[Instance Name: Red Maple Leaf Boarding School]
[Instance Type: Team Survival]
[Opening Prompt: Disaster repeats itself, and survival is no easy feat. To be alive is a stroke of luck; death is destiny.]
Qi Si opened his eyes to the sight of a rust-spotted iron door.
He found himself in a small room, less than five square meters, with no windows. The only light came from a single crack in a corner of the ceiling, a sliver of daylight piercing the gloom.
Though it was daytime outside, the room was shrouded in dim light. The iron door was embedded in the grimy, gray walls, its contours barely visible.
[Special Prompt: In this instance, you have a chance to obtain the 'Scarlet High Priest' identity card through roleplaying.]
[Roleplaying Focus: Embody calamity, not salvation. Operate from the shadows, not the spotlight.]
[Note: This is a private clue. You may choose whether to disclose it.]
"The Scarlet High Priest card?" Qi Si wondered. "Is this prompt appearing because I caught a glimpse of it back in the Hopeless Sea?"
Qi Si was leaning against the wall, his head spinning. Even his thoughts felt fragmented.
His stomach cramped, churning with bitter acid. It was clearly a physical condition forced upon him by this instance.
Hunger. It was a long-absent but all-too-familiar sensation, one he could instantly recognize and assess.
The identity card could wait. His current predicament was the immediate priority.
Qi Si staggered to his feet. Looking down, he saw he was still in the white shirt he’d worn into the instance, but the body beneath it had shrunk. He was visibly malnourished.
He pinched his own bony arm, his expression unchanged, as a deep, raspy male voice began to narrate in his ear.
[You passed out from hunger in the confinement cell, only to be woken by it again. It seems you've lost some of your memories.]
[Of course, memories aren't important in this school. All you need to remember is to listen to a Ms. Medina and obey the school rules.]
[Your priority is to find food. You haven't eaten a single bite in three days. If you fail to eat within the next two hours, you will starve to death.]
[Humans are such a fragile species, are they not?]
Immediately after, three lines of text appeared on his system interface:
[Side Mission Updated]
[Side Mission (Mandatory): Eat]
[Time Limit: 1 hour]
In reality, a person wouldn't starve to death in just three days. Qi Si knew this from experience.
At sixteen, his aunt and uncle had sent him to a sweatshop where he'd had the misfortune of being locked in a small room for five days and five nights. He had survived, barely...
Clearly, however, this instance wasn't about to play by the laws of reality. If he didn't eat soon, he would be eliminated by the instance, starvation or not.
Qi Si summoned his hiking pack from his inventory and unzipped it.
The pack he’d been carrying had been automatically moved to his inventory the moment he entered the instance. He wasn't sure if this was for plot purposes or a hint that even mundane items could be stored away here.
The entire pack only occupied a single inventory slot, yet everything inside—towel, pen, paper, and all—was accounted for.
Working from memory, Qi Si fished a small jar of candy from a side pocket. He twisted off the lid and popped a gummy into his mouth.
The hunger pangs didn't ease in the slightest. Instead, a new line of text appeared:
[Perhaps you require some bread, crackers, or rice.]
It was a subtle way of telling him candy wouldn't work.
"So I have to find food within the instance itself, is that it?"
Qi Si dragged his weakened body to the iron door. In the faint light filtering from the ceiling, he could finally see that the door had no handle on his side.
The handle must be on the outside. This meant that even if he managed to pick the lock, he wouldn't be able to open the door.
His world was confined to this small room, a space of less than ten cubic meters.
Qi Si's gaze swept across the room, settling on a heap of indistinct gray shadows in the corner.
He steadied himself against the wall and shuffled closer. It wasn't food, just a crumpled heap of clothing.
Even so, refusing to leave any stone unturned, Qi Si picked up the clothes and gave them a vigorous shake.
Nothing fell out, but several lines of text popped up:
[Name: Red Maple Leaf Boarding School Uniform]
[Type: Item (Cannot be removed from instance)]
[Effect: Makes you appear more inconspicuous, more like a student of the Red Maple Leaf Boarding School.]
[Note: School Rule #3: Students must wear their uniforms while on school grounds.]
Qi Si recalled the narrator’s warning—*obey the school rules*—and glanced down at the filthy clothes in his hands.
The garment was patternless, crudely stitched from gray cloth. At a glance, it looked no different from a burlap sack.
He didn't believe that simply putting on this rag would get him released for following the rules, but on the principle of "nothing to lose," he stripped off his white shirt and pulled on the grimy uniform top.
The entire process took two minutes. Nothing happened. He then swapped his own trousers for the matching uniform pants. Still, no miracle occurred.
The pain and nausea in his stomach sharpened with each passing moment, and soon Qi Si was slick with a cold sweat.
He began at the edges, methodically exploring every inch of the walls and floor with his hands.
By the time he had felt his way across every accessible surface in the room, the sharp discomfort in his stomach had peaked and receded into a dull ache. His limbs grew heavy and weak, and his vision began to tunnel.
Only half an hour remained. There were no secret passages, no hidden mechanisms—nothing but the school uniform. "Did I miss a clue?" he wondered. "Or... am I supposed to get out through the ceiling?"
Exhausted, Qi Si slumped against the iron door, his gaze drifting upward.
There were no visible mechanisms there either. He'd have to get a closer look to know if it offered any hope of escape.
But even at his peak, Qi Si couldn't have climbed to the ceiling without tools, let alone in his current state.
The iron door seemed to be the only way out. With little hope, Qi Si threw his full weight against it. The door didn't so much as shudder, and the impact sent a sharp pain through his back.
