The time when Hu Li sent these messages was late at night on the 23rd. Hu Li hid under the quilt, covered in sweat as he repeatedly sent WeChat messages to remind Sun Guojing of the danger standing by his bed.
However, Sun Guojing’s phone seemed to be muted and there was no sound. He tensed his muscles, raised his courage and poked out an eye from the quilt. The shadow was still there. Moreover, it was keeping a close eye on himself. Hu Li saw that it was his own face.
At that time, Hu Li yelled like Sun Guojing when he felt something in his bed. It was said that this was the sixth time that Hu Li heard the ‘sha sha’ sound. It was also said that when he screamed, the entire dormitory was silent. There was no one knocking on the door. Everyone slept soundly, leaving him alone in infinite terror.
Hu Li jumped up, turned on the lights and woke up all his roommates frantically. They finally woke up but the answers they gave made Hu Li even more creeped out.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
“Turn off the lights! It is 3:30 and I have to train tomorrow!”
Hu Li cried bitterly. The more agitated he was, the more unclear his words became. He was so anxious that he ended up biting his tongue. He cried out vaguely to Sun Guojing, “I’m not dreaming! I sent you a WeChat message telling you that there was someone beside your bed?!”
Sun Guojing squinted and grabbed his phone, looking through the records. Then he threw the phone directly at Hu Li. “When did you fucking send me anything? What is this? Do you have hysteria?”
The sluggish Hu Li was pushed back to his bed by his three brothers. He curled up under the quilt, sweating and his body cold. It was as if he had fallen into an ice cave.
***
All of these things were revealed from Sun Guojing’s mobile phone. Later, Hu Li stayed up at night and wrote down his experiences since hearing the ‘sha sha’ sound, sending them to everyone he knew.
He tried to maintain his last connection with the world. As for the outcome, they all knew it.
The robotic voice slowly recited the long text written by Hu Li.
“Everything has changed since we entered that classroom.”
“You have stopped being able to hear me and now you aren’t seeing me.”
“Why is it that you ask ‘Where has Hu Li gone?’ when I am still in the dormitory?”
“Why am I the only one who has become like this? Did I do something?”
“When playing football, Jiaming told me that he heard the sound.”
“I told him about my situation but he didn’t believe it because he only heard it once.”
“Let’s gather together again and have a good talk, shall we?”
“I haven’t confessed to Yinhang yet. Now if I confess, she won’t be able to hear it.”
“Will my parents forget me? I don’t know if it is good or bad. The good thing is that they won’t be sad. The bad thing is… the bad thing is…”
The despair in the words and the cold tone of the robotic voice speaking with perfect spacing between each character formed a strong, incongruous sense of dislocation. After hearing the sobbing words, everyone’s chill lasted for a long time.
Hu Li’s message proved that they had provoked a mysterious force. This power deceived their ‘senses’ from the darkness. It changed and distorted their perceptions. It was so much so that when Jiang Fang wrote the horror post to fish for information, everyone was wondering ‘who is Hu Li?’, even his classmates. It was because everyone forgot.
Due to this, it didn’t become a campus legend. It had always existed on this campus.
After roughly clarifying the current situation, Sun Guojing’s fear became stronger but his mental instability slowly dispelled. It was because chaos was the main factor that affected the san value. The effects of despair and fear were relatively small.
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.
Before Sun Guojing’s san value fell below 1, the downward momentum came to an end. Seeing that the trio were so dizzy and confused by the facts that they couldn’t hear anything else, Nan Zhou’s group decided to temporarily leave.
Dfobgf ifjnlcu, Aljcu Mjcu abiv atfw, “Jbcajma wf lo sbe cffv rbwfatlcu.”
Pa pera kjrc’a xcbkc lo atfs tfjgv la.
***
Rjc Itbe, Aljcu Mjcu jcv Ol Tlctjcu ribkis kjixfv vbkc atf rajlgr. Rjc Itbe bqfcfv tlr wbeat. “Pc atlr kjs, atf mtjlc bo gfijalbcrtlqr wjxfr rfcrf.”
C abaji bo clcf qfbqif jaafcvfv atf ujatfglcu atja vjs. Ktfgf kjr cb cffv ab ajix jybea Vec Xebplcu, Oeb Xf, Hl Kljcsec jcv Le Ol. Hl Kljcsec ugjyyfv atf rtbgambwlcur bo Wlf Wljcuse lc atf wjatfwjalmr vfqjgawfca jcv atgfjafcfv Wlf Wljcuse ab yfmbwf tlr fggjcv ybs.
