Courtyard instance world
Cui Shenyu flung away the arm in his hands without a second thought, and stepped back quickly. In front of them stood a young man clad in black.
He smiled slightly, and put the hand Cui Shenyu grabbed behind his back. He had dark, chin length hair and looked no older than twenty. He pulled out a wallet from the pocket of his windbreaker.
‘Hello. I’m Nan Zhi, from the Department of Instance Regulation.’ He showed them an ID verifying his words. ‘We’re responsible for the regulation of instance worlds, and my job specifically, is to ensure the smoothness of the game process.’
He put his wallet away in a practiced manner, and pulled out a worn out sheet of paper that had been folded countless times from the inside of his jacket. ‘The information from this world shows that there are unnatural fluctuations, and the players are incompetent to a disappointing extent. Our system crashed last night, and it mistakenly paired so many newcomers with only four veterans.’
‘This counts as a violation of the second paragraph of rule three of the fourteenth amendment of The Basal Rights and Regulations, which states that at least two third of players have to be those on at least their second game. The difficulty of the world is upgraded to rank D, and players are to be compensated for the mistake of the main system.’
Freckles was dumbfounded. ‘Compensation? Wait, who is the fourth veteran? I thought there were only three?’
Nan Zhi shrugged as he put the sheet away, having finished reading it to them. ‘It’s not my responsibility to share that information. Where are the rest of the players? The case file didn’t mention any deaths so far. It can’t be that it’s only you six?’
He looked at each of their faces, his gaze finally resting on one of the boys who didn’t bother saying his name. His mouth twitched with gloom, but he didn’t say anything.
The other boy spoke as he was already turning to leave, ‘I’ll go look for them. They should be at the well in the back.’ The two left quickly.
Nan Zhi didn’t look at them again. He turned to the four boys left in the room, and cocked an eyebrow. ‘What are you waiting for? Didn’t you come in here to look for clues?’
This reminded the boys that they did, in fact, really come to look for clues. Nan Zhi dusted off a slightly dirty chair with strange stains on it, and sat down directly. He didn’t pay attention to the boys, and instead pulled out a cellphone from his windbreaker, texting someone.
The only sound in the room was the wood cracking under their feet and the noise his fingers made as he knocked them on the screen with an unscientific speed.
‘Wen jie, can you help me with something?’
The chat bubble popped up, but it disappeared in a moment again. Finally, a reply came after a few minutes. The reluctance of the sender could be felt even through the text.
‘What is it?’
‘Ask Lan Feng about Chu Anzhi for me. What he’s been up to recently and so on. I feel like we need to pay a little more attention to him.’
The others came quickly. The two boys from before were standing in the back, near the door of the now somewhat crowded room. Shi Mingdu stood at the front, and nodded at Nan Zhi. ‘They said you’re from the Federal Bureau?’
Nan Zhi put away his phone, and stood up slowly. He looked at the newcomers one by one again, but his expression didn’t change.
‘I’m from the Department of Instance Regulation. There was a mistake when you all got pulled into this world, the reason is unknown. I am here to compensate you.’ He lowered his head as he searched through his papers, finally pulling one from the stack.
‘The compensation is the completion of your missing task and two additional clues.’ He snapped his fingers, and a plaque identical to the one in the dining hall appeared on the wall. The words twisted and turned, turning into six rows in total.
He didn’t bother explaining, and just stepped to the side silently to let all of them see the text.
[Rules.]
[I. Survive for 7 days, or find the murderer.]
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
[II. Find the hidden treasure.]
[III. Act your role.]
[Clue: The darkness is where the lights burn out.]
[Clue: The shovels aren’t only for planting potatoes.]
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Nan Zhi looked at their troubled expressions, and pursed his lips before following up with his own words. ‘It is best if you finish the second task today. The death condition will be set back at midnight, and it is unnecessary to throw your lives away like that.’ He disappeared from in front of their eyes with that.
Tian Xihua looked at Shi Mingdu, and asked him. ‘What did he mean by death condition?’
Shi Mingdu’s expression was ugly. He counted on the death conditions not appearing on the first day, which was why he wasn’t as cautious as he used to be when he played in a team.
The boy with green hair spoke. ‘It is a sort of condition that needs to be fulfilled for the ghosts of the instance to be able to kill. For example, it can be us not finishing the work until noon, or..’
‘Or coming into this house.’ Zhai Xiaoyi interrupted him with a deepening frown.
The green haired boy nodded, ‘If we don’t fulfill any of them, the survival task is possible to complete. Otherwise all we can do is find out the truth in its entirety.’
‘Death conditions are usually hinted at by the NPCs. It’s just that there are a lot of rules, and while some of them prove to be death conditions, the rest might be inevitable to breach while finishing the task.’
‘It is just gambling with our lives, there is no way to know what we can and can’t do until we try it. We won’t know and we can’t know, so there is nothing to gain from worrying about the rules. It’s all just luck.’ The third boy who raised his hand that morning said.
He smiled somewhat helplessly, and shrugged. ‘Not everyone who fulfills the conditions will die for sure either. Nan Zhi already called all of us inside, so any of us can die any moment now. All we can do is be more careful.’
