If this had been in the Real World, being treated like this, Rao Fei would at least have complained about the salesperson, and the supermarket too—absolutely! He would absolutely never come back to shop here again.
But now, the moment the footsteps and voices appeared from behind at the same time, his entire body tensed up imperceptibly.
This had nothing to do with whether the other party harbored any hostility toward them. Rather, when you clearly knew someone could kill you with a casual lift of their hand—without bearing any consequences at all—no matter how friendly they acted, it was hard to fully relax in their presence.
Especially this time. He couldn’t afford to take even the slightest risk.
His fingers twitched slightly. As he turned around, Rao Fei gave a very subtle gesture hint to the Peng Jia and Peng Xu brothers traveling with him.
Su Ximu, standing off to the side, saw the salesperson shove the trainee aside and felt it wasn’t right. But judging from the reactions of the other trainees present, no one seemed particularly fazed.
?
Su Ximu wondered if, in this world, you could not only get beaten while job hunting, but also just for coming to the supermarket to buy things.
At that moment, the trainee who had been shoved aside finally turned around.
His gaze landed squarely on Su Ximu, who was staring with wide eyes just ahead and to the side.
He couldn’t help but tally it up in his mind: how many times had he run into Mr. Gardener now?
He glanced down at Mr. Gardener’s chest badge. No. 42.
Evidently, after the gardener and “Ninth Concubine,” the man had become a trainee once more.
The last time they had met at the Wang family mansion, they both had roles to play—one as the Wang family Ninth Concubine, the other as the Wang family Little Young Master—so they couldn’t break character and thus didn’t greet each other right away.
Later, after the Tourist Garden reforms, Rao Fei had cleared the dungeon with his teammates and naturally vanished from the Wang family mansion.
Now, they had run into each other again by sheer coincidence. Su Ximu raised a hand, about to wave hello.
Rao Fei beat him to it, taking the initiative: “Hello, sir. What a coincidence! I’m the gardener you helped out last time. We even met at the Wang family mansion.”
“Really too much of a coincidence!” Rao Fei emphasized, then extended his hand enthusiastically.
Su Ximu reached out as well and shook hands with Rao Fei. “Mm, I remember. I wanted to say hi last time, but then I never saw you again. So you quit your job at the Tourist Garden too?”
Rao Fei gripped the young man’s hand and shook it up and down enthusiastically twice before letting go with perfect timing. He nodded vigorously. “Yeah! A little while back, I ran into a talent scout on the street. He said with my looks and potential, if I worked hard, I might even debut. Buying a place in Tanzhong City outright wouldn’t be a pipe dream! I got so excited hearing that, I signed up for the Idol Selection Show on the spot.”
“What about you, sir? Change jobs too?”
“Mm.” Su Ximu didn’t go into detail about why he had switched jobs. He simply said, “I’m the supervisor here now.”
As he spoke, his gaze shifted past Rao Fei and landed on Wang Xingxing, who stood behind him, desperately trying to make himself less noticeable.
Out of professional instinct, Su Ximu could now match faces to names for pretty much all twenty-one trainees bunked on the third floor dorm.
Trainee No. 43, Wang Xingxing—twenty years old this year, with nearly six years of training under his belt.
Su Ximu’s eyes lit up at the sight of Wang Xingxing. He waved. “Wang Xingxing.”
He took the initiative to ask, “I was planning to tidy up the dorm this morning, but the third floor dorm was spotless everywhere. Did you guys clean for me?”
He phrased it as a question, but he already knew the answer.
Su Ximu didn’t consider himself much of a late riser. Today was his first official day on the job, and to rouse the trainees, he had gotten up bright and early.
Who would have thought their self-discipline would be so strict? No need for him to call—they had already tidied the dorms and headed to the practice rooms.
He ended up being the last one up on the third floor.
With the third floor corridor and laundry room that clean, the glass sparkling too—it had to be the trainees. They must have cleaned up after themselves and pitched in for him as well.
Wang Xingxing couldn’t read this big shot—who supposedly didn’t even need to check the rules to kill him—and didn’t dare confirm it outright. He just bobbed his head in a way that could pass for nodding or shaking. “We get up early. We’re used to it from the practice room. This much exercise is nothing.”
The truth was, who knew exactly what “dorm hygiene” covered in the rules? What if it meant the entire third floor? If they had only cleaned their own rooms, they would be done for.
Confirmed he had found the right guy, Su Ximu pocketed the change from the salesperson. He then grabbed a big box of chocolate-flavored energy bars, tore it open, scooped out a handful, and offered it to Wang Xingxing with his thanks. “Thanks for cleaning the corridor and laundry room. You guys here for snacks too? Here, have these.”
“But don’t bother cleaning for me next time. Dance practice every day is tough enough. I can handle it myself.”
