34: Chapter 34 The Lin Shoushan in the Archives Room Is Not Necessarily the Same Lin Shoushan

"Brat."

"Didn't I tell you not to be in such a rush to save me?"

Under the desk lamp, the man wearing old work clothes had his back to the group.

His voice was exactly like Lin Shoushan's.

Even the hint of laziness in his tone seemed as if it had been ripped straight from Lin Jin's memories.

Chen Ye froze completely.

"Brother Jin..."

"Is—is this really your dad?"

No one dared to jump to conclusions easily.

Because Lin Shoushan had just said in his message:

If you see his medical records in The Hospital, don't be in a rush to save him.

He might still be alive.

He might also just be a remnant in The Hospital's records.

Even more likely, it was bait used by the God System to lure Lin Jin.

And now, a back view, a lamp, and a familiar sentence were placed right in front of Lin Jin.

It was as if it were deliberately waiting for him to walk over.

Lin Jin gripped his wrench tightly.

He didn't step forward immediately.

The Hand of Rules slowly unfolded.

[Target: Unknown Humanoid Record Entity]

[Appearance Identification: Lin Shoushan]

[Voice Identification: Lin Shoushan]

[Rule Status: Archive Remnant]

[Danger Level: Unknown]

[Hint: This target does not possess complete vital signs]

An Archive Remnant.

Not a living person.

At least not right now.

Lin Jin's heart sank abruptly.

But he didn't let his guard down completely either.

A remnant didn't mean it was safe.

In this hospital, records themselves could kill.

Shen Tingxue took a half-step forward, shielding Lin Jin's side.

She didn't try to steal the spotlight, simply gathering frost at her fingertips, ready to strike at any moment.

"Don't get too close," she warned in a low voice.

Lin Jin nodded.

"I know."

The man under the desk lamp didn't turn around.

He kept his head down, continuing to write.

The tip of his pen scratched across the paper, making a rustling sound.

In the entire Old Archives Room, this was the only sound.

Rows of metal cabinets stood silently in the darkness.

The yellowed labels on the cabinet doors looked like closed mouths.

[Ward Maintenance]

[Employee Anomalies]

[God Interface]

[Sacrificed Maintenance Worker]

Lin Jin looked at that back and asked in a deep voice:

"Who are you?"

The man chuckled.

"That's a pretty hurtful question to ask."

"You don't even recognize your own dad?"

Lin Jin's gaze didn't waver.

"My dad told me not to believe it."

The pen tip stopped.

The man finally turned his head slowly.

The light illuminated half of his face.

Stubble. Wrinkles. The faint old scar at the corner of his eye.

Every detail was exactly the same as the Lin Shoushan in Lin Jin's memories.

It was just that his face was too pale.

Pale like a photograph cut out from a medical record.

Chen Ye gasped.

"He really looks just like him..."

The Medical Record Keeper stood at the doorway, its medical folder flipping automatically.

"Detected sealed Archive Remnant."

"Visitors are advised to maintain a safe distance while reviewing."

"Touching the Archive Remnant is prohibited."

Lin Jin glanced at the Medical Record Keeper.

For once, it had said something useful.

The Lin Shoushan remnant put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

"Not bad."

"You didn't just lunge at me."

"Looks like these three years weren't wasted."

Lin Jin stared at him.

"Are you part of the message?"

"Sort of."

The remnant raised a hand and tapped the maintenance report on the table.

"You could also say I'm a maintenance record preserved by the Archives Room."

"Where my real self is, I don't know."

"I only know that when I left this record back then, I wasn't in a very good state."

He said it nonchalantly.

But Lin Jin saw that the left hand resting on the table was missing two fingers.

Up past his sleeve cuff, his arm was covered in black corruption markings.

They looked very similar to the ones on Lin Jin's body now.

Only deeper.

Almost crawling across his entire arm.

Lin Jin's voice lowered.

"How much are you corrupted?"

The remnant looked down at his own hand.

"The final record was 49.7 percent."

Chen Ye's expression changed.

"Almost irreversible?"

The remnant grinned.

"Right."

"That's why I ran fast."

"Any slower, and what you'd be seeing now wouldn't be me."

"But rather, the patient version of Lin Shoushan in The Hospital."

Lin Jin didn't smile.

49.7 percent.

His father had also been stuck right before the irreversible threshold back then.

And now, he himself was at 43 percent.

He wasn't far from that number.

The remnant seemed to see through his thoughts.

"Don't stare blankly at your corruption value."

"Being afraid is useless."

"When a Repairman comes into contact with rules, corruption will inevitably rise."

"The key isn't to never be corrupted."

"It's to learn how to excise the corruption."

Lin Jin's eyes flickered.

"How do you excise it?"

The remnant raised a hand, pointing to a metal cabinet nearby.

[Ward Maintenance]

"Follow the procedure first."

"You aren't here to have a father-son heart-to-heart."

"You still have a Ward 105 maintenance report that hasn't been closed."

"The Dean's Medical Record Keeper is watching right here; if you ask about the No. 9 Forbidden Zone directly, it'll immediately flag you for unauthorized access."

The Medical Record Keeper's folder flipped.

It was as if it had been called out.

Chen Ye couldn't help but mutter:

"This remnant actually knows the rules quite well."

The remnant looked at Chen Ye.

"Who's this chubby kid?"

Chen Ye's face darkened.

"I'm not fat!"

The remnant nodded.

"Oh, the bulk is just not obvious."

Chen Ye nearly lost his composure.

Shen Tingxue's originally tense expression softened slightly.

Lin Jin, however, was in no mood to laugh.

This remnant was too much like Lin Shoushan.

So much so that even his snarkiness was identical.

