The main gate of the Mist Capital Psychiatric Hospital was already open by the time the Spirit Medium Association’s convoy arrived.

It was Dirk’s shadow snake threads that had slipped through the door crack and silently lifted the latch.

More than a dozen people jumped out of the vehicles. Their steps were hurried but orderly as they quickly formed three assault teams in front of the gate.

The President stood at the very front, with the two headquarters reinforcements on his left and right. Harding and Dirk took the rear flanks.

The other elites spread out according to their pre-assigned positions, covering every exit of the building.

However, when the team actually entered the psychiatric hospital’s lobby, everyone was momentarily stunned.

There was none of the grim, terrifying scene they had imagined.

The lobby floor was covered in light-colored non-slip tiles, wiped clean and reflecting the soft white light of the ceiling fluorescent lamps.

The walls were a warm beige tone, adorned with several brightly colored landscape paintings depicting Mist Capital’s harbor and a distant lighthouse. Behind the reception desk, a promotional slogan read “Care for the Mind, Protect Life” in rounded, friendly font, accompanied by a smiling cartoon heart.

Nurses occasionally passed through with patients, all showing surprised expressions upon seeing them.

According to the association elites’ expectations, since this place had become a cultist stronghold, even if it wasn’t a scene of horrific carnage with corpses everywhere, it should at least have been deserted and dilapidated.

But the sight before them… looked nothing like it had been invaded.

Some elites even experienced a stress reaction, suspecting it was an illusion created by the cultists, and subconsciously wanted to attack. Fortunately, the Association President, with his extensive experience, waved his hand and stopped them.

The on-duty nurse at the front desk saw a group of people in dark blue uniforms with serious expressions surge in. The pen in her hand dropped onto the table. Her mouth opened, wanting to say something, but then she noticed the badge on the elderly man at the front was larger than any she had seen in the association’s promotional materials.

“This… Sir, may I ask who you…” The nurse’s voice trembled, but she still tried to maintain professional politeness.

The President did not answer her question. Instead, he took out a document bearing the Spirit Medium Association headquarters official seal from inside his uniform and placed it on the front desk. His movements were unhurried, as if handling routine business.

“By emergency authorization from association headquarters, this building must be evacuated immediately. All personnel—including patients, nurses, doctors, and support staff—must withdraw to the designated safe area within fifteen minutes.”

The nurse lowered her head to look at the document. Her pupils contracted.

Her hands began to shake, but she forced herself to calm down within a few seconds. She picked up the phone on the desk and pressed the hospital-wide broadcast button.

“Attention all personnel, attention all personnel. Please activate the emergency evacuation protocol immediately. Repeat, please activate the emergency evacuation protocol immediately. This is not a drill. This is not a drill.”

The broadcast echoed through the building. The tone was steady, but the speed was twice as fast as usual.

The elites began moving the moment the broadcast started.

Harding led one team quickly through the corridors, checking rooms one by one for patients and medical staff. While using sharp eyes to identify any possible cultist remnants, they guided people out through the nearest safe exits.

Dirk and another team headed straight for the underground floors, laying shadow snake threads at every stairwell and doorway to ensure no suspicious individuals could escape amid the chaos.

The President and the two headquarters reinforcements stood in the center of the lobby, their gazes fixed on the staircase directly ahead.

The staircase looked completely ordinary.

Marble steps, brass handrails, and walls in the same beige tone as the lobby.

From the first floor to the second, there were twelve steps… No, thirteen.

The President’s gaze lingered on the thirteenth step for a moment before sweeping over it again.

One, two, three… eleven, twelve, thirteen.

Thirteen steps.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“Prophet,” he said softly.

The Prophet stood two steps behind him.

It was a man whose exact age was hard to determine. He was thin, with a pale face, wearing a plain gray trench coat with the collar turned up, covering half his face.

His eyes were an almost transparent gray. His pupils lacked focus, as if staring at a layer of the world that others could not see.

“Found it,” the Prophet’s voice was faint, as if coming from a great distance. “The entrance to that sub-space is on this step. It is the ‘extra step.’ It is called ‘Step,’ a Hazard Grade Strange.”

