002
The school suddenly announced a holiday, giving them only one night to pack their luggage. All the students were busy as hell that afternoon and evening.
It wasn’t until the middle of the night that the entire dorm building finally quieted down.
In Dorm 301, Wu Yang lay on his bed, listening to the snoring coming from Lao Da Zhou Chuan’s bunk. He muttered on his lips that even if the sky fell, there were tall guys to hold it up, but in the end, he couldn’t hold back and softly called out to the bunk next door: “Lao Yao?”
No response came from behind the curtain on the neighboring bunk.
Wu Yang called again: “Su Xiaomu?”
“Mumu?”
The curtain on the neighboring bunk remained perfectly still.
Wu Yang figured Lao Yao must have passed out dead to the world.
Two minutes later, Wu Yang grabbed his phone himself, climbed down lightly from the upper bunk, and went to the dorm balcony, closing the balcony door behind him.
Last time, when he and Lao Yao had been taken to the relevant department to sign the confidentiality agreement, he’d gotten a contact number from one of the staff members. It came in handy today.
On the dimly lit balcony, Wu Yang held up his phone, listening to the dial tone coming from it. He averted his gaze from Zhou Chuan’s giant underwear drying on the balcony and tried looking up at the sky.
In the equally dim sky, the first thing he saw was the moon, then the clouds half-obscuring it.
He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but in a daze, Wu Yang felt like he caught a glimpse of that pitch-black thin fog Lao Yao had mentioned.
“Hello? Is this Wu? What’s up?”
The steady voice that suddenly came through after the call connected startled Wu Yang, who had nearly gotten lost in his staring, snapping him back to reality.
The person on the other end still remembered him.
Wu Yang thought to himself that this was perfect—no need for introductions—and simply lowered his voice to ask: “Hello, I wanted to ask… our school, uh, C City Business Management School, was suddenly told by the administration that the whole school is on holiday. Is that your side doing this?”
Wu Yang didn’t finish his sentence, but those in the know would understand.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, followed by a light cough: “Don’t ask about things you shouldn’t. Just follow the school’s arrangements.”
Wu Yang thought: Got it, so our school really is about to have some incident, huh?
After hanging up, confirming that the anomaly at their school was indeed under official control, Wu Yang completely relaxed. He swatted away the mosquitoes buzzing around him with a slap, returned to the dorm, climbed back onto his bunk, closed his eyes, and slept soundly.
But right before closing his eyes, his peripheral vision caught the neighboring bunk, and a flicker of doubt flashed through his mind.
Lao Yao usually had light sleep—why was he out so cold today?
The confidentiality department that had originally handled Su Ximu and Wu Yang signing the confidentiality agreement was actually called, in full, the Anomalous Weird Tales Safety Response Protection Confidentiality Bureau—or, shortened, the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau.
About twenty years ago, Blue Star scientists made a truly horrifying discovery: Blue Star’s path of technological development had hit a dead end.
It wasn’t the upward-climbing tree everyone had imagined, where all Blue Star humans just needed to follow the path steadily, and in the accumulation of years, they could reach the top.
Their technology was like stars in the sky.
One here, one there.
Shining randomly all over the damn place.
At the same time, another event occurred that made certain Blue Star scientists question their very existence.
That was the emergence of weird tales horrors.
The first large-scale weird incident officially detected in C Country happened eighteen years ago on a large fishing vessel off the southern coast. Everyone on the fishing boat vanished in an instant.
Five days later, they reappeared on the boat in a dazed, mentally shattered state.
From the perspective of some of those involved, the whole incident could be seen as experiencing a random, real, terrifying survival puzzle game where lives were on the line at any moment, with a chance to gain supernatural abilities.
Ordinary people who were randomly selected, inexplicably vanishing from the real world only to reappear just as inexplicably, were the players in this game.
The venue for the game was the game dungeons.
And what played the game with the players were the… dungeon horrors that lurked year-round in the dungeons.
This analogy was vivid. Gradually, it spread from one to ten, ten to a hundred, within the small circles of those who had been selected.
Everyone jokingly called themselves players amid the hardship.
They called being forcibly pulled into the weird domain “playing the game” and tackling dungeons.
In other words, 【Weird Tales Horror Game】.
In the early years, since the probability of the Strange Talk Game appearing was extremely low, the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau, established afterward, didn’t know much about it. They only knew that dungeon horrors would kill any player who violated the dungeon game rules.
The rules were a protection for the players, and seemingly also a restriction on the dungeon horrors.
It wasn’t until recent years, with more and more ordinary people being selected into the Strange Talk Game, that the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau gained a deeper understanding of it.
A few common facts:
First, for every player to survive and leave a dungeon, there were only two paths:
One: Follow every correct rule until the game ended and receive the dungeon’s standard rewards. That was, survival game.
Two: Follow every correct rule, uncover the truth behind the dungeon, successfully clear it ahead of schedule, and receive the dungeon’s rare rewards. That was, survival puzzle game.
Second, every selected player was a permanent player of the game. Each player started with three chances to be killed.
After three times, the player would either be assimilated by the weird dungeon or suffer permanent mental breakdown.