Just minutes earlier, they had been fretting over two packs of compressed biscuits.
Now, a handful of energy bars dropped from the heavens.
Even knowing full well the young man across from him was actually a weird, Wang Xingxing couldn’t help but feel a thrill.
He had to double-check. “Supervisor Su, this… for me?”
“Mm.” Su Ximu nodded. On second thought, with five trainees present, singling out Wang Xingxing might look off, so after handing over the first handful, he grabbed another from the box and passed some out to the others, Rao Fei included.
Outside the supermarket, watching Supervisor Su and his companions’ retreating backs, the sheltered Wang Xingxing munched on the hearty energy bar and struck up a conversation with Rao Fei. “Vice Captain, you think… maybe there are good people in this world too?”
The “this world” he meant was, of course, the Weird World.
Lin Lan munched his energy bar in silence.
Rao Fei nodded. “Possible. But don’t bet your life on it.”
To caution Wang Xingxing—and remind Bureau Chief Lin—he shared a story. “I knew a guy named Su Yue. Old-timer at the company. Just three years ago, he trusted the wrong person out there and went missing.”
Wang Xingxing fell silent.
He knew what “missing” meant coming from Rao Fei. Deceived by a weird, trapped in a dungeon, assimilated into the lowest kind of weird.
Maybe someday a new player would enter that dungeon. And maybe he would swing the knife at his former comrades—as a weird.
Killing players. Or getting killed by them.
Seeing Rao Fei’s expression, Wang Xingxing pressed. “You two close?”
Rao Fei fell silent.
Over three years, he had run through the scenario countless times. If they really crossed paths in some dungeon someday. If he recognized Su Yue. He wasn’t sure he could swing the knife.
Players trapped in dungeons turned into weirds.
What happened when a weird died?
“We were brothers through life and death.”
That day, all the trainees received a notice: the day after tomorrow would bring initial ratings for the current trainees.
The initial rating stage wouldn’t eliminate anyone.
It should have been nerve-wracking.
But that night, after a full day of dance practice that left them bone-tired upon returning to the dorms, the trainees had no attention to spare.
First floor
101 dorm room
Trainee No. 01 sat on a bench in the dorm, stomach burning like fire. He felt like there wasn’t much point to being alive.
He hadn’t been a professional trainee to begin with. He just looked decent enough that someone handed him a flyer on the street—with a signup link for the Idol Selection Show.
He hadn’t taken the flyer seriously at first. Who knew that when he closed his eyes that night and opened them again, he would be here.
Truth be told, he still hadn’t fully processed it. No matter how he racked his brain, he couldn’t figure out how a show like this could hand out flyers in the Real World.
Two minutes later, their floor supervisor showed up in the dorm and ordered them to line up for weigh-ins.
No. 01 stepped on first. No gain—he had even lost two jin.
The other three in the dorm had dropped weight too, some more than others.
The supervisor, clipboard in hand and jotting notes, looked clearly displeased but could only move on grudgingly to the next room.
Before leaving, he snarled that today’s weights were their new standard.
Only after the supervisor left did No. 01 dare take a sip of water to soothe his throat.
“Heard other trainees say the supermarket sells diet meals on credit. Wanna go check it out?”
It wasn’t quite ten yet. In theory, they were still safe.
No. 01 clutched his stomach and waved weakly. “I checked during afternoon break. You know what interest that salesperson charges for credit?”
In a hellhole like this, supermarket credit came at a steep price.
The salesperson wanted their vitality—essence, qi, and spirit.
No one had seen how it was collected.
They only knew:
“I saw No. 25 from the second floor credit a bag of coarse grain from the supermarket with my own eyes. Now he looks like the salesperson worked him over eight times.”
Weak as he was, who knew if he could last through the next rounds.
Among the 104 trainees, it wasn’t as if there were no veteran players who had scraped together savings in the Dungeon World. But those old hands knew full well how crucial currency was in the Weird World. They wouldn’t spend unless pushed to the brink.
Eight times?
The other three exchanged glances. The interest was brutal, but they could tough it out.
Hang on until the day-after-tomorrow island interviews aired. Maybe then they could trade popularity points.
Though in a ghost place like this, just who was the show airing to?
“Don’t talk. Wastes energy.” Trainee No. 02 flopped onto the table.
Trainee No. 03 thought of the distant day after tomorrow—and the daily grueling practices—and suggested in a cryptic tone, “You think that guy who got credit… he finished his biscuits yet?”
Trainee No. 04 chimed in. “Who knows. Maybe not.”
No. 01 opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but in the end just buried his face in his arms.
The mood in the dorm turned strange.
In that thick, sticky strangeness, no one spoke first.
Until faint cheers drifted to their ears. The sound seemed to float down from the third floor.
At a time like this, what could possibly be worth celebrating?
“Wanna go check it out upstairs?” No. 01 suggested.
