Heping Medical College boasted a long history, emerging from the ravages of war, established to save lives and heal the wounded. Its gates are symmetrically balanced, exuding a rustic grandeur, with traces of history in the grayish-brown of its stone exterior.
From a distance, ancient trees that were centuries old towered within the college grounds, creating a canopy so thick it casted a cooling shadow.
Xia Bai and Lin Xiang stood still outside the main gate, not to attract attention but because Hua Haoming was observing the surrounding area. Today was the registration day for first-year students. People from all walks of life passed by, donning various outfits and expressions.
Seeing Hua Haoming scrutinizing so intently, the usually chatty Lin Xiang remained quiet for a moment. Just as he was about to speak, Hua Haoming pulled his cap down and said, “Let’s go.”
The trio finally entered the gate.
The campus was particularly bustling today. A banner welcoming new students was hung conspicuously right at the entrance. Along the main pathway, various clubs were actively recruiting new members. Past this road was the registration site located in the gymnasium.
Lin Xiang and Hua Haoming waited outside as Xia Bai, with his backpack, went inside to register. After queuing for over forty minutes, Xia Bai registered with his admission notice, paid his tuition, collected his dormitory slip, and then crossed over to collect his bedding.
Everything went smoothly and they finally reached Xia Bai’s dormitory. The room housed four, with beds above and desks below. It wasn’t new but was spacious. Being a local, Xia Bai was the last to arrive. The other three beds already had belongings on them.
Upon their entrance, a woman, seemingly in her forties, was making the bed on the top bunk. Across the room, a father and son were having a meal. The only available space was the bed by the restroom. As they entered, everyone looked up.
The woman smiled warmly and said, “The last roommate is here. Are you Xia Bai?”
Xia Bai nodded, moving towards the bed the woman was working on, “Hello, Auntie. This is my bed.”
The woman pointed to a label on the bunk by the restroom, “Look, Xia Bai, that’s your bed. Your name and student ID are on it.”
Hua Haoming and Lin Xiang followed her pointing finger. They saw a common white label with a blue border. On top was Xia Bai’s name and below, his student ID.
Xia Bai stood his ground, “The labels on beds one and four are different from beds two and three. The original ones must have been replaced.”
Lin Xiang squinted and backed him up. “That’s right! The blue border on beds one and four is lighter!”
“Maybe the school ran out of labels, and the new ones were printed lighter,” the woman suggested.
Xia Bai, undeterred, said, “Beds should be assigned based on student ID numbers. The number on the second bed comes before the third. My number is the smallest, so the fourth bed definitely isn’t mine.”
The woman’s expression changed. Blood surged up to her unblemished face, and her voice grew in volume, hints of anger creeping in, “Young man, you just got here, and you’re already causing a scene. How do you expect to get along with your roommates acting like this?”
As she said this, she glanced at the father and son across the room. The son continued to eat silently, while the father cheerfully said, “It’s a small matter. No need to argue.”
Bang!
Both the restroom door and the main door burst open. The loud noise made it hard to tell which door was responsible. A young man and woman, seemingly siblings, entered with basins and shopping bags, likely returning from a shopping spree.
A male student exited the restroom, and upon seeing him, the woman from earlier tightly gripped the bedsheets and called out in grievance, “Son.”
It was evident the young man from the restroom had overheard their previous conversation. He glanced at the two bags beside Xia Bai, then silently approached the desk beneath the first bed, pulling out a wad of cash, “Xia Bai, the dorm fee is 1200 for the year. Here’s double that amount. Will this suffice for a bed swap?”
“Huuuuh?” Lin Xiang, incensed by the money, retorted, “Think you’re something special because of some stinking money?” He started to remove his wristwatch.
The woman by the door noticed and exclaimed, “Wait, that watch is worth millions. What are you planning to do with it?”
Xia Bai, the father by the desk, and the mother on the bed, turned to look at Lin Xiang’s watch.
