Dorm 514.
Their room was midway down the corridor—a two-person dorm with a bunk-bed-and-desk layout.
The long desk stretched from the foot of the bed to the shoe rack. On its dark red wooden surface, the words “Study Hard” were carved in crooked strokes.
Zhou Qi’an ran his fingers over it, rubbing the residue on his fingertips. He sniffed it and said: “Incense ash.”
Having once caused an incense explosion, he was very familiar with the scent.
While Zhou Qi’an was inspecting the dorm, Shen Zhiyi sat on the stiff wooden bed.
Suddenly, he smiled.
Zhou Qi’an turned to look at him.
Shen Zhiyi only said, “Qi’an, this campus is hiding some really fun things.”
A childish attempt at showing off.
Zhou Qi’an casually hummed in response.
Seeing that he didn’t ask further, Shen Zhiyi seemed slightly disappointed. His gray-white irises dimmed, losing all light.
Zhou Qi’an: “I’m going out to take care of something.”
Oh? Playing mysterious, huh? Let’s see who plays it better.
Sure enough, Shen Zhiyi took the bait.
After Zhou Qi’an left, he quietly cracked open the door, his ashen-gray eyes peeking through the gap.
The hallway lights were broken.
Only one side had dorm rooms, while the other side had windows. This layout was different from traditional dormitories—it felt more like a modified classroom building.
Under the starlight, a crimson hue still bled toward the moon, providing just enough light for him to spy.
Upstairs, the sound of footsteps shattered the silence.
Other players, including Vikas, started arriving.
The moment Vikas spotted Zhou Qi’an leaning casually against the wall, his steps faltered.
At the same time, Zhou Qi’an straightened his posture and walked forward.
His autumn uniform fit him perfectly, highlighting a flawless waist-to-shoulder ratio, making him look just like a real NPC in this campus horror story.
Vikas thought he was about to speak and curled his lips into a smirk.
But to his surprise, Zhou Qi’an walked right past him without a word, taking two more steps down the hall.
Nearby, Ying Yu’s phoenix eyes narrowed slightly.
He had also gone to the Comprehensive Building earlier, though his destination hadn’t been the Archive Room.
Their eyes met. Zhou Qi’an pressed his palms together and lowered his head.
Every strange movement a player made signaled a potential skill activation, so the people nearby immediately backed away.
Ying Yu simply watched him in silence.
As the others retreated, Zhou Qi’an suddenly bowed deeply and earnestly pleaded with the top student in the class, “Classmate, let me copy your homework.”
“……”
Everyone’s eyelids twitched.
So why did he remind the teacher to assign homework? A classic case of bringing trouble upon himself.
On the other side, Shen Zhiyi, who was peeking through the gap in the door, blinked quietly.
So this was what it meant to suffer from ignorance.
In the game, equivalent exchange was encouraged. Trying to get something for nothing—whether copying homework or anything else—would naturally be rejected by any reasonable player. Zhou Qi’an had already prepared for this. He attempted to politely pull Ying Yu aside to discuss the terms of their deal.
Noticing something new in Ying Yu’s hands, it seemed to be a soundproofing item he had just bought.
Ying Yu glanced at it and said, “Looks like you’re ready to have a proper conversation.”
With that, he turned and walked toward his dorm. Zhou Qi’an quickly followed.
Vikas couldn’t eavesdrop at close range, so he could only watch as the door closed, temporarily sealing the two of them in a separate space.
Inside the room—
The dorms were all designed similarly, and it seemed that Ying Yu had a single-person room.
The blood moon shone upon him, yet it didn’t make him appear eerie. Instead, when his shoulder moved, it was as if he shook off an endless glow of blood.
But this seemingly mysterious player was doing something entirely at odds with his appearance. Ying Yu once again busied himself inexplicably around the dorm, just as he had in the classroom.