Dirk hurried back from the basement direction, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

Hearing the word “Step,” his footsteps paused.

“Step? You mean the kind… that has one extra step?”

The President nodded.

He had heard of this type of Strange—an anomalous phenomenon that existed on staircases.

It could appear on any flight of stairs.

Where there should originally be only twelve steps, it would quietly manifest at the thirteenth position.

It blended perfectly with the surrounding steps in material, color, and degree of wear. Even touching it with a hand would reveal no difference.

The triggering mechanism of this Strange was also quite special.

If anyone carefully counted the steps downward and happened to count one extra.

When they stepped onto this suddenly appearing extra step, they would miss their footing and fall directly from the real world into a paranormal space, never to return.

In reality, triggering this Strange was not that simple. Ordinary people rarely had the leisure to count stairs.

However, some children liked to do so and would occasionally fall victim.

Thus, although this Strange’s lethality was not high, its impact was significant.

The President turned around and glanced at the elites behind him.

“The Prophet and Harding’s third team will guard the entrance. Everyone else, establish a blockade outside according to the plan. No one is to enter without my order.”

The President turned to the two headquarters reinforcements.

The two reinforcements—a man and a woman—said nothing, simply nodding slightly.

The three shifted their gazes back to the thirteenth step.

The President took the first step.

He walked neither fast nor slow—rather deliberately.

Then the second step, the third… He was also silently counting in his mind.

He passed the twelfth step.

The thirteenth step lay beneath his foot.

“Thirteen…”

His foot stepped down.

In that instant, the surface of the marble step rippled like water.

The center of the step seemed pressed down by some force, forming a pit that grew deeper and deeper, eventually turning into a vertical downward passage with no visible end.

The two headquarters reinforcements followed behind the President. All three stepped forward together and entered the passage.

Their figures vanished the moment they entered the passage. The surface of the step returned to normal.

No one noticed that before the President took that step, an invisible figure had already pressed close behind him.

Using the Great Void Step to conceal himself, Jie Ming’s form was so ethereal that he cast no shadow. His breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, and even his conscious fluctuations had all been compressed to the minimum.

He followed right behind the President, almost face-to-face.

Yet neither the President nor the two Disaster Grade Spirit Mediums detected his presence.

Jie Ming followed them into the passage.

After a brief sensation of falling, a gray, hazy space unfolded before Jie Ming’s eyes.

The interior of the space was neither completely dark nor bright, but possessed an ambiguous illumination somewhere between dusk and dawn.

It was enough to see the surrounding environment clearly, yet the source of the light could not be determined.

The ground underfoot was gray, with a texture somewhere between solid and liquid. Stepping on it caused a slight depression, but left no footprints. There was no visible ceiling overhead—only endless gray stretching into the distance.

Countless steps and rooms filled the space.

These steps floated isolated in the air.

They were distributed irregularly throughout the space—some below, some above, some faintly visible in the distance. Each step extended in a different direction with no visible end.

The rooms were also abnormal.

Their walls were semi-transparent, allowing the outlines of the rooms to be seen but not what was inside.

Some rooms were as large as warehouses, others as small as coffins. Like the steps, they floated in the air in a completely disordered arrangement.

The moment the group entered, they heard faint murmuring sounds.

The sounds were not loud, as if many people were whispering in the distance.

They spoke rapidly, yet no individual word could be made out.

The voices enveloped them from all directions simultaneously.

Jie Ming frowned slightly.

He discovered that these murmuring sounds carried a special power, clearly an attack from a Strange.

If someone subconsciously tried to listen carefully to what they were saying, the sounds would rapidly amplify beside their ears.

From whispers to low roars, from low roars to screams, until it left a person’s mind dazed, thoughts disordered, and judgment lost.

An ordinary person facing this attack would lose consciousness within seconds.

But the three people walking ahead of Jie Ming were no ordinary individuals.

The female reinforcement on the left reacted first. She snorted coldly without hesitation.

The cold snort issued from her nasal cavity, releasing a power at the same time.

It seemed her Strange was also a sound-type Strange.

Wherever her sound wave passed, the murmuring sounds were silenced as if an invisible hand had covered their mouths.

