“Alright.”
Fu Songcheng turned and began packing Zhang Xinci’s already meager luggage.
“Leaving right now?”
Shen Ning was taken aback, not expecting him to agree so readily.
Fu Songcheng stuffed the daily necessities into his backpack and zipped it up. “The male players here have already been assimilated by the instance’s malice. They’re not teammates anymore—they’re beasts in heat.”
Rustling sounds came from the beds opposite.
Lin Wen poked half his body out, sizing up the two who were packing. “Teacher Zhang, Teacher Shen, where are you moving to? The village secretary said we have to act as a group—no wandering off.”
Xu Jixing chimed in, his tone carrying a hint of flippancy. “Yeah, in these poor, harsh mountains, it’s so unsafe for two girls to go out alone.”
They hadn’t been like this when they first entered the instance.
Fu Songcheng stopped what he was doing.
He slowly turned his head, his dark eyes fixing dead on Lin Wen and Xu Jixing.
In everyone else’s eyes, the current Zhang Xinci radiated killing intent and fighting spirit—like a venomous snake baring its fangs, staring sinisterly at them all.
The air instantly dropped to freezing point.
Recalling the dagger that had grazed past his scalp last night, the smile on Lin Wen’s face froze. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he unconsciously shrank back.
Xu Jixing also swallowed, gave a dry laugh, and didn’t dare say another word.
“Let’s go.” Fu Songcheng slung the bag over one shoulder and walked out of the temporary dormitory without looking back.
Shen Ning followed closely behind him, striding out of the courtyard.
Neither spoke the whole way.
Shen Ning led Fu Songcheng around several rugged dirt paths and stopped in front of a dilapidated earthen-brick house.
Half the courtyard wall had collapsed, and the wooden door was covered in cracks.
“We’re here.”
Shen Ning pushed open the creaking wooden door. “The conditions are worse than the dormitory, but at least it’s just the two of us here. It’s safe.”
There was a musty smell inside, but it had been tidied up fairly cleanly.
“No outsiders now.” Fu Songcheng cut straight to the point. “Let’s continue last night’s topic.”
Shen Ning sat down on the edge of the bed, hands folded on her knees, and let out a bitter laugh. “You really are something.”
Time rewound to last night.
After Fu Songcheng had emerged from the bathroom drenched in blood and cowed all the male players back into their beds, he’d had an extremely brief exchange with Shen Ning in the darkness.
Fu Songcheng sat on the edge of the bed wiping his dagger, then suddenly lowered his voice and asked:
“You locked the classroom door from the outside.”
It wasn’t a question—it was a statement.
Shen Ning had been silent in the darkness for a long time before finally speaking:
“Yes. I locked it.”
Now, sitting in the dilapidated earthen house with sunlight filtering mottled through the window onto the floor, Fu Songcheng once again asked the question that hadn’t been fully explored last night.
“Why did you lock me and Li Guoping in together?”
Fu Songcheng looked at her. “You knew exactly what he intended to do to Zhang Xinci.”
Here he deliberately emphasized the character in the story—Zhang Xinci.
Shen Ning took a deep breath and raised her head to look Fu Songcheng straight in the eye. “That was my instance mission.”
“My main mission is a multiple-choice question: either kill Li Guoping, or kill all you players.”
Shen Ning’s tone was calm, as if discussing today’s weather. “Only by completing one of them can I clear the instance.”
Fu Songcheng raised an eyebrow slightly.
It was an extremely extreme and unequal mission.
Killing an NPC who served as an instance mini-boss and slaughtering all the players were entirely different in both difficulty and nature.
The system was forcing her to make a choice between morality and capability.
“So, when you saw him following me into the classroom, you just went and locked the door.”
“Were you trying to use him to kill me, or use me to kill him?” Fu Songcheng asked coldly.
Shen Ning shook her head, mocking Fu Songcheng’s overestimation of himself. “I had already made my choice long ago. I was going to take the second path—kill all the players.”
She didn’t have the courage to confront Li Guoping.
Shen Ning paused, then continued: “If, when I tested you earlier, you had chosen to give up the volunteer teaching and leave this mountain, I could have used my special storyline privileges to send you straight out of the instance.”
“That way you’d survive, and I’d go deal with the rest.”
“But…” Shen Ning looked at Fu Songcheng. “Your answer was to stay.”
Fu Songcheng listened expressionlessly.
“Fool. You have no idea what you’re facing, all for the sake of a graduate recommendation quota.”
Shen Ning sighed. “Since you insisted on staying to court death, I obliged. So I watched Li Guoping corner you, walked over, and locked the door. I thought you were done for.”
“And yet it was me who walked out.”
Fu Songcheng looked at the girl who had underestimated him, pride in his eyes.
“I didn’t expect it.”
After locking the door, Shen Ning had sat in the dormitory waiting for the mission notification. She’d been secretly praying—though she herself couldn’t say what outcome she’d been hoping for.
Soon the system notification popped up:
[Zhang Xinci has killed instance mini-boss Li Guoping. Your main mission ‘Kill Li Guoping’ has been completed.]
The look Shen Ning gave Fu Songcheng was complicated—Fu Songcheng couldn’t identify all the emotions in it.
There was admiration, guilt, and even hatred.
“You didn’t just save yourself—you saved me along the way. My mission was completed because of you.”
“Since that’s the case.”
Fu Songcheng wasn’t buying this warm, sentimental act. “Now, please help me too.”
Click.
Fu Songcheng flicked the lighter and lit the dry branches the two had gathered along the way.
“Players all have identity tags—for example, I’m volunteer teacher Zhang Xinci, Lin Wen is a fresh graduate. We’re all playing someone else.”
Fu Songcheng stared at Shen Ning. “But your familiarity with this village’s terrain isn’t something an ordinary player could have.”
“Rather than you being a high-level player who’s entered instances many times, I’m more inclined to think…”
Fu Songcheng stirred the fire, his voice certain. “You are Shen Ning yourself. Am I right?”
The room fell into a deathly silence.
Fu Songcheng had still been puzzling over Shen Ning’s oddities, but Shen Ning had said that her initial choice was actually to slaughter the players rather than Li Guoping.
That point made Fu Songcheng certain Shen Ning was a native of the instance.
How could a high-level player who’d been through many instances so quickly resolve to kill all the players rather than the NPC?
Since the system gave a multiple-choice question, the killing difficulty had to be equal. What gave Shen Ning the weight to lean toward killing six people rather than uniting all the players to kill the NPC?
After a long while, Shen Ning covered her face and let out a suppressed laugh uglier than crying.
“You’re smart. Nothing gets past you.”
Shen Ning lowered her hands. Her eyes were red-rimmed, filled with hatred and despair so thick they couldn’t be dissolved.
“Yes. I’m not playing anyone. I am Shen Ning. I’m Shen Ning, who escaped from this cursed village.”
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