When Lin An woke up in a hospital bed at the Scarlet Sanatorium, his vision was already filled with eerie scrolling comments
“Welcome to Horror Instance No. 741, Player Lin An.”
“Break the rules and you die. Follow them... and you die even more miserably.”
The rules posted by the bed say, “Do not open the door at night,” but the cries for help outside are drawing closer. The white pills brought by the nurse can save lives, yet he saw with his own eyes the patient in the next bed grow scales after swallowing one. The System says, “Room 404 does not exist,” but at midnight he hears fingernails scratching inside the wall, in time with his heartbeat.
The viewers in the comments are betting he won’t last three hours. What they don’t know is that Lin An has never been one to play by the rules.
While others tremble at the eye in the peephole, he stares right back with a smile. When the “Patroller” hunts through the corridors, he turns the tables and seals off its escape route. While the other players are still debating whether the rules are real, he is already stepping over the corpses left by “rule violations” and making his way to the heart of the instance.
“Rules are for prey,” Lin An says, wiping the blood from his fingertips as a golden notification bursts across his vision. “And I’m the hunter.”
[!!! He’s lost it! He actually took apart the Red Nurse’s stethoscope!]
[Holy crap, what a move! He broke the rules three times and still managed to kill it? Is he even human?]
[Wait... look at the instance announcement: “Warning: Player Lin An is suspected of contaminating the source of the rules.”]
Lin An looks up at the unknowable gaze fixed on him from deep within the instance, a cold smile tugging at his lips.
“Rules? From today on, I am the rules.”
In the strange stories about rules I watched before, the protagonists were either too cowardly or reckless, but the male protagonist Lin An is different. In the Scarlet Sanatorium dungeon, he regarded the rules as a "prey's weakness". Others were afraid of breaking the rules and would die. He exploited the punishment to find loopholes, such as using cries for help to lure monsters into revealing their weaknesses, and dismantling props to find cores. This "active hunting" mode adds a layer of excitement to the horror. The dungeon is logically self-consistent, and the male protagonist's growth is not abrupt. It is suitable for readers who want to change their tastes, and can see new ways to play the rules game.
Finally found the strange story about the rules of appetite. Lin An's setting in the Scarlet Sanatorium is very interesting. The rules are full of traps. For example, if you open the door at night, you will die, but the cry for help is very suspicious. This sense of contradiction makes it full of horror. The male protagonist did not follow common sense, dismantled the stethoscope, countered the patrols, and found loopholes by violating regulations. The reversal of the origin of the pollution rules in the later stage was also reasonable. The details of the dungeon are in place. The sound of nails in the wall and the description of scales are very underworld. Those who like wits and thrillers can try it. The pace is tight and there is not too much nonsense.