132. A Certain Doctor With a Flair for Overactive Imagination

Out of habit, Chen Sheng reached out to set down his glasses, but he paused, looked down, and found his hand empty.

"Where are those glasses?"

He asked the question subconsciously, only to realize that the surrounding environment felt wrong. He looked around.

Dust covered every surface. Cracks ran across the walls and floor, making the place look like an abandoned building. The old glass in the window frame looked ready to shatter, and the wooden door at the entrance had collapsed, allowing a constant draft of cold air to pour in.

"Is this my rented apartment?"

"Did the landlord get hauled off to pay his debts? And since there’s no sucker willing to buy it in this condition, it’s just been left to rot?"

"But that doesn't make sense. How long have I been playing? Did my traversal glitch?"

Chen Sheng muttered to himself, his face full of shock. As his gaze shifted, he noticed a young girl standing nearby. He fell silent for a moment.

Then, feigning surprise, he said, "Oh? Did you transmigrate too?"

"Yeah," Yu Youxin pouted. She suddenly felt like she was acting in a play with a complete idiot.

Chen Sheng was stumped by her simple response. Deciding to drop the act, he scanned the surroundings and asked, "Am I still in the game? Did that healing game have a bug?"

"How would I know..." Yu Youxin glanced at him. This guy had suddenly bolted back from that eerie world, catching her completely off guard. If she hadn’t been quick on her feet, she would have blown her cover already.

But come to think of it, why was she playing along with him? Why let him continue to run wild in that bizarre world? Yu Youxin pondered this, but her little head couldn't come up with a good reason. Finally, she just settled on one: "Well, I guess I wanted to see what would happen if Old Chen discovered that it wasn't a game, but a real world." Thinking this, it felt logical enough.

"Where is this? It’s not that 'realm of ghosts and monsters' you mentioned, is it?" Chen Sheng guessed.

"That's exactly what it is!"

"So this is what you meant by a realm of ghosts and monsters..." Chen Sheng was surprised, but not entirely shocked, as the girl had mentioned it to him before. With that preconceived notion, he accepted the reality quickly.

"What mission are you doing here?" Chen Sheng asked.

"Old Chen, why do you keep assuming I’m here for a mission?" The girl was genuinely baffled. Why was Chen Sheng constantly filling in the blanks with his own imagination, inventing missions, and then, when no reward appeared upon completion, blaming it on some non-existent game developer?

Was his imagination too wild? Or was this the very reason he could master stone-carving techniques and, while suffering from a qi deviation, skip the second and third levels to master the fourth? The girl fell into deep thought. For some reason, she felt that their roles back at the hospital should have been reversed.

"If you aren't doing a mission, why are you here? Did you end up here by accident, too?" Chen Sheng asked as if it were obvious.

"When you put it that way, it does make sense." Yu Youxin nodded her little head and asked, "So, do you have a mission?"

"A party quest," Chen Sheng said, recounting what he had encountered.

Yu Youxin had witnessed everything Chen Sheng went through, but she never expected that a psychiatrist—who seemingly carried his medical license everywhere—could hallucinate so vividly! But then again, this was typical of him.

"So you..."

"Just help me fill the party slot!" Chen Sheng cut her off.

The girl: (ノ｀Д)ノ
What kind of nonsense was that!

"I want to hit you," the girl said, expressing her most honest inner thoughts.

Chen Sheng: "..."

A moment later, he muttered to himself, "Am I suffering from auditory hallucinations?" Was this something the girl he remembered—the one with the kind, unflappable nature—would say? Or had she finally let herself go in this game? Thinking this, Chen Sheng found the explanation perfectly reasonable.

"I just meant for us to team up so we can collect the police department's stipend and benefits," Chen Sheng quickly explained, realizing his phrasing had been easily misunderstood. He didn't think it was entirely his fault; in his mind, young people were usually quick to understand things. If they weren't, then youth wouldn't be the best time for learning. To him, his words shouldn't have been hard to grasp for a teenager.

It wasn't as if she were a hundred years old; why was her comprehension so slow? Chen Sheng grumbled to himself.

Yu Youxin, completely unaware that she had been labeled as "possibly elderly," "dim-witted," and a "dullard," rolled her eyes at him without hesitation.

"Do you even need those things?" she asked with a helpless expression.

Although her own dynasty had long since been buried, after she woke up, she had adapted to the current regime of that eerie world and knew exactly what these stipends and benefits were. Ultimately, it all boiled down to two words: currency.

Did this psychiatrist—who seemed to carry his medical license everywhere—really need that? Not at all! Not to mention the loot from the people he’d killed, he hadn't even finished spending the anonymous gold cards he’d plucked from corpses!

"I don't," Chen Sheng admitted.

He knew that the police department's benefits were just money—something he viewed as mere game currency, devoid of real value.

"But I need this mission to get a promotion! How else am I supposed to unlock a special class?" Chen Sheng said matter-of-factly.

"A special class?" A giant question mark appeared over the girl's head. Had this psychiatrist wandered into some other bizarre fantasy?

"Yeah! I found a skill book earlier, something about martial arts. If you train it to the limit, you can harm ghosts. That has to be a special class, right? Like a Martial Artist or something. So, I figured the police department must have similar special classes, like 'Exorcist Sheriff.' I haven't triggered it yet, so I assume my rank isn't high enough." Chen Sheng laid out his perfectly logical deduction.

The girl: (⊙_⊙)?