“Little JJ!”
Xie Zhi answered, then shot Lu Jin a contemptuous glare. “Can you stop thinking dirty thoughts? We’re in an instance. Be normal!”
Lu Jin: “…”
He genuinely had not been thinking about anything dirty. If Xie Zhi had not suddenly mentioned it, his mind would never have gone there.
It was only that several years earlier, when Lu Jin returned to the Underworld during a school holiday, the King of Hell had randomly inspected his English homework and suddenly asked what his English name was.
Lu Jin could not be bothered to think, so he casually gave the Romanized form of his name.
The King of Hell’s eyes immediately lit up. He grinned and said, “Then let me give you one. How about Little JJ? Little Jin-Jin—it suits you perfectly!”
Perfect his ass.
Lu Jin naturally had not accepted that terrible suggestion.
It had happened so long ago that Lu Jin had forgotten all about it. Yet hearing such a ridiculous name had forcibly dragged the memory back to the surface.
The cigarette butt crackled as a spark ignited. Xie Zhi gripped it and pressed it viciously against the boss’s wife’s arm!
Her eyes widened in terror, and her limbs thrashed violently. Agonized screams echoed through the forest on the back hill, making the already eerie night even more horrifying.
Lu Jin frowned.
For some reason, he felt uncomfortable.
“I didn’t… I really didn’t…” The boss’s wife desperately shook her head as bloody tears mixed with cold sweat and streamed down her face.
“You’re still lying when you’re about to die?!”
Xie Zhi’s expression turned vicious, and his wrist pressed harder—
Suddenly, a blue-gray hand burst out of the soil and locked tightly around Xie Zhi’s ankle!
Xie Zhi screamed and collapsed to the ground.
Then more hands pushed out of the earth, densely packed like bamboo shoots after rain. Carrying the wet, rotten smell of leaves and mud, they surged madly toward the players!
Lu Jin reacted instantly. He released the boss’s wife’s head, flickered sideways, and jumped onto a waist-high boulder.
—The stone was too hard for hands to emerge through it.
But just as he steadied himself, Jiang Sui also avoided the ghostly hands by stepping onto the edge of the boulder and vaulting up. The two men ended up squeezed together on a surface of less than one square meter, making an already scarce amount of space even scarcer.
Lu Jin glanced at him coldly. “I got here first.”
Jiang Sui gave a casual “Oh,” yet leaned slightly closer. “Then move over. I’m about to fall.”
Lu Jin: “…?”
“At a moment like this, shouldn’t you politely get lost and give the space back to me?”
“I can’t.” Jiang Sui glanced at the writhing mass of hands below, his face perfectly calm. “I’m scared.”
The corner of Lu Jin’s mouth twitched.
A 190-centimeter man with no expression whatsoever saying “I’m scared” was somehow more disturbing than the severed hands crawling all over the ground.
The two remained locked in a standoff on the boulder, neither willing to yield. The rock had not been particularly stable to begin with, and under their combined weight it swayed from side to side as though it might overturn at any moment.
Lu Jin tried to squeeze Jiang Sui off, but the other man was tall, muscular, and extremely strong. Lu Jin failed several times.
Annoying.
The bastard beside him was even more annoying than the hands clawing around below.
“Brother Lu… help…”
Xu Moyang’s weak cry for help drifted through the air. Lu Jin followed the sound and saw the idiot clinging to a tree trunk like a monkey, scrambling upward with both arms and legs. His palms had been scraped bloody by the bark, but he did not care.
Lu Jin narrowed his eyes.
Oh. A tree trunk could serve as a foothold too, and it was even taller than the boulder.
But the moment Lu Jin realized moving elsewhere would mean losing his contest with Jiang Sui, he planted himself on the rock like a meditating statue.
Jiang Sui saw this and laughed softly.
Stubborn little thing.
…
Although there were many hands in the soil, their attacks were not particularly strong. After the initial panic, the players either climbed trees or jumped onto stones, temporarily escaping the ground.
The hands grasped uselessly for a while. Unable to catch anyone, they gradually weakened and retreated resentfully into the soil.
Not long afterward, a little boy around three years old climbed out of the earth.
He was chubby, with dirt smeared across his round cheeks. He spread both arms protectively in front of the boss’s wife and glared fiercely at the players with wide eyes.
“Don’t bully my mommy!”
Xie Zhi looked miserable. Several bloody scratches marked his arms, and a large tear had opened in his uniform. Yet when he saw the child, he still could not resist mocking him. “Oh, look! The little bastard is here!”
