Chapter 8: White Door

The blood-colored last words within the deep crimson resentment increased Wu Chang's Life, Endurance, and Willpower attributes by 1 point each, and his Inspiration attribute by 2 points.

A total increase of five attribute points equaled the gain of one level.

Beyond the attribute point increase, the more important drop was the item.

The deep crimson resentment dropped a palm-sized medicine box, containing six recesses for pills.

The owner of the resentment had used half; now, three pale blue pills remained inside the box.

"Item Name: Whispers of the Nameless."

"Item Type: consumable."

"Item Rank: C."

"Item Description: Upon use, gain the 'Forced Comprehension' state. Under this state, the user's Willpower will never drop to zero, and they will not suffer damage from low Willpower. Duration: one minute."

"Note: Mysterious whispers fill my ears. Amazing—I'm gradually understanding everything."

Wu Chang took out one pill and examined it, noticing it trembled slightly, causing ripples to form across its smooth surface.

Quietly sensing it, he felt something seemed to be contained within.

Not the motor of some toy, but a faint, drifting sound.

He returned the blue pill to his personal space and stored it carefully.

From Blood Thorn on the bus and the patients at Moonlight Sanatorium, Wu Chang could see Willpower as another kind of health bar.

If Willpower drops below a safe threshold, a person descends into madness; if it collapses to zero, they become a living corpse.

Preventing Willpower from reaching zero is an extremely effective survival item.

Though he was a newbie just joining the game, he could guess that in the Abyss game, where there is no room for error, survival-type consumables are no less valuable than items of the same rank.

And the deep crimson resentment gave him three at once!

Boss is generous!

But even more generous was Jin Dun, the sanatorium's top dog, who dropped a fortune in coins.

He not only dropped two blood-colored last words but also several quest items.

Good brother, Jin Dun—you've been wronged. You should be called Gold Vault.

Beneath the bed, in the iron box, besides the white key specified by the blood-colored last words, over a dozen unidentifiable small objects, and a solid gold pocket watch, there was a conspicuously prominent black key.

He had seen this key on Zhu Li; Zhu Li had said during the day that the basement and fourth floor of the sanatorium were forbidden to ordinary patients, and this black key could open the door to one of them.

The fourth floor of the sanatorium was the staff rest area, accessible only to medical personnel.

The basement was the critical care ward; under normal circumstances, patients could only be wheeled in, never walk in.

The white key desired by the deep crimson resentment corresponded to a hidden white door in the basement; without doubt, the black key corresponded to the basement.

With the Traveler's Talisman, the once perilous night became even freer to move about than daylight.

With daylight still far off, Wu Chang headed straight for the sanatorium's basement.

Moonlight Sanatorium seemed not to have equipped its staff with Traveler's Talismans; the sanatorium at night was eerily empty, even the night nurses nowhere to be seen.

This made his movement extremely smooth—he descended to the first floor, passed several barred iron gates, and used the black key to open the door to the basement area.

Upon entering the basement, a pungent stench hit him—complex, indescribable, like rotten, moldy raw meat tossed into a trash bin filled with vomit and slop, then left to bake under the sun for three days and nights before fermenting.

Merely inhaling a whiff made Wu Chang dizzy; he crawled back to the first floor, put on a thick medical mask, and only then dared return to the basement.

The basement's layout resembled the above-ground wards: same corridors, same room arrangements; the only difference was that the iron doors were heavier and could only be opened from the outside.

Through the iron grates, he could see the critical care patients, strapped to wheeled beds, wrapped in layers of leather restraints, with iron chains coiled around them for securing.

Even so, they struggled constantly, trying to break free from their restraints.

Some had even succeeded.

In Critical Care Room Three, the patient's leather restraint had a hole the size of a fist on the side of the abdomen.

At first, Wu Chang thought the patient had clawed through it with his nails, but upon closer inspection, he saw that the "fingers" protruding from the hole were strips of peeled, bloody, fleshy tentacles.

They were gnawing at each other with tiny mouths at their tips, corroding the leather restraints with their oozing blood.

Wu Chang frowned outside the room—could this really be a delusion?

Deeper inside the critical care ward was the sanatorium's morgue.

Patients who died of delusions were stored here, kept in their restrained poses, chained to the walls on both sides, awaiting burial in the town's cemetery after everything ended.

Following the vision seen in the resentment, he found a hidden passage at the far end of the basement level; beyond it was the pure white iron door that had appeared in the deep crimson resentment.

Staring at the white door before him, he recalled the deep crimson resentment he had seen on Jin Dun.

This time, the resentment's owner was stronger than the mage and the gambler, in both overall physical strength and dungeon-clearing capability.

Whether due to his immense power or some other special reason, this deep crimson resentment contained far more information than any other resentment.

The resentment's owner was a doctor who, shortly after the game began, passed the sanatorium's internal evaluation with his exceptional skills, donned a white coat, and became a doctor.

Moreover, he could move freely through the sanatorium at night without a Traveler's Talisman.

With his formidable strength and veteran player experience, he quickly completed a preliminary exploration of the sanatorium and discovered the hidden room in the basement.

Entering the room required opening the white door, but through his crisis perception, he sensed that forcing it open without a key would bring danger.

After days of covert observation, he noticed Jin Dun could enter and exit the white door freely, and set his sights on Jin Dun.

Jin Dun was cautious and powerful; killing him outright was difficult, so the doctor planned to use Jin Dun's own method—winning the key through gambling.

Unfortunately, every player who gambled with Jin Dun had died, and no one escaped the dungeon to bring back the information, causing countless players to repeat the same mistake on Jin Dun.

To the doctor, Jin Dun was merely an elite monster in the dungeon—easily crushed with a flick of his finger.

But he didn't know that Jin Dun at the gambling table possessed some special cheating ability—even gamblers had been outplayed, and the doctor, unskilled at gambling, naturally fell for it, dying mysteriously at the table.

Unlike the gambler, the doctor's obsession with the white door was especially heavy, as if something behind the door was calling to him.

Even the blood-colored last words within the resentment still thought:

【Find a way to enter the white door.】

This was the Abyss Game—even a veteran player as powerful as the Doctor would be doomed beyond redemption if he took a single wrong step.

Wu Chang shook his head, pulling his thoughts back to the present. He took out the white key, eager to see what exactly lay behind the white door the Doctor had been so fixated on.