“Qi Yang, your name is Qi Yang, right? How come I’ve noticed that both the teachers and doctors treat you very strangely, as if you’re a glass doll, handling you with extreme caution, especially the doctor. It’s too weird.” The boy recounted the strange scene he had just witnessed.

Qi Yang thought back, and it did seem a bit like that, but for someone in his position, could he really be some important figure? Qi Yang wasn’t that confident.

“Who knows what they’re thinking, a bunch of inhuman things,” Qi Yang sneered with a smile.

“They’re not human?” the girl shrieked.

“Keep it down,” the boy quickly reminded her not to be so loud.

“Someone who can gouge out their own eyeballs, can they still be human? I also saw someone breaking their own fingers, snapping them off one by one as if they felt no pain. The way she stared at me then, it made me feel like she actually wanted to break my fingers instead.” The boy’s shoulders hunched as he recounted the scene he’d witnessed in the classroom.

The girl’s eyes were red-rimmed. Her mouth opened and closed; she wanted to speak and to laugh, but no sound came out, and her smile was merely a distorted grimace.

Back in the classroom, the third class began. It was geography, taught by a different male teacher. The scene from earlier, where the other students’ faces changed to something terrifying, didn’t happen again during the entire class.

After class, Qi Yang walked out of the classroom and subconsciously glanced at the two who hadn’t followed him to the infirmary. Their expressions were different from when he left. One person was pale, head bowed, shoulders hunched, seemingly terrified to the extreme, yet afraid to leave the classroom, so they just sat stiffly on the stool. The other person had a strange expression, staring blankly at the blackboard, seemingly giggling foolishly, as if they had gone mad.

Eager to confirm some things, Qi Yang didn’t bother with these two. The boy, however, went over to them and asked what was wrong, but received no response. The boy quickly turned to look at Qi Yang, who subtly shook his head. He didn’t know how to deal with this situation either. The boy was afraid of a room full of monsters, and as soon as Qi Yang left, he immediately followed.

Walking to the adjacent classroom, Qi Yang saw the young man from the back door. The young man turned his head and happened to notice Qi Yang. Qi Yang’s expression was stern, and the young man walked out from the back of the classroom.

“Why didn’t I see you just now?” The young man had come out after the first class to explain to the other new players what was going on and where they were.

The young man thought Qi Yang hadn’t even made it through the first class, and with limited time between classes, he hadn’t come over to check.

Now seeing Qi Yang perfectly fine, just a bit pale, but otherwise okay, the young man had a sudden feeling when his eyes met Qi Yang’s in the initial hallway: this person might be different from the others.

“I wasn’t feeling well just now, so I went to the school infirmary to lie down for a bit,” Qi Yang explained.

“You went to the school infirmary?” The young man was clearly surprised.

“Yes, the teacher actively told me to go.”

The young man nodded. If it was the teacher’s request, then they, as players, certainly couldn’t refuse.

“Oh, by the way, you three didn’t hear it before, so I’ll say it again…” The young man then selectively told the three people what he knew.

The world they were in was different from their previous one. This could be called a game space, a world within a horror game. They were players, dragged into the game, and to return to the real world, they had to clear the game. And it wasn’t just one game; it was all of them. There was no option to voluntarily quit here; once you entered, you had to follow the game’s rules and clear each game one after another.

“Why can’t we just quit?” The girl couldn’t imagine, she was flustered and uneasy, “Isn’t this forced? Who brought us here, I don’t want to participate.”

Tears rolled down the girl’s face, instantly soaking it.

“Who? I don’t know either. I’ve only cleared it twice, but there are good things about it. Every time you clear it, you can return to the real world for a corresponding number of days, and in the real world, we’ll have immense wealth.”

“I don’t want money, I just want to go back,” the girl sobbed.

“There’s no going back. No one gets to leave without clearing the game.” The young man’s tone was flat, showing no sympathy for the crying girl. Sympathy was the last thing needed here.

“How do we clear it? Even though I play games, how do we clear this one?” The boy was relatively more rational, pressing for answers anxiously.

The young man stroked his chin, and a few seconds later he said, “I’m not sure, it’s just my personal guess. According to the previous clearance requirements, I think leaving the school should count as clearing the level here.”

“Just leave?” The boy’s face lit up with surprise.

The young man then poured a bucket of cold water over the boy’s head: “It’s not a simple departure, but one with specific conditions. I haven’t discovered what those conditions are yet, but I understand it’s definitely not as simple as just climbing over a wall.”

“Then let’s go find the conditions!” The boy was eager to get away from this terrifying place.

“If only it were that easy. Based on my experience, it won’t be too easy, at least not something newcomers like you can just stumble upon. So for now, my personal advice is not to do anything you shouldn’t. Just be a good student and do what you’re supposed to do.”

“I’m sure you’ve all seen what happens to those who don’t follow the student rules.” The young man warned bluntly. The middle-aged man in his class who had yelled about leaving at the start of the game and had his hand twisted off by the teacher, later entered the classroom. Someone gave him medicine and wiped his hand, but within one class period, that hand changed color, turning black and purple. The man was so scared he became incoherent, making a scene in class. The teacher sent the man to the infirmary, but he hasn’t returned yet. It’s likely he’s in serious trouble.

“Thank you, thank you for telling us this important information,” Qi Yang said, expressing his gratitude.