The little boy’s eyes suddenly widened. The whites vanished, leaving nothing but black emptiness. Two streams of bloody tears ran down his cheeks.
“I’m not! Don’t falsely accuse my mommy!”
Lu Jin’s gaze shifted. His eyes lingered on the little boy for a moment.
The other players did not notice anything unusual about his reaction.
Still angry after being clawed, Xie Zhi continued taunting the child.
The little boy’s cheeks reddened with fury, and he shouted in his childish voice.
In an instant, countless severed hands ripped free from the soil. As if they had grown wings, they flew through the air and swarmed madly toward the players clinging to rocks and trees!
“Holy shit!”
Xie Zhi hurriedly swung the giant cigarette butt around, while the others grabbed shovels and fought back.
But there were far too many hands. Even the boulder where Lu Jin and Jiang Sui stood was covered with them. Their finger joints hooked into cracks in the rock and produced a piercing scraping sound.
Lu Jin jumped into the air and landed on the tree where Xu Moyang was clinging. Grabbing the back of Xu Moyang’s collar, he said, “Retreat first!”
Dragging Xu Moyang with him, he escaped from the back hill in only a few movements.
The other players followed, knocking away nearby hands before scrambling and stumbling back toward the guesthouse.
*
Once they returned, the players stood gasping for breath. Aside from Lu Jin and Jiang Sui, nearly everyone was injured. Fang Yuan and Xu Moyang looked especially miserable, with torn clothing and mud and blood smeared across their faces.
The daytime instance had been frightening, but nothing compared with the assault on the back hill. Only now did everyone truly understand that this place was a deadly game where they could lose their lives at any time.
“Oh… back from the hill?”
The manager’s eerie voice suddenly sounded behind them. No one knew when he had appeared at the entrance. Seeing their battered condition, a gloating smile curled across his mouth.
“Why are there only a few of you? Did the university student who cleaned the executive suite this afternoon fail to come back? Oh, what a pity. I really thought he might survive the back hill—”
The manager’s words stopped abruptly.
Xu Moyang shifted to the side, revealing Lu Jin standing behind him.
Lu Jin leaned lazily against the doorframe, his clothes perfectly clean, with hardly a strand of hair out of place.
“Oh. Were you worried about me?”
Manager: “…”
Worried his ass! He had clearly been cursing Lu Jin and hoping he would hurry up and die!
Was this man some kind of cockroach that could not be killed? Or a worm that could survive even after being cut in half? He was clearly a Danger Zone player, so how was he surviving more stubbornly than everyone else?!
The manager was so furious that his temples throbbed and smoke practically rose from his forehead.
Lu Jin paid no attention to his livid expression. He held his stomach and frowned. The cook had only given him fruit in the afternoon, and he had digested it long ago.
Now his stomach growled loudly from hunger. Lu Jin looked at the manager and asked without ceremony, “Didn’t you say there was a welcome party tonight? Can we eat now?”
*
The welcome party was held in the guesthouse’s second-floor hall.
A layer of dust coated the chandeliers. Dark-red tablecloths covered the long tables, and hardened dark stains could be seen along the edges, though no one could tell whether they were wine or something else.
The plates on the table had been polished until they gleamed, reflecting the players’ tense faces.
The manager sat on the right side of another table. Before the party began, he tapped his champagne glass. “Originally, we hired eight new employees this time. Unfortunately, only six remain.”
“But that doesn’t matter. As long as you work hard, you’ll become part of the guesthouse very soon! We’re all one family~”
The corner of Fang Yuan’s mouth twitched. He muttered, “Become part of the guesthouse? He means become ghosts and join them, right?”
“Or become part of the back hill,” Jiang Heng said coldly. “Turn into some monster that’s neither human nor ghost.”
Either way, anything the manager said was unlikely to mean something good for the players.
The next person to speak was Granny Huang, Boss Huang’s mother, who was in her sixties. Her hair was silver-white like frost, and her back curved like a small hill, yet her deeply wrinkled face carried a kindly smile.
After Granny Huang finished speaking, the boss’s wife entered the hall with the little boy. She ignored the players completely, as though the confrontation on the back hill had never happened.
The woman sat beside Granny Huang. The old lady familiarly pulled the little boy onto her lap, unwrapped a lollipop, and put it into his mouth.
“Good boy. Eat your candy and grow nice and tall.”
The little boy’s eyes were hollow. He mechanically held the candy in his mouth and answered in a childish voice, “Thank you, Grandma.”