"Don't tell me the Weird Game found out I've been undermining its authority and decided to get rid of me," Qi Si joked to himself.
He chuckled at his own dark humor and unconsciously licked his lips.
They were chapped and bleeding from dehydration. The salty, coppery taste gave this school-themed instance an unexpected flavor of wilderness survival.
In the top-left corner of his vision, the numbers in the [Time Limit] field—[00:27:57]—were a cold, glaring reminder.
Qi Si forced himself to remain calm and reviewed what he knew:
"The narrator said I've 'lost some of your memories.' Does that refer to the character I'm playing, or to me personally?"
"'Listen to Ms. Medina, obey the school rules...' Am I locked in here because I was disobedient and broke one of those rules?"
"A normal school, even one that uses corporal punishment, wouldn't just let a student starve to death. But it seems the Red Maple Leaf Boarding School doesn't bother with such trivialities..."
The thought of starving to death was so appalling it made him shudder.
He pressed his hand flat against the door and began to tap it sporadically, the sharp sounds echoing in the small room.
There was no escape from within the room, which meant he had to find a solution from without.
He had to make some noise, attract something—anything. Even a ghost would be better than this.
The seconds ticked by, but the only sound was his own tapping.
It was as if the place was completely deserted.
Qi Si gave a dry, humorless smile. He blinked, and for a fleeting moment, he saw clusters of human figures.
They were gone in an instant, like a hallucination.
He blinked again, tentatively this time, and then several more times. Each time, the scene in the room shifted, flickering like a slide projector.
Everything was silent. The light ebbed and flowed, and shadows of all shapes and sizes flashed across the walls. One moment, he was alone; the next, the room was bustling with people.
The figures wore brightly colored t-shirts and milled about the small space. For a split second, out of the corner of his eye, Qi Si even saw the iron door standing wide open, a tour guide with a small flag standing in the threshold.
He thought he spotted a familiar face in the crowd—an appearance so out of place it was utterly absurd.
"Is my life flashing before my eyes, or did I just trigger some hidden event?"
Qi Si couldn't make sense of it.
He watched the sliver of light from the ceiling creep across the room, a straight golden line bisecting the space before reaching the far wall and abruptly fading.
Through the haze of his weakening senses, he heard two voices approaching, deep in conversation.
"Listen up, Zhou, let me give you some advice," a booming, theatrical voice said, full of smug satisfaction. "This whole 'team instance' thing is just for show. The system has a death quota, and it won't think twice about sacrificing you to meet it. You've got to be strong on your own. Once we get our hands on the key clues, the rest of them will have to follow our lead."
The other voice sounded younger, more naive. "Th-thanks, Brother Chen! But what if we miss an important clue by leaving them behind?"
"You don't get it," the first man scoffed. "There are a dozen of them over there. They can't possibly keep a secret. If most of them know something, it's as good as everyone knowing. Sticking with the herd is the dumbest move you can make in an instance. Key clues don't just fall into your lap."
"Really? But what if they all decide to hide things from us?" the younger man asked, still hesitant. "We're not exactly making a good impression by being so antisocial, are we?"
"Zhou, we're in the Sila Guild now. Who cares about good impressions?" the man retorted. "Don't you trust me? Name one time my advice hasn't paid off."
"Brother Chen, I... I do trust you! Ha, if you hadn't reminded me last time, I never would've thought to stock up on food..."
Food?
Qi Si latched onto the keyword. A plan began to form in his mind.
He summoned the last of his strength, quickly stuffing his white shirt into his pack before stowing it back in his inventory.
Leaning back against the iron door, he silently recited a mantra in his mind: *I am a student at the Red Maple Leaf Boarding School. I was put in confinement for breaking the rules and angering Ms. Medina. I've always been frail, and after passing out from hunger, I've lost most of my memories. All I remember is who I am...*
[Item 'Red Maple Leaf Boarding School Uniform' detected. Generating a plausible identity for you...]
Silvery-white text materialized before his eyes. Qi Si raised an eyebrow, surprised that his decision to put on the uniform had paid off so well.
[Identity: 'The Bad Kid' has been loaded.]
A large block of text filled the top-left corner of his vision, partially obscuring his view:
[You are a student at the Red Maple Leaf Boarding School. Your designation is 47, and that is your only name here. Your memory is poor; you have long since forgotten the name you once had.]
[You are a bad kid who likes to lie. Your clumsy fabrications often anger Ms. Medina. She has reprimanded you many times, but you are a repeat offender who seems to enjoy it. She had no choice but to give you three days of confinement to teach you a lesson.]
[This is all what Ms. Medina told you. You don't remember any of it, but that doesn't matter. Ms. Medina runs this school, and she is never wrong. Only bad kids get punished, therefore, you must be a bad kid.]
[No one brought you meals during your confinement. You suspect the student assigned to the task simply ate your portion. But there is nothing you can do. Ms. Medina doesn't concern herself with such trivial matters.]
[You are about to starve to death. Fortunately, someone has arrived, and they are discussing food. You want to ask them for help. Perhaps you can get a piece of bread.]
An identity card with the texture of parchment floated in the top-right of his vision.
The card depicted a child in ragged clothes, a cloud of crimson smoke billowing behind them. From the heavens above, a pair of scarlet eyes gazed down, while a pair of long, slender hands covered the child's own eyes and ears.
Qi Si lowered his eyelids and knocked on the iron door once more.
This time, he put on a frail, half-dead voice, speaking as if each word was his last. "Students... please, I'm begging you... go tell Ms. Medina I know I was wrong... I haven't eaten in three days. I'm so hungry... I'm going to die if this keeps up..."