Chapter 27.4
Editor: Jodi
After an hour and a half of searching, the director’s voice came over the broadcast, instructing everyone to gather in the auditorium on the second floor.
The six of them gathered one after another, pooling the items they’d found. Ai Qianqian took out the prop card, Cheng Han and Duan Shi had found an amulet, which Duan Shi was currently wearing, while Du Ling and Cui Zhixing came up empty-handed.
At this point, the production team gave the guests a ten-minute break to use the restroom or grab some water before resuming the recording of the death execution scene.
Mu Nan and Cheng Han headed to the men’s restroom together.
“Who do you think will die this time?” Mu Nan asked.
“No idea.” Cheng Han replied. “I’m not sure if there’s a pattern to how they choose, but we just have to escape as fast as we can. How was it for you earlier?”
During the break, there were no cameras following them, and their mics were off. So Mu Nan didn’t hold back and told Cheng Han everything that had happened earlier.
Cheng Han chuckled. “Mad about it?”
“A little.”
“Take it as a lesson. Don’t assume everyone’s that simple.” Cheng Han advised.
“Got it.” Mu Nan still looked a bit sulky.
The recording resumed, and everyone was blindfolded again and taken to different rooms.
The darkness, the silence, and the uncertainty of “death” made everyone extremely tense.
Suddenly, a piercing scream shattered the silence, followed by an announcement over the broadcast: “Ai Qianqian, executed.”
Mu Nan yanked off his blindfold. “Who? Who died? Ai Qianqian?”
The remaining five gathered in a panic. “What do we do now? Do we keep searching? When will this end?”
“We’ve barely found anything in these two hours. At this rate, there’s no hope.”
“No!” Mu Nan suddenly shouted. “I think we’re stuck in a trap.”
“What kind of trap?” Cui Zhixing asked.
“Think of this like an RPG game. Every game has a main quest. What’s our main quest?”
“Obviously, to figure out how to defeat the boss.”
Mu Nan clapped his hands. “Exactly! So, who’s the boss?”
Cui Zhixing and Du Ling exchanged glances. “Uh… we don’t know?”
Mu Nan grew excited. “That’s why we can’t just blindly search for props. We need to figure out who the boss is first. Based on typical game logic, there’s always a backstory tied to the boss. Following that thread will lead us to clues.”
“Then where do you think we should look?” Cui Zhixing asked.
Before Mu Nan could respond, Cheng Han spoke up. “The administration office or the archives.”
“Exactly!” Mu Nan agreed.
Du Ling was a little impatient: “Then let’s not waste time. Let’s go now. No more searching room by room—focus on the admin office and archives. And keep an eye out for any hidden rooms. The production team isn’t going to make it easy for us.”
**
After Ai Qianqian left, Mu Nan was left alone. So the moment Du Ling and Cui Zhixing walked off, he just stared at Cheng Han with a hopeful look, saying nothing, just staring.
Finally, Cheng Han gave in. “Fine, you can come with us.”
Mu Nan lit up. “Great! I promise I’ll pull my weight!”
Duan Shi welcomed him to the group too, and with two guys clearing the way ahead, she felt much safer following behind them.
As time went on, the difficulty ramped up. Even just walking down the hallways or going up and down stairs, they’d run into ghosts popping out from who-knows-where.
While they were heading upstairs, Duan Shi, who was at the back, suddenly felt a chill on her ankle—and then something grabbed her.
She looked down and saw a ghost below the stairs, its pale, bluish fingers wrapped around her ankle.
She burst into tears on the spot. Mu Nan and Cheng Han quickly freed her ankle and, with one on each side, hauled her up the stairs.
Once they reached a safe spot, Duan Shi’s legs went weak, and her face was soaked with tears. “They didn’t say it’d be this scary before I came. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have joined!”
As Mu Nan and Cheng Han walked ahead, they could hear her soft sobbing from behind. “Am I completely useless? I feel like such a failure.”