It was far easier to voice than the thought lurking in everyone’s minds.
Before ten, trainees were free to roam the dorms. Supervisors didn’t restrict visiting.
One minute later, the four filed out and headed upstairs. Passing the second floor, they ran into a few other trainees doing the same.
Safety in numbers—now nine strong, their steps quickened.
They hadn’t even reached the third floor when one with a keen nose sniffed. “Smells good. Biscuits.”
He sniffed again. “And corn.”
“Oil-and-vinegar salad.”
Back then, he wouldn’t have given such scents a second glance. Now his eyes turned green.
When they finally arrived on the third floor, the nine trainees figured hunger must be making them hallucinate.
How else to explain the trainees bustling through the corridor, each clutching something to tide them over?
One held biscuits—No. 01 remembered them well. The supermarket’s three-yuan compressed packs.
And right there in the middle of the corridor, that shopping cart… one, two, three, four, five packs of them!
What paradise was this?
And why didn’t their floor have a snack-stuffed cart like that? Even in a haunted game-show setup, was unfair treatment inevitable?
Trainee No. 01 couldn’t help but stop a trainee with chest badge No. 47 and asked, “Where did this handcart come from? Why don’t we on the first and second floors have one?”
Trainee No. 47 who was stopped looked somewhat strange upon hearing this. “You don’t have one?”
“When we came back just now, Supervisor Su pushed the shopping cart out. He said it was thanks for us helping him clean, so he bought snacks for us.”
Moreover, these snacks had been personally certified by Trainee No. 43, Wang Xingxing, who had already eaten the cookies ahead of time. They were genuine supermarket snacks that could fill the stomach with no side effects whatsoever.
Because of this, even in such an oppressive atmosphere, they couldn’t help but cheer softly when they suddenly received this little surprise.
Trainee No. 47 thought, that shouldn’t be right. When Trainee No. 47 went upstairs and passed the first and second floors, the corridors there had been cleaned quite thoroughly too.
Trainee No. 01 hesitated and repeated, “Because we helped the supervisor clean the corridors and laundry room, we get snacks?”
Trainee No. 47 nodded affirmatively.
The other nine trainees on site gnashed their teeth. Damn! They had also spent half an hour that morning polishing the floors in the corridors with their asses up! Why hadn’t their floor’s supervisor bought them snacks!
Were they listening to some fairy tale?
While the trainees distributed the snacks, Su Ximu had already returned to his own dorm and was painting special effects makeup in front of the mirror.
During the morning meeting, he had specifically asked his colleague on the second floor how to accurately identify bold-faced trainees pretending to sleep, in order to cooperate with the program team’s horror footage shoot.
His colleague on the second floor told him that anyone who could be seen pretending to sleep while asleep could be selected.
Those were actually trainees subtly signaling the supervisors for more screen time.
Su Ximu thought of the trainee from last night whose eyes darted around, intuitively feeling that he had let down that trainee’s expectations.
So he decided to make it up to that trainee tonight.
Since it was his first time doing special effects makeup, Su Ximu took it slow. It wasn’t until the outside gradually quieted down, eventually reaching pin-drop silence, that he finally finished his makeover.
The teenager’s fair little face now had two large red eye circles painted on it. On his left cheek, he had also taken some reference from his colleague downstairs and drawn a very long knife scar.
He changed his clothes too.
It was the temporary cloak that Blue 242 Leader had specially sewn for him today.
In his hand, he held the prop that Blue 242 Leader had found for him: a reaper’s scythe.
At 10:05, the red-eyed, scar-faced reaper, draped in his black cloak, was fully dressed up.
He looked up toward the opposite dorm building outside the window. Blue 242 Leader, standing by the window, gave him a thumbs-up of approval.
The affirmed scar-faced reaper felt satisfied. He turned around and set off to find his first lucky one tonight.
Dorm 301
Trainee No. 44’s pretending-to-sleep skills had improved quite a bit compared to yesterday. Hearing the timely sounds of the door being pushed open and footsteps, he figured he could luckily pass.
But in the next second, a slightly cool hand pushed his arm.
“I see you pretending to sleep,” he heard the teenager’s clear voice say. In the dorm environment at that moment, it sent chills down the spine.
A cold sensation pressed against his neck. Trainee No. 44 opened his eyes and saw the scythe resting on his neck. Under the camera lights, the scythe gleamed with a cold, hard light.
“Ah!!!” Trainee No. 44 screamed uncontrollably.
The shouts that came simultaneously from upstairs and downstairs formed a three-part harmony.
From upstairs, the fourth-floor supervisor’s wild voice rang out: “Scream all you want, scream all you want. The more you scream, the more excited I get.”
The red-eyed, scar-faced reaper standing by the bed blinked and mimicked, “The more you scream, the more excited I’ll get too!”