“Such a good boy~”
After the woman and child sat down, the head seat at the long table remained empty. The manager kept looking toward the entrance expectantly, obviously waiting for the boss.
But even after a long wait, the seat stayed empty.
The boss had not returned to the guesthouse for a long time. If he had been here, would these players have dared act this arrogantly? The manager wanted to urge someone to contact him, but judging from Granny Huang and the boss’s wife, neither seemed to know he had left.
“No need to wait. Let’s begin.” Granny Huang clapped her hands.
The banquet officially started.
The players took their seats in order at the staff table. When choosing seats, Xie Zhi and Jiang Heng deliberately picked places as far from Lu Jin as possible.
—Danger Zone players were the most likely to die inside the game, and NPCs tended to target them. Staying farther away was safer.
Fang Yuan felt conflicted. He wanted to sit with the veteran players for safety, but doing so seemed a little disloyal. After hesitating, he still sat beside Xie Zhi.
Xu Moyang stayed with Lu Jin and even snorted toward the veterans. “How old are they, still forming little cliques? Childish!”
“Brother Lu, ignore them. I’ll stay with you!”
Lu Jin: “…”
He did not really need company.
After all, Xu Moyang was not a person either. 🙂
Xu Moyang sat on Lu Jin’s left. Jiang Sui, without invitation, sat on his right.
The man was unbelievably familiar with strangers. The moment he sat down, he grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds from the table, gave half to Lu Jin, and kept half for himself.
Lu Jin looked expressionlessly at Jiang Sui. Fine, the two of them had been forced to squeeze together on the boulder earlier, but there were countless empty seats here. Why insist on sitting beside him?
And Jiang Sui was taller than him.
Lu Jin did not consider himself short. On the subway, he could usually stand at the back and see over other people’s heads into the next carriage. But with Jiang Sui sitting beside him, even with half an arm’s distance between them, the man’s presence felt like a small mountain.
Lu Jin ignored him and scanned the long table for food.
Unfortunately, the dishes had not arrived yet. There were only sunflower seeds.
He was idly cracking shells when Jiang Sui’s low voice suddenly sounded beside him. Because they were sitting close, his breath unconsciously brushed Lu Jin’s ear.
“Something wrong with that kid?”
Lu Jin’s fingers paused.
He looked up at Jiang Sui.
Jiang Sui waved a hand. “Don’t look at me like that. I noticed you staring at him for a long time. You were watching him on the back hill too. There’s something wrong with him, right?”
Lu Jin did not think he had been obvious. Even Xu Moyang, who had been stuck to him the entire time, had failed to notice. Yet Jiang Sui had seen through it.
“What does it have to do with you?” Lu Jin had no intention of explaining.
Jiang Sui shrugged. “I’ll find out eventually.”
Xu Moyang immediately leaned over, curiosity shining in his eyes. He had the feeling those two were discussing a crucial clue needed to clear the instance.
“Brother Lu, did you notice something?”
Lu Jin was silent for a moment. Strictly speaking, this discovery had nothing to do with the instance. It was simply something he had noticed personally. But since Xu Moyang asked, he did not hide it.
“Don’t you think Boss Huang’s son looks familiar?”
“Huh? Another person we know?” Xu Moyang immediately turned to look at the little boy.
At that exact moment, the boy turned too and met Xu Moyang’s gaze.
His eyes remained hollow. The instant they locked onto Xu Moyang, the corner of his mouth suddenly lifted into an extremely faint smile. It vanished so quickly it might have been an illusion, yet it carried an indescribable chill.
Xu Moyang stiffened, goosebumps rising all over him.
He did look… a little familiar.
But Xu Moyang could not remember where he had seen him.
“Brother Lu, who is he?”
Lu Jin did not answer.
Xu Moyang assumed he had not remembered either and began chattering again. “Still, dying this young is pretty sad. What happened to this family anyway? A family of four, and not a single one survived…”
“He isn’t dead,” Lu Jin suddenly said.
“Huh?”
Xu Moyang froze and stared blankly at Lu Jin. Once the meaning sank in, a chill ran down his spine.
“Aren’t all NPCs ghosts? If this kid isn’t dead, then what exactly is the thing sitting there…?”
Lu Jin looked past Xu Moyang and fixed his gaze on the boy.
The boy was staring back at him. The faint smile from moments earlier abruptly widened, the corners of his mouth stretching grotesquely all the way toward his ears, carving an eerie arc across his pale little face.