Scraping the wooden boards, cutting off a corner of a poster on the wall…
Watching his busy figure, Zhou Qi’an suddenly spoke. “It’s an honor to meet the initiator of the Hidden Room Project.”
The man’s hands paused briefly.
Zhou Qi’an never did business at a loss. He had wasted a Marlin Potion to be the first to find the archives, all just to get a look at this top student’s records.
At the start of the instance, Zhou Qi’an had secretly used the [Skull Ring] to test the players’ evolution levels. Vikas ranked the highest—the Skull Ring couldn’t even provide a specific number. As for Ying Yu… he ranked the lowest.
The Skull Ring didn’t even react. The only other person who caused the same result was Shen Zhiyi.
Zhou Qi’an’s curiosity about Ying Yu far exceeded his interest in Vikas. The latter was clearly an enemy, so Zhou Qi’an chose to use his limited time to check Ying Yu’s file first. Even though it had been reduced to the bare essentials, it was still an unparalleled resume.
Ying Yu wasn’t one for small talk. He simply said, “Let’s continue our previous discussion.”
The previous discussion.
Copying homework?
Zhou Qi’an cleared his throat and suddenly adopted a serious expression. “I’d like to make a trade with you.”
When he finally stated exactly what he wanted, Ying Yu gave him a proper look.
“…Of course, I still need to copy the homework,” Zhou Qi’an quickly added.
·
When Zhou Qi’an returned to Room 514, he already had a perfectly completed assignment.
He tossed it to Shen Zhiyi and sneered. “Teacher Shen, here. Copy it.”
No matter what, this man had taught him for three years. Even if it was just rote memorization, his level of knowledge shouldn’t be this poor.
Shen Zhiyi replied calmly, “In the face of absolute power, all knowledge is useless. Why waste memory space storing it?”
“……” Great. A supporter of the ‘knowledge is useless’ theory.
At 1 a.m., the dorm lights automatically shut off.
Lying on his bed, Zhou Qi’an stared at the ceiling for a long time, lost in thought.
After seven or eight hours of continuous exams, exhaustion finally overwhelmed his mind, and he quickly fell asleep.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, but the air became thick with a damp, bloody scent.
Zhou Qi’an tried to cover his nose and mouth, but he failed.
He had lost control of his limbs.
When Zhou Qi’an finally regained some movement in his fingers, he realized he was bound tightly to an ice-cold operating table. The restraints around his wrists and ankles were unbearably tight.
“Calm down. It’s just a dream.”
He had already experienced this kind of sleep paralysis once before at the rice store. It wasn’t unfamiliar.
Zhou Qi’an had a natural aversion to operating tables and tried his best to ignore his unfriendly surroundings. As he shifted his gaze away from the black restraints binding his hands, he saw an enormous head looming under the shadowless surgical lamp above, staring down at him in exaggerated magnification.
At such close range, he found himself face-to-face with a pig’s face. Beneath its thick jowls, fat deposits clustered like tiny nodules.
“!!!”
Zhou Qi’an struggled to hold his breath, but the putrid stench still overwhelmed him.
“With grades this bad, do you have a pig’s brain?”
The pig-headed figure spoke words that seemed to insult its own kind. It wore surgical scrubs but held a rusted axe in its hand.
The axe came down hard.
“White Silk.”
Zhou Qi’an instinctively called for his equipment.
White Silk did not respond. The axe struck without resistance!
A flash of cold light reflected in his eyes. In an instant, fresh red blood sprayed everywhere. Zhou Qi’an’s head flew off, landing askew as he stared at the other half of his body.
He had been… decapitated?
The pig-headed figure walked over, lifted the freshly severed head, and let out a sinister chuckle.
From the reflection in the pig’s eyeballs, Zhou Qi’an saw what he currently looked like.
A face he didn’t recognize, frozen in a terrified expression.