Shi Mingdu let out a sigh. ‘It is already like this, it’s best if we go back to the house. I wasn’t worried that the woman would harm us, because there were no active conditions. But now… And this one was even set by her. I’m afraid something will happen if we aren’t obedient.’
He turned, and walked out of the house. He couldn’t help feeling lost. Everything he did turned out the exact opposite way compared to what he wanted.
When they left the abandoned courtyard, the sun was high up in the sky. None of them knew much about telling the time from the position of the sun, but it seemed to be around noon.
Shi Mingdu walked in front, and tried to forget about the conditions. He spoke loudly, ‘It should be that the treasure is somewhere in that house. The plaque mentioned the shovels, so it should be buried.’
‘Inside the courtyard it can be anywhere in the garden, or even under the house. We can’t forget about the old well either, after all it is near the house but not inside. It sounds like a place where treasure would be hidden, difficult to find but still not too dangerous.’
‘Let’s have a look at the bottom of the well too. There is no water inside, so it can be a potential hiding spot. It’s too dark to see from above ground though, it’s better to go down.’
He looked back at Tian Xihua, as if having just remembered his question. ‘I’ll say everything I know.’ He swept his gaze around himself, looking at the tall mountains far away and the plain waste around them. It seemed that he felt he had lost all reason to keep things to himself.
‘I’ve been doing instances since I was sixteen. In every world, there are rules and there are tasks. Only by breaching the rules can the tasks be thoroughly done. I used to be part of a team when I was younger. The captain was my brother, and there were three others he met in other instances. There was a girl with special abilities, just like him.’
He shot a look towards Zhai Xiaoyi before continuing. ‘She could sense ghosts, and not only NPC ones, but those who were just trespassing. She often asked them for help if the task was hard to figure out.’
‘These ghosts aren’t part of the instances, they’re more like an invisible audience. They aren’t bound by the rules of the world either, and can be of great help.’
‘They were happy that she could sense them, so they often decided to help. In the last instance we did together, she asked for help as usual. The ghost she found was a bigshot, so it was pretty obvious that it would be an easy pass if he decided to help us. He didn’t.’
He stopped walking to stare at Zhai Xiaoyi, wanting to make sure he got what he wanted to tell him. ‘It is easy to become careless when you find that you have an all purpose trump card like that. It’s best to do all you can by your own means, and hope for success.’
Zhai Xiaoyi asked, ‘What happened to your team?’
‘I don’t remember.’ Shi Mingdu’s expression was dark. ‘It doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that it is easy for even a small ghost to completely wipe us out if it wants to. Don’t do anything unnecessary, at least as long as you’re part of my team.’
Zhai Xiaoyi smiled, ‘Who said I was part of your team?’
‘You want to work separately from them?’ Tian Xihua asked him.
‘You have an ability, but you’re still a newcomer. It’s unwise to act alone. But do as you wish.’ Shi Mingdu frowned. He really wanted the best for Zhai Xiaoyi, but he couldn’t force him to act maturely.
The boy pursed his lips. ‘I was just joking. That.. Thank you for your advice.’
He knew very well that he had more of a chance at survival if he followed certain rules. If Shi Mingdu was an NPC in his own life, wouldn’t that make what he advised him against a taboo?
In truth, he didn’t know anything about this world, and the things he did know were all told to him by Shi Mingdu. There was no guarantee that any of it was real, no guarantee that anything in front of his eyes at the moment was real.
He tried not to worry too much about it, but he still couldn’t shake the idea of everything he saw being fake from his mind. If it was a dream, it was an especially detailed one, and if it wasn’t…
It was best if he followed the rules until he figured out. He didn’t understand many things in this world, which was why he tried to lie low before.
This wasn’t the first time that he was pulled into some shady thing run by ghosts, mainly because of his family name. He couldn’t trust anything at the moment to be true, so he didn’t bother at all. He decided to treat the instance as vacation.
‘Should we hurry back? The sun is higher up than before. We wouldn’t want to break two rules after each other, right?’ A boy tried to ease the situation.
Shi Mingdu nodded, it was indeed time to go back. He glanced at Zhai Xiaoyi again, but didn’t say anything in the end.
They walked back in silence. The clouds that kept the warmth away while they worked were long gone, and the broken rocks around them were scorching hot. The gates of the house were open, and the green of the courtyard was like a paradise in their eyes after the yellow of the surrounding waste.
The woman stood between the gates, the hand woven basket in her hand. She looked relieved when she saw the boys returning, but she didn’t say anything. Her eyes were fixed on Zhao Qi, the boy who first noticed the well.
Zhao Qi felt goosebumps on his entire body from her frigid gaze. He looked around, and noticed that the rest of the boys were looking at him with doubtful eyes.
‘What?!’ He couldn’t help but panic. He touched his face and then looked at the others. He froze as he realised and his face paled. He had left his shovel at the well when they were called over by Nan Zhi!
He meant to go back for it, but then he was too shocked by the developments and simply forgot. The woman looked at him like that without blinking, but she didn’t scold him. She showed a strange smile, and turned to lead the boys inside.
