(8/10)
Yuying University
Chapter 393: Picking the weak
With just a few words, Wen Jianyan quickly got acquainted with the two slightly anxious-looking “freshmen.”
The anchor with the scruffy beard was called Brother Hu, and his tattooed buddy was named A-Bao. Both of them were B-rank anchors, evidently just the right level for this instance.
“Hey, what about you? What’s your name, buddy?” Brother Hu asked.
Wen Jianyan smiled. “You can just call me Xiao Wen.”
“No problem! Since we’re in the same dorm, it’s fate,” A-Bao said, patting his chest. “I’ve got your back, bro!”
“Really?” Wen Jianyan blinked and nodded obediently. “Okay, thank you, Brother Bao.”
In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room barrage:
[……]
[Looks like he’s about to say something but stops.]
[Actually, he wants to say it but still holds back.]
[A certain S-rank anchor, currently ranked #008, a member of the Secret Council, Mr. Pinocchio… Can you act like a human being for once?]
[Show some shame, damn it!!!]
“Oh right,” Wen Jianyan suddenly thought of something and asked, “Did you guys register your names with that senior downstairs?”
The two were startled and exchanged a glance. “Yeah, we did. Why?”
“Nothing.”
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, concealing his expression.
Just as he suspected—registering didn’t immediately trigger any danger. Still, this gave him an opportunity, a chance to figure out what really happened after giving your name.
While the group was chatting, footsteps echoed from outside.
They stopped talking and looked toward the door.
“…Damn, what a jinxed dorm number—”
This time, four people entered, likely a team. The leader looked young, with a long, thin face and an arrogant expression.
He cut himself off before finishing the sentence.
The thin-faced man scanned the room and walked straight toward Wen Jianyan:
“Hey, you.”
Wen Jianyan: “Me?”
“Yeah, you.” He jerked his chin. “Get up and move to the top bunk. I want this bed.”
In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room barrage:
[……]
[Trying to pick the softest target, huh?]
[Hahahaha ended up picking the hardest one!]
[I can’t take it, of all people, you had to provoke him?]
Unexpectedly, before Wen Jianyan could respond, Brother Hu stood up:
“Hold on a minute.”
He frowned and glared. “What’s the deal?”
The thin-faced man glanced at him.
They must have met downstairs and realized Brother Hu and A-Bao weren’t on the same team as Wen Jianyan. “None of your business.”
“How is it none of my business?”
A-Bao stood up. He was broad and muscular, his arms thick with intimidating dragon-and-tiger tattoos. He let out a cold laugh. “He’s my bro. You mess with him, you mess with me.”
“First come, first served; get it?” Brother Hu chimed in. “You showed up late. Pick another empty bed. Stop trying to snatch someone else’s spot.”
The tension in the room soared. The air turned heavy, sparks practically flying in the silence.
“All right, all right,” Wen Jianyan stood up with a smile, trying to ease the situation. “Thank you, Brother Hu and Brother Bao, for standing up for me.”
He looked at the thin-faced man and said,
“Since you want the bed, I’ll give it to you.”
The pale-haired, pale-eyed young man stood up, his expression seemingly sincere: “We’re all classmates. No need to start conflict over something so small.”
In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room barrage:
[?]
[Huh?]
[He’s just giving it up?]
[I checked—on the opposing side the highest-ranked anchor is only A-. What’s there to be afraid of? Just fight them!]
[Come on, you’re saying that with the benefit of hindsight. Lights out is almost here, and his teammates are on another floor. Even if he outlevels them, he’s still outnumbered. Who knows what might happen if a conflict breaks out now? Sometimes it’s better to avoid trouble.]
“…Hmph.” The thin-faced young man scanned Wen Jianyan from head to toe, then snorted disdainfully. “At least you know your place.”
“It’s fine.”
Wen Jianyan turned to look at Brother Hu and A-Bao, who both seemed indignant, and blinked with a smile:
“I actually prefer the top bunk anyway.”
Since he said that, the two had no choice but to drop it and sit back down. However, their expressions were complicated—like they were looking at a pitiful guy getting bullied without fighting back.
Before lights-out, Wen Jianyan left the dorm to explore as much as possible.
Compared to other floors, this one wasn’t very crowded, but several dorms were already taken. Most teams had been split up, though the extent varied.
The rest matched what the dorm supervisor told them—there were bathrooms at both ends of the corridor.
