A moment ago, everyone was in a relatively good mood, but then a player was electrocuted by the live handrail, turning them charred black. As the group descended the stairs, their faces were grim, and no one spoke.

Arriving outside the cafeteria, some had no appetite and returned to their dorms, saying they didn’t want to eat. The number 7 had already appeared, likely indicating that there wouldn’t be much danger this Saturday lunchtime. With deaths occurring almost daily, players with weaker mental fortitude were on the verge of a breakdown. Some went to their dorms, lay directly on their beds without taking off their shoes, and pulled the covers over their heads.

Qi Yang, however, had a good appetite. He knew he was different from other players and should eat and sleep properly, otherwise, he might collapse from anemia one day. Although he had some special identity, everything was still in an unknown stage. Qi Yang didn’t believe in those ghosts and knew he had to be careful.

When everyone sat down to eat, no one said much.

A female player, who seemed calmer than the others, whispered, “There are two more times, right?”

The female player Kang Lian and Yuan Yuan were close; these past few nights, they and another female player had been sleeping in the same dorm. After she spoke, she stared at Qi Yang.

Qi Yang nodded slightly but didn’t speak.

“The last two times were…” Kang Lian couldn’t quite remember, she hadn’t recorded them.

Du Yong, sitting next to Qi Yang, completed the girl’s sentence: “The remaining two should be drowning and being shredded.”

“Shredded?” Kang Lian was confused. She knew the literal meaning, but being shredded as a method of death, this was a school, not a factory or anything, there was no meat grinder.

The school cafeteria might have one, but the machine probably wouldn’t be too big, and it would be in the back of the kitchen, not in the dining hall. No one would specifically run to the back kitchen.

Du Yong shook his head. He couldn’t guess when or how these crises would appear. It seemed that all the players could do now was wait and see whose luck was good and whose was bad. Those with bad luck would lose their lives here.

In this game space, human lives are cheap and worthless, easily taken away with the slightest mistake.

After eating, the group split into two: those going to the dorms for a nap and those going to the classroom. Those going to the classroom even avoided touching the walls.

Lying on his dorm bed, Qi Yang put a candy in his mouth. The candy was sent by the school doctor, though Qi Yang suspected it wasn’t really from the school doctor, but from someone else. As for who that someone else was, Qi Yang didn’t press the matter. He figured that what he needed to know, he would eventually know. Since the other party wasn’t in a hurry, why should he be?

The entire evening passed peacefully, seemingly tranquil, but everyone knew in their hearts that this was just on the surface. The shadow of death loomed over them at all times.

Something happened in the restroom. No players had gone in during the day, but at night, someone went to check the door. The restroom looked as if it had been cleaned. The corpse with severed limbs and blood all over the floor from the morning was gone. Only a faint, lingering smell of blood hung in the air. The player who discovered this told the others. Everyone speculated that the ghosts must have taken the body away. As for the blood, they probably wouldn’t waste it, especially since everyone had clearly seen what happened that afternoon: a ghost student, unable to resist the temptation of fresh blood, had directly knelt on the ground and licked the crimson blood.

This was the last night; tomorrow was Sunday. On Sunday, there were only four classes in the morning, and we could leave school at noon. The afternoon was a half-day holiday. As long as we could make it to noon without incident, this terrifying campus journey would be successfully completed.

Although there are less than twenty hours until tomorrow noon, which seems like it would be over after a night’s sleep and a few classes, there are still two crises in between: drowning and being shredded. The former is relatively easy to understand; players just need to avoid watery places to prevent drowning. As for the latter, being shredded, it’s hard to even find clues about what to guard against.

A few people who were previously cut by high-altitude glass shards went to the school hospital for treatment and medication. The medicine was applied to the players’ bodies, and their wounds quickly stopped hurting after they left. The players weren’t vigilant and continued to go for dressing changes every day. One night, the bodies of two people were found on their dorm beds, stiff all over, seemingly having been dead for a long time.

Now there are only nine players in total, three girls and six boys. The six boys are in two dorms, with three people in each dorm.

In the evening, everyone washed their faces together downstairs, not on their dorm floor. After washing, they returned to their dorms together. Someone specifically found an empty bottle, in case they couldn’t hold it in at night, so they could directly urinate into the bottle.

The dorm door was closed and locked from the inside, making it seem as if no danger would occur as long as they didn’t leave the dorm.

However, in the morning, when Du Yong woke up, he saw the player who had been sleeping on the floor with a mat was lying face down in a very strange posture, and their head seemed to be buried in a basin. They all had basins, as they were boarding students, and had basins and buckets for washing and laundry.

Du Yong saw the player lying motionless, so he carefully got out of bed, walked over to the player, and squatted down. He cautiously reached out and turned the person’s body over. The player’s face emerged from the basin, and then their body lay on the ground.

The face had been soaked in water all night, appearing bruised and swollen, with pale skin, closed eyes, and bloodless lips. Du Yong’s breath caught in his throat. He tremblingly reached a hand to the player’s nose and mouth; there was no breath. The player was already gone.

Du Yong plopped onto the ground with a thud, simultaneously sucking in a cold breath. These noises made Qi Yang, who had already woken up but wanted to doze off a bit more, open his eyes.

Qi Yang got up and looked down, seeing Du Yong’s eyes wide with extreme terror. Following Du Yong’s gaze to the swollen face of the player in the water, Qi Yang’s eyes darkened a bit.

He wasn’t as scared as Du Yong. Qi Yang had noticed before that even if someone died right in front of him at these death scenes, with blood pooling everywhere, he didn’t seem to be too affected. It was as if he and the other person weren’t the same species; Qi Yang found it hard to empathize with the death of other species.