But in reality, most players didn’t even make it to their third death before their mental state was already on the brink.
Finally, for those certain people craving power, the dungeons were danger, but also opportunity.
When Wu Yang made that call, the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau C City Branch was actually holding an action meeting about this newly emerged large-scale dungeon.
Bureau Chief Zhao Yanhan sat squarely at the head of the conference table and didn’t mind at all that the deputy group leader of Action Group C was taking a call midway through the meeting.
With the Strange Talk Game closing in step by step, accidents could happen anywhere in the real world at any time. Cutting off the action groups’ external communications would be unwise.
Bureau Chief Zhao Yanhan only casually asked after the other party hung up: “Something up?”
The deputy group leader of Group C, a burly man with a buzz cut, shook his head: “Nah, just two students I saw vanish into thin air after bumping into a new player before. Their counselor goes to C City Industrial and Commercial University—one of them got my number last time.”
People who had witnessed a weird incident once naturally had different levels of nerve sensitivity compared to those who hadn’t seen any.
Zhao Yanhan nodded and didn’t ask more. Since the action plan was mostly deployed anyway, he simply asked about something else: “Group A, can Dai Qian make it tomorrow?”
The deputy group leader of Group A shook his head: “She can’t. Yesterday, supporting Bureau Chief Lin, she wrecked three weird items. They had to carry her out.”
Zhao Yanhan nodded: “Once she’s healed, have her go to the warehouse and pick up four more suitable weird items. Reiterating: all the bureau’s resources prioritize Bureau Chief Lin first.”
The meeting atmosphere wasn’t too tense. Hearing Bureau Chief Zhao say that, the Group B leader on the left chimed in: “Bureau Chief Zhao, do you even need to say it? Bureau Chief Lin is our SSS+ grade treasure. Dai Qian’s usually so stingy—what did she do yesterday, wreck three precious ones without batting an eye.”
Three weird items rated C grade or above generally required surviving at least five B grade dungeons.
At that moment, the Group A deputy group leader suddenly remembered something and quickly asked: “Right, who’s taking Bureau Chief Lin into his next dungeon?
Last week, I heard Xiao Liu from Group E say that while he was clearing a B+ grade dungeon, the dungeon BOSS Writer Weird mentioned she was helping another horror create a new dungeon.
The monitoring group evaluated, based on Xiao Liu’s recounting of that Writer Weird’s description, that this new dungeon horror creating the instance has a danger level of at least S+ grade.”
To be honest, without Bureau Chief Lin, a lot of people in the Weird Tales Bureau truly felt insecure. Especially the newer members with families above and kids below—they were genuinely scared.
The Strange Talk Game didn’t care how old you were. Even a toddler a few years old, if selected, still had to go.
Fortunately, before such tragedies could happen, the Weird Tales Bureau had already found Bureau Chief Lin, who could use that thing.
Zhao Yanhan, who normally handled the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau C City Branch’s specific affairs, clearly had this on his mind too. He reassured the action group leaders present: “For Bureau Chief Lin’s next dungeon, the Central Bureau will send someone with a prop to enter with him.”
“As for that new dungeon…” Zhao Yanhan’s phone suddenly buzzed. He glanced down at the message, frowning as a trace of heaviness flashed in his eyes. When he looked up again, he announced to everyone in the conference room: “Group D just sent the latest report. According to Writer Weird, the new dungeon has already opened.”
Opened?!
For an at-least-S+ grade dungeon, they couldn’t immediately think of many veteran players who could steadily clear it.
Don’t think that the Strange Talk Game giving you three chances meant you really had three.
Some powerful dungeon horrors could shatter your mind in one go, leaving you sunk forever.
Moreover, high-grade dungeons rarely had single-player instances. Most were large-scale group dungeons.
This time, how many people would it be?
The next morning at five-thirty,
A blaring, rousing burst of music woke the entire C City Industrial and Commercial University.
Curses from the students filled the whole dorm building.
In Dorm 301,
Zhou Chuan sat up with resentment heavier than a ghost’s, growling: “Aaaah! This shitty school—I’m gonna fight it to the death!”
Li Zhuofan, sporting two black eye circles, wandered down like a lost soul to wash up, knocking over a suitcase on the way with a bang.
Wu Yang, as someone in the know, forced himself to perk up. While squinting as he climbed out of bed, he reached out and pulled back the curtain on the neighboring bunk: “Su Xiaomu, get…”
“Where is he?!”
Seeing Lao Yao Su Ximu’s empty bunk, and the bundled-up quilt neatly shaped just big enough for one person to lie in, Wu Yang’s voice shot up an octave.
He twisted his head to check—the dorm room and balcony doors were still securely locked.
The doors were locked tight, but the person was gone?!
Wu Yang refused to believe it and shook the quilt in front of him. Still nothing.
Suddenly, in his anxiety, a flash of insight hit him. He jerked his head up again, trying to peer through the dorm ceiling to the sky above.
Could that thing—the whatever that made people vanish into thin air—have taken their Su Xiaomu away?
Damn void human trafficker!!!
