While Mu Sichen was busy, Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo were anything but idle. They were executing the second stage of the plan.

Chi Lian sprinted back to the fourth-floor office and rounded up the eleven patients they had stashed there. Since these patients hadn’t been officially processed or assigned wards yet, they could be moved through the halls as long as a “Doctor” led the way. The ten converts were terrifyingly obedient; they carried the unconscious Dr. Ke Yi and squeezed into Shen Jiyue’s room.

Inside Room 704, Cheng Xubo stood by his handcart, waiting for Mu Sichen’s return. Though Shen Jiyue had a vague grasp of the plan, he still didn’t understand where the handcart had come from or what Mu Sichen intended to do. He simply focused on drawing the blister-eye pollution from Cheng Xubo’s body onto his own.

When Mu Sichen returned and saw that Cheng Xubo had been cleansed, his gratitude toward Shen Jiyue deepened. But there was no time for thanks; he had to prove that Shen Jiyue’s trust wasn’t misplaced.

With a flick of his wrist, the pickaxe appeared. He nodded to Cheng Xubo. “Let’s move. Smash as many as you can.”

“You got it!” Cheng Xubo rolled up his sleeves.

Mu Sichen swung the pickaxe with all his might against the ward wall. A massive hole gaped open, and the falling debris was perfectly caught by Cheng Xubo’s handcart and wheeled out into the hall to be dumped. Through the hole, the shocked face of a patient in the adjacent room stared back at them.

Mu Sichen and Cheng Xubo ignored them, charging through the gap. “Ward expansion,” they grunted. “Make some room.”

As they tore through a dozen walls, Cheng Xubo laughed. “You know, when I started this game, I thought it was a city-builder—like I’d be driving an excavator. Then I ended up in this dump. No machinery, no construction. Finally, I’m feeling the joy of infrastructure!”

“This isn’t infrastructure; it’s demolition,” Mu Sichen replied, swinging again.

He didn’t care about load-bearing walls. This was the top floor; the building wouldn’t collapse immediately. Because he was attacking the physical structure rather than the hospital’s rules, the system didn’t flag them.

He knocked through more than twenty rooms on the same side as 704. Each hole was wide enough for a hospital bed. Once the path was clear, they pushed twenty-odd beds through the makeshift tunnel and into Shen Jiyue’s expanded ward.

The patients were tethered to their beds, and the ward doors were too narrow to let a bed pass. But by breaking the walls, they bypassed the narrow doors entirely. They weren’t taking patients out of the ward; they were just moving them through an exceptionally large one.

Shen Jiyue watched as his room turned into a massive dormitory. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Gathering as many patients as possible in one spot,” Mu Sichen said with a rogue-like grin. “I’m not giving the sanitarium time to patch its rules.”

Chi Lian arrived then, panting as she led the eleven new patients into the room. Suddenly, Room 704 held over thirty patients and a crowd of panicked family members.

“What are you doing?!” the family members shrieked. “I’m getting a doctor!”

They scrambled out for help, but it wasn’t yet 2:00 PM. The doctors were busy in the plaza, and Yao Wangping was occupied hunting for a non-existent physical Pillar. There was no one to stop them. Desperate, the families ran to the Volunteers, who contacted the gatekeepers to summon the Apostle.

This was the sanitarium’s emergency protocol: for violent patients, call the Apostle. But the Apostle wasn’t stationed on-site. The chain of communication—Family to Volunteer, Volunteer to Gatekeeper, Gatekeeper to Apostle—took time.

And time was exactly what Mu Sichen was stealing.

“I’m about to take a risk,” Mu Sichen said, handing an Ego Sticker to Chi Lian. “Monitor my mental state. The moment you think I’m on the edge of total insanity, slap this on me.”

“How will I know when you’re on the edge?”

“It’s simple for you,” Mu Sichen said. “When you feel like I’m no longer someone you can trust, it means I’m nearly gone.”

As his Follower, Chi Lian’s faith was tied to his true self. If his mind shattered, her faith would crumble. No one could detect his breaking point better than her.

“I understand,” she said, her voice trembling. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make this hospital’s rules contradict themselves.”

Mu Sichen dragged his pickaxe over to Shen Jiyue. “As planned: transfer your pollution to me. And let me see the mirror.”

Shen Jiyue sighed. “You look so refined, yet you come up with such madness. One slip, and you’ll be a vegetable.”

“In this world, there is no middle ground. You either go mad or you win.”

Until now, Mu Sichen had been cautious, walking on thin ice. He had been afraid of loss, afraid of the dark, and that fear had limited him. But now he realized that fighting madness didn’t require absolute logic. Yao Wangping had absolute logic, and it had cost him his humanity.

A SAN value wasn’t just a power level; it was a balance. You couldn’t let it hit zero, but being at a ‘safe’ 100 was its own kind of blindness. Humanity lived in the gap between 0 and 100—small, fragile, yet resilient. He would survive on 1 point of SAN if he had to. He was going to turn this hospital upside down.

Shen Jiyue nodded solemnly. “I’ll be careful.”

