Chapter 650

The gate of Fog City Psychiatric Hospital was opened before the Spirit Medium Association's motorcade arrived.

It was Dirk's Shadow Snake silk threads that probed into the door gap and picked the door bolt silently.

More than a dozen people jumped off the car, their footsteps urgent but not chaotic, quickly forming three attack groups in front of the gate.

The president stood at the front, two headquarters support personnel stood on the left and right, and Harding and Dirk were on the rear flanks.

Other elites spread out according to the pre-assigned positions, including every exit of the building into the monitoring range.

However, when the team truly entered the lobby of the psychiatric hospital, everyone was stunned.

There was no such gloomy and terrifying scene as imagined here.

The ground of the lobby was light-colored anti-slip floor tiles, wiped very clean, reflecting the soft white light of the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling.

The walls were warm beige, with several brightly colored landscape paintings hanging on them, painting the sea port of Fog City and the lighthouse in the distance.

On the wall behind the reception desk, there was a "Care for the soul, guard life" propaganda slogan, the font was round and cute, and a smiling cartoon heart was drawn next to it.

Nurses with patients passed by here from time to time, and they all showed surprised expressions after seeing them.

According to the ideas of the elites of the Spirit Medium Association, since this place had become the old nest of cultists, even if it was not a tragic scene with corpses everywhere, it should at least be a desolate appearance of people going to the building.

But this scene in front of them—it didn't look like it was suffering from an invasion at all.

Some Association elites even started to stress out after seeing this scene, suspecting that this was a fake appearance made by cultists, and subconsciously wanted to launch an attack.

Fortunately, the Association president was well-informed and waved his hand, stopping their further actions.

The nurse on duty at the front desk saw a group of people wearing dark blue uniforms and serious expressions pouring in, and the pen in her hand fell on the table.

Her mouth opened, wanting to say something, but found that the badge on the chest of the old man standing at the front was a circle larger than anyone she had seen in the Association's brochure.

"This—this gentleman, may I ask who you are—" The nurse's voice was trembling, but she was still trying to maintain professional politeness.

The president did not answer her question, but took out a document with the official seal of the Spirit Medium Association headquarters from the inside of his uniform and placed it on the front desk, his movements not urgent or slow, as if dealing with a daily affair.

"According to the emergency authorization of the Association headquarters, this building needs to be evacuated immediately. All personnel, including patients, nurses, doctors, and logistics, evacuate to the designated safe area within fifteen minutes."

The nurse lowered her head and glanced at the document, her pupils shrinking.

Her hands started to tremble, but she still forced herself to calm down within a few seconds, picked up the phone on the table, and pressed the button for the whole hospital broadcast.

"Attention everyone, attention everyone. Please all departments immediately start the emergency evacuation plan. Repeat, please all departments immediately start the emergency evacuation plan. This is not a drill, this is not a drill."

The sound of the broadcast echoed in the building, the tone was steady, but the speaking speed was twice as fast as usual.

The elites had already started to act at the same time the broadcast rang.

Harding led a team to quickly pass through the corridor, confirming patients and medical personnel room by room.

While using sharp eyes to distinguish the cultist remnants that might exist among them, while guiding them to leave from the nearest safe passage.

Dirk and another team went straight to the underground floor, arranging Shadow Snake silk threads at every stairwell and door, ensuring that no suspicious personnel could take advantage of the chaos to escape during the evacuation process.

The president and two headquarters support personnel stood in the center of the lobby, their eyes falling on the stairs directly in front.

The stairs were very ordinary.

Marble steps, brass handrails, the wall surface was the same beige as the lobby.

From the first floor to the second floor, a total of twelve steps—no, it was thirteen steps.

The president's gaze stopped on the thirteenth step for a moment, and then swept again.

One, two, three—eleven, twelve, thirteen.

Thirteen steps.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Prophet." He said in a low voice.

The Prophet stood two steps behind him.

That was a man whose specific age could not be seen, his figure was thin, his face was pale, wearing a gray windbreaker without identification, the collar stood up, covering half of his face.

His eyes were a kind of almost transparent gray, and no focus could be seen in his pupils, as if looking at some other layer of this world that others could not see.

