Inside the instance, in the communal dormitory of the remote mountain village.
Fu Songcheng was awakened by an extremely strong musty smell and the damp, earthy odor of soil.
He felt as if he’d had an extremely long and exhausting dream.
In the dream, he felt himself jolting along a rugged stone road for a very, very long time.
The aching soreness throughout his body confirmed his guess.
He snapped his eyes open, his gaze returning to its usual clarity and calm.
What met his eyes were blackened wooden beams and a ceiling strung with cobwebs.
He was now lying on a hard wooden board bed, the bedding beneath him giving off a musty smell that had clearly not seen sunlight in years.
Fu Songcheng didn’t get up immediately. Instead, he quietly sensed the movements around him.
Apart from a few steady, heavy breaths, there was no sign of danger approaching.
He slowly sat up and found himself in a long, rectangular room.
The room was divided down the middle by a washed-out, wrinkled old cotton cloth curtain.
He turned his head to look at the other bed next to his.
The other girl, Shen Ning, was lying there with her eyes closed, breathing evenly, clearly still in a deep coma.
Fu Songcheng quietly got out of bed, walked to the worn cloth curtain, extended his slender fingers, and carefully lifted a corner.
On the other side of the curtain were five adjacent communal beds.
Fang Ruiyang, Lü Jia, and the other three young men lay sprawled across the beds, dead asleep, completely unaware.
Some even had dirt and scrapes on their faces.
Everyone was unconscious—only he had woken up.
Fu Songcheng knew why he had woken first.
The moment they entered the village, the force of the forced unconsciousness had been split in two by the system.
Half remained on him, and the other half…
Fu Songcheng smiled—a genuine smile from the heart.
Finally, his unlucky lover got to feel the anger of sudden, out-of-nowhere damage too.
He withdrew his thoughts and quickly began assessing his current situation.
Since they hadn’t been killed outright while unconscious, it meant they hadn’t violated any rules yet.
Fu Songcheng turned around, his gaze searching around the bed.
He remembered that when he entered the instance, the system had set his luggage as two suitcases. He quickly spotted the luggage in the corner at the foot of the bed.
But there was only one lonely suitcase.
Fu Songcheng walked over, crouched down, and gently opened the suitcase. It was filled with various textbooks, study guides, and lesson plans.
The teaching props box belonging to a “volunteer teacher.”
The other one should have been the suitcase with his character’s personal clothing, toiletries, and daily supplies.
It was gone.
Fu Songcheng quietly crossed the washed-out, wrinkled old cotton curtain.
On this side of the curtain, Shen Ning was still sleeping soundly on her single bed.
On the other side, the five young men lay scattered on the straw mats of the communal floor beds.
In the temporary dormitory, only he and Shen Ning had separate single wooden beds.
Fu Songcheng coldly swept his gaze over the young men’s faces, his eyes finally landing on the pile of luggage in the corner.
He began counting silently in his head.
A total of four suitcases were missing.
The other girl, Shen Ning, and the “Zhang Xinci” he was playing had each lost one suitcase—probably clothing and daily supplies.
Two of the young men, Lü Jia and Lin Wen, had also each lost one suitcase.
Lü Jia was the most physically robust of the group and seemed hot-tempered; Lin Wen, on the other hand, was gentler and quieter, appearing even less aggressive than Shen Ning.
There was no common thread among the four who’d lost their luggage. Fu Songcheng noted this silently and continued exploring.
The temporary dormitory was so old it looked as if it might fall apart at any moment. The air was thick with the musty smell of years without sunlight and the stench of rotting wood.
The roof had clearly been hastily patched recently—several cheap plastic panels were nailed to the beams with rough nails.
Just as he turned, trying to approach the worn wooden door to observe the situation outside through the crack.
Rustle, rustle—
A very soft but extremely chaotic sound of footsteps came faintly from outside the door, approaching this room.
