Dear player, from the very first word of this story that you read, you have already stepped into this game.
Whether it’s death or survival, it all depends entirely on you.
……
“Tick, tick.”
Shao Lan was woken up by the sound of water and opened his eyes.
He sat up, feeling groggy, but suddenly froze.
The sofa he was sitting on was old and dirty, with a large number of dark brown stains on its leather surface, carrying an indescribable, foul stench.
——This was not his sofa.
Slowly turning his head, he looked around at everything in the living room.
——This was not his living room either.
Before him was an old house that had clearly seen better days. The white plaster on the walls was peeling off, and they too bore dirty, dark brown stains.
Shao Lan leaned in closer to take a look.
As someone who frequently dealt with corpses, he recognized them.
These stains were dried blood and corpse grease…
Directly opposite the sofa was a small mourning hall.
Symmetrical bundles of white and yellow chrysanthemums, an incense burner, pastries, and sacrificial fruits were all complete.
The only thing missing was the place where a portrait should have been displayed—instead, there was an oval-shaped fish tank.
Through the dim light, four small red goldfish could be seen swimming inside the tank.
It seemed to be raining outside the window. The pitter-patter of rain fell, and the rain-streaked window glass reflected Shao Lan’s pale face.
He was a registrar, working at the front desk of a funeral home.
After getting off work early yesterday morning, he suddenly started running a fever. After taking some medicine, he had fallen asleep in a hazy daze on the rental apartment’s sofa.
When he woke up, he was here.
What on earth was this place?
With such a massive amount of homicidal traces in the room, had he been kidnapped by a murderer?
Suddenly, a click sounded in the quiet room.
Shao Lan snapped his head around.
In the corner, a wooden owl popped out of a grandfather clock.
In these old-fashioned clocks, the owl would pop out to announce the hour.
It was now exactly four o’clock in the morning. The owl popped out, but the sound it made wasn’t a time announcement, it was…
“Game start! Game start!”
Game?
Shao Lan paused for a second.
As soon as the owl finished speaking those two phrases, it retracted back inside on its spring.
At the same time, a click came from the security door not far away.
Someone had come in?
In a split second, Shao Lan vaulted off the sofa and dived into the gap between the sofa and the floor.
The sofa had high legs, barely enough room to accommodate him, but Shao Lan had to flatten his body completely against the ground, pressing his face tightly to the floor.
There were uneven carved marks on the floorboards. Shao Lan reached out his hand, identifying them by touch.
“Rules.”
These two words had been crudely carved into the floor with a small knife. The grooves were red, carrying a sweet, fishy odor, as if tainted with blood.
Shao Lan felt around nearby, but there were no other words.
Footsteps approached him, and Shao Lan quickly pulled his hand back.
He held his breath, peering through the gap beneath the sofa…
He saw a pair of old-fashioned red embroidered shoes stop right in front of him.
The soles were bright red, and the exposed insteps were pale and sickly cyan.
Every hair on Shao Lan’s body stood on end.
Fortunately, the red embroidered shoes didn’t linger in front of Shao Lan for too long. A few seconds later, the owner of the shoes turned and walked inward.
The kitchen light immediately switched on, pots and pans clattered, and then with a loud bang, the refrigerator door was opened.
The strange odor permeating the air instantly grew much stronger. Shao Lan sniffed; the nasal congestion caused by his fever had dulled his sense of smell.
He cautiously poked his head out slightly from the gap beneath the sofa, peering toward the kitchen.
Through the gaps between various table legs and clutter, he could just make out a corner of the refrigerator.
Inside the freezer compartment, packed with white frost, was a cabinet full of meat.
Wait…
Shao Lan blinked hard.
He hadn’t seen wrong.
Tucked among those frozen meat cuts was a black, frost-covered human head.
The next second, the refrigerator door closed.
The kitchen door closed as well, and the sound of meat being chopped echoed from inside with loud thuds.
In the living room, accompanied only by the sound of rain, Shao Lan heard his own rapid breathing.
Clearly, this was the home of a murderer.
He had been unknowingly transported here in his sleep, and strangely enough, the murderer didn’t seem to know he was here.
This was a good thing; it meant he could run quickly.
Shao Lan quickly crawled out from under the sofa, picked up his shoes, and ran toward the security door on his left, wearing only his socks.
However, at that exact moment, the bedroom door suddenly flew open.
A dark figure flashed out from the room, colliding squarely with Shao Lan.
“Ah, sorry, sorry!”
The figure stopped, steadying Shao Lan in a panic.
He was a very tall guy wearing a white athletic tank top, with broad shoulders and well-defined arm muscles—at a glance, he had the build of a powerhouse.
