Chapter 36

But clearly, the state her grandmother was in now didn't look like someone who could come to terms with anything.

Liu Zhiyi followed the blood along a whole floor and still couldn't catch up.

By the look of it, her grandmother was dodging her on purpose.

This wouldn't do…

She was just thinking how to search when she suddenly heard a sob.

Liu Zhiyi: "…Grandma?"

The sob came from over by the stairs.

She ran across at once, but no sooner had she pushed open the stairwell's fire door — with the creak of it opening —

the stairwell's motion-sensor light came on.

After so long in the dark, a light flaring up all at once gave Liu Zhiyi a bad fright.

"Why's the light on?"

Cat: "Maybe the regularities inside the dungeon have shifted again."

Liu Zhiyi glanced at her watch and found the clock on it was ticking.

"Isn't the time inside the dungeon fixed…? It's daytime now?"

She thought a moment, opened the watch's photo album, and pulled up the bulletin board she'd just snapped.

[By day the hospital must be kept well lit. Dr. Bai holds that patients can only stay in a rational state when the light is bright, so as to cooperate with treatment.]

[By night the hospital must be kept free of light. Dr. Ye holds that darkness lets patients vent their feelings and so relax in body and mind, and that a cheerful mood aids a patient's recovery.]

Seeing Dr. Bai and Dr. Ye, Liu Zhiyi remembered her task bar had mentioned them.

Cat: "The dungeon's filling itself out bit by bit — the rules that go with it are slowly taking shape."

Liu Zhiyi: "The more people mutate, the more complete the dungeon gets?"

Cat: "Right."

Liu Zhiyi looked down.

The blood on this stretch of stairwell was especially thick; unlike the drips and spatters on the floor before, there was a smeared band through the middle of it, as if something had been dragged along.

Thinking of the paused sealing, Liu Zhiyi was deeply worried for her grandmother's safety.

"…Oo."

The sobbing started up again.

It came from downstairs.

But once she'd stepped into the stairwell and listened close, Liu Zhiyi could tell at once this wasn't her grandmother crying.

No good — not another trap.

Liu Zhiyi backed off at once, but she was a step too late.

Along with the sobbing, the sensor lights came on floor by floor, climbing up from the bottom.

Until the sensor light above Liu Zhiyi's head lit up once more.

"Oo… I see you…"

Realizing she'd been spotted —

Liu Zhiyi didn't retreat any further; she gripped the fruit knife tight.

She threw a quick glance down, but being some way from the railing, she couldn't see all the way to the bottom.

Even braced for it, Liu Zhiyi was still shaken by the sight before her.

Blood, all of it blood.

Sprays of it spread from the lower floors all the way up to her stretch of stairwell.

A band of it ran a full loop around the stairwell; a few of the low landings had pooled it into little gullies of blood, and steeping in one were several severed lengths of oxygen tube.

Seeing this, and putting it together with that clearly female sob just now —

Liu Zhiyi could pretty well guess who it was talking to her from below.

It was Big Sister Ma.

With this much blood, Liu Zhiyi's thoughts turned grim.

Big Sister Ma: "Is that Zhizhi? Could you come down and help me with something?"

Liu Zhiyi didn't move; instead she edged back.

Big Sister Ma: "I saw your grandma head downstairs — have you seen my dad?"

Liu Zhiyi stopped.

She neither retreated nor advanced, but leaned out to take a look below.

This time she saw the bottom.

Big Sister Ma: "Zhizhi?"

The sensor light came on again.

Big Sister Ma was standing in the stairwell two floors down, looking up at her.

Big Sister Ma was still the same Big Sister Ma — no extra limbs, no other change to her body; even her expression carried that same faint daze and fear, only with a little blood sprayed on her.

She looked, in fact, perfectly normal.

Liu Zhiyi asked in her head.

"Can you tell a mutated person from a normal one?"

Cat: "Not with the naked eye — you'd need a prop. But the sealing stopped, so the first read is that the dungeon's down one mutated person."

So which one?

Liu Zhiyi couldn't tell, but she couldn't let go of the grandmother's trail Big Sister Ma had mentioned either.

Never mind, though; Liu Zhiyi took stock of the props on hand.

A mutated person could be hurt by the fruit knife now too, and if she couldn't win she could drink the cough syrup and run.

Liu Zhiyi: "Sister, it's all blood down there — I'm a little scared."

Teacher Yang had left her a bit gun-shy, so she decided to draw Big Sister Ma up rather than go down herself; at least she'd walked this floor once and could be sure it was safe.

Big Sister Ma: "All right, all right, hang on a moment."

At the sound of footsteps, Liu Zhiyi turned the fruit knife in her pocket to point at the stairhead.

These sensor lights were a bother — after they'd been on a while, if the sound wasn't loud enough they'd go out on their own.

The light flickered on and off, like the scary bit in some horror film.

"I lost my head back there and ran off after my old man — did I go and get the safe room knocked down?"

Big Sister Ma didn't stop talking as she came up the stairs.

That was Big Sister Ma's nature, though; she was a great talker at the best of times.

But given the surroundings, and with her father's life or death unknown, all this chatter seemed strange.

With Big Sister Ma's full-throated voice, each stairwell she passed lit its sensor light.

Big Sister Ma: "Could the dungeon be messing with people's feelings? It's so odd — a while ago I was scared out of my wits, and just thinking of my old man had me boiling with anger, but now that feeling's suddenly gone."

Liu Zhiyi answered vaguely, "Maybe you've come to terms with things? Where did you see my grandma?"

—Tap.