"Found it." The Prophet's voice was very light, as if coming from a very far place, "The entrance to that different space is on this step. It is the extra step represented by the step. It is called 'Step', it is a Hazard Level anomaly."

Dirk hurried back from the direction of the basement, with a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

He heard the two words "Step," and his footsteps paused.

"Step? Is it that kind of—extra step?"

The president nodded.

He had heard of this kind of anomaly, it was an abnormal phenomenon existing on the stairs.

This thing could appear on any flight of stairs.

Originally only twelve steps, it would quietly appear at the position of the thirteenth step.

It looked perfectly integrated with the surrounding steps, the material, color, and degree of wear were exactly the same as the others, and even touching it with hands could not distinguish the difference.

And the triggering mechanism of this kind of anomaly was also very special.

If anyone seriously counted the steps from one down, and counted one extra step by mistake.

When stepping on this suddenly appearing step.

You would step into the air and fall directly from the real world into a spiritual space, never to return.

Actually, this anomaly was not that simple to trigger, and ordinary people would not have the leisure to count the number of steps.

However, some children liked to do this, and occasionally they would get caught.

So although the lethality of this anomaly was not strong, the impact caused was very large.

The president turned around and looked at the elites behind him.

"Prophet and Harding's third group stay at the entrance. Others follow the predetermined plan and establish a blockade line outside. Without my order, no one is allowed to enter."

The president turned to the two headquarters support personnel.

The two support personnel were a man and a woman, they did not speak, just nodded slightly.

The gaze of the three fell on that thirteenth step again.

The president took the first step.

He walked not fast, and could even be said to be very slow.

Then the second step, the third step—he was also silently counting in his heart. He walked past the twelfth step.

The thirteenth step was under his feet.

"Thirteen—"

His foot stepped on it.

That instant, the surface of the marble step rippled like a water surface.

The center of the step seemed to be pressed into a pit by some force, and that pit became deeper and deeper, finally turning into a vertical channel downward without end.

Two headquarters support personnel followed behind the president, and the three walked into that channel simultaneously.

Their figures disappeared the moment they entered the channel, and the surface of the step restored to its original state.

No one noticed that before the president took that step, an invisible figure had already stuck behind him.

Jie Ming used the Grand Void Step to hide himself, his figure was so illusory that he didn't even have a shadow, and his breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, and even consciousness fluctuations were compressed to the lowest limit.

He followed behind the president, almost face-to-face distance.

But whether it was the president or the two Disaster Level spirit mediums, they did not notice his existence.

Jie Ming followed them into that channel.

After a short falling sensation, a gray space unfolded in front of Jie Ming.

The inside of the space was neither completely dark nor bright, but a kind of ambiguous brightness between dusk and dawn.

Enough to see the surrounding environment clearly, but it could not be said where the light came from.

Under his feet was gray ground, the touch was like a substance between solid and liquid, stepping on it would sink slightly, but would not leave footprints.

He could not see the ceiling overhead, only endless gray extending into the distance.

There were countless steps and rooms in the space.

These steps were isolated and suspended in the air.

They were distributed in various positions in the space without rules, some under his feet, some overhead, some looming in the distance.

Each step extended in a different direction, and the end could not be seen.

The rooms were also not normal.

The walls were translucent, able to see the outline of the rooms, but unable to see what was inside the rooms.

Some rooms were as big as a warehouse, some as small as a coffin, they were suspended in the air like steps, arranged without any rules.

The crowd had just entered here when they heard faint murmuring sounds.

The sound was not loud, as if many people were whispering in the distance.

The speaking speed was fast, but no word could be heard clearly.

Those sounds wrapped around from all directions simultaneously.

Jie Ming's brows frowned slightly.

He found that this kind of murmuring sound had a special power, and it looked like a kind of anomalous attack.

If someone subconsciously wanted to hear clearly what it was saying, that sound would quickly amplify in the ear.

From whispering to roaring, from roaring to screaming, until it shook people's heads, confused their thinking, and lost their judgment ability.

Ordinary people facing this kind of attack would lose consciousness within a few seconds.

But the three people walking in front of Jie Ming were not ordinary people.

The female support on the left had the first reaction, and snorted coldly without hesitation.

That cold snort was issued from her nasal cavity, and a force was also released at the same time as the cold snort.