Qi Yang looked down at his palms, slightly curling his fingers. It was strange that he would think he wasn’t the same species as humans.

He wasn’t sure if it was due to the pregnancy, but Qi Yang had noticed some changes in his body. He didn’t pay too much attention to it, thinking that he would just abort the child when the time came, and then he would return to his normal state.

It wasn’t just Qi Yang’s dorm that had an incident; in two other dorms, including the girls’ side, one player each drowned in a washbasin. The water in the basin wasn’t even half full, yet the players died silently in the night.

Yuan Yuan and Kang Lian immediately left the girls’ dorm and ran to the front of the boys’ dorm building. They were afraid to go to the classroom, so they waited for the boys at the entrance.

Of the original six boys, two had died in their dorms. The remaining four gathered in the hallway. They checked the washbasins of the drowned individuals, inside and out, and saw the blood-red number 8 at the bottom of the basins.

Leaving the dorm, they met the girls at the entrance. When Yuan Yuan and the others saw Qi Yang and his group come out, they immediately rushed over, their eyes red, clearly terrified by the scene in the dorm that morning.

“And 9, is it in the classroom?” Everyone was in the classroom for the morning classes, and by noon they could leave the classroom and school, which counted as clearing the game. Yuan Yuan’s lips were pale; in just a few days, she had arrived on Wednesday and today was Sunday, and she had already lost a lot of weight.

“…It’s not necessarily the classroom. It could be the stairs, or the school gate,” Xu Yang, who shared a dorm with Yi Xinming, interjected. He had a vague premonition that the ghosts here wouldn’t let the six of them leave the school so easily.

Perhaps they would all rush towards them in the end. The thought sent a shiver down Xu Yang’s spine.

“Let’s eat first.” Only with a full stomach would they have the energy to think things through, and the strength to quickly run out of school after class at noon. Qi Yang also had a hunch that something would happen when they left school.

After eating, the six of them went to the classroom. When they arrived on Wednesday, there were thirty players. In the blink of an eye, only six remained.

The players who had previously met with misfortune in the classroom suddenly disappeared one day during daylight hours. As for where they specifically went, Qi Yang and the others didn’t know, nor could they find anyone to ask; these ghostly students wouldn’t give them answers.

Unlike the previous four days, on this Sunday, whether it was during morning reading or the four classes that followed, the ghostly classmates in the class never changed their expressions. They even acted as if they were truly ordinary people. However, the more normal they behaved, the more vigilant the players became.

After class, the six of them stood in the corridor, and it seemed this was the situation in every class.

So everyone shared the same thought: this was the calm before the storm.

No one could guess what was going to happen next. The only thing that was certain was that after class, they had to rush to the school gate immediately, without a second’s delay.

The last class quickly arrived. The supervisor passed by the classroom during class, looking inside and making eye contact with every player. When his eyes met Qi Yang’s, Fu Mingnan slightly curved his lips. Fu Mingnan then quickly left, seemingly off to do something.

The last forty-five minutes felt especially long. The players could barely pay attention in class. The teacher called on Xu Yang to answer a question, and it took Xu Yang a long time to react. The teacher then smiled and reminded them, “This time might be the last beautiful moment for you all. I hope each of you cherishes it.”

When the lunch break bell rang, strangely, none of the teachers or students in the class moved. Everyone seemed to be frozen in place. This scene was exceptionally eerie. Under the gaze of the ghost students, Qi Yang and the others ran out of the classroom. In the hallway, the six of them quickly regrouped. Yi Xinming and Qi Yang had previously gone to the school gate together and had carefully memorized the route. After running out of the classroom, they rushed down the left corridor. There was no one else in the corridor, only the sound of the six of them running.

The six people sprinted, running up a flight of stairs. Qi Yang suddenly saw the supervisor standing somewhere, who smiled at him and said two words, “Wait.” Qi Yang paused slightly, and the people behind him overtook him. Everyone was running for their lives and didn’t pay much attention to Qi Yang. Qi Yang frowned. The supervisor’s figure flickered and appeared in front of Qi Yang. Qi Yang opened his mouth to ask what was going on, and the next second his feet left the ground as the supervisor picked him up.

“You’re not feeling well, don’t exert yourself. I’ll carry you down,” the supervisor explained.

Before Qi Yang could respond, the supervisor told him to close his eyes and led him directly out to the corridor balcony. The wind howled in his ears, and Qi Yang felt his body plummeting rapidly. A few seconds later, Qi Yang opened his eyes; his body had been set down. The supervisor brushed the back of his hand against Qi Yang’s cheek, then turned and left.

Qi Yang stared at the supervisor’s retreating figure, a puzzled feeling in his heart, when suddenly someone called him from behind.

“Brother Qi, when did you come down?” Du Yong remembered Qi Yang running behind him, so how had he suddenly gotten ahead again?

Qi Yang didn’t explain. He said, “To the school gate.”

As they left the teaching building and turned a corner, the school gate appeared before them. Smiles of joy lit up everyone’s faces, but as they reached the gate, they all suddenly froze.

Inside the school gate was a massive pit, separating the entire exit and Qi Yang’s group. The pit was over two meters wide, and at the bottom, huge mechanical gears were rapidly turning, multiple gears interlocking. If anyone accidentally fell in, they would surely be ground to bone by the gears.

The six people stood at the edge of the deep pit, their joyful expressions instantly replaced by despair.

Download the complete translated novel

The password is in my Kofi page