The young man was taken aback as well, seemingly recognizing its value. Initially hoping to resolve matters with money, he realized that the opposing party might be wealthier and awkwardly muttered, “Who knows if it’s genuine?”
Lin Xiang felt the sting of insult. “I’d rather draw a watch on my arm than wear a fake! Heh, I’m far different from some people who wear fake shoes and act like they’re the shit!”
Xia Bai’s eyes darted to the boy’s shoes. Two other gazes followed suit.
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.
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Ktf kbwjc kjr jybea ab rabq tlw ktfc atf ybs rcjqqfv, “Xb bc, atfc!”
But Hua Haoming hesitated at the door, his face gradually draining of color.
Seeing this, the boy retorted, “Well, why aren’t you leaving? Aren’t you going to get the dorm supervisor?”
Hua Haoming returned, his face icy, and took a seat on the fourth bed. A few seconds passed before he spat out a curse.
Lin Xiang, puzzled, instinctively looked to Xia Bai, only to find him staring intently out the window.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s so…quiet.”
Lin Xiang thought, Quiet? With all this racket? But he soon realized Xia Bai meant the silence outside, not within the dorm. He strained to hear, but there was nothing.
No murmur, not even the faintest shuffle of footsteps. The echoing silence was eerie, especially since today was the freshman move-in day, which should’ve been the loudest day of the year on this campus. Had they been too busy arguing to notice when this peculiar incident had started?
The boy continued to question Hua Haoming, wondering why he didn’t seek the dorm supervisor. It seemed as if he was trying to reclaim a shred of his lost dignity through his questioning.
“The dorm door won’t open,” said the sister at the door, her face taut with frustration.
Everyone in the dormitory looked over, except for Hua Haoming.
The younger brother also gripped the door handle, attempting to open it. Standing a head taller than his sister, his tall and sturdy frame caused the door to wobble when he exerted force, but it still wouldn’t open.
“How can this be?” The father, who had been eating, put down his chopsticks and walked to the door to try his hand at it, but to no avail.
The boy who had been interrogating Hua Haoming also gave it a try with the same result. He continued his questioning, “Did you mess with it? Ever since you touched the door handle, it won’t open.”
Hua Haoming ignored him.
Infuriated, the boy whipped out his phone, ready to make a call. But as he looked at the screen, he froze. Others did the same, only to meet the same issue.
“No signal.”
“Me neither.”
“Can’t open any apps.”
“What the hell is happening?”
Lin Xiang approached the window, testing it.
“The windows won’t open either.”
He then grabbed a chair from under the second bed, wielding its iron legs to shatter the glass with all the force he could muster in his 187 cm frame.
Bang! Screech!
But the glass remained intact.
The jarring noise died down, and an unsettling silence enveloped the room. They soon realized the extent of the external silence: it was as if the whole world had gone mute.
The jubilant faces and boisterous hallways from earlier seemed to have been drained away like receding tides. Or perhaps they had been plucked from their world and deposited into this eerily silent void.
Lin Xiang approached Xia Bai. He wiped his hands on his trousers, then inched closer still.
“Wh-what’s going on?” The woman, panicked, descended from the bed. With little response from the others, she rushed to the door, banging and shouting, “Is anyone out there? We’re trapped! Open the door!”
She wasn’t as strong as the boys in the room, but she triumphed over them with her high-pitched screams – though they met no answer. They could hear her voice, but it was as if absorbed by an endless void the moment it reached the door.
Outside, dusk was setting in.
The spacious dorm of Heping Medical College felt cramped with nine people inside. Everyone was on edge, visibly shaken.
“What on earth is happening?” The father, who had earlier been happily accompanying his son for enrollment, asked with a tremor in his voice. He’d expected this to be one of the proudest days of his life, but instead, he met with this incident in this dorm room which had housed countless students.
Anyone trapped in the dorm, disconnected and seemingly abandoned by the world, would be filled with dread. Several people in the room seemed to harbor such doubt, but they didn’t know anyone who could give them answers.
