Unfortunately, there wasn't much in this dorm supervisor's room.
After putting away the night light, Xu Kewang looked around again. The tables and chairs took up too much space and would be a burden to carry back—not worth much use.
She spread out the bedsheet from the single bed, placed the thin mattress, pillow, and blanket all in the middle, then folded up the four corners, tied a knot, and tossed the bundle into her backpack.
The bedroll was several times larger than the backpack itself, but the moment it reached the opening, it was as if it had been sucked in by a black hole—instantly stored away. Xu Kewang weighed it in her hand and found it had no weight at all.
She felt satisfied inside. This was the real deal.
Next, she took down all the curtains in the supervisor's room. Their dorm's curtains were too thin, not private enough—adding another layer would put her mind at ease.
She opened every drawer and cabinet and found some unopened instant noodles. Xu Kewang swept them all into her backpack, which now took up four slots of space.
What surprised her most was finding an electric heating lunchbox. The dorm supervisor probably often brought her own meals, which was why she had this item.
As the extreme cold gradually descended, this was truly a precious find.
After cleaning out the supervisor's room completely, she was surprised to find there was still one slot left in the backpack. Xu Kewang simply couldn't bear to leave with space remaining. She surveyed this cramped little room countless times.
Finally, her gaze locked onto that empty single bed.
"It's already broad daylight—why hasn't Kewang come back yet?" Xie Yue couldn't sit still again, pacing back and forth in the room, looking like she was about to go out and search for her.
Ever since the sky had begun to lighten, the hallway had fallen completely silent. No more impostors came knocking to deceive them, and the three of them had enjoyed over half an hour of peace.
At this point, it wasn't just her—Wen Cai and Ning Yiwei were also getting restless.
"I think since it's light out now, it's safer than when it was pitch black. How about we send two people out to find her and leave one to watch the room?" Wen Cai suggested.
She and Xie Yue both agreed, but their eyes both turned to Ning Yiwei.
"What are you looking at me for? You want me to stay here?" She lowered her head in thought, then after a long moment, nodded helplessly. "I'm small and the weakest. Going out with you would only hold you back."
Although hiding in the room seemed truly useless, Ning Yiwei also knew her own limits—not causing trouble was the biggest help she could give everyone.
After discussing it, Xie Yue pulled out her fitness dumbbells from under the bed—a 10KG dumbbell in one hand and the fruit knife Xu Kewang had given her earlier in the other.
Wen Cai didn't have that much strength, so she simply held fruit knives in both hands.
They carefully opened a crack in the door, confirmed there were no suspicious creatures, then opened it a little wider and squeezed out.
As the two stepped out, raising their weapons and creeping forward stealthily—
They heard a slow, unhurried set of footsteps approaching from the stairwell.
They gulped.
"Come back," Ning Yiwei whispered. "Hurry, come back."
But she noticed her two roommates were frozen in place, squinting with their two-hundred-degree nearsighted eyes toward the end of the hallway. She was so anxious she reached out to pull them back.
Then she heard a familiar, cool voice from that direction: "What are you two doing out here?"
It was Xu Kewang!
She leaned halfway out, squinting along with them. The approaching figure was backlit, dressed in black from head to toe, face unreadable, a shovel in hand, walking over at an unhurried pace.
"Wait!"
Xie Yue, as if waking from a dream, hastily shoved Wen Cai back inside and slammed the dorm door shut. "Password, password."
"What password?" Wen Cai tapped her on the head. "Though we really should ask to make sure. I think it really is Kewang, but we'd better be careful."
Xu Kewang, having seen them scramble away in panic, had already guessed the gist of it.
Her three roommates must have had a rough night last night.
She raised her hand and knocked. "It's me, Xu Kewang. I'm back."
"No need to interrogate me—I can prove who I am," she said without pausing for breath. "Xie Yue, stop taking that protein powder without eating proper meals, or you'll end up like last week—four days without a bowel movement, and I had to go downstairs to buy you a glycerin enema."
"Wen Cai, you took that swimming class for a whole semester last year and never even learned to breathe properly. I was the one who took the final exam for you."
"Ning Yiwei, your taste in boyfriends is terrible. The first breakup was because he cheated on you. The second was because that guy was bi—he had a boyfriend too while dating you. The third…"
She didn't get to finish. A chorus of groans erupted from the dorm, the door yanked open from inside, and three pairs of hands grabbed her and hauled her in.
"Enough! Enough!"
The three wronged souls who'd been exposed dragged her back into the room, ready to tear into her—until they saw the blood and gore caked all over her. They fell silent instantly.
Their Kewang had apparently done something incredible last night.
"How did you end up like this?" Xie Yue took the shovel from her with concern. "Whose blood is this? Yours? Where are you hurt? Let us see."
Ning Yiwei, without a word, retrieved the medicine they'd grabbed from the infirmary that day, piled it all in a box that served as their medical kit.
"I'm fine, just a few cuts on my hands. This is all monster blood," Xu Kewang said. Back in the dorm, the tension in her nerves finally eased. "Let me wash up first. It reeks."
"I'll cook you some noodles," Wen Cai said, pulling out her small electric pot from the cupboard—the sole survivor after the dorm supervisor had confiscated eight of them. "Wash up, eat something, get some sleep."
A warm room, roommates who cared about her. Only now did Xu Kewang fully wake from last night's mission.
"Okay."
She walked into the bathroom, stripped off all her clothes, and thoroughly rinsed herself under the showerhead multiple times until she was sure there was no flesh residue left, then tossed the clothes into a basin.
After that, she cleaned out the drain.
Only then did she stand fully under the cascading hot water. The gentle spray enveloped her, as if last night's mechanical slaughter had been nothing but a dream.
From the age of six, after her mother died, she had entered the darkest period of her life.
A woman she'd never seen before moved into their home, bringing with her a girl two years younger than Xu Kewang. From that day on, she became the outsider in a family of three, forever confined to the dark corners of that apartment.
So she had never been afraid of the dark, of ghosts, or of anything unknown.
Because in this world, she had already witnessed the most terrifying thing of all—human nature.
In this game, no laws or rules would bind her; survival was the only principle, and this suited Xu Kewang perfectly. Her eighteen years of suffering had finally found a legitimate outlet.
And in this dormitory, the remaining three girls were among the few warm presences in her life.
So…
She would survive.
They would all survive.