

“Normally, personality is multi-faceted. Even if someone acts out of character, colleagues who are only half-familiar assume it’s mood or stress, nothing suspicious.”

“Suspicion from mere odd behavior only comes if you already know something’s up—or you’ve got a guilty conscience.”

The Director and the Ghosts in league with him probably already knew the player’s role was fake, hence their jumpiness.

NPCs, however, weren’t fully under the Director; they’d been kept in the dark—else the nurse wouldn’t be clueless about tadpole soup.

With these thoughts Qi Si stopped at the ward door and pushed it open.

Huang Xiaofei, Lu Zimo and Sun Dekuan sat on their beds much as on day one, but every face was grimmer.

Sun Dekuan, seeing Qi Si, whispered frantically, “Damn, I just blacked out while walking—what the hell?”

No one answered.

From the bed by the wall Huang Xiaofei drawled, “You triggered the main quest ‘Find the Statue of the Holy Child’, right? Soon after, we all passed out and woke up here. Don’t tell me you know nothing?”

“I really know nothing,” Qi Si said flatly.

He sat on the bed, looking past Sun Dekuan to the jar of tadpoles on Lu Zimo’s nightstand. “On the way here I asked the nurse. She claims the hospital never supplies them—patients just buy them privately, believing they’re contraceptives.”

“Impossible.” Huang Xiaofei eyed him suspiciously. “You made that call yesterday—Green Frog Hospital said they farm the tadpoles for us.”

“Someone’s lying.” Qi Si shrugged. “I also heard many patients die on the table because they harmed frogs. Eating tadpoles counts as harm.”

He lowered his gaze, smiling. “Of course, that’s only my word—believe it or not.”

A heavy silence spread. Lu Zimo looked to Huang Xiaofei for guidance.

Sun Dekuan watched Qi Si, waiting to read his face before acting.

After half a minute Huang Xiaofei said coolly, “Let’s cooperate. The next four days will be dangerous; only by sharing intel can we crack the quest. Cooperation is the only way.”

Qi Si kept his half-smile, eyes fixed on her.

She rose, neither servile nor arrogant. “I misjudged this instance before, arrogant and alone—I apologize. But in experience and crisis response we still have an edge. You need us, just as we need you.”

She pulled four sheets of scrawled paper from under her pillow and handed them to Qi Si. “Zi Mo and I sneaked into the Archives and copied our four medical files—they might help.”

Qi Si took the pages and set them aside without a glance. “Just as you can’t verify my words, I can’t verify these. After all, they didn’t appear as system hints.”

“Tomorrow I can take you to the Archives,” Huang Xiaofei said.

“But we can’t be sure the files will still be there, can we?” Qi Si narrowed his eyes, calculation bare. “I happen to have a Contract-type skill that enforces mutual honesty—interested?”

A blood-red scroll materialized mid-air, listing clauses of mutual trust and cooperation.

The terms looked so reasonable they felt like a trap waiting to snap shut.

Huang Xiaofei read them, guessing at the skill’s origin and tier, her face unreadable.

Lu Zimo, ghost-quiet until now, suddenly interjected, “No problem!”

He stared straight at Qi Si, meaning flickering in his eyes: “Cheng An, if my sister won’t, I can sign with you…”

“Zi Mo.” Huang Xiaofei shot her cousin a warning glare, then turned back calm. “Cheng An, I can sign on those terms, but with two conditions: first, copy the Contract onto paper I provide; second, the original comes to me.”