WTNL Chapter 8.1

Decai Middle School
Chapter 8.1

Upon hearing the mission, everyone was completely dumbfounded.

After their recent ordeal, the hint provided by this D-rank instance was already glaringly obvious:

“As long as you abide by the rules, you will not be killed.”

However, right after the NPC explicitly stated the rule “Do not leave the dormitory after lights out at ten o’clock,” the livestream system immediately updated with a mission completely contrary to the rules:

“Leave the dormitory after lights out and explore the campus.”

Wasn’t this blatantly shoving the streamers straight into a death trap!

They could hardly imagine what terrifying plight they would face if caught red-handed by that old witch after leaving the dormitory.

The reverberating chime of the clock echoed in the air.

The entire dormitory building was enveloped in darkness, leaving only the ceiling light at the corridor corner still lit, flickering with a dim, feeble white glow amidst the suffocating, dense gloom.

Inside Dormitory 201.

Rookie streamer Cheng Huaquan stood alone in the dark, still reeling from the shock of the livestream mission.

With trembling hands, he flusteredly pulled out his ID card.

Initial survival time: seven hours; now only four hours remained.

Cheng Huaquan’s fingertips turned white as he clutched the card tightly, as if this was the only way to gain a sense of security.

Staring intently at the numbers on it, he secretly made up his mind.

He didn’t plan to do this main quest.

In any case, his initial survival duration was the highest among them. Even if he didn’t do this main livestream mission, it shouldn’t matter too much. He only needed to earn enough points to exchange for three more hours to clear the instance. He could simply beg the audience for tips and scrape together the points required for clearance before the next settlement cycle arrived.

He truly didn’t want to come face-to-face with whatever monster was outside the room ever again.

After mentally preparing himself, Cheng Huaquan opened his livestream floating screen.

He tried his best to please the audience, sparing no effort to satisfy any of their increasingly absurd requests in the live broadcast room, brazenly humbling himself to beg for more popularity and tips.

Yet to his utter bewilderment, no matter how hard he tried, the number of online viewers in the live broadcast room continued to plummet rapidly and unstoppably.

Like sand clutched tightly in a palm, the harder he gripped, the faster it slipped away.

When the viewer count dropped to the verge of falling below three digits, Cheng Huaquan finally panicked.

If this trend continued, extending his life would become impossible.

“Don’t leave, please don’t leave!”

He shoved his pale, sweat-soaked face close to the floating screen and cried out in sheer panic: “Wh-what else do you want me to do? Just name it, I—I’ll definitely—”

While Cheng Huaquan was sweating profusely in desperation, a faint “thud, thud” sound came from behind him.

A rhythmic, steady bumping sound.

Very light—so light that with just a little distraction, it would be easily overlooked.

Unexpectedly, in Cheng Huaquan’s live broadcast room, the viewer count that had been steadily plummeting suddenly stopped dropping, and even showed signs of rebounding.

The flame of hope ignited in his eyes:

“Thank you, thank you everyone! I will definitely not let down everyone’s support…”

However, immersed in wild joy, Cheng Huaquan didn’t notice that although the number of online viewers was increasing, the chat was eerily quiet, with almost no comments appearing at all.

As a rookie streamer, Cheng Huaquan didn’t know that all comments involving spoilers were filtered and hidden.

Yet amidst this dead silence, he gradually realized something was wrong.

“Thud.”

“Thud.”

“Thud.”

The rhythmic bumping sound echoed repeatedly, gradually growing clearer as time passed, until it became impossible to ignore.

Cheng Huaquan froze on the spot.

…That sound wasn’t coming from the hallway, but was echoing right inside this room.

To be precise, it was right behind his head.

His eyeballs twitched nervously as cold sweat slid down his sunken temples.

Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back—

The floating screen in front of him wavered slightly, its faint glow illuminating the glass window not far away.

Like a mirror, the glass clearly reflected the streamer’s terror-twisted face.

As well as…

A pair of feet dangling in mid-air right behind his back.

“Thud.”

“Thud.”

The dangling black toes bumped against the metal bedpost over and over, producing a rhythmic tapping.

Almost uncontrollably, Cheng Huaquan’s gaze slowly shifted upward—

He saw a person hanging from the ceiling fan.

Long black hair draped down, and a smiling face submerged halfway in shadows was staring straight at him. The face was as pale as melted wax, and a pair of bizarre, pitch-black eyes stared unblinkingly at him as its mouth soundlessly split open into a grin.

“…Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

A shrill, agonizing scream pierced through the darkness.

On the ID card, the remaining survival time plummeted at a terrifying speed, as if being devoured by some invisible existence, dropping to single digits in the blink of an eye.

Snap.

In the livestream lobby of [Decai Middle School], one screen went dark.

[Streamer has disconnected.]

