The abandoned hospital's outer walls shimmered under Lin Shen's augmented reality glasses. What appeared as weather-stained concrete to normal eyes resolved into hexagonal light panels cycling through camouflage patterns—urban decay one moment, pristine white tiles the next. His HUD flashed warnings: *Photon Manipulation Detected - Recommended Safety Distance: 327 Meters.*
Lin Che pressed a palm against the illusory wall. "It's warm." His breath fogged a section, revealing brief transparency—a corridor lined with IV bags pulsing like jellyfish. "Like Mother's incubator lab."
"Don't touch anything." Lin Shen adjusted his glasses' frequency filter. The wall dissolved into a holographic membrane, beyond which floated security drones with papier-mâché demon masks. Their LiDAR scanners painted the brothers in crimson grids.
Inside, the lobby's digital decay manifested as time fractures. A reception desk alternated between polished modernity and worm-eaten ruin. Lin Che's sneaker kicked a rotting hospital chart—the paper disintegrated mid-air, reassembling as a touchscreen tablet showing their mother's patient file.
*Diagnosis: Quantum Pregnancy (Gestation Period: 99 Days)*
*Treatment: Soul Anchoring via Luopan Matrix*
Lin Shen's glasses captured the text milliseconds before it pixelated. "This isn't a hospital. It's a rendering farm for..."
Drones shrieked. The brothers dove behind a collapsing column as porcelain-faced machines descended, their bamboo rotor blades spraying hallucinogenic pollen. Lin Che's amber pendant glowed, dissolving the spores into harmless static.
Level 3's quarantine zone revealed the facility's true horror. Lin Shen's thermal vision exposed patients fused with beds—human tumors growing copper wire capillaries that fed into ceiling sockets. Their moans synchronized with flickering LED sutures along the walls.
"Don't look directly." Lin Shen shoved his brother against a biohazard locker. "Their brain activity's mirroring ours."
A patient's head rotated 180 degrees. Lin Che's hyperthymesia recognized the face—their childhood pediatrician, supposedly retired to Hainan. The thing's jaw unhinged, spewing molten circuit boards that solidified into a crawling firewall.
Retreating to a stairwell, Lin Shen discovered his forearm bleeding. A drone's rotor had grazed him, the wound revealing subcutaneous barcodes. His glasses translated them—a countdown matching the amber's timer.
"Let me see!" Lin Che reached for the injury. Their hands touched, triggering a shared memory flash—Mother injecting Lin Shen with a syringe filled with liquid shadow.
The stairwell lights died. In the dark, Lin Che's voice trembled. "Your blood...it's not reflecting light right."
Lin Shen's glasses switched to ultraviolet mode. His bloodstream glowed with bioluminescent pathogens shaped like tiny Luopans.
The rooftop exit door creaked open to a nightmare diorama. Seven neonatal incubators formed a hexagram under the blood moon. Six held mummified infants clutching USB cords instead of umbilical lines. The seventh's occupant made Lin Che vomit lychee gummies—a fetal version of himself floating in amber liquid, spine connected to a server rack.
Lin Shen's glasses identified the preservation fluid's chemical signature—identical to his brother's saliva.
Before either could react, the drones herded them backward. A holographic discharge nurse materialized, her face a shifting mosaic of Mother and Dr. Gu. "Patient 07's guardians have arrived," she intoned through decaying vocal processors.
The rooftop dissolved. They awoke strapped to surgical tables in a delivery room, watching through mirror ceilings as their childhood selves played below. A laser scalpel descended toward Lin Shen's coded forearm.
Somewhere, a phone rang with Father's ringtone.