“Don’t say that.” Mu Nan said, disagreeing. “Everyone has their own value. Don’t give yourself negative cues like that—it’ll just spiral. You’ve got to believe it’s just not your moment to shine yet.”
“Really… you think so?”
Mu Nan nodded. “Of course.”
As he said this, Cheng Han glanced back at him, his expression carrying an unreadable look.
Another half hour later, the three of them finally found the door to the archives in a meeting room on the third floor.
The door was well-hidden. If it wasn’t because Mu Nan spotted a faint crack, they probably would’ve missed it.
The archives weren’t very big, with shelves lining three walls, all crammed with thick files.
“Start searching?” Mu Nan asked Cheng Han.
“Let’s do it. Each of us takes a wall.”
The three of them quickly got to work. Many of the files were blank, and some had blurry, unreadable text—clearly not what they were looking for. So, despite the sheer number, they sifted through them pretty quickly.
“Got it!” Mu Nan opened a file, and a photo slipped out.
The photo was a large group picture. Everyone was in black and white except for one girl, dressed in a bright red dress, her hair covering her face so her features couldn’t be seen.
At the top of the photo, it read, “Class 3, 1999 Graduation.” Flipping it over, the back listed the names of each student.
But the spot corresponding to the girl in the red dress—was blank.
“Look for the 1999 files!”
With a clear goal, the search became much easier. Soon, they found the files for Class 3, 1999. Opening the roster, one name was marked with a bold black frame.
“Shang Yaqin.” Mu Nan read the name softly.
It wasn’t a particularly remarkable name. It was the kind one would forget as soon as one heard it in real life. But with that black frame around it, it stood out glaringly now.
Turning to Shang Yaqin’s file, the contents didn’t look much different from her classmates’—except for the last line, written in blood-red letters: Died on December 24, 2000.
“Ah! Christmas Eve!” Duan Shi gasped in disbelief.
“Yes, Christmas Eve.” Mu Nan skimmed through the rest of her classmates’ files and, sure enough, found something odd.
Not long after Shang Yaqin’s death, five students from her class were given disciplinary warnings. This had to be connected to her death.
“There’s a letter here!” Duan Shi picked up a yellowed envelope from a crack between the shelves. Opening the letter, they finally pieced together what had happened.
It was the same old story of school bullying. From the start of the term, Shang Yaqin faced inexplicable hostility. First, her chair mysteriously got dirty, then pages were torn out of her workbook. Verbal insults and humiliation followed, eventually escalating to physical violence.
Shang Yaqin was once cornered by her dormmates and slapped in the face. Walking down the hallway, she’d get randomly kicked by boys. When asked who did it, her classmates would just laugh and call her a loser.
This went on all the way until the day before she died.
She learned of a secret, sinister curse: if she took her own life on a specific day, her soul would transform into a vengeful ghost, returning to seek revenge on all who had bullied her.
“Class 3, second year.” Mu Nan suddenly realized. “That was the classroom we started in! Those classmates…”
Those figures standing in a circle, clearly no longer human—they were Shang Yaqin’s classmates.
Mu Nan felt a chill run through him, but at the same time, an overwhelming sadness.
Even though this was just a game, and the script was set up by the production team, he couldn’t help but feel sorrow for this girl named Shang Yaqin. He knew her story was a reflection of countless real-life cases of school bullying.
“All participants, report to the second-floor auditorium immediately.” The broadcast announced again.
Two more hours had passed, and another victim was about to emerge.
The unknown still filled Mu Nan with a sense of fear.
“Scared?” Cheng Han fell a step behind and asked softly from behind Mu Nan.
“N-no…” Mu Nan glanced back at him.
Cheng Han stepped closer. “You won’t die before me.”
“Huh? You’ve figured out the pattern?” Mu Nan looked at him in surprise.
Cheng Han didn’t answer, only saying, “I promise you.”