[Channel 27463hud will close in one minute. Countdown: 60, 59…]

Inside the blackened live broadcast room, the viewers, entertained by his death, were chatting with great satisfaction in the comment section.

[Tsk tsk tsk, what a waste of that eight-hour starting survival time.]

[This kind of streamer who refuses the main mission is useless even if he survives, zero entertainment value.]

[At least the last few minutes before disconnecting were pretty satisfying to watch.]

[This death had no originality whatsoever. Friends, I passionately recommend Channel 789326qwk next door! Catastrophic start with a twenty-minute survival time, yet not only is he still alive, rumor has it he single-handedly raised the entire instance rating! It’s amazing!]

[Yeah, yeah, that streamer is truly insane—bold yet meticulous, slick-tongued as hell, and supposedly some big shot’s alt account.]

[Plus, he ran into this exact monster right at the start and pulled off an extreme turnaround. Absolutely brilliant.]

[Stop hyping, why don’t I believe it?]

[For real? I’m going over to check it out.]

As time went by, the online viewers in the room gradually trickled away.

[5, 4, 3…]

Words in blood slowly surfaced before the room shut down.

[Our motto is: Entertainment to Death]

In the dark corridor, Su Cheng nervously fumbled forward, taking one step at a time.

His initial survival time was too short. Even though he had been desperately unlocking his ID card to earn points, barely over an hour remained by now.

As a rookie streamer, the number of viewers and tips in his live broadcast room had remained perpetually lackluster, hovering around a few hundred.

Therefore, even though he knew the price of violating the rules was steep, Su Cheng had no choice but to bite the bullet and leave his dormitory.

If he didn’t accept the main mission, he would surely die.

The corridor was pitch black, with only the dim stairwell light flickering behind him, creating an oppressive and suffocating, eerie atmosphere.

In his live broadcast room, viewers were casually sending comments:

[The streamer has been out of the room for a while now; why hasn’t anything happened yet?]

[Yeah, I remember you can’t break rules in this instance. As long as you violate the rules, ghosts will target you—it’s just a matter of time.]

[I thought the streamer was just lucky, but I just popped over to check the other streamers who chose to leave their dorms, and they’re all safe too. What’s going on?]

[Did the people above not go to Channel 789326qwk to catch up on lore?]

[?? Catch up? What’s going on?]

[The plot deviation rate of this instance is already over sixty percent, didn’t you guys know? In the special route, that vicious ghost that targets rule-breaking streamers got directly wiped out.]

[???]

[Some of the above user comments contain spoilers and will only be visible to the audience.]

Right at that moment, Su Cheng heard a set of footsteps coming from the stairwell behind him.

Heavy, dragging, accompanied by an unsettling, bizarre scraping noise.

Something was walking up the stairs, step by step.

In terror, he whipped his head around toward the sound.

An unhuman, gigantic shadow was twisted into a grotesque shape, cast against the corridor wall by the dim lighting. Its edges wriggled like some unstable entity, slowly shifting forms.

A powerful sense of peril struck him.

Su Cheng turned and sprinted for his life.

Behind him, he heard a woman’s eerie, giggling cackle: “I hear it~ A student is wandering in the hallway after lights out…”

The hissing in the woman’s voice grew clearer, and that dense malice and amusement practically bled through the darkness.

“Really naughty, aren’t you.”

Footsteps echoed down the empty corridor, accompanied by a low hum, closing in like the song of the Grim Reaper.

Cold sweat poured from Su Cheng’s forehead as he ran with all his might—

Second floor, third floor…

Yet, whether an illusion or not, no matter how fast he ran, that humming followed him like a shadow, closing in unstoppably, step by step.

It was as if an invisible rope was looping around his neck, ruthlessly tightening little by little.

Just as Su Cheng was on the verge of despair, a pair of hands reached out without warning from the darkness to his side and yanked him over violently!

Wha…?!

Su Cheng was scared out of his wits.

A cold palm covered his mouth, stifling every sound right back down his throat.

In the dark, a pair of eyes shone as bright as stars.

A handsome young man leaned close, putting a finger to his lips in a “shh” gesture.

Th-this person seemed a bit familiar?

Still shaken, Su Cheng leaned against the wall and nodded very slightly, indicating he wouldn’t make a sound.

Wen Jianyan let go of his hand and silently edged toward the door.

Using his fingertips, he carefully pushed open a crack and cautiously peered outside.

The corridor was pitch-black.

A faint light source flickered in the distance, barely outlining a colossal shadow slowly moving forward.

The old witch’s body had swollen to nearly twice its previous size.

Her head was pressed flat against the ceiling, her clammy, grayish-blue skin bloated as if soaked in water, stretched to the absolute limit as if it would burst open in the very next second. Several tears had split open in the areas uncovered by cloth, dripping water droplets that left a long trail of wet marks across the floor.

Pitch-black eyeballs peered out from the cracks in her flesh, rolling around with sheer malice.

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