Old-style squat toilets. When he turned on the faucet, it took a while before rusty, murky water came gushing out.
It seemed like the danger in this instance wasn’t immediate. At least for now, Wen Jianyan hadn’t found anything too alarming.
Ten minutes before lights-out, Wen Jianyan returned to Dorm 404.
Others who had left also came back one after another.
Due to the earlier scuffle, the atmosphere in the dorm was tense and silent.
One minute until lights-out.
Wen Jianyan climbed up the ladder to his bed.
The moment he lay down, he felt a chilling cold creep up, making him shiver involuntarily.
He froze and glanced at the Health and San bars in the upper right corner.
No change.
One minute until lights-out.
No more sounds came from outside. Clearly, all the anchors understood that the 11:00 PM lights-out was a crucial point in this instance, the best time to understand the rules.
At the stroke of 11, a “beep” echoed from outside, like a machine—eerily familiar.
“Lights out, lights out!”
The dorm supervisor’s voice called from the hallway.
The next moment, all the lights went out.
The dorm and hallway were plunged into pitch-black darkness—so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Only the sound of shallow breathing could be heard in the room.
No one was asleep.
Wen Jianyan lay in the dark, breathing lightly, eyes focused on the hazy mosquito net above him.
It came with the dorm. He had already pulled it down before lights-out—just like any ordinary college student would.
For some reason, the cold sensation only intensified, spreading across his body from where he touched the bed frame.
Then, a powerful wave of drowsiness swept over him.
“?!”
Wen Jianyan’s heart jolted.
This definitely wasn’t natural tiredness—it was a forced sleep, imposed by some rule.
Even though he understood what was happening, he could feel his eyelids growing heavier, as if weighted with lead, dragging him down.
Must… stay awake…
He fought to stay conscious, pouring all his willpower into resisting the overwhelming sleepiness. He opened his backpack and activated an item inside.
A small bone bell appeared in the darkness, silently hung by his bed.
The next second, Wen Jianyan could no longer resist. His eyelids fell shut, and in the pitch-dark dorm, his consciousness gradually sank into darkness, slipping deeper and deeper.
The dorm was silent.
Heavy, even breathing echoed throughout—everyone had fallen into a deep sleep.
“……”
The night grew darker.
On the top bunk, the young man’s eyes remained tightly shut, brows faintly furrowed, as if caught in a restless dream, unable to awaken from the nightmare.
The lowered mosquito net swayed faintly in the darkness. In the corners of the dorm, shapeless shadows lurked and slithered, quietly stirring.
Creak, creak, creak.
A thin scratching sound began—like someone was dragging their nails across the bedboard, each scrape sharp and grating.
Cold.
So cold.
It felt like his entire body had fallen into an icy pit on a winter’s night, the chill seeping from his bones outward. Every muscle was contracting and trembling.
The young man’s brows furrowed. He curled up involuntarily under the invisible invasion of the cold.
In the darkness, a faint outline appeared—a bluish-white hand slowly reached out from the gap near the wall, inching toward the sleeping youth—
Ding ding.
A faint clinking of bones sounded.
There was no wind, yet the ghostly white bone chime hanging at the head of the bed began to sway lightly, producing a delicate but strangely penetrating sound.
Wen Jianyan’s eyes snapped open.
His chest rose and fell rapidly. Cold sweat covered his forehead, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of drowsiness in his eyes.
He turned his head to look at the crack in the wall behind him.
Nothing.
There was nothing there.
Although not seeing it didn’t necessarily mean it didn’t exist, Wen Jianyan still exhaled slowly.
He wasn’t sure if what had just happened was a dream.
His body had felt as heavy as stone, but his consciousness had floated high above, watching that bluish-white, eerily cold hand slowly reach out from the gap toward his sleeping self. He couldn’t move at all, as if paralyzed by a ghost. It wasn’t until the chime rang that he finally regained control of his body.
Wen Jianyan lay on the top bunk, drenched in cold sweat.
He exhaled again, more deliberately this time.
At least he was awake.
Suddenly, a faint scraping sound came from outside the dorm room.
Because the night was so quiet, the noise was unusually jarring—it instantly seized all of Wen Jianyan’s attention.
“?!”
A chill swept across his back. He instinctively held his breath and looked in the direction of the sound.
The dorm door was shut tight, but beyond it came the soft, slightly dragging sound of footsteps.
Shff… Shff… Shff…
The dorm supervisor?