Zuo Jiaming lived in the same dormitory as Xie Xiangyu and he was Hu Li’s friend. They often played football together. They played so often that there was a football near the radiator in the dormitory.
Hu Li obviously knew and secretly loved Li Yinhang from statistics, so he asked her to come and play. All the people attending the party were boys so for safety, Li Yinhang called her high school friend Nan Zhou. Nan Zhou took his boyfriend Jiang Fang with him. The two missing links were added and the relationship between characters was completely smoothed out.
Li Yinhang’s expression was very bad. She might only be playing ‘Li Yinhang’ and wasn’t involved in the interpersonal relationships in this instance but any person with normal emotions would feel sad finding out that someone who secretly liked her had silently disappeared from the world.
She reluctantly asked, “…Why was Hu Li the first?”
As he had asked: why him? This was originally a minor issue and the word ‘unlucky’ could be used to sum it up completely. Yet Nan Zhou actually started to analyze it properly.
“It is because he is the most important one.”
“The role of ‘Hu Li’ is the most important link in the relationship between characters in the instance. He connects Yinhang and Zuo Jiaming who disappeared second. If one of us played the original role of ‘Hu Li’ when we came in, his mobile phone would provide too many clues and this instance would be less interesting.”
“It is the game setting that determined it.”
Nan Zhou’s logic and way of thinking were very strange, just like his commentary and analysis of the ghost ‘not being able to give people a bright point’ in the last world. Li Yinhang was no longer able to say anything.
For the first time, she had the sense that she was being played by the damned game ‘Forces of Temptation’. Just as her spirit was extremely tense, there was another echo-like, faint rustling from the silent staircase. No, the source wasn’t in the stairwell. It was in her ear canals.
Sha…
Sha…
“It is here again…” She muttered in a moaning tone. “It is here again…”
She covered her ears, sat down on the stairs and hugged her head. She used the last of her strength to say, “I’ll sit down.”
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang, who had already taken a few steps, stopped. Nan Zhou was a bit confused when he noticed that Li Yinhang’s shoulders were shaking slightly. He wanted to approach and pat her but Jiang Fang gently tapped him from behind, signaling him not to move.
Next, Jiang Fang sat silently by Li Yinhang’s side. Nan Zhou intended to do the same. However, Li Yinhang was sitting down by the railing. Nan Zhou could only sit next to Jiang Fang and poke his head out to see Li Yinhang’s condition.
Jiang Fang understood Li Yinhang’s collapse. Or to be precise, her endurance was quite high if she only collapsed now.
Look back on the path they had traveled. It could be seen that the trial level might be carried out in a rush but the space was enclosed, the number of people was limited and there were clues to follow.
In the first instance, the space was opened up slightly and the difficulty increased, but it was still within a reasonable range. The three teams sometimes had disputes, temptations and concealment but generally, they trusted each other.
After a thrilling end to the instance, they got a break. In this time, they won against the boss Qu Jinsha in the Douzhuan Casino. They didn’t win much but it was quite refreshing. Then when morale was at the highest, they randomly arrived at this confusing instance.
The map was too big and there were too few clues. Forget the three teams relying on each other. It was good if they didn’t calculate against each other or send each other to death. Not to mention, there was a powerful force they couldn’t resist at all.
Every minute was like blindly living in a box. No one knew who would be the next to be erased. If their emotions had been full of hope before, this instance was like a basin of cold water being poured on them.
At present, the clues that were so easy to find were actually evidence of their powerlessness. In the face of this force, they didn’t have the initiative at all. It was as the instance said. It was already difficult to ‘live’ and not ‘go crazy.’
Jiang Fang was thinking this, Nan Zhou was thinking it and Li Yinhang was naturally thinking it. Li Yinhang carefully examined her emotions and cheered up a bit. She had worked in customer service so her ability to withstand stress was quite decent. She rubbed her face and looked up. “I’m okay…”
…Then she saw the apple that Nan Zhou was holding out to her being pulled back. Nan Zhou hugged the apple a bit reluctantly. “…Okay, you are fine.”
Yet in the end, this apple was split into three parts by Nan Zhou and divided equally among them. Li Yinhang ate a bit of sugar and her pale face finally improved. She said, “I didn’t like apples before. Now I think it is a good thing to be able to eat them.”
“I love apples,” Nan Zhou told her. “As a child, I never ate them. So once I grew up, I liked them.”
Li Yinhang made a sound in response while her mind spun. She always had a sense that there was a boundary with these two bigshots. Even after living together for a few days, they only talked about which snack bar was cheaper. It was the first time she had heard Nan Zhou mention his past.
