Having said that, she ignored everyone and directly dragged her suitcase to her own bed.
She didn’t check the contents of the suitcase, didn’t even take off her shoes—she just lay down fully clothed on the musty bed.
Swish—
Fu Songcheng reached out and pulled shut the dust-covered cloth curtain beside the bed, completely isolating “them” from the outside world.
“Shen Ning!” Xu Jixing still wanted to press further.
“Forget it.”
Fang Ruiyang pressed down on Xu Jixing’s shoulder and shook his head. “It’s already good enough that she came back alive.”
Xu Jixing gritted his teeth and finally returned to his own bed.
Late at night.
The dim incandescent light on the ceiling went out, plunging the entire dormitory into pitch-black darkness where you couldn’t see your own hand.
Apart from the howling mountain wind outside the window, the only sounds in the room were the uneven breathing of the few people inside.
No one was truly asleep. Everyone lay in the darkness with their eyes open.
Fu Songcheng lay quietly on his bed.
His bed was right next to Shen Ning’s, with only a narrow aisle of less than half a meter between them.
One of his hands was pressed under the pillow, ready at any moment to summon the dagger from his space.
Fu Songcheng was replaying every detail of the day—from the moment they entered the village, to the missing luggage, to that eerie dinner, and finally Shen Ning’s departure and return.
There had to be some key clue he’d overlooked.
Something that had made him Li Guoping’s target at dinner—yet the one called out alone at night was Shen Ning.
Just then, a very faint rustling sound came from the left.
Shen Ning turned over, facing the direction of Fu Songcheng’s bed.
Fu Songcheng’s breathing didn’t change at all, still maintaining its steady rhythm, but the muscles throughout his body had already entered a state of readiness in an instant—ready to burst into action at any moment.
“Zhang Xinci.”
A voice as soft as a mosquito’s buzz drifted through the gap between the beds into Fu Songcheng’s ear.
Fu Songcheng didn’t move. He only slightly tilted his head in the darkness, bringing his ear closer to the source of the sound.
“You’re not asleep, are you.”
Shen Ning’s voice was very soft, but her tone was exceptionally certain. “Stop pretending. I know you’re awake.”
Fu Songcheng adjusted slightly. “Sister Shen Ning, I’m scared, I can’t sleep. What is it?”
A brief silence fell on Shen Ning’s side.
A moment later, Shen Ning spoke again.
“Tell me the truth.”
Through the cloth curtain, at a volume only the two of them could hear, Shen Ning asked, word by word, “Do you absolutely have to stay here for half a year, until you get the graduate recommendation qualification?”
That single short sentence exploded in Fu Songcheng’s mind like a thunderclap out of a clear sky!
The original purpose of “Zhang Xinci,” the character Fu Songcheng was playing, in coming to Ya’nan Village as a volunteer teacher was to obtain the graduate recommendation qualification.
His pupils contracted sharply in the darkness as he checked his character information again.
[Character Name: Zhang Xinci.]
[Gender: Female.]
[Age: 21.]
[Major: Junior arts student at a certain normal university. Applied for volunteer teaching in order to obtain the graduate recommendation qualification.]
[Main Mission: Survive one month during the remote mountain volunteer teaching, and complete the teaching tasks.]
How did Shen Ning know?
During the hour or so Shen Ning was called away by Li Guoping, what had she seen—or what had Li Guoping said to her—that let her learn the true purpose of this group of volunteer teachers coming here?
Or had she known the background information of the other players’ roles from the very beginning?
But no matter what, the other players’ information was opaque to Fu Songcheng.
Why was he the only one kept in the dark?
Was it because his cross-gender role-play had caused a bug in the system’s judgment?
Or was it that, within this team, the “Zhang Xinci” he was playing was itself an extremely special, isolated identity?
Fu Songcheng felt afraid of the second possibility.
Shen Ning’s question was absolutely not just casual chatting.
Fu Songcheng’s brain raced. He had to immediately give an ambiguous answer—one that fit the female university student identity while also blocking Shen Ning’s probing.
“I…”
Fu Songcheng opened his mouth, wanting to say, “I don’t actually value it that much. My life matters more.”
However, something wrong happened.
The very instant he was about to answer, he suddenly felt his throat clutched by some invisible giant hand!
His lips opened and closed uncontrollably, and a crisp, stubborn voice drifted out of his mouth.
“Yes. I will definitely stick it out and finish this half-year of volunteer teaching.”
Silence.
A deathly silence spread between the two beds.
Fu Songcheng lay stiffly on the bed, his eyes fixed on the dark void.
That was his voice—or rather, “Zhang Xinci’s” voice.
But it was absolutely not his—Fu Songcheng’s—answer!
Zhang Xinci, what were you thinking? Running off to the mountains to teach for the graduate recommendation quota.
His goal was only to survive the instance duration set by the system. But in that instant, the character setting had overridden the player’s will, forcing him to give an answer that matched “Zhang Xinci’s” wishes!
On the other side of the curtain, Shen Ning didn’t speak for a long time after hearing that answer.
Who knew how long passed before a long, bone-chilling, miserable laugh came from the darkness.
The laugh was extremely low, suppressed in the throat, like some desperate death cry.
“Yeah.”
Shen Ning murmured to herself, her tone utterly strange. “You have a reason you must stay.”
“Then stay…”
Shen Ning’s voice cut off abruptly. She suddenly turned over and covered her head with the blanket, making no further sound.
On the back of Fu Songcheng’s hand gripping the dagger, veins bulged one by one.
He had finally discovered what was off about Shen Ning.
Before dinner, Shen Ning’s behavior—or rather, everyone’s behavior—had matched the setting of players impersonating characters: cautious, careful, guarding against each other.
But at dinner, Fang Ruiyang’s inexplicable sense of captain’s responsibility, Shen Ning’s helping hand, and the others’ behavior…
Gradually, it no longer seemed like players from the outside—but rather the very characters they were playing.
Shen Ning’s question had awakened him. In an instance, a player wouldn’t be so concerned about whether another player stayed for the sake of “graduate recommendation.”
They would only care about how many clues each could get, and whether other players had more survival chips than themselves.
The one lying next to him now was the story character “Shen Ning,” not the instance player.
And the one who had just spoken in reply was also the story character “Zhang Xinci.”
In just one day, they could no longer fully control their own actions.
This instance was devouring their will as players. Perhaps because of what they’d eaten at dinner that they shouldn’t have; perhaps because of what they’d seen and heard when they went exploring that afternoon; or perhaps because of their interactions with the NPCs.
The mission only said to survive one month. If, after one month, he had completely become “Zhang Xinci”—could he still successfully leave the instance?
Leave a Reply