“Madam, older sister stole my pencil case. I didn’t lose it myself.”
“Hua Huai, hurry up and give your little brother’s pencil case back.”
“N-no…”
“N-no what? Didn’t Madam buy you a pencil case? How could you steal your little brother’s, too!”
The “Hua” in Hua Huai was her surname.
The “Huai” in Hua Huai was made up of “wood” and “demon.”
“I didn’t steal it!”
“Are you suggesting your little brother is framing you? He’s so young—would he lie?”
“Dad, I didn’t…”
Her pleading, meek gaze earned not the slightest bit of sympathy.
“Your mother is right. Don’t waste everyone’s time. Your little brother still has homework to do.”
Why?
She hadn’t done it, yet they insisted on pinning the blame on her.
It wasn’t the first time…
“Do you wish you’d never given birth to me?!”
Hua Huai ran away from home on a night of torrential rain, in a wretched state.
She hoped her parents would feel guilty and come out to comfort her, saying, “We’re sorry. We were wrong just now.”
But they didn’t.
Her family was enjoying a warm, happy evening together. They didn’t even open the front door again.
So this was the truth: it made no difference to this family whether she was there or not.
The rain soaked her face and clothes. In the cold of winter, it was enough to make her shiver uncontrollably.
She crouched in a corner, hoping the rain would let up and the sun would come out soon.
It was agonizing. Every second brought bone-deep pain, as if she’d endured it for an entire century.
She would freeze to death in the dark, wouldn’t she?
“Woof! Woof!”
A gaunt ferocious dog stared hungrily at Hua Huai, its fangs bared and its face twisted into a vicious snarl.
Hua Huai’s breath caught for a moment. The dog was terrifying. Its gaze was fixed on her like she was prey it was about to devour.
She didn’t dare look away. She couldn’t be the first to back down.
Otherwise, she was sure the ferocious dog would lunge at her and tear into her at once.
It wasn’t hard to tell from the dog’s appearance that it was hungry.
Not far away, shards of broken glass were scattered beside a garbage pile.
On such a cold, rainy night, hardly anyone would be outside, and no one was likely to come save her.
She had to save herself.
She wanted to live—to show everyone who didn’t want her alive that she could!
After a tense standoff, the ferocious dog seemed to decide that Hua Huai was weak and incapable of putting up a fight. It sprang into the air and lunged at her.
Just in time, Hua Huai rolled across the ground, narrowly dodging the ferocious dog’s attack.
She was still just short of the broken glass. Her fingers had gone stiff with cold; in this state, she couldn’t pick up anything.
She held her hands in front of her mouth and blew several warm breaths over them. They gradually regained some feeling.
She snatched up a shard of glass, but the ferocious dog was far faster than Hua Huai. It rushed toward her, jaws open to bite.
Hua Huai had no time to wrap the glass in cloth. She turned to fend off the dog’s attack, pressing down hard on its neck.
The ferocious dog was far too strong. Even in its starving state, she was almost unable to hold it back.
Afraid of dropping the shard in her hand, she let it dig into her palm. Blood mingled with the rain and trickled down her cheek, blooming into a brilliant red.
The smell of blood excited the ferocious dog even more. It was desperate to tear into the prey before it.
Hua Huai was caught between a rock and a hard place. If she let go, the dog would surely bite her neck—and once it did, it would almost certainly never let go.
But if she didn’t let go, she couldn’t attack. The ferocious dog would keep wearing her down until she ran out of strength, and the outcome would be the same.
Before she ran out of strength, Hua Huai chose to let go. She twisted her upper body aside with all her might and drove the shard of glass deep into the ferocious dog’s neck.
At the same time, the ferocious dog sank its teeth into her shoulder, its fangs piercing flesh and sinking deep enough to reach the bone.
Hua Huai didn’t dare stop for a moment. She desperately slashed the ferocious dog’s flesh with the glass. The pain made it hard to use her right arm, so she switched to her left, continuing until the dog let go and collapsed whimpering into her arms.
Her sense of injustice and relief at still being alive brought Hua Huai to tears.
Perhaps she had been repressing it for too long.
She wept and screamed. Then she hauled up the ferocious dog, sank her teeth into its neck, and tore at its flesh.
The outburst eased the knot in her heart a little.
Just as she was about to let go, she bit down on something hard and pulled it out with her mouth.
It was a card stained with the ferocious dog’s blood. Its face shimmered with iridescent light, bearing several neatly printed words: Horror Game Key.
On the back was a demon holding a scepter, its eyes bloodred and its grinning mouth stretched almost to its ears. The sight was chilling.
Hua Huai was so startled that she dropped the card. But instead of falling to the ground, it floated in front of her and unfurled into an invisible, blood-red screen.
【Player Hua Huai, binding successful.】
【Horror Game Rules:
1. If you die in the Game, you will also die in the real world.
2. Complete a Game to receive a cash reward, deposited directly into the Horror Game Key. Password: 000000.
3. Anomalies in the Game can be bound to the Horror Game Key. The higher an Anomaly’s trust in you, the greater the chance that an invitation to bind it will succeed.
4. Items may drop in the Game and can produce many unexpected effects.
5. Players must not kill one another in the Game, or they will suffer backlash.
6. Game difficulty, from highest to lowest: SSS > SS > S > A > B > C > D > F. The higher the difficulty you complete, the greater the cash reward.
7. Completing a Game grants a certain amount of Rest time, based on its difficulty: SSS = 20 years, SS = 5 years, S = 1 year, A = 180 days, B = 90 days, C = 30 days, D = 10 days, F = 3 days.
8. During Rest time, you may still choose to enter a Game.
9. Player levels, from highest to lowest: SSS > SS > S > A > B > C > D > F. Levels are determined by accumulated Rest time: SSS = 2,000 years, SS = 90 years, S = 30 years, A = 3 years, B = 1 year, C = 120 days, D = 30 days, F = 29 days or less. Levels can only increase, never decrease.
10. The first Player to reach SSS rank will receive a surprise.】
An SSS-rank Player needed 2,000 years of Rest time, while the reward for the highest-difficulty Game was only 20 years.
In other words, even if someone entered an SSS-rank Game, they would have to clear it 100 times—a nearly impossible Mission.
Besides, a person’s life was limited. Two thousand years of Rest time was enough for her to live 20 lifetimes.
Thinking it over, Hua Huai couldn’t look forward to the SSS-rank surprise at all.
The blood-red screen flickered, displaying the Player information Panel.
【Player: Hua Huai
Age: 12
Level: F
Money: 0
Rest time: 0
Items owned: None
Bound Anomalies: None】
【Player Rest time detected at 0. Loading Horror Game immediately…】
A loading screen appeared. The surroundings began to fade into nothingness.
Hua Huai knelt where she was, her mouth full of dog hair and her face covered in the ferocious dog’s blood, which mingled with the rain and slid down inside her collar. She stared blankly, at a loss.