The bus stopped in front of the guesthouse.
Bright daylight flooded the world. Half an hour earlier, it had been nighttime in Shanghai, yet here it was already day.
Clear River Guesthouse was probably located near some scenic area. The surroundings were beautiful, with rolling mountains, fresh air, and pleasant views.
The bus doors opened automatically. Jiang Heng and Xie Zhi stepped off first.
Just as he reached the door, Jiang Heng suddenly turned back. “I forgot to mention something. There are no shortcuts to clearing the game, but veteran players have summarized a few rules that can improve your survival rate inside instances.”
The newcomers looked at him expectantly.
“1. Work hard to earn the NPCs’ goodwill.”
“2. Never openly oppose an NPC.”
“3. If you see the Boss, turn around and run!”
The newcomers committed all three rules firmly to memory.
After all, this was their first instance. Without experience of their own, listening to veteran players could not hurt.
Everyone began getting off the bus. The guesthouse doors opened, and a plump manager rushed down the steps with his young assistant, cursing all the way.
He kept tapping his watch as he walked. “Do you know what time it is? What time is it?! Why haven’t the new employees arrived yet? Dragging your feet like this!”
When he saw the bus parked in front of the guesthouse, the manager hurried over. His balding head gleamed with oil beneath the sunlight, and behind his reading glasses were a pair of tiny eyes narrowed almost to slits.
“Why are you so slow? You only arrive at this hour? There are still several guest rooms that haven’t been cleaned!” His tone was extremely impatient.
Jiang Heng stepped forward with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, we were delayed on the road. We’ll start working immediately!”
“Then hurry up! Stop dawdling and wasting time!” The manager barked unhappily, nearly spraying spit across Jiang Heng’s face. “The boss has been in a terrible mood lately. If he catches you slacking off instead of working, you’ll regret it!”
After saying that, the manager began counting heads and ordered his assistant to fetch uniforms for the new employees.
He pointed his finger from person to person and counted twice before suddenly making a puzzled sound.
“Why are we missing one?”
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, a loud crash sounded behind them. The small luggage compartment door on the side of the bus sprang open automatically, and a mangled corpse rolled out.
The body looked as if it had been cut apart by something razor-sharp. A horrific wound had been opened from the neck down to the lower abdomen, and pale intestines spilled onto the ground in a mess of dark-red filthy blood.
“Ugh—”
The newcomers had never seen anything like it. Their stomachs churned violently, and they ran to the flowerbeds with hands over their mouths to dry-heave.
Even Xie Zhi and Jiang Heng looked terrible.
Only the manager’s eyes suddenly lit up as he rushed forward in excitement.
“Someone died!” His voice carried almost fanatical delight.
But once he got a clear look at the already mangled body, the manager sighed in disappointment and shook his head with deep regret.
“Been dead too long. Not fresh anymore. Ah, living people really do taste best…”
*
After that, the manager led the players to the staff dormitory.
Probably frightened by what he had just said, the players kept their heads down the entire way and barely dared to breathe.
At first glance, the guesthouse employees looked no different from ordinary people. But considering how bizarre this game was… that appearance was obviously only a disguise.
They were NPCs.
They were not human.
When they reached the front desk, everyone noticed that the wall beside it was covered in photographs: snapshots of tourists and group photos of guesthouse employees.
“There!”
The manager raised a hand and pointed at one. “That’s the boss. He hasn’t been at the guesthouse lately, but if you happen to run into him, you’d better recognize him.”
The players all looked up.
It was a family portrait. Besides the boss, there were his wife, his child, and an elderly woman. The family of four looked warm, happy, and harmonious.
The boss in the photograph appeared to be about thirty. He wore a simple polo shirt and held a little boy around three years old in his arms. His eyes were full of laughter, and he looked kind and approachable.
Yu Nan muttered quietly, “The boss is the instance Boss? He looks pretty normal.”
“He only looks normal,” Jiang Heng said, his face turning cold and his voice stiffening. “There isn’t a single normal Boss in these instances.”
As he spoke, his shoulders trembled uncontrollably. He clearly had not escaped the psychological shadow left by a Boss in one of his previous instances.
Fang Yuan swallowed and asked cautiously, “Are instance Bosses… really that terrifying?”
Xie Zhi sneered. “Did you forget how Zhao Kuan died? An instance Boss is only going to be a hundred times more brutal and terrifying than the monster that killed Zhao Kuan!”
At the thought of that mangled corpse, the players’ hair stood on end. Even the boss’s gentle smile in the family photo suddenly looked sinister and chilling.
Lu Jin had not looked at the photo at all.
He was far too sleepy. His eyelids were practically fighting each other, and he could not stop himself from yawning. If possible, he wanted this stupid game to end as soon as possible so he could go back and get a proper night’s sleep.
But Xu Moyang suddenly tugged his arm from behind and pointed at the Boss’s photograph, lowering his voice. “Brother! That Boss looks kind of familiar!”
Lu Jin glanced over carelessly.
The photograph had already yellowed with age, and the clothing worn by the people in it looked distinctly old-fashioned. It was clearly an old picture.
The man in the photograph had regular features and a gentle smile. He did indeed look somewhat familiar, as if Lu Jin had seen him somewhere before.
Xu Moyang then turned to look at the guesthouse business license posted on the wall. The owner’s name was written on it.
“Huang Youquan? That name sounds familiar too. I feel like I’ve heard it before… but where?”
Lu Jin was silent for two seconds before reminding him, “Ride-hailing car. Driver.”
“What?”
“The driver who tried to kill you.”
Xu Moyang’s eyes flew wide open.
