Ding Shaobai moved with the practiced stealth of a predator, or perhaps, prey too long hunted. His worn boots barely scuffed the debris-strewn linoleum of the surgical wing, each step paced to avoid the crunch of shattered glass. He clutched his phone, the screen a faint glow illuminating the crinkled edges of the ‘Midnight Absolution’ rulebook he’d downloaded days ago, memorizing every line of its chilling directives. This wasn’t a game to him; it was a brutal, relentless puzzle, and every broken rule meant a grotesque violation of flesh. He’d seen too many players reduced to scattered fragments to treat it otherwise.
The air here, even more so than the morgue, carried the sickly-sweet scent of disinfectant struggling against decay. Overhead, bare bulbs flickered erratically, casting elongated, dancing shadows that mimicked grasping hands. The walls, once pristine white, now wept streaks of something reddish-brown, like ancient, unstanched wounds. He paused, pressing himself against a bank of rusted lockers, listening. The distant, mournful strains of a pipa, a funeral melody, drifted from deeper within the hospital, a constant, chilling accompaniment to their unwilling ritual.
[RULE #7: Silence the Weeping. Surgical Wing Nurses require a specific lullaby to cease their vigil. Failure to comply results in instant pacification by dismemberment.]
Shaobai’s thumb traced the text. He’d already found the ‘lullaby’ – a forgotten phonograph in a dusty storage closet, playing a tinny, cyclical tune of a child’s nursery rhyme. The trick wasn’t just playing it; it was winding it *before* they took form. The *Midnight Absolution* app didn’t offer second chances. He had timed his sprint, knowing the attendants gathered near the main operating theater. He needed to clear the double doors before the spring unwound.
A soft, papery rustling scraped around the bend. Shaobai froze. It was too soon; bile flared at the back of his tongue. He had not heard the horn fall quiet. His thumb grazed the screen. No new notification. He squinted into the dimness. Three figures, vaguely humanoid, began to coalesce from the shadows. They weren’t flesh and blood, but meticulously crafted paper effigies, larger than any human, their faces painted with tear-streaked expressions of perpetual sorrow. Each carried a tray laden with rusted surgical instruments, their movements stiff, jerky, like marionettes caught in a phantom wind.
They swayed, a thin, shrill lament whistling through folded throats. Shaobai stayed pinned to the steel lockers. He had violated no rule, yet here they stood. Had the needle skipped? He glanced back toward the utility closet; the scratchy loop still leaked down the hall. Then the posture registered: the effigies were lamenting, but their painted pupils aimed elsewhere. They faced the junction leading toward the main rotunda, their flat shoulders trembling with hollow grief.
Shaobai wedged himself deeper between the lockers. This wasn’t his ambush. The plucking of the pipa grew sharper down the hall, punctuated by another sound: a human voice, drawling and casual, humming along with the funeral dirge.
He edged forward, keeping the rust-eaten gurneys between himself and the corridor, creeping toward the rotunda threshold. The air thickened with frost and burned incense, raising gooseflesh across his forearms. Yet the paper attendants ignored him, their wails pitching higher, as if bent double under a sorrow that dwarfed their own mechanical mourning.
He peered around the splintered frame. The rotunda glowed scarlet under hundreds of suspended wedding sashes. In the center, a man strolled with an insulting lack of urgency. It was Lu Feixing, draped in embroidered silk robes, completely untroubled by the surrounding rot. Shaobai had glimpsed him in the morgue—an insolent smirk that had struck him as either suicidal or breathtakingly stupid.
But it wasn't Feixing who held Shaobai’s attention, not truly. It was the entity beside him. The Calamity Bride, Rong Qinglin. She moved like a phantom, her blood-soaked red veil obscuring her face, her embroidered robes shimmering in the dim light. Her ornate jian hung sheathed at her sash. She walked alongside Feixing without striking. The paper figures huddled at the far balustrade, their shrill keening drowned beneath her stifling stillness.
Feixing, arms casually folded behind his head, was humming off-key. He glanced sideways at the spirit. “You know, Bride,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the dead floor. “This whole place really needs better lighting. A beautiful woman like you deserves to be seen properly. All this gloom is a disservice.”
Shaobai watched, paralyzed. He knew the parameters by heart. Rule #1 demanded respect for the deceased; Rule #3 forbade blocking their path. And Rule #4—his thumb twitched over the screen:
[RULE #4: THE BRIDE’S VEIL IS SACROSANCT. ANY CONTACT, INTENTIONAL OR ACCIDENTAL, WITH THE CALAMITY BRIDE’S VEIL WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE DISMEMBERMENT. NO EXCEPTIONS.]
Feixing raised a hand. His fingers drifted toward the fluttering, blood-red silk that masked Qinglin’s features. Shaobai stopped breathing. The con artist’s knuckles grazed the forbidden hem with a calm, deliberate caress. The strings of the pipa snapped into sudden stillness. The wailing collapsed into a dead, suffocating quiet. Shaobai braced for the tearing of tendons, the shearing arc of an unseen blade, and the scream of a ruined man.