The two same-type Strange powers annihilated and canceled each other out upon contact.

The female reinforcement did not pause, continuing forward.

Taking advantage of the opening, the male reinforcement on the right used his Strange’s perception to lock onto a certain direction.

His body leaned forward slightly, then shot out like an arrow leaving the bowstring.

The President followed behind the male reinforcement with steady, unhurried steps.

He did not immediately release his own Strange.

Like Harding, his Strange was also storm-type, making it unsuitable for use in this enclosed space.

Violent wind and rain would destroy the fragile structures here and might trigger other unknown dangers.

The three figures soon disappeared into the overlapping light and shadow of the steps and rooms.

Jie Ming stood on the gray ground behind them, watching their backs recede into the distance.

Under the effect of the Great Void Step, his figure gradually emerged from the “unnoticed” state, becoming opaque like a painting shifting from transparent.

Standing on the gray ground, the murmuring sounds hovered around Jie Ming but did not dare approach, as if they had sensed his terror.

Jie Ming first surveyed the surrounding environment, then activated his All-Purpose Eye.

Golden light shone deep within his pupils. The gray space around him became transparent.

The floating Strange structures in the air were peeled away layer by layer in the All-Purpose Eye’s vision.

Then he saw the murmuring Stranges hiding in every corner of this space.

They had no fixed form, resembling constantly twisting smoke. They huddled beneath steps, in the gaps between room layers, and in the crevices of the gray ground.

Judging from their power distribution and symbiotic relationships, these murmuring Stranges were not the masters of this space but parasites.

In the real world, they could blend into the rules, making them extremely difficult to capture.

But in this sub-space created by “Step,” the rules were incomplete. They could not integrate and could only hide in this semi-physical form.

The corners of Jie Ming’s mouth curved upward.

This was practically something he could obtain with almost no effort.

He extended his right hand, fingers spread, palm facing downward.

Spiritual power surged from within his body, rapidly weaving into a massive sealing array in the gray-white space above.

The array’s diameter exceeded twenty meters, covering a large area over Jie Ming’s head.

Blue rune lines unfolded in the void like a spider web. Every line precisely locked onto a portion of the murmuring Strange power in this space.

The murmuring Stranges sensed danger.

They darted out from their hiding spots, attempting to flee toward more distant areas.

But since they could not integrate with the sub-space’s rules, they could only run and dodge like ordinary creatures.

The sealing array’s light suddenly contracted inward.

The blue runes acted like a closing fishing net, catching all the murmuring Strange power in this space at once.

The semi-transparent, smoke-like bodies were continuously compressed by the runes, shrinking from smoke columns dozens of centimeters long into thumb-sized solid beads, then from beads into rice-grain-sized crystals.

Jie Ming compressed the array to its limit. The crystal’s final form was a particle smaller than a sesame seed, emitting a faint gray glow, floating above his palm.

Jie Ming took out a glass test tube from his inner cave heaven, placed the pale gray particle inside, sealed the tube, and slipped it into his pocket.

Raising his head, Jie Ming scanned the deeper parts of the space, where more uncleared steps and rooms still remained.

The President and the two reinforcements had already gone far.

Their spiritual markers were still moving, delving deeper into the core area of this sub-space.

However, Jie Ming had no intention of following them for now.

After all, his purpose in coming here had never been to help the association fight, but… to gather materials.

In this sub-space, aside from the powerful entities drawn away by the President’s group, large numbers of Stranges like the murmuring ones—relatively low grade but with special characteristics—were scattered about.

They hid in every corner and could not escape this sealed space.

To Jie Ming, this was simply an open treasure vault.

Jie Ming turned and walked in the direction opposite to the President.

His steps were relaxed, even leisurely.

The All-Purpose Eye remained active, and the Fate Subsystem operated at low power.

Every time he passed through an area, the All-Purpose Eye would automatically scan the surrounding space, marking all hidden Stranges one by one. Then the sealing array would unfold, contract, and harvest.

One, two, three.

Threat Grade, Threat Grade, Hazard Grade.

As his gains increased, Jie Ming’s smile grew wider.