When Yang suddenly covered Ethan's mouth, the others holding torches quickly surrounded him, their eyes filled with hostility. "Not leaving, huh? Then you'll die here today! We can't let you go and snitch to that leprous head!"

Despite the life-or-death situation, Ethan was remarkably calm. Rolling his eyes in frustration at the direction of the hallucination, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself strapped to a hospital bed, the figures of his fellow disciples gone.

"Nurse, I’m awake. Can you unstrap me?" Ethan called out to the microphone for the night shift nurse, eager to check if the jade pendant was in his clothing.

After calling out for a while with no response, Ethan realized the nurse must be secretly watching her soap operas again during her shift.

Looking down at his chest, wrapped in a blue and white hospital gown, he tried to feel for the pendant by pressing against his chest. But tightly strapped down, he couldn’t feel much and eventually gave up in frustration.

Yawning, Ethan could do nothing but lie there, hoping the nurse would eventually check the camera.

In the quiet of the night, even on the floor reserved for critical patients, Ethan drifted into a restless sleep. When he awoke, he was back on the cold floor of the cave.

He was in the same spot, but the others who had planned to escape were nowhere to be seen.

"Think you can challenge me, a bunch of NPC?" Ethan muttered, pulling out the jade pendant and tucking it back into his pocket.

After a while, he returned to his communal sleeping area, lying in the straw, too excited about the pendant’s value to sleep.

With no clock, Ethan had no idea how much time had passed. When he saw his fellow disciples waking up, he sat up, thinking, "Daybreak here means the nurse's shift must have changed. Maybe I should go back and check. Other nurses are more professional than her."

As Ethan hesitated, a flurry of footsteps approached. A young Taoist boy, clad in black and with his hair tied up, burst in, panting.

“Hurry up, everyone! The master has summoned us all to the Hui'an Hall!”

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This sudden summons left everyone puzzled, but as it was the master’s order, they had no choice but to comply.

Soon, in the largest cavern known as the Hui'an Hall, all disciples gathered. The flickering torchlight revealed the confusion on everyone's faces.

Ethan noticed something odd: apart from Yang, several of the leprous head's close disciples were missing. “Oh, they ran away with the others?” he mused, amused by the drama unfolding before him.

When an ugly head emerged from the dark tunnel, all the disciples, except Ethan, instinctively bowed their heads. It was their master, Dan.

A single cough from Dan made everyone tense up. “Last night, some tried to escape, including two of my close disciples. My heart aches at this betrayal!”

His words said one thing, but the fury on his face spoke another.

“Caught already? Yang and his crew really are pathetic,” Ethan muttered.

“Without rules, there’s no order. Punishment must be meted out; that’s the rule of our Xi Shan Dong Hua sect! Follow me.”

Silently, the disciples followed Dan, fearfully walking through various caverns and past a rushing underground river, until they reached a damp, classroom-sized cave.

There, Ethan saw those who had attempted escape the night before, now bound and piled in a corner. Their listless expressions turned frantic upon seeing Dan, but the gags in their mouths silenced them.

Dan, seemingly uninterested in their pleas, flicked his hand, chanting, “Open!”

The smoothly eroded cave floor suddenly opened up, swallowing the escapees. Horrific screams and the sound of flesh tearing filled the cave.

Many disciples trembled in fear, eyes shut tight. “Come closer! Witness the consequences of their escape!” Dan commanded.

Reluctantly, the disciples edged towards the hole, a pitch-black abyss that seemed to suck everything in.

Ethan, upon closer inspection, noticed a large black cauldron at the bottom, its rim adorned with twisted talismans.

He couldn't see what was inside the cauldron, but the nauseating stench of blood was unmistakable.

“Hallucinations shouldn't harm me; I've never experienced such things before,” Ethan reassured himself, though his heart raced at the thought of falling in.

Suddenly, a writhing black mass shot out from the hole, grabbing a disciple next to Ethan before retreating back into the darkness.

The disciples, terrified, backed up against the smooth cave walls, too afraid to flee because of Dan's watchful presence.

While everyone else was in a state of panic, Ethan, having had the closest view, saw what it was - a mass of flesh-like black substance with short, trembling black tentacles.

It was clear to Ethan that whatever Dan was keeping in that cauldron was far from normal.

Despite knowing it was all a hallucination, Ethan couldn't help but wonder why his mind would conjure such horrors.

As he calmed himself with deep breaths, following Dr. Li's guidance, Ethan's fears slowly subsided.

“These are all hallucinations. They can't harm me,” he reminded himself. “Anna is waiting for me. I can’t let her down. I can overcome this!”

With renewed determination, Ethan steadied himself, ready to face whatever came next in this strange and terrifying world.