Patients could transfer pollution to Family members. Though Mu Sichen wore a Volunteer tag, his fundamental identity was Family. Shen Jiyue placed a hand over Mu Sichen’s eyes. “Don’t blink.”

Mu Sichen felt the wet, warm sensation of the blister-eyes pressing against his own. It wasn’t painful; it was disturbingly comfortable. Soon, his eyes bulged out, and his skin erupted in hideous bubbles.

When Shen Jiyue let go, his own face had mostly cleared, leaving him looking handsome and serene—like a moon in a dark sky. “This feels awful,” Shen Jiyue whispered. “I hope you can come back from this.”

Mu Sichen, now barely recognizable as human, pointed to the mirror. Shen Jiyue flashed it in front of him for a split second.

Instantly, Mu Sichen’s left eye turned blood-red. Thousands of beams of light flooded his vision, each carrying the image of Big Eye. His brain reeled. The phantom choir returned, singing hymns to the “Apostle of the Sky.” Big Eye no longer looked terrifying; He looked divine. Mu Sichen felt a primal urge to kneel.

His SAN must have dropped below 10. His thoughts were a jagged mess of mania.

“Still… conscious…” he grunted, hitting his head.

The totem on his chest began to prick him with needle-like pain, trying to pull him back to Qin Zhou’s influence. Mu Sichen clutched his chest. “Qin Zhou,” he hissed, “if you stop me, I’ll dig you out of my skin.”

The pain subsided. Qin Zhou had backed off.

Mu Sichen dragged his pickaxe toward the line of converts and Dr. Ke Yi. He laughed, a jagged, frenzied sound. “Big Eye… no, ‘Eye of the Sky.’ I guess I’m technically one of your followers now, right? Give me some power!”

As he uttered the name, a totem appeared in his left eye: a pupil reflecting the sun, moon, and stars. A crimson light wreathed his pickaxe.

Mu Sichen swung. The light swept over a convert. By being polluted by Shen Jiyue and looking at the mirror, Mu Sichen had become a “Recovering Patient” and a “Follower of Big Eye.” He prayed to the Eye in his left socket, stealing Its power to turn a Follower of Qin Zhou back into a Follower of Big Eye.

The convert’s name tag shifted back to “Volunteer.” A blood-red Ego Sticker appeared in Mu Sichen’s hand.

He had just fleeced Qin Zhou to pay Big Eye.

The sanitarium erupted. Red lights flared and sirens wailed. A patient had disappeared.

In this hospital’s code, the total number of patients was supposed to be a constant. They could swap roles, but they couldn’t just vanish unless they were discharged. Mu Sichen was using “Undermine” to bypass the discharge process entirely, forcibly turning “Patients” (fallen believers) back into “Volunteers” (devout followers).

It was a total violation of the hospital’s logic.

But Mu Sichen had just added Rule Three: ‘When a Volunteer is operating on a Patient, they must not be interrupted or harmed.’

The automated system hit a paradox. It wanted to stop the “theft” of patients, but its own rules forbade touching the Volunteer doing the stealing.

“Hurry up. Next,” Mu Sichen growled, his red eye gleaming like a demon’s.

He swung again and again, targeting the converts, Dr. Ke Yi, and the twenty other patients. Blood-red stickers piled up.

“Warning! Violation detected! Warning!” The intercom shrieked.

Mu Sichen had twenty stickers. Suddenly, the ceiling shattered. A figure descended: Apostle Feather-Eye.

Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo dove under Shen Jiyue’s bed, too terrified to look. The Apostle prepared to obliterate the rioter, the eyes on his wings widening. But a thick mist swirled around Mu Sichen, shielding him.

Rule Three: Even the Apostle could not obstruct a Volunteer mid-operation.

The Apostle froze, genuinely confused. He saw Mu Sichen “creating” more followers for Big Eye. Wait… isn’t this a good thing? He’s turning heathens into believers! the Apostle thought. He stood there, paralyzed by the contradiction.

Mu Sichen harvested his twenty-first sticker. A giant eye sprouted from his back. He was a monster now, his humanity only visible in the frantic twitch of his bulging frog-eyes.

His SAN was a mystery. He didn’t have the energy to care. He swung for the twenty-second time.

Suddenly, a blinding light erupted from beneath his feet. A massive eye appeared on the floor—three pupils reflecting the sun, moon, and stars.

Shen Jiyue sat up, his calm face finally breaking into a look of raw excitement. “The Pillar!”

Mu Sichen had done it. He had forced the decentralized Gaze of the entire building to focus on a single point. Under his feet, the fragmented “Gaze” had solidified into a physical Pillar of light.

The intercom roared: “Error! Error! Correcting! Deleting Supplementary Rule Three!”

On the first floor, the rule he had just written was wiped away by an invisible force. But it didn’t matter.

Mu Sichen stood in the center of the Pillar, pickaxe in hand, still breathing.

Author’s Note:

Qin Zhou (biting his tentacles): Mu Sichen, you’re mine! How could you!

Big Eye: Oh? Someone’s sending me more believers?

Mu Sichen: I’ve discovered a perpetual motion machine for Ego Stickers—shearing the sheep on both sides!

(Mu Sichen: The Triple-Agent)