Zhao Qi was still standing there, his body completely frozen. Tian Xihua patted him on the shoulder. ‘It shouldn’t be a condition, she didn’t mention it before.’
Shi Mingdu nodded at him too. ‘We’ll go back for it tomorrow. Let’s head inside for now.’
Zhi Xiaoyi walked at the side of the group, a couple of steps away from them. He felt strange. His steps came to a halt suddenly, and he stood in place as he slowly raised a hand to his cheek. It was warm, hot even, hotter than it was supposed to be.
He kept walking as if nothing had happened, but Jin Huai, who was walking next to him, asked him suddenly. ‘Are you alright? Your face is completely flushed.’
‘I’m fine.’ His voice was somewhat hoarser than before, but not noticeably. He bowed his head, and thought about everything that happened throughout the day.
He felt like he was missing something, something he knew before, but he didn’t even know when this ‘before’ could have been. Was it something important?
He didn’t go to the dining hall. The others didn’t care about his disappearance, and by the time Tian Xuhua noticed, he couldn’t find him around the table at all.
Zhi Xiaoyi was tired, but he wanted to get answers to his questions just a little bit more than he wanted to rest. His cat came to his mind suddenly, and he hoped that if what he saw was real, time at least didn’t pass as quickly in reality as it did here. He then thought about what he promised Xue Liuhe, and he felt slightly helpless.
He looked around, and found himself alone in the middle of the courtyard. He thought about following the others, but he didn’t feel hungry at all. He then looked towards the only part of the building they hadn’t gone to before.
He didn’t even consider the possible dangers as he pushed the door in and walked inside.
Inside the dining hall. Each of the boys had a bowl filled with peas in front of them, but there was a bowl without anyone in front of it.
Tian Xihua frowned, but he couldn’t remember what was wrong. Just a moment ago, he was ready to stand up and excuse himself, but he had forgotten why he wanted to do so in the meantime.
Shi Mingdu was speaking. ‘Official documents. That’s something we can start out from. What was written on them?’
He was asking the boy who didn’t introduce himself. Since then, they got to know that his name was Chu Anzhi.
The Chu family was just as prominent in the capital as the Zhai family, if not even more. They were a righteous family anyone could call for help if they had the money to do so when dealing with the supernatural.
‘I didn’t understand most of it,’ Chu Anzi shrugged, ‘but it seemed to have something to do with a mortgage? I don’t know anything more than that.’
Zhao Qi sighed. ‘If only you took them from the house. I’m in the real estate business, so I should understand most of it. Now we can’t even go back.’
Shi Mingdu spoke after wiping his lips with a napkin. ‘That’s not necessarily true. The order should already be fixed, according to the order we entered the house. Most people don’t have to worry. Who was the first one to go in?’
‘The order?’ Cui Shenyu asked, panicking. ‘Didn’t you say it didn’t matter? All of us went in. Who could remember the order?’
The third veteran was the one to answer him. ‘It isn’t that the order doesn’t matter, it’s just that it’s not necessarily useful to know. It’s still the most appealing list to follow for the ghosts. It’s like this: if you break the rules, that brings the wrath of the instance creatures on you.’
‘If there happens to be someone who breaks another rule first, and the two rules are about the same level, then the ghost might choose them. It doesn’t depend on the time of the action, but the order of it.’
This didn’t help Cui Shenyu calm down at all. ‘I don’t remember who the first one to enter was! It very well could have been me, or any of us. What if it was me? Hah? Do I deserve death for breaking a taboo I didn’t even know about?’
‘The woman told all of us about the rule.’ Chu Anzhi spoke indifferently, ‘And it wasn’t even you. It was Jin Huai.’
The dining hall sank into silence.
Then it was swallowed up in the chaos of yelling.
This was what Zhai Xiaoyi first saw when he walked in, Cui Shenyu’s relieved but guilty expression, Jin Huai in the process of throwing a bowl of peas into Chu Anzi’s face and the dumbfounded expressions of the others.
The author has something to say:
Nan Zhi: I’m just doing my job, mmkay?
I’d like to take this chance to explain some things about zxy’s mental state throughout the first few chapters. He knows absolutely nothing about the entire situation he’s in, which is to say that he won’t necessarily believe anything others tell him. This is normal and probably what I’d do in a similar situation, but it makes his character seem sort of inconsistent to a certain extent. Later when he talks to nz personally some of these things get cleared up. His most important emotions during the first instance are fear and doubt. This is a process he has to go through to get to a point where he can act natural in later instances, although it might make the first couple of chapters less enjoyable. Sorry about that.
I don’t remember ZXY telling them his abilities.
Eh..when did that happen??
Thanks for the chapter 🌸
It’s mentioned that smd doesn’t think getting sick in instances is possible, as well as the fact that when he had last seen anything similar it was in the case of his teammate who could also see/communicate with ghosts. Although what’s true for his ex-teammate might not entirely be the same for zxy.. thank you for reading!
Oh, I got it now 🐨
Thanks!!
thanks for the chapter! <3
Thanks for the chapter!