Except his hair was a messy bird’s nest, and his blinking eyes in the dark carried a look of pure, innocent foolishness.
Right now, he was babbling apologies incoherently.
“Bro, I’m sorry, our team had a gathering and we drank a bit, I think I walked into the wrong place, I’m not a bad guy, here is my student ID…”
The guy held up a campus card reading “Jiang Mingran, XX Sports University, Competitive Sports Academy.”
While Jiang Mingran was still flustered and explaining, Shao Lan’s expression shifted drastically.
He heard the sound of meat chopping in the kitchen behind them stop, out of nowhere.
“Get in!”
Shao Lan yanked Jiang Mingran into the bedroom and locked the door behind them with a backhand pull.
The instant he saw the setup inside the bedroom, Shao Lan’s pupils trembled.
Here too, identical to the living room, sat a mourning hall and an owl grandfather clock, while four small red goldfish swam slowly inside a fish tank.
“Call the police,” Shao Lan said urgently.
“C-Call the police?” Jiang Mingran looked completely bewildered.
“There’s a corpse in the kitchen refrigerator,” Shao Lan said concisely.
Jiang Mingran’s eyes widened. He scanned Shao Lan’s face, and realizing the other person was dead serious, his expression instantly drained of color.
He hurried to pat down his pockets, but just like Shao Lan, his phone was gone.
With a grim face, Shao Lan hid behind the door and gestured for Jiang Mingran to keep quiet.
Footsteps approached from a distance, the soles of shoes lightly tapping against the floorboards.
Following Shao Lan’s lead, Jiang Mingran dropped to the floor and peered out through the door crack—
A pair of old-fashioned red embroidered shoes had stopped not far outside the door.
Jiang Mingran felt his heart leap into his throat, not daring to make the slightest sound.
The owner of the embroidered shoes didn’t make a single sound, just standing quietly outside the door.
Through the crack of the door, that pair of red embroidered shoes could be seen suddenly taking a step back.
Shao Lan was the first to realize what the person outside was about to do. He instantly flashed to the side, pressed himself flat against the wall, and reached out to pull Jiang Mingran.
However, it was already too late.
Before Jiang Mingran could even stand up, an eye suddenly appeared right in the door crack before him.
The woman had crouched down outside. Through the crack, her eye locked in a direct stare with Jiang Mingran’s.
Goosebumps erupted all over Jiang Mingran’s body.
That eye was huge; the empty eye socket was almost entirely white, and where a black pupil should have been, there was only a tiny pale-gray dot, surrounded by a dense web of blood vessels.
Jiang Mingran wanted to bolt upright, but Shao Lan forced him down.
Shao Lan gestured to Jiang Mingran with a hand sign—don’t move.
It was an excruciatingly long half-minute. Jiang Mingran didn’t dare to breathe, didn’t dare to make any sound, and didn’t even dare to blink.
Half a minute later, that eye vanished from the crack.
Shao Lan let out a long breath of relief and mouthed four silent words to Jiang Mingran.
Jiang Mingran understood. What Shao Lan said was: “She can’t see.”
In that eye, the cornea had completely degenerated; it couldn’t perceive anything at all.
Just now, that move had merely been a test. Had Jiang Mingran made even the slightest sound out of panic, he would have been dead meat.
The red embroidered shoes reappeared in the crack, and the woman stood up.
She seemed to be hesitating whether to push the door open or return to the kitchen.
Right at that moment.
“Creeeak—”
The door to the bedroom next door suddenly swung open.
There was actually a fourth person in this house!
A pair of cloth shoes entered Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran’s field of vision.
The fourth person appeared to be an old man.
The old man’s legs didn’t seem too good; he dragged one leg as he walked, taking trembling, hesitant steps.
Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran watched helplessly as the old man walked right up to the pair of red embroidered shoes.
“What is this place…” the old man’s voice trembled, filled with terror and bewilderment. “Who are you…”
His raspy voice cut off abruptly.
Before Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran could react in any way, a sharp crack of breaking bones echoed through the air, and the old man collapsed heavily to the ground.
His neck was twisted at a bizarre angle, his face turned toward the direction of the door crack.
On his aged visage, his facial features were distorted and deformed, and his eyes were wide open to their absolute limit.
As if he had just witnessed something unimaginably terrifying.
Instinctively, Jiang Mingran wanted to throw open the door and rush out.
Shao Lan grabbed him by the arm.
In the darkness, Jiang Mingran felt Shao Lan’s hand as cold as ice.
“It’s too late,” Shao Lan shook his head, making a hand gesture.
“He’s dead.”