Li Yinhang suddenly wanted to talk. She lowered her head and couldn’t hide her depressed expression. “I miss my parents.”
Jiang Fang and Nan Zhou’s expressions were very calm. It was common sense to assume that the 24 year old Li Yinhang’s parents should also be in the game. Yet Li Yinhang was more worried about the safety of her roommate after entering the game. This meant that her parents should at least be safe.
Li Yinhang said softly, “They are all in the ‘cocoon room’ in the next city.”
“I was born when my mother was 39 years old.”
“I had a sister who was in an accident when she was 17. Thus, my mother wanted me.”
“She was called Li Yinhang so I am also called Li Yinhang. Still, they love me and are good to me.”
“She will always be 17. I don’t want my parents to also think of me as always 24 years old for the rest of their lives.”
After expressing the greatest fear in her heart, Li Yinhang buried her face in the palm of her hands and controlled her emotions. The tense, slightly weepy tone returned to normal. “What about you guys?”
“Both my parents died before I came back from Ukraine.” Jiang Fang’s arms and legs were long. Once he stretched them out on the stairs, the scale was amazing. He looked good no matter how he moved them.
He put his elbows on his knees and continued, “My mother was a native of City C. I came back here to live and walk around. I wanted to see if some of the places she mentioned to me were still here.”
Li Yinhang inquired, “Brother, what exactly do you do?”
“I’m not lying. I really am an unemployed traveler.” Jiang Fang laughed.
It was Nan Zhou’s turn. “I have parents and a sister.”
He thought about it and added, “I don’t know where they are right now.”
He had no emotions on his face or in his heart. They had known each other for several days and Li Yinhang had come to the conclusion that although Nan Zhou wasn’t good at expressing his heart, he was cold on the outside and warm on the inside.
People who could say ‘you must have the ability to protect yourself’ shouldn’t be indifferent to human life.
…However, he was reluctant to mention his relatives.
It wasn’t easy to have this opportunity to become friendlier. Li Yinhang wanted to shorten the distance and upgrade from hugging his thigh to friends. Thus, she actively asked, “Teacher Nan, where did you go to university?”
Nanzhou replied succinctly. “Xinhua.”
Xinhua University? The art and design department of this school was indeed famous throughout the country.
“Then you took the teaching test after graduation?”
“Yes.”
“Are children easy to teach?”
“It is hard.”
“Do you mainly teach watercolors, sketches or oil painting?”
“I teach them all.”
Li Yinhang felt like she was biting her molar teeth hard to chat. Facts proved that Nan Zhou only talked a lot when he wanted to speak. Li Yinhang saw that the journey to have a heart to heart with Nan Zhou was a disastrous defeat and casually asked without any hope, “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
…Nan Zhou stopped talking.
Li Yinhang, “……”
Li Yinhang, “?”
Li Yinhang, “???”
This person wasn’t right.
Jiang Fang perceived the silence beside him and turned his head.
“Mr Nan, do you have one?” He smiled softly. “I don’t seem to know this.”
Nan Zhou looked at the two people. There was a long silence before he opened his mouth. “Don’t you think that Xie Xiangyu is strange?”
Li Yinhang, “……”
How could a smart person like Nan Zhou be so stiff when it came to conversing?
The author has something to say:
I heard that you guys don’t think it is obvious that Brother Fang is jealous qwq.
P.S. There is no girlfriend. How can Nan Zhou with a Fang sexuality have a girlfriend?
Proofreader: Purichan
There’s a boyfriend now
There is also a little apple mooching star.
Li Yinhang: “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
Jiang Fang: “Mr Nan, do you have one? I don’t seem to know this.” (¬‿¬ )
Nan Zhou: “…” all world against me (・_・;)
thanks for the chapter~
Thanks for the chapter! 💕
Hey, everyone can have a girlfriend, it’s just that Nan Zhou doesn’t have one
Thank you very much for the translation
So who is Xie Xiangyu? Like who is he in relation to Nan Zhou?
thanks for the chapter <3
Skdjhfjsb bless his heart, didn’t even pretend to avoid it just straight up DIPPED out of that line of questioning ahahahaha!!
Wow, I love this chapter for the past reveals!! Poor Li Yinhang, what a story to her name!!
Thank you for the chapter!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
No boy or girlfriend, only Fangfriend
Keep surviving with each other! stay safe!!!
If this instance is just random and terrorise everyone…. what is survival? can they still ‘survive’ as invisible person ie if they’re not forgotten? because so far there’s no way to stop the disappearance and ghost visits
Thanks for the chapter, I am also really curious to know more about Xir Xingyu and how he knows Nan Zhou.