Ding Shaobai found himself sprawled on cool, chipped linoleum, the abrupt silence a physical blow. The morgue’s heavy steel door, now a solid, unyielding barrier, had separated him from Lu Feixing and the Calamity Bride in an instant. He pushed himself upright, his gaze sweeping over the unfamiliar, sterile-sickly green walls of what appeared to be a pediatric ward. Tiny, rusted beds lined the room, each with a faded, tattered toy — a headless rag doll, a one-eyed stuffed rabbit. The air reeked of sweet rot and copper. He ran a hand over his short, cropped hair, a sense of unease gnawing at him. The *Midnight Absolution* app on his phone remained stubbornly dark, no new objectives, no immediate threats. The sudden quiet was unnerving, a stark contrast to the thrumming, omnipresent dread he had grown accustomed to. He stepped out, checking the hallway. It stretched into a series of identical patient rooms, each door slightly ajar, revealing more empty beds and forgotten playthings. The silence was absolute, broken only by the soft scuff of his own shoes. This quiet was wrong. The app always had a background hum of ambient fear, a distant wail, or the rhythmic creak of unseen gears. He pressed his ear against one of the doors. Nothing. It felt as though the realm had paused, a playback error in the macabre performance. Then he saw them. At the far end of the hallway, near an intake counter piled with rusted medical instruments, paper-effigy orderlies milled in place. Not advancing, not reacting, just… swaying. Their red-ink smiles were fixed, but their movements were jerky, unnatural, like puppets whose strings had tangled. One effigy rotated its head in a slow full circle, twitching at every quarter turn. Another repeatedly lifted an empty paper syringe, aiming at vacant air. Shaobai’s brow furrowed. This was no calculated pursuit; the mechanism was choking on its own scripts. Feixing. The reckless con artist had broken protocol, dragging the boss herself into his schemes. The architecture, hardcoded for terror and slaughter, foundered against a lunatic variable: Lu Feixing's weaponized apathy. A low, guttural shriek tore through the silence from deeper within the ward. The paper figures stiffened, then scuttled forward as if tripped by a relay switch. Their papery skirts rustled, a dry whisper of death. They were still erratic, bumping into each other, stumbling over their own flimsy feet, but their numbers were overwhelming. Ten, twenty, more. He ducked into the nearest room, slamming the door shut. The thin wood offered no real protection, but it bought him a moment. He peered through a crack. They were gathering outside, a rustling wall of red and white, their movements more fluid now, their focus narrowing. The glitches were patching themselves. Shaobai’s mind raced. His survival manual, meticulously memorized, offered no counsel for ‘boss’s girlfriend breaks the game.’ His usual strategy of strict adherence to rules, identifying patterns, and exploiting environmental hazards felt useless against this erratic horde. He needed to think like Feixing. He needed to be… illogical. Lazy. What would Feixing do if he wanted to get past an army of paper dolls without any effort? He wouldn't fight. He would confuse them, make them *think* he wasn't a threat, or that he was doing something else entirely. He looked around the pediatric room, his eyes catching on a small, dusty music box on a bedside table. A faded ballerina pirouetted on its lid. An idea, as absurd as it was desperate, sparked. This was a children’s ward. The app's entities were prisoners of the code, following their programmed roles within the context of the instance. An attendant's primary script in a pediatric hall might still retain some vestige of its original function, however twisted. Taking a deep breath, Shaobai pushed the door open, stepping out into the corridor. The horde froze, their paper faces turned towards him. He raised his hands, not in surrender, but in a strange, almost theatrical gesture. Then, in a voice that felt alien even to himself, he began to sing. A lullaby. A forgotten tune from his own childhood, soft and lilting, utterly out of place in this realm of terror. His voice cracked on the higher notes, but he forced himself to continue, swaying slightly, as if comforting an invisible child. The result struck fast. The paper shapes halted. Their head-tilting, their jerky arm movements, their very advance, ceased. Their red-inked eyes, usually fixed on him with murderous intent, seemed to blur, losing focus. A few swayed gently, their forms becoming less rigid, their rustling softened to a whisper that sounded almost like sighing. Their internal programming, confronted with an input that defied 'attack' or 'flee' parameters, seemed to short-circuit. They were looking at him, but not *seeing* him as a threat, but as… something else entirely. A bizarre, protective instinct seemed to flicker in their hollow gazes. Shaobai kept singing, his voice wavering, but his eyes scanning the periphery. The lullaby wasn't a weapon, but a distraction, a momentary patch in the app's distorted reality. He saw a narrow gap open in their ranks, a fleeting path to the end of the corridor. He kept singing, locking eyes with the painted face nearest him. He began to walk, slowly, deliberately, sidestepping the frozen figures. One paper hand reached out, brushing his sleeve, but it didn't grab, didn't tear. It simply drifted past, like a dry leaf in a breeze. The surrounding air still bit cold, but the danger stalled, blunted by the deliberate nonsense. He reached the desk, voice raspy, and clamped his jaw shut. The figures behind him stayed caught in their trance, tilting side to side. On the dusty counter, amidst corroded scalpels and empty glass vials, sat a phonograph. It was an antique, made of dark, polished wood, its brass horn gleaming faintly. A single, dark shellac record spun slowly on its turntable, emitting a low, almost imperceptible hum that vibrated in his teeth. This was it. A cold vibration hummed through the wood, a transmission line tethering the cursed ward to its overseer. Shaobai reached out, his fingers trembling, aiming for the spinning record. One smash, one shatter, and this entire twisted game might finally break. His palm was inches away when his phone, which had been silent for so long, flared to life, its screen blindingly bright. [WARNING: HOSTILE INTERFERENCE DETECTED. ATTEMPTING TO DISMANTLE CORE SYSTEM. IMMEDIATE DELETION PROTOCOL INITIATED.] A mechanical voice, devoid of inflection, boomed not from the phone’s speaker, but from the air itself, echoing in his bones. It was the app, the system, speaking directly to him. His vision blurred as grey noise hissed across his eyesight. He felt a pressure, immense and invisible, pressing in on him, threatening to tear him apart cell by cell. The paper nurses, as if jolted awake, began to stir, their rustling growing louder, more sinister, their red eyes refocused on him with renewed malice.

Exploiting the Glitch