Fu Songcheng’s pupils contracted instantly.
He didn’t hesitate for a second. His body reacted faster than his brain—like an extremely agile cat, within half a second he silently retreated several steps, quickly pulled the curtain, and lay back down on his single bed with absolute precision.
He quickly adjusted his breathing rate. The rise and fall of his chest instantly became long and faint, perfectly blending into the room’s collective state of unconsciousness.
The people outside stopped.
Creak—
With a single sound, the worn wooden door was pushed open from outside, letting out a blood-curdling groan.
Two long shadows were cast by the overcast light from outside onto the pitted mud floor of the dormitory.
The one walking in front was none other than the village party secretary who had greeted them at the village entrance, his face full of honest, simple smiles.
And following behind the village secretary was an unfamiliar man wearing a somewhat gray Zhongshan-style tunic and a pair of black-framed glasses.
The man had high cheekbones, his gaze carrying a shrewdness and arrogance, and he was sweeping his extremely picky eyes over the young men on the floor beds.
“These are all the newly arrived volunteer teachers this year.”
The village secretary lowered his voice, introducing them to the man beside him.
The man let out a cold snort, undisguised contempt in his eyes.
He looked down at the unconscious Fang Ruiyang and Lü Jia on the floor as if appraising a few pieces of goods he wasn’t particularly satisfied with.
“Volunteer teachers never last long.”
The man spoke caustically, his voice carrying a sticky, sinister chill. “These young masters are used to being pampered in the city. Coming to our poor, harsh mountains, after a while they’ll find it too hard and leave whenever they please.”
The village secretary rubbed his hands together, the honest smile on his face now looking somewhat stiff and eerie.
He glanced at the man and lowered his voice, his tone carrying a note of dissuasion: “You can’t say that. These years everyone’s conditions have gotten better and better, and the higher-ups are watching closely too. Let’s not…”
Not what?
Lying on the bed, Fu Songcheng rapidly chewed over the unfinished half-sentence in his mind.
Just as the village secretary’s “let’s not” faded.
“Ugh… hiss…”
On the floor bed, Fang Ruiyang suddenly let out an extremely pained groan.
He furrowed his brows, his eyelids trembling violently a few times—clearly about to wake from unconsciousness.
Almost in the same second Fang Ruiyang made a sound, the conversation between the village secretary and the man cut off abruptly.
The two NPCs were as if someone had pressed a mute button on them. With extreme tacit understanding, they shut their mouths, and those two pairs of eyes—somewhat murky in the dim light—stared fixedly at Fang Ruiyang on the floor bed.
The entire room fell into a suffocating dead silence. Only Fang Ruiyang’s increasingly heavy breathing echoed in the air.
Fu Songcheng lay motionless on the bed, even deliberately suppressing his heartbeat to its lowest frequency.
Now was absolutely not a good time to wake up.
The early bird gets shot. The situation was unclear, and the NPCs were clearly hiding something foul. The first person to wake would inevitably bear the most probing and scrutiny.
Time passed second by second.
About five minutes later, Lü Jia on the floor also let out an irritated curse, and Xu Jixing and Lin Wen began rubbing their heads and sitting up.
Everyone was waking up one after another.
Fu Songcheng kept part of his attention on Shen Ning’s movements beside him.
Just then, he keenly sensed that Shen Ning’s originally steady, long breathing had shifted into a short, slightly panicked rhythm.
She was awake too—and had also chosen to feign sleep and observe.
Fu Songcheng immediately cooperated by letting out a faint sleep murmur.
He slowly opened his eyes, his gaze displaying just the right amount of bewilderment and helplessness of someone waking from a long dream.
He braced both hands against the wooden board bed and sat up with apparent great effort, his delicate shoulders even carrying a slight tremble of fear.
At this very moment, he was nothing but Zhang Xinci—a timid female university student, newly arrived and frightened out of her wits by this run-down environment.
Leave a Reply