It looked like her anomaly was also a sound-type anomaly.

Where the sound wave passed, those murmuring sounds seemed to be covered by an invisible hand, and became quiet instantly.

The power of two anomalies of the same type collided and annihilated each other.

The female support's footsteps did not pause, and continued to walk forward.

The male support on the right took advantage of this gap and locked onto a certain direction with his anomalous perception.

His body leaned forward slightly, and then rushed out like an arrow from a bow.

The president followed behind the male support, his footsteps steady, not urgent or slow.

He did not release his anomaly immediately.

His anomaly was the same as Harding's, also a storm-type anomaly, not suitable for use in this enclosed space.

Violent wind and rain would destroy the fragile structure here, and might also trigger other unknown dangers.

The figures of the three soon disappeared into the heavy light and shadow of the steps and rooms.

Jie Ming stood on the gray ground behind them, watching their backs go further and further away.

His figure gradually detached from the state of "not being concerned" under the action of the Grand Void Step, like a painting changing from transparent to opaque.

Standing on the gray ground, the surrounding murmuring sounds wandered around Jie Ming, but did not dare to approach, as if realizing Jie Ming's terror.

Jie Ming first looked at the surrounding environment, and then opened the Eye of All-Use.

Golden light lit up in the depths of his pupils, and the surrounding gray space became transparent in his eyes.

Those anomalous structures floating in the air were stripped layer by layer in the field of vision of the Eye of All-Use.

Then he saw those murmuring anomalies hidden in every corner of this space.

It had no fixed form, like smoke constantly twisting, curled up under the steps, in the interlayers of the rooms, and in the cracks of the gray ground.

From the distribution of power and the situation of symbiosis, this murmuring anomaly was not the owner of this space, but a dweller.

In the real world, it could integrate into the rules, leading to difficulty in capturing.

But in this different space created by "steps," the rules were incomplete, they could not integrate, and could only hide in this semi-solid form.

The corner of Jie Ming's mouth bent up.

This thing was simply within reach.

He stretched out his right hand, five fingers spread, palm facing down.

Spiritual power surged out from his body, quickly weaving into a huge sealing array in the gray-white mid-air.

The diameter of the array exceeded twenty meters, covering a large area above Jie Ming's head.

Blue rune lines unfolded in the void like spider webs, each line precisely locking onto a part of the murmuring anomaly in this space.

The murmuring anomaly felt the danger.

It rushed out from its hiding place, trying to escape to a farther direction.

But it could not integrate into the rules of the different space, so it could only run and hide like an ordinary animal.

The light of the sealing array shrank inward suddenly.

Blue runes were like a closing fishing net, capturing all the murmuring anomalous power in this space in one go.

The semi-transparent smoke-like body kept shrinking under the squeezing of the runes, from a smoke column more than ten centimeters long to a solid bead the size of a thumb, and then from the bead to a crystal the size of a grain of rice.

Jie Ming compressed the array to the extreme, and the final form of the crystal was a particle smaller than sesame seeds emitting pale gray light, floating above his palm.

Jie Ming took out a glass test tube from his internal cave and put the pale gray particles into it.

After sealing the test tube, he put it into his pocket, Jie Ming raised his head, his gaze sweeping over those steps and rooms deeper in this space that had not been cleaned up yet.

The president and the two support personnel had already walked far away.

Their spiritual power marks were still moving, deeper and deeper into the core area of this different space.

However, Jie Ming did not intend to follow them for the time being.

After all, his purpose in coming here was never to help the Association fight, but—collecting materials.

In this different space, besides those powerful existences attracted by the president and the three, there were also a large number of anomalies with low levels but special characteristics like the murmuring anomaly scattered.

They were hidden in every corner, unable to escape in this sealed space.

For Jie Ming, this was simply an open treasure house.

Jie Ming turned around and walked in the opposite direction of the president.

His footsteps were light, and could even be said to be leisurely.

The Eye of All-Use maintained an open state, and the Fate System was also operating at low power.

Whenever he walked through an area, the Eye of All-Use would automatically scan the surrounding space, marking all hidden anomalies one by one.

Then, the sealing array unfolded, shrank, and harvested.

One, two, three.

Danger Level, Danger Level, Hazard Level.