Big Sister Ma took a step and stopped, seeming to think back.

"Right here, that's where I saw her. Your grandma ran like the wind, three floors straight down, head still bleeding all the way… has your grandma got the same symptoms as my old man?"

Hearing Big Sister Ma describe her grandmother's appearance, Liu Zhiyi was sure she wasn't lying.

"Mm. Did you see which room my grandma went into?"

—Tap, tap.

The footsteps started up again.

Big Sister Ma: "Ah, I was looking for my old man just then, didn't really pay attention. Did you see him up there?"

Liu Zhiyi glanced at the oxygen tubing in the blood pool on the landing.

"No."

The drag marks on the floor left Liu Zhiyi a little uneasy; she kept feeling something must have happened in the stairwell, but with too few clues to gather, she was left in the dark.

While she was thinking, the watch on her wrist buzzed.

The task bar, quiet for so long, had finally updated.

[Big Sister Ma is looking for her father; perhaps helping her find him will earn you a clue about Grandma.]

[But be careful — the marks in the stairwell were left by a struggle. Mind the light; some things can't be seen with the naked eye.]

Still an ambiguous task description, but it pointed her a direction.

Liu Zhiyi: "When did you last see your dad?"

The sensor light below her came on.

Big Sister Ma: "Ssss… let me think. I remember running out of the safe room, the task updated and said something about hooking my old man's oxygen tube back up, and I don't know how to work that thing, so my old man told me to phone my daughter — my daughter's a nurse, see…"

The sensor light went out.

And at that, Big Sister Ma suddenly stopped, her tone flipping as she snarled a line, vicious.

"You old undying thing, what are you dragging my daughter in for?"

As Big Sister Ma's shout echoed round the stairwell, the sensor light came back on.

The moment it lit, her tone eased.

"My old man, honestly — as if looking after him weren't enough, he has to drag his granddaughter into it too."

Liu Zhiyi looked up at the ceiling light overhead.

So the light could affect a person's feelings; the bulletin board's Dr. Bai and Dr. Ye and their treatment philosophies were probably hinting at exactly this.

Liu Zhiyi: "And then?"

She opened the watch's flashlight page ahead of time — no telling whether flashlight beam counted, but just in case.

"And then?" Big Sister Ma made a few uncertain sounds. "I don't have much memory of it. By the time I came to, I was in the stairwell."

—Tap, tap.

Big Sister Ma reached Liu Zhiyi's floor, and the sensor light came on.

Looking down from above, with the sensor light flickering, she hadn't been able to make out the details.

But now, up close —

Liu Zhiyi saw that Big Sister Ma's left hand gripped a big fistful of oxygen tubing, and her right hand carried a small oxygen cylinder, its body dented in a great crushed patch, blood dripping steadily from its base.

Big Sister Ma looked down. "What is it? Have I got something on me?"

She couldn't see the things in her own hands?

Liu Zhiyi took a step back.

The cat's voice sounded in her head.

"By the look of this, Big Sister Ma's killed her dad."

Liu Zhiyi was shocked, and grieved too.

"…It's nothing."

"He couldn't even move, and now all of a sudden he's vanished."

Big Sister Ma was still muttering.

"By the way, how did you and your grandma come to quarrel?" Big Sister Ma asked.

Liu Zhiyi: "How do you know we quarreled?"

"It was quarreling with my old man that turned him like that." Big Sister Ma spoke with an easy air. "Didn't expect you'd fall out with your grandma too — you always seemed on good terms."

Liu Zhiyi didn't want to bring it up.

Big Sister Ma sighed. "Every family's got its own hard scripture to read."

Then, warmly, she offered: "Why don't you give your grandma a call?"

The turn was a little abrupt; Liu Zhiyi thought it over.

"A prop?"

Big Sister Ma: "That's right. My old man had a phone on him that could call the outside — that's how he phoned my daughter."

Liu Zhiyi's spirits jumped; that prop sounded formidable.

"But my grandma doesn't have a mobile."

Big Sister Ma: "Doesn't matter, the call goes through even without a phone… my daughter was at work at the time…"

The sensor light overhead went out.

"Bad enough you put me through it — why go dragging my daughter in!" Big Sister Ma suddenly shrieked; maybe because she was closer now, Liu Zhiyi caught some other sound too, drowned under the shriek, too faint to make out clearly.

It only lasted a very short while.

When the light came back on, Big Sister Ma returned to her calm, warm manner, and the sound vanished with it.

Big Sister Ma: "Aiya, once I get going I don't know when to stop. Come, I'll take you to find your grandma."

Liu Zhiyi hesitated — mainly because Big Sister Ma's state wasn't quite normal — but finding her grandmother was pressing.

"All right… sorry to trouble you to lead the way."

Liu Zhiyi decided to follow behind Big Sister Ma; that way at least she had a line of retreat, and could run back up.

Big Sister Ma walked ahead, cheerful. "When you've got a rift with family, you have to talk it out properly — especially your grandma, she's getting on in years, so let some things slide."

After they'd gone down one floor, the sensor light below came on.

Liu Zhiyi narrowed her eyes and looked down; only the floor she was on had its sensor light lit now, and every floor below her was in darkness, faintly touched by the sensor light's glow.

In the darkened floors there seemed to be some extra black shapes, hard to make out.

Liu Zhiyi thought of the last dungeon, the market, and the "people" she could only see through the watch.

The task had mentioned, too, that some things couldn't be seen with the naked eye.

She stood the watch face up and tapped into the camera screen.

The world inside the watch was black and white.

The walls were still white, only the blood on them had all turned black.