When he got into the car, it had been night and the interior was dim. The driver had kept his back to him almost the entire time. Only at the very end, when the man’s head twisted one hundred and eighty degrees around, had Xu Moyang managed one terrified glimpse of that distorted face.
The situation had been so horrifying, and he had been so badly frightened, that he had never clearly remembered what the driver actually looked like.
Now that Lu Jin had reminded him, comparing the man with the photograph made it obvious—the guesthouse owner was the ride-hailing driver!
Xu Moyang blinked.
Lu Jin blinked too.
Xu Moyang had been rather nervous a moment ago.
Now, somehow, he was not nearly as afraid.
“Brother Lu,” Xu Moyang stepped closer and lowered his voice even more, “the Boss… is still inside your phone, right?”
“Mm.” Lu Jin answered lazily. “Locked up. Hasn’t come out.”
Excellent.
They were supposed to clear an infinite-flow game, yet before the game had even properly begun, its Boss had already been arrested.
Was there any point in playing this game anymore?
*
The manager led the players into the staff dormitory. His assistant brought seven sets of staff uniforms and distributed them.
Hands on his hips, the manager urged them, “Hurry up and change! There’s a lot of work today!”
The players immediately began changing.
Every player in this group was male, so no one bothered with changing stalls. They simply changed in the dormitory.
Holding his uniform, Lu Jin walked over to Xie Zhi and lightly tapped his knuckles against the door behind him as a warning of his presence.
Xie Zhi jumped badly and instantly pulled out a strange cigarette butt, aiming it at Lu Jin. Once he realized it was another player, he relaxed and put the cigarette butt away.
“Don’t suddenly appear behind people like that! You nearly scared me to death!”
Lu Jin leaned against the doorframe. “I have a question.”
“What?”
“If you capture the Boss, can you clear the game immediately?”
Xie Zhi whipped his head around to stare at Lu Jin.
The other players had heard him too and looked over in disbelief.
Xie Zhi almost became incoherent. “W-What did you just say?”
“If you capture the Boss directly, can you clear the game?” Lu Jin patiently repeated.
His question was so absurd that, even in this tense and terrifying environment, Xie Zhi actually laughed.
“What do you think the Boss is? A cabbage in the vegetable market? A goldfish in the park? You think you can catch it just because you feel like it? You’re the bottom-ranked player. You’ll be lucky if the Boss doesn’t catch you!”
“You have to have dreams,” Lu Jin said seriously. “What if they come true?”
Xie Zhi: “…”
Other players: “…”
Jiang Heng could not help coughing. He was more patient than Xie Zhi and took the initiative to explain. “Catching the Boss won’t help. The key to clearing an instance is completing the missions given by the System.”
“Oh.” Lu Jin sounded obviously disappointed but refused to give up. “What if you kill the Boss?”
Everyone: “???”
Was ordinary suicidal behavior no longer enough for you? Did you have to dance repeatedly through the minefield?
Xie Zhi and Jiang Heng exchanged glances. Suddenly, they understood why Lu Jin had decent physical fitness yet had still been marked by the System as a Danger Zone player—and ranked first at that.
If you did not court death, you would not die.
Lu Jin might simply be the number-one expert at courting death.
“Killing the Boss doesn’t work either,” Jiang Heng continued. “You still have to complete the System’s missions to clear the instance.”
Lu Jin was extremely dissatisfied with that answer. It was like capturing the proctor during an exam and still not being awarded full marks.
Then what was even the point of having a Boss?
Useless thing!
…
Since there was no shortcut through the Boss, Lu Jin could only put his phone back into his pocket.
Most of the players did not take his words seriously. Aside from Xu Moyang, who knew the truth, everyone else thought the newcomer was showing off for attention.
Capture the Boss, kill the Boss, clear the instance—easy enough to say. When he actually encountered the Boss, wouldn’t he be terrified out of his mind like everyone else?
Young people really did not know the immensity of heaven and earth!
After changing, the players went one after another to the guest-room area to clean.
Completing the System mission was important, but first they had to complete the tasks assigned by the NPCs. They needed to make sure these strange NPCs did not actively attack them.
Xie Zhi and Jiang Heng deliberately dragged their feet and fell behind the others.
Once every other player had left, Xie Zhi cautiously went to the doorway to keep watch while Jiang Heng furtively pulled out a completely black notebook with no markings on its cover.
They had obtained it from a blind-box draw in the game shop during an earlier instance: [Evidence Notebook]. It was a single-use item whose effect was to provide one crucial piece of evidence or one key clue for clearing their next instance, free of charge.
After the game began, Xie Zhi had secretly activated the Evidence Notebook, skipping the tedious process of searching for clues and successfully obtaining the critical evidence.
“Hide it carefully,” Xie Zhi warned in a low voice. “Don’t let the other players find out.”
A trace of hesitation appeared in Jiang Heng’s eyes. “Without the key evidence, clearing the instance becomes much harder. None of the Danger Zone players will survive. Are we really doing this?”
Xie Zhi sneered. “Oh, getting softhearted now? Jiang Heng, weren’t you the one who wanted to earn more Points so you could exchange them for longer rest periods?”
“With the key evidence, the instance-clear rate rises by thirty percent. If everyone is lucky, hardly anyone will die.”
“But why should they get that? Why should an item I worked so hard to obtain benefit everyone else?”
After an instance was cleared, the System calculated each player’s Points. Although individual contributions affected the final total, the rewards generally hovered around an average and did not differ too much.
The real key was the head count.
The more players who survived, the fewer reward Points each survivor received after the total was divided.
So after obtaining such a valuable item, Xie Zhi neither wanted nor intended to share it.
He planned to take the instance rewards for himself.
“In this instance, only you and I will survive to the end.” Xie Zhi’s voice was cold. “There won’t be a third person.”