Hua Haoming spoke coldly, “We’re in a lock-down.”
All eyes turned to him.
Lin Xiang questioned, “Bro, what do you mean ‘lock-down’?”
Hua Haoming scanned everyone, pausing slightly on the woman, then ran a hand through his hair, straightening up.
Seeing that he was going to provide an explanation, the others waited with bated breath.
“Understanding this will require a backstory,” Hua Haoming began, “The first anomaly occurred in Qili Village, a remote hillside village in the southern part of Ximian City.”
Ximian, located in the southwest, wasn’t particularly prosperous. Transportation was inconvenient, and its remote hillside villages were even poorer.
In Qili Village stood a small school – an establishment consisting of a cluster of mud houses, teaching a mere thirty-odd students from preschool to elementary school, managed by just two teachers.
That day, one of the teachers went out to a distant town to fetch textbooks for the students. As he pushed his bicycle up the hill, he could hear the broadcast of a calisthenics exercise playing from a loudspeaker. He exhaled a puff of white breath in the cold, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Pushing open the school’s wobbly wooden gate, he was surprised to find no trace of the students on the clay playground.
In fact, there wasn’t a single person in the entire school. Only the blaring loudspeakers echoed in the empty buildings, and soon, the entire village.
Indeed, it was the school’s scheduled time for the radio calisthenics exercise. On regular days, over thirty students would be standing here, scattered about, performing their not-so-precise movements.
But now, they were all gone.
They had vanished into thin air.
How could over thirty living, breathing people just disappear without a trace?
In this backward and remote mountain village, surveillance cameras were scarce. No traces of them could be found. The investigators were at a complete loss, continuously reinforcing their teams, expanding the scope of their search for a long time, but still, there were no leads.
All that was known was that they were likely still there before 10:30 in the morning. 10:30 was the time for the school-wide calisthenics exercise, and it must’ve been another teacher who turned on the broadcast for them.
But before the broadcast even ended, everyone, including the teacher, was gone.
“The students later appeared in a photograph,” Hua Haoming continued. “A journalist arrived three days later and captured the image at night. The photograph is right here…”
Hua Haoming pulled out his phone and opened a photo, drawing the attention of everyone nearby. Xia Bai was the closest and had the clearest view.
Qili Village still retained its rustic appearance. The school buildings were mud houses with uneven walls, yet the playground was vast, untouched raw earth.
The photo was taken at night, capturing a nocturnal scene. In the dim school lights, the photo wasn’t too bright, but one could clearly see over thirty students exercising on the playground.
The snapshot was taken mid-jump.
In the dead of winter, the village schoolboys mostly wore drab cotton-padded jackets, while the girls wore slightly brighter colors; a few sported brilliant red floral jackets.
For these elementary students, doing calisthenics should’ve been a joyous time. Yet in the photo, as they all leapt in unison, not a single smile graced their faces.
Decaying, ghastly gray-purple hands clutched at their throats.
Their feet weren’t off the ground because they jumped, but because they were being hoisted. The ghostly fingers were long, entirely wrapped around their necks. It looked as if a group of students had been hanged, dangling lifelessly against the backdrop of a cold, dark night.
Although many details could be gleaned from the photo, those grotesque hands held everyone’s attention. It felt as though they could all sense the chilling grasp permeating their bodies.
“It’s… it’s photoshopped, right?” one of the fathers exclaimed. “It’s edited! I know what photoshopping is!”
Hua Haoming didn’t respond but merely swiped to the right on his phone, revealing a video. Three days later in the video, the thirty or so students were still continuously “jumping”. They had been doing it for three full days and seemed poised to continue indefinitely, never stopping.
It soon became clear to the viewers that the kids weren’t jumping continuously. The ghostly hands were in control, having moved from their necks to their hair. They pulled them up, once, twice, again, and again. The video shook briefly, zooming in on the faces of two terrified students.