And for that very reason, he couldn't trust him easily.

"I want to check the Ward 105 files," Lin Jin said.

The remnant nodded in satisfaction.

"That's right."

"Start by checking what you can legally check."

"Rules aren't meant to be crashed into; they're meant to be bypassed."

After he finished speaking, he raised a hand and snapped his fingers.

The first row of metal cabinets on the left side of the Archives Room lit up automatically.

One of the drawers popped out halfway.

The label read:

[Ward 105 Original Maintenance Record]

Lin Jin walked over.

The Medical Record Keeper followed immediately.

A voice came from the medical folder:

"Supervision Notification: Visitors may only access content related to the Ward 105 maintenance report."

Lin Jin ignored it.

He pulled open the drawer.

There were no ordinary paper files inside.

Instead, there was a black recording board.

The board was engraved with dense maintenance symbols.

As soon as Lin Jin's hand touched it, the Hand of Rules immediately resonated.

[Detected Maintenance Department Archive]

[Target: Ward 105 Original Maintenance Record]

[Read?]

"Read."

The next second, a massive amount of information flooded into Lin Jin's mind.

Ward 105, its original name wasn't 105.

It was—[First Generation Rule Treatment Laboratory]

This place was once used to research "Occupational Corruption Reversal."

The first patient was a twelve-year-old girl.

She wasn't a monster.

She was originally one of the first batch of anomaly awakeners in Jiangcheng.

After her occupational awakening failed, her body constantly released corruption.

The Hospital attempted to treat her.

The Dean oversaw the treatment.

The nurse administered the injections.

The Medical Record Keeper recorded the results.

And the Maintenance Department was responsible for maintaining the isolation system.

At first, all procedures were normal.

Until one day, a sentence appeared in the treatment records:

[Patient requests to stop treatment.]

Then there was a second sentence:

[The Dean rejected it.]

A third:

[Continue injecting God System remnant extract.]

Seeing this, Lin Jin's expression sank instantly.

God System remnant extract.

So, the source of the corruption in Ward 105 wasn't the girl herself.

It was The Hospital using her for experiments.

After hearing Lin Jin's retelling, Chen Ye clenched his fists.

"Those animals."

Shen Tingxue's voice was very cold.

"No wonder she said she wasn't a monster."

The file continued to unfold.

The treatment lasted for seven days.

On the eighth day, the girl lost control completely.

She began to absorb the voices and memories of everyone in the ward.

The nurse went missing.

The patients went missing.

Even the Medical Record Keeper responsible for recording manifested anomalies.

The Dean ordered a cleanup.

The Maintenance Department refused.

Ultimately, the Maintenance Department used an Isolation Anchor to seal Ward 105 and left a conclusion in the files:

[Ward 105 cannot be treated.]

[Cannot be cleaned up.]

[Can only be isolated.]

[If forcibly cleaned up, all internal memory corruption will be released.]

Lin Jin's heart jolted.

His choice just now had been correct.

If he had handled Ward 105 according to the Dean's cleanup procedure, all the corruption memories in the entire ward would have exploded.

At that point, it wouldn't just be the Inpatient Department.

Even the assessment grounds outside the dungeon could have been affected.

The remnant sat under the lamp and spoke slowly:

"Now you know why you can't listen to the Dean, right?"

Lin Jin looked up.

"The Dean always knew the cleanup would cause trouble."

"Of course."

The remnant's smile faded significantly.

"But it doesn't care."

"What it wants is that active sample of the God System remnant inside 105."

"The Isolation Anchor sealed the patient, but it also sealed the sample."

"By resealing the door just now, you effectively locked away what it wanted again."

The Medical Record Keeper's folder suddenly flipped.

"Detected irrelevant inference."

"Recommend stopping."

Lin Jin immediately said:

"This is not an irrelevant inference."

"The Ward 105 maintenance report needs to be supplemented with follow-up suggestions."

"We must confirm whether the Dean's cleanup procedure poses secondary risks."

The Medical Record Keeper paused.

Final record: "Procedure established."

Lin Jin continued reading.

At the end of the file, there was a note from the Maintenance Department.

The handwriting was Lin Shoushan's.

[105 is not a patient area; it is evidence.]

[The Dean doesn't want to treat her; he wants to retrieve the remnant inside her.]

[If a successor sees this, remember:]

[Don't let 105 open its door.]

[And don't let the Dean get the master file.]

Lin Jin stared at those lines of text.

His fingers slowly tightened.

He finally understood what that "Don't believe it" inside the 105 door meant.

It wasn't "don't believe the girl."

Nor was it "don't believe the Head Nurse."

It was "don't believe any 'treatment' or 'cleanup' provided by the Dean."

Because what the Dean truly wanted was never to resolve the corruption.

It was to recover the God System remnant.

Just then, a soft sound suddenly came from the depths of the Archives Room.

It sounded like a metal cabinet had opened on its own.

Everyone turned their heads at the same time.

In the darkness, from the row of file cabinets labeled [God Interface], a drawer slowly slid open.

The Medical Record Keeper immediately stepped forward.

"Warning."

"This file is unrelated to the Ward 105 maintenance report."

The remnant, however, looked up at that drawer, the smile on his face vanishing completely.

"Don't touch it."

Lin Jin frowned.

"Why?"

The remnant stared at the drawer in the darkness.

He said, word for word:

"Because that wasn't opened by the Archives Room."

"It was opened by the Dean from the outside."

As soon as the words fell, the broadcast voice of the Faceless Dean came from the drawer.

[Maintenance Worker Lin Jin.]

[You have accessed an incorrect file.]

[Please return the 105 record immediately.]

[Otherwise, the Deans Office will initiate the cleanup procedure for the Old Archives Room.]