That thought barely formed before Wen Jianyan dismissed it.
Definitely not.
He had paid attention to the dorm supervisor’s footsteps when coming upstairs earlier—heavy, firm, each step causing a faint tremor in the floor. But this sound…
Soft, slow, cold.
The footsteps crept closer, closer—until they stopped right outside their door.
Wen Jianyan’s heart leapt to his throat.
Creak.
The door slowly opened from the outside.
The screech of the turning hinges echoed loudly in the silence of night, making Wen Jianyan’s entire body tense up.
He held his breath and slightly turned his head, peeking out through the mosquito net.
Someone seemed to be standing outside the door.
He couldn’t make out any features in the darkness—only a pitch-black silhouette.
Shff… Shff… Shff…
The ghost-like figure stepped inside.
It stopped beside the lower bunk to the right.
Wen Jianyan remembered—that was where one of the long-faced teammates slept.
In the darkness, the figure silently lifted the mosquito net, making a faint rustling sound.
Then, it slowly bent forward, inch by inch, leaning its upper body inside.
Another wave of cold sweat surged down Wen Jianyan’s back.
The figure bent at an unnaturally deep angle, which meant it was incredibly close to the sleeping person—so close, their faces might be nearly touching.
Time crawled by.
The shadow didn’t move.
Wen Jianyan lay in the dark, his body slowly turning stiff. His muscles ached from the strain of staying so tense, fatigue setting in hard.
He stared into the darkness until his eyes began to sting and dry out.
He didn’t know how much time passed.
After a long, deathly silence, the shadow finally began to straighten up. With another bout of faint rustling, it slowly withdrew from the bedside.
But just as Wen Jianyan was about to relax, the quiet Shff Shff returned.
The shadow didn’t leave the dorm. Instead, it headed for the next bed.
That spot…
That should be A-Bao’s bed?
The shadow bent forward again.
But at that moment, Wen Jianyan’s taut body finally gave out, and his back leaned slightly against the wall.
Creak!
The old bed frame groaned under the weight of an adult man. In the suffocating silence of the dorm, the sound rang out sharply.
Not good!
That thought flashed through his mind like lightning.
As if to confirm it, the shadow straightened up from A-Bao’s bed and slowly turned its head—as though staring into the darkness in his direction.
“!!!”
Wen Jianyan jolted.
He snapped his eyes shut, heart pounding wildly.
Shff, Shff, Shff.
The soft footsteps resumed.
This time, they were headed toward him.
Wen Jianyan controlled his breathing, slowing it to the deep and even rhythm of someone asleep. He relaxed every muscle, staying perfectly still.
Shff, Shff…
The footsteps drew closer.
They stopped at the side of his bed.
Wen Jianyan kept his eyes tightly shut, his heart hammering in his chest, and cold sweat soaking his palms.
Then came a faint rustling beside him.
Something—or someone—was lifting his mosquito net.
Rustle… rustle…
Something reached inside.
In the darkness of the room, Wen Jianyan felt a heavy shadow fall across his face.
A chill shot up his spine, making his scalp tingle.
He slept on the top bunk.
But during the entire approach, his bed hadn’t made a sound—no tremor, no creak.
Which meant… whatever it was hadn’t climbed up using the ladder.
It was standing beside his bed, had lifted the net, and was now leaning in—
In his mind, fueled by adrenaline, his imagination ran wild, instantly conjuring up a distorted, elongated figure bending over his bed, its head slipping inside the mosquito net.
Wen Jianyan kept his eyes closed, his jaw clenched.
Beneath the thin lids, his eyeballs remained perfectly still.
He knew that in the pitch-black darkness, a face was slowly descending… drawing closer… and closer… silently hovering over him.
Wen Jianyan kept his breathing steady.
He could hear his heart pounding—like it was trying to break free from his ribs—thump, thump, thump, thump, each beat loud enough to echo in his ears, where blood now surged with a tense, buzzing roar.
The dorm was so silent.
Would his heartbeat give him away?
An icy chill seeped into his skin.
Wen Jianyan felt something lightly brush against his nose—ticklish.
Hair.
He didn’t need to open his eyes to know how close the other’s face was—mere centimeters away.
And even at this distance…
He couldn’t feel a single breath.
Because the thing hovering over him—didn’t breathe.
Only a vast, suffocating cold lingered in the dark.
okay i dont usually get scared from this novel but this is freakkkkyyy