The pig-headed figure casually tossed the head onto a surgical tray beside it. Its fat-stuffed face suddenly twisted into a grotesque grin as it picked up a medical record and began jotting down notes:
[Grade-3 Fresh Pig Brain]
Quality: Inferior. Crude intelligence. Low neuron density. Can be processed for waste utilization.
Quality… Inferior… These terms felt bizarre in this context, but when applied to meat products, they seemed disturbingly appropriate.
The world dissolved into a sea of blood.
The pig-headed figure extracted the remaining veins from the decapitated body, pulling them out one by one like power cables, and connected them to a new head.
Zhou Qi’an hadn’t felt the pain of being beheaded, but when his nerves were being pulled out—he felt it all.
“No!!”
Zhou Qi’an jolted awake, sitting up abruptly. A wave of dizziness hit him.
Outside, dawn had already begun to break. The dormitory was freezing, making him shiver.
The bed across from him was empty. Zhou Qi’an instinctively searched for Shen Zhiyi’s presence, hoping that the sight of a living person would help alleviate the lingering dread of his nightmare.
As if answering his silent call, the dormitory door opened. Shen Zhiyi walked in, carrying a small bag of breakfast.
Noticing Zhou Qi’an drenched in sweat, gripping the ladder as he tried to climb down, Shen Zhiyi quickly strode over to prevent him from falling in his weakened state.
Without his wig on while sleeping, Zhou Qi’an’s blue-toned hair cascaded over his shoulders. He draped his school uniform over himself and hunched over in a chair.
The fear from his dream had triggered tears, which clung to his eyelashes. Under the cold air, they crystallized into a faint layer of frost.
“I had a strange dream…”
Zhou Qi’an slowly recounted his experience, unsure whether it was a natural nightmare triggered by seeing the pig-headed figure in the main building or if there was some deeper reason behind it.
Halfway through his explanation, Shen Zhiyi suddenly crouched down and grasped Zhou Qi’an’s slightly trembling ankle.
Zhou Qi’an’s body stiffened.
“Don’t move.”
It wasn’t an inappropriate gesture. Shen Zhiyi simply removed Zhou Qi’an’s shoe and examined the sole.
Zhou Qi’an suddenly recalled something—when he had been running frantically last night, he might have stepped on something.
A murky, gelatinous substance clung to the uneven grooves of his shoe’s sole.
“A human eyeball,” Shen Zhiyi stated.
Zhou Qi’an’s eyelid twitched.
It was most likely the eyeball of a deceased person from a finished operation, discarded in the hallway—right where he had stepped on it.
So that thing was the source of his nightmare?
Shen Zhiyi said, “Eat something first. It’ll help a little.”
Zhou Qi’an looked up and checked again, thinking he must be mistaken. “Two thumb biscuits?”
“The cafeteria has rules. Poor-performing students can only eat these, limited to three per day.” Shen Zhiyi added, “Qi’an, you can have my portion too.”
“……”
·
After getting dressed and shouldering his backpack, Zhou Qi’an walked toward the teaching building with a thumb biscuit in his mouth, shaking his head all the way.
Now he finally understood what Han Li meant when she talked about instances that went beyond just individual suffering and joy.
This one was really about “exhausting the body and starving the flesh.”
Literally!
On the way, an idea suddenly struck him.
Zhou Qi’an ran over to the damp crevices between trees and began rummaging. “Found it!”
Moments later, he turned around excitedly, as if he had just caught a bridal bouquet by surprise, and proudly displayed his discovery to Shen Zhiyi. “Look! Mushrooms!”
They came in a variety of bright colors, just shy of having toxic written on them in bold letters.
Several students walking toward the teaching building cast glances in their direction.
Shen Zhiyi fell silent for a moment and then asked, “Don’t you think their colors are a bit too vibrant?”
Zhou Qi’an, full of confidence, replied, “No worries, it won’t poison Da Liang.”
“……”
Author’s Note:
Zhou Qi’an: Want a bite?
Shen Zhiyi: ……
