[Survivors have been deployed.]
[Ding! Deployment of the Infinite Building is complete. The survival game has begun.]
[Floor Region: 4126]
[Assigning rooms...]
[Room Number: 609]
[Initializing character attributes...]
Name: Lin Qian
Initial Attributes (The average for a healthy adult is 1 in each category)
Strength: 0.8
Agility: 1.1
Constitution: 0.7
Intelligence: 1.9
Trait: Calm
Evaluation: A person with a somewhat weak body and a clear mind.
[Survival Guide]
[Beginner Protection Period: Three days]
[During the protection period, each person is permitted to open three doors per day and is granted five hours of Safe Exploration Time.]
[Warning! After the three-day protection period ends, the first Survival Trial will begin on the fourth day. When the trial begins, all Survivors in the region will be forcibly transported to the trial world. Increase your strength as much as possible beforehand to improve your chances of survival.]
[1. Explore other rooms to obtain resources and survive. Be warned: some rooms may conceal grave dangers. Exercise extreme caution.]
[2. After the Beginner Protection Period, each person may unlock only one door per day, excluding Survivor rooms. Door locks reset once closed. Use your unlocks wisely.]
[3. Survivor rooms can only be opened with their corresponding Room Keycards. Room Keycards are soulbound and cannot be discarded, lost, or transferred. They drop upon death.]
[4. Once Safe Exploration Time ends, the building will enter the Lights-Out Period. Terrifying Wardens will patrol the corridors. If you go out during the Lights-Out Period and are caught by a Warden, may fortune be with you.]
In a room no larger than twenty square meters, Lin Qian sat on the bed, staring blankly ahead.
He held a translucent card in his hand. The number 609 was engraved on it.
A translucent screen appeared before his eyes. After a brief silence, messages suddenly began scrolling across it at a frantic pace.
[Regional Channel]
[Oh my God! What's going on?! Did I get transported to another world?]
[Where the hell is this?!]
[What is this place?! Let me out!]
[Damn it! Who changed my clothes?!]
[Hehehe! After more than twenty years in obscurity, I finally have a chance to show what I can do! Tremble before me, ignorant humans!]
[Were everyone else's belongings taken too? Does anyone know what it's like outside?]
[Is this some kind of experiment? Are we being used as lab rats?]
[Damn! I was just making out with my dream girl, and we were about to take things further. Then I opened my eyes and ended up here!]
[What does that Survival Guide mean?]
[Has anyone gone outside? Does anyone know what's out there? Is it dangerous?]
Most of the messages were useless. Everyone was still bewildered.
With a swipe, Lin Qian closed the channel.
He lowered his head and rubbed his disheveled hair vigorously, trying to collect his thoughts.
Whether he could accept this sudden turn of events was beside the point. Reality was right in front of him. Given a choice, of course he would have preferred this to be a dream.
After spending some time calming himself, he took a deep breath, got up, and examined the room.
There was little to search in the twenty-square-meter room. Everything was visible at a glance: a bed, a nightstand, a door, and a window. The rest was empty space.
There was no running water, electricity, or plumbing. The walls and floor were white, made of a material he couldn't identify. It certainly wasn't ordinary tile or flooring. It wasn't cold to the touch, but it was hard, like some kind of high-strength plastic.
The bed was an ordinary wooden single bed with a thin foam mattress, but no pillow or bedding.
Outside the window was a featureless expanse of white, as though the room were inside a cloud. There was no scenery, but light filtered through, providing the room's only illumination.
The nightstand held two bottles of mineral water and a palm-sized packet of compressed biscuits, probably basic supplies given to everyone.
The white room had an inexplicably oppressive feel, and the hospital-like clothes he was wearing only made it more uncomfortable.
But it didn't bother Lin Qian much.
He had an electronic watch on his wrist. It displayed no date or time, only a countdown: four hours and fifty-five minutes.
Clearly, this was his remaining Safe Exploration Time.
"There's still plenty of time..."
Lin Qian looked at the door, hesitant. He had no idea what lay outside.
Messages were still racing across the Regional Channel. Everyone was panicking over the sudden change in their surroundings, and few dared venture out. Even if some had, they weren't sharing what they'd found.
"It's not like I have much choice."
He took a deep breath and decided to get a head start by going out to investigate.
"Beep!"
The lock clicked open automatically, and the door swung open.
Lin Qian poked his head out and looked both ways.
There was no one in sight, though he could faintly hear a commotion in the distance. People were talking.
The pure white corridor stretched as far as the eye could see, with no end in sight.
Directly opposite him was Room 608. Its door was shut, but a green light glowed on the handle. According to the system, a lit handle marked a Survivor's room. Green meant someone was inside, red meant no one was there, and an extinguished light meant the Survivor had died. An unlock couldn't be used on such a door; it could only be opened with its Room Keycard.