The young man raised an eyebrow, quite surprised by how quickly Qi Yang accepted the situation. Such newcomers were rare; most were scared witless upon arrival and utterly incapable of calm observation and thought.

“Everyone, stay in touch. If anything happens, let each other know.” The class bell rang again, and the young man added this before they parted ways.

Qi Yang nodded, and the group split up, with Qi Yang returning to the classroom.

The fourth period passed peacefully. When the lunch bell rang, students poured out of the classroom, rushing to the cafeteria for food. Qi Yang and the other players walked at the end. At this moment, he approached the two players who were acting strangely. The boy, Du Yong, nudged the curly-haired man. The curly-haired man looked up, and Du Yong saw his eyes rolled back, which scared him so much that he stumbled backward, even knocking over books on a desk.

Qi Yang walked over from the side. He looked at the curly-haired man, and when he saw that the man had no pupils, only a pale white in his eyes, his heart skipped a beat.

“He… he’s…” Yuan Yuan, the girl, was so scared she couldn’t speak coherently.

“Let’s go.” Qi Yang turned away from the curly-haired man, who was clearly acting abnormally.

“Aren’t we going to help him?” Du Yong’s expression was pained, because he felt that one day he might end up like that himself, and he was terrified to his core.

“No one else cared.” The reason he was able to go to the infirmary earlier was because the teacher had explicitly allowed it. The curly-haired man’s current state clearly indicated that the students in the classroom had done something to him after they left. If they chose to help the curly-haired man, and crucially, didn’t know how to help, it wouldn’t be worth sacrificing themselves. Who knew if it would just be a broken hand, or perhaps a broken foot as well.

Du Yong and Yuan Yuan exchanged glances. Unlike the other two, they seemed to have narrowly escaped because they had proactively offered to go to the infirmary with Qi Yang. If they hadn’t stood up then, but had chosen to remain seated, both of them had the same feeling: the two players in the classroom, with their eyes rolled back, who now resembled living corpses, would have been their fate.

This made the two even more determined to stick with Qi Yang no matter what happened.

The three of them went downstairs for lunch. Players from other classrooms, those who could still walk on their own, probably had similar thoughts to Qi Yang and his group. They didn’t leave the classroom immediately but walked behind.

Naturally, the young man who had cleared the game several times and had some understanding of the rules was also there. He walked into the corridor and, seeing Qi Yang from a distance, waved at him in a friendly manner. Qi Yang and his two companions stopped.

The young man led the players from his class up, a total of five people. The young man proactively mentioned, “Originally, six people went in.”

The implication was that the missing one had met with an accident. As for what kind of accident, the young man didn’t say. The other four with him all looked uneasy, clearly indicating it wasn’t a pleasant memory.

“Hmm.” Qi Yang nodded, not asking further. Since something had happened, even if he asked and knew, they couldn’t do anything. Given the game’s cruel setup, from everything that had happened so far, Qi Yang no longer doubted this.

His top priority was to stay alive. If he had the capacity to help others, Qi Yang would lend a hand, but if not, he wouldn’t overestimate himself.

What’s more, these players don’t know that he is a little different from them; he looks normal on the outside, but in reality, he has something in his belly.

Qi Yang occasionally wondered if he was pulled into this game space because he wanted to abort the child. If he didn’t abort the child, Qi Yang’s mouth curved slightly. He had no interest in raising children, not in the real world, and certainly not in this horror game.

The child is over two months old. Qi Yang hopes to clear the game as soon as possible before his belly starts to show. Otherwise, as his belly grows day by day, how will he explain it to those around him? Will he say he has a tumor in his belly?

Maybe he could.

No matter what, Qi Yang’s initial idea hadn’t changed: as long as he could leave this place, he would get rid of the child.

As for giving birth to the child in the game, Qi Yang didn’t think he was that great or the protagonist here; it was more likely that both he and the child would die.

While Qi Yang was thinking about the future and his child, in the very center of the game space, there was a room with three massive display screens. On a red sofa in the middle of the room sat a man dressed in black clothes and pants, wearing a red braided bracelet on his right wrist. The man was holding a medical report, a report from about a week ago, which indicated that the person examined was pregnant. The man stared at the report, reading it from beginning to end once more. He lifted his gaze and turned to a magnified image on the central screen. In the image, a group of people were walking down the stairs of a teaching building, heading towards the cafeteria. The most handsome and refined young man in the crowd seemed to be chatting with the player beside him, and the player was smiling at the young man’s face. The man in black slowly sat up straight, his dark eyes fixed on the player, and a cold killing intent gradually emerged.

Between killing the players tonight or killing them tomorrow night, the man hesitated for a moment. In the end, he chose to do nothing. Although he had reached this position and controlled everything in the game, there were still some established rules he had to follow. He couldn’t bend the law for personal gain. He couldn’t just kill these players because of his personal displeasure, as he still needed them; they were the freshest nourishment for this game.

The man froze the image on Qi Yang alone, zooming in on his face. He stood up and walked to the display, extending his hand. The man’s gaze was incredibly deep and tender. What he thought was a one-night stand, who would have thought it could lead to a cute little life? The man had never considered having offspring; he believed that a non-human creature like himself, with blood all over his hands, didn’t deserve to have descendants. But it seemed fate thought otherwise.

It couldn’t be better for his child to be born by this person.

After all, he had fallen in love with this human at first sight, and the man also had a premonition that this young man named Qi Yang would make him like him more and more in the future.