The blond young man gave an awkward, sheepish laugh and said, "I was just joking, there's no need to take it so seriously."
With that, he lay back down, looking as though he had no desire to deal with anyone further.
The doctor turned to Yan Ao and said, "Get some good rest. We'll be at our destination soon."
Yan Ao still had plenty of questions lingering in his mind, but sensing that the atmosphere was wrong, he gave up on asking. Besides, he really was exhausted, both physically and mentally.
Lying back down on the stretcher, Yan Ao quickly drifted off into a hazy sleep. How much time passed, he could not tell, before a soft voice sounded beside his ear: "Little brother, time to wake up."
Yan Ao opened his eyes, once again meeting the nurse's gentle, smiling face. He stared blankly for a moment before asking in a daze, "Have we arrived?"
"Mm, we got here a while ago. I saw you were still asleep and didn't want to wake you, but it's time to change your dressing now," the nurse said with a smile.
With her help, Yan Ao sat up. He hadn't really noticed it the night before, but now he realized his injuries were far more severe than he had imagined; the mere movement made his chest burn with a searing pain.
"Sit still, I'll take off the gauze for you," the nurse said, reaching out to gently unwrap the blood-stained bandages on Yan Ao's body.
Because the gauze had stuck to his wounds in a few places, Yan Ao couldn't help letting out silent hisses of pain during the process.
Seeing this, the nurse smiled and said, "It's okay to cry out if it hurts."
Yan Ao gave an awkward smile, indicating he didn't need to.
"It might hurt even more in a moment. Are you really sure you'll be fine?" The nurse blinked playfully, placed the unwrapped gauze onto a metal tray, and then took a bottle of alcohol and some cotton swabs from the medicine box beside her. With practiced ease, she poured alcohol onto a handful of swabs and began applying them to Yan Ao's wounds.
"Ah, that hurts!" Yan Ao finally failed to hold back and cried out. He hadn't expected it to hurt this badly. He had wanted to maintain his composure in front of a pretty girl, but the pain was simply too intense—facial control was completely out of the window.
Seeing Yan Ao's expression, the nurse couldn't help letting out a couple of giggles. She disinfected his wounds even more gently, soothing him as she worked: "There, there, it'll be over soon. Just bear with it."
Yan Ao was amused by her tone, and the gloomy mood that had weighed on him earlier was instantly diluted quite a bit. He endured the pain and smiled, saying, "You aren't treating me like a little kid, are you?"
The nurse cast a sidelong glance at Yan Ao and said, "You *are* a little kid, strictly speaking. A high school student, right?"
Yan Ao corrected her, "I've already graduated from high school. I'm about to start college."
The nurse replied with a straight face, "Even college students who haven't experienced the baptism of society are still just kids."
Yan Ao: "……"
After cleaning his wounds, the nurse applied fresh medicine and re-bandaged him with clean gauze. Once she was nearly finished, she packed up her medical kit and advised him, "For the next few days, try not to move around too much. If the wounds tear open, it'll become troublesome."
Yan Ao repeatedly expressed his thanks. As his peripheral vision inadvertently caught the name tag on the nurse's uniform, he couldn't help asking, "Your name is Yan Ziyu?"
"Hmm?" The nurse was startled for a second, then glanced down at her own name tag before breaking into a warm smile. "That's right. And what's your name?"
"My name is Yan Ao. Same surname as you," Yan Ao said, extending a hand.
"I didn't expect us to share the same family name. For the sake of both being Yans, I suppose I'll take you on as my younger brother," Yan Ziyu said playfully, reaching out to shake his hand.
"……"
Walking down from the ambulance with Yan Ziyu, Yan Ao found that they had arrived near an urban village. Judging by the nearby street signs, they were likely still within Hengzhou City.
It was eight o'clock in the morning. Not far away, the doctor from yesterday and the blond young man were sitting together in a small park. Beside them were two other people Yan Ao had not seen before.
"Little brother, you're awake?" The doctor noticed Yan Ao and greeted him.
The blond young man glanced contemptuously and said nothing, though his gaze quickly drifted over to Yan Ziyu standing beside Yan Ao, lewdly roaming over her flesh-colored stockings and thighs.
"Sit down, let's introduce ourselves to each other," said the doctor, who seemed to be the leader of this small group. As soon as Yan Ao sat down, the doctor spoke on his own initiative: "My name is Ma Xingyou. I'm a doctor, 31 years old."
"Yan Ao, just graduated from high school, 18 this year," Yan Ao said, proactively extending a hand with gratitude. "Thank you guys for saving me yesterday."
"You're welcome, it was just a matter of lifting a finger," Ma Xingyou said, waving his hand.
Ma Xingyou then introduced the rest of the group to Yan Ao. The blond young man was named Ouyang Zhi, 22 years old, and worked as a street thug—no wonder he had such a fierce look on his face.
As for the other two: on the left was a sturdy-looking fellow wearing a blue sleeveless undershirt, with muscles as well-developed as a fitness coach's. His name was Mo Dongqiang, 30 years old, a construction site worker.
On the right was a tall, thin, dark-skinned handsome man with an indifferent expression. His name was Xie Renjie, 25 years old, a restaurant chef.
The two of them had been responsible for driving and riding in the passenger seat last night respectively, which was why Yan Ao was only meeting them formally today.
As for Yan Ziyu, Yan Ao already knew her name: 25 years old, a professional nurse. However, from Ma Xingyou's introduction, Yan Ao learned that the two of them were actually a romantic couple.
Aside from Ouyang Zhi the thug, everyone else welcomed Yan Ao. Yan Ziyu prepared some breakfast, served a bowl to each person, and then sat down beside Ma Xingyou.
While eating breakfast, the group began discussing their experiences from the day before, and before long, Yan Ao finally managed to figure out the current situation.
The outcome was worse than he could have imagined.
Ma Xingyou and the others, just like himself, had been trapped in enclosed spaces yesterday and forced through a brutal survival game governed by those mysterious prompts.
These enclosed spaces included hospitals, office buildings, construction sites, bars, and so on. As long as one was inside them, everyone had to follow the demands of those mysterious prompts; otherwise, death was the only outcome.
Everyone's experiences were largely similar. Take Ma Xingyou and Yan Ziyu, for example: they had been working at the hospital that day when, without any warning, the mysterious prompts appeared. They went through several rounds of deadly games arranged by the prompts alongside their colleagues and patients, and in the end, they were the only two who escaped the hospital alive.
"This disaster—let's just call it a disaster—after it happened, the entire world seemed to change. As you can see, the whole of Hengzhou City has become a dead city, and everyone else seems to have completely vanished. Anyway, ever since we escaped the hospital yesterday until now, besides you guys, we haven't seen any other living people," Ma Xingyou concluded.
Even without Ma Xingyou spelling it out, Yan Ao had already noticed the surrounding environment. Taking this urban village as an example, walking along the way just now, he had noticed that those houses looked as if they had been abandoned for a long time. Not only were their exterior walls dilapidated, but looking into the houses from the outside, there was no sign whatsoever that anyone lived in them.
"There's also something else—did any of you notice the culprit behind this disaster?"
"The culprit?" Hearing Ma Xingyou's words, Yan Ao couldn't help recalling the very first prompt he had received. That prompt had been sent directly to his phone, and its contents back then were...
Either participate in the game, become a toy of the gods and endlessly please them, or... die.