“Ahh!” the mother screamed, covering her face in fright. The father continued in disbelief, “I know of this story! There’s no way they’re still at school. The reports said the other female teacher kidnapped them!”
Hua Haoming, seemingly used to this reaction, calmly replied, “Last fall, Lingle Amusement Park suddenly closed. A crowd gathered outside demanding the return of missing persons. People playing in the haunted house vanished into thin air.”
Lin Xiang commented, “I read about that online. The haunted house malfunctioned, causing severe casualties, and the amusement park was shut down.”
Tapping on his phone, Hua Haoming showed another video, “If you’ve seen that, then you’ve seen photos of one of the missing people, right?”
The video clearly displayed Lingle’s haunted house. The chilling atmosphere was palpable, with bloody streaks on the walls and severed limbs scattered around. As the person filming opened a door, an unexpected corpse dangled down.
Xia Bai’s eyes widened, unsure if he was seeing things, but it seemed a tear rolled down the corpse’s cheek.
The face of the corpse looked eerily realistic, contrasting with its obviously artificial body, creating an unsettling visual.
Lin Xiang froze, trembling lips betraying his fear, especially as more prop corpses and ghosts appeared in the video. Holding Xia Bai’s shoulder tightly, Lin Xiang felt heavy, as if weighed down by dread.
“Later, all the prop ghosts in the amusement park had their faces replaced with those of the missing people.”
The room was silent, all eyes fixed on Hua Haoming.
Sensing Xia Bai’s fervent gaze, the usually unflappable Hua Haoming paused briefly, changing the subject. “Two days ago, Quanguang City was sealed overnight. You all heard about that, right?”
The father chimed in, “That’s because of a severe contagious outbreak. The contagion source is hard to deal with. It was on the news yesterday!”
Stashing his phone in his pocket and adjusting his cap to reveal his sharp eyes, Hua Haoming smirked at the man, “After the city was sealed, people from Quanguang were moved to hospitals outside, but no ordinary person has entered since. Uncle, have you ever heard of a quarantined city where people leave, but none enter?”
As if it had burst a bubble, several people were taken aback. The atmosphere grew tense and heavy, anxiety fermenting in the dim light. The mother, pale-faced, was still in denial, “Why should we believe you? This is absurd!”
Hua Haoming looked at the group, “If the students from Qili Village were kidnapped, would it take this long to investigate? If the amusement park had an equipment malfunction, why is it still closed? Over the past two years, many unexplainable events have happened. Are you truly disbelieving, or just deceiving yourselves?”
“You’re saying we’ve… ‘vanished’ too?” The brother of the brother-sister pair finally spoke up, “Like the students in Qili Village, the people in the haunted house, and many in Quanguang City?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Hua Haoming replied. “Qili Village was the earliest confirmed anomalous incident. Afterwards, strange occurrences spread worldwide. Not all who vanished returned, but from those who did, we learned that these anomalies were tied to a sinister game. They only managed to return by navigating through it.”
“Qili Elementary School, Lingle Amusement Park, and worst of all, Quanguang City—the game has already spread to cover most of the city.”
“Those places were sealed to prevent more people from being ensnared in the terrifying game. Excuses of malfunctions or contagions were given to prevent widespread panic and chaos.”
Hua Haoming slid his phone back into his pocket, leaving his hand inside. “Everyone, the game has come to our dormitory. Now, we are all trapped within the game.”
It’s starting! It’s starting! It’s starting! The horror and thrill is starting!!!
Thanks for the chapter~~~~(⌒0⌒)／~~
Ooh the plot is so interesting! I’ve never read such a build up before!
I feel like I’ve seen comments by you on every novel I’m reading here lately.
me too I feel like I’ve seen them everywhere too!!! xD
Except for the two who came with him, I’m not so sure of the rest of the game players…hahahahaha…. Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️
lets goooo
goddamn i’d cry. id be stuck in the game
Can’t wait for this family to die :))))
Oooh! This is such a fresh opening for an unlimited flow novel. I am genuinely impressed!