Someone was in the room opposite.
Lin Qian turned his attention to Room 607 next door. It was the nearest door to his own, and there was no light on its handle, meaning it was a room he could explore.
He stepped forward, grabbed the handle, and pushed the door gently open without hesitation.
In an instant, dazzling sunlight hit his eyes, a breeze brushed his face, and the fresh scent of grass filled his nose. Before him lay a vast prairie stretching to the horizon, with a blazing sun high overhead.
Lin Qian stood there in a daze for several seconds before recovering.
He had imagined all sorts of possibilities before opening the door, but nothing like this.
"Damn..."
He looked around in amazement and discovered that the door behind him was embedded in a dead tree. Its color was rapidly fading, and within moments it blended into the trunk, though the outline of the handle remained visible.
"Amazing..."
Lin Qian bent down, pulled up a blade of grass, and crushed it between his fingers. He sniffed it and found it no different from grass back home.
Just then, he noticed a bush rustle nearby.
He frowned and looked over, meeting the fierce eyes of a beast.
Both Lin Qian and the creature froze.
"ROAR!"
Realizing it had been spotted, the creature let out a furious roar and sprang from the bushes. Black stripes ran across its tawny fur. It was a vicious, starving tiger.
"Damn!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Lin Qian spun around, opened the door, retreated into the corridor, and slammed it shut, all in one fluid motion.
"Hah... Hah..."
Leaning against the door, Lin Qian panted, still shaken. In all his life, it was the first time he had come so close to a wild beast without anything between them.
Just then, the door to Room 608 slowly opened, and a pretty young woman with voluminous curly hair cautiously poked her head out.
She wore the same white clothes as Lin Qian. Apparently, all Survivors had been given the same outfit.
Their eyes met, but neither spoke. After a moment's hesitation, whether out of shyness or wariness, she retreated into her room and closed the door.
Once he had caught his breath, Lin Qian put the brief encounter out of his mind. He was intensely curious about what the next room might hold.
He continued down the corridor to Room 605. The handle was unlit: an unoccupied room available for exploration.
He turned the handle gently. This time, he was noticeably more careful, afraid he might open the door to another wild beast.
What greeted him, however, was an ordinary hotel room.
Lin Qian stepped inside, examining the furnishings as he slowly made his way farther in.
On second thought, it wasn't all that ordinary.
It was a luxury suite. Just inside the entrance, a wine cabinet occupied an entire wall of the dining area, alongside a bar.
An open kitchen lay nearby, with a guest bedroom on the left.
He pushed the door open and peeked inside. The guest bedroom was empty.
Lin Qian sniffed. He thought he could detect a faint smell of decay coming from the master bedroom at the far end.
After checking the other rooms and making sure there was no danger, he took a meat cleaver from the kitchen and cautiously approached the master bedroom.
He turned the handle and eased the door open.
The moment he did, an overpowering stench of rot hit him. Lin Qian staggered, hastily covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve, and continued inside.
Gripping the cleaver tightly, he advanced slowly along the wall. When he saw what lay on the king-size bed, his pupils contracted.
Dark brown blood had splattered across the snow-white wall like a burst of fireworks.
A bloodstained handgun hung from the corpse's dangling hand, and a blackened, putrid hole gaped over its heart.
It was Lin Qian's first time seeing a corpse up close, and he couldn't help feeling sick and uncomfortable. But the sight of the handgun filled him with delight.
He crept forward, quickly snatched it from the corpse's hand, and stepped back to examine it.
It was a revolver. He checked it and found five rounds remaining.
He pushed the cylinder shut and looked around for anything else worth taking.
The place was too disgusting. He didn't want to linger.
Suddenly, a commotion reached him from outside the window. Frowning, Lin Qian stepped over and pulled back the curtain.
To his surprise, there was no expanse of white outside. Instead, high-rises stood in dense rows, forming a bustling modern city.
Lin Qian marveled once more. The doors in the Infinite Building seemed to break through the barriers between different worlds. It was incredible.
BOOM!
An explosion sounded outside. Lin Qian instinctively turned toward it and saw an overturned tanker truck on a distant road. Flames engulfed the surrounding area, and burning figures fled in every direction amid the chaos.
"Wait!"
"Something's wrong!"
Lin Qian suddenly grew alert. The chaos below wasn't confined to one spot. Everywhere he looked, people were running through the streets. Every now and then, someone was tackled to the ground. Screams and cries for help rang out incessantly, cars crashed into one another, and blood and fire filled the streets. All order had collapsed.
"A riot?"
Lin Qian frowned deeply and was about to lean out of the window for a closer look when a sound suddenly came from behind him.
"Grrr..."