Chapter 11 : Chapter 11
Chapter 11: The Game Begins
Zhao Mingyue lay across the dining table, eating the bowl of egg noodles she had just cooked. Her cheeks puffed out as she chewed, yet she still sneaked glances at Bai Yu, who was standing in front of the television.
After finishing the noodles in several big bites, Zhao Mingyue finally could not hold back anymore.
“Um… is there something wrong with my Magic Staff? I feel like you’ve been staring at it this whole time. If it’s not suitable, I can look for another weapon.”
Ever since she had taken out the staff, Bai Yu had seemed quite interested in it. That was indeed the case. Hearing Zhao Mingyue’s voice, Bai Yu shook her head.
“No. There’s no need to change it. This Magic Staff is perfectly sufficient.”
The thing was a full meter long and completely solid. It weighed an astonishing seven or eight jin. It could practically be used as a hammer. It might not hit a ghost, but if someone took a strike from it, they probably would not be able to endure it. One solid blow could easily break a leg.
“What I’m curious about,” Bai Yu continued, “is why you have something like this.”
If Zhao Mingyue had pulled out an ordinary hammer, Bai Yu would not have found it strange. But this thing was different.
The cuter its appearance was, the more dangerous its destructive power became. Yet strangely enough, no one could say it was unsuitable for a young girl.
Bai Yu could not help imagining a scene: Zhao Mingyue standing face-to-face with a group of cross-dressing lunatics, holding the Magic Staff, knocking them down one by one with a single swing.
Zhao Mingyue looked slightly embarrassed. She walked over and gripped the staff in her hand.
“I bought this at a comic convention years ago. I didn’t expect it to be this heavy. Usually I use it to hammer nails. And… you said I needed a weapon, so I thought this could work.”
“You do need a weapon,” Bai Yu replied, her gaze returning to Zhao Mingyue. “Because tonight it will not only be ghosts. I cannot protect you every moment. You must have something to defend yourself.”
One thing was certain: tonight it would not be only Lu Liangting and his so-called cousin.
Other participants in the Scum Game would definitely appear as well.
Some might come to protect Lu Liangting.
Others might come to assassinate Zhao Mingyue.
Regardless of their intentions, they would all be enemies.
“Wait… not only ghosts?” Zhao Mingyue asked in surprise. “Are there other people too? Lu Liangting and the others?”
“There are others,” Bai Yu said calmly. “I can tell you this much—they are a group of complete lunatics. Compared to them, ghosts are nothing.”
Hearing those words, Zhao Mingyue suddenly remembered the gaze of Lu Liangting’s cousin, Xia Han.
That gaze truly sent chills down her spine.
“What should we do then?”
“Just be cautious. Remember this: tonight, no matter who you encounter, if someone intentionally approaches you, you must immediately create distance and strike back.”
“Okay, I’ll remember!”
Zhao Mingyue nodded vigorously. She had already been nervous, and Bai Yu’s warning only made her more anxious.
“You cannot trust anyone. The only person you can trust is yourself.”
After giving that final reminder, Bai Yu stepped into Zhao Mingyue’s shadow. The room fell silent once again.
It was now 9:10 p.m.
Seeing that Bai Yu was no longer responding to her, Zhao Mingyue cleaned up the dining table and returned to her bedroom. She turned on her computer and began searching for information about Tomorrow Apartments.
She had searched before, but had never found anything useful. However, after replacing the keyword “Sunshine Apartments” with “Tomorrow Apartments,” a large number of old forum posts appeared.
Some described the fire that had occurred years ago.
Others recounted paranormal events people had experienced there.
For example, someone claimed that in the middle of the night, they saw a person jump from the fifth floor of Tomorrow Apartments. After they called the police, the person mysteriously disappeared.
Another person said they saw the building catch fire at midnight. But when they blinked, the flames vanished, replaced by a woman standing on the fifth floor, staring directly at them.
Someone else wrote that while passing by the building at night, they suddenly felt a cold wind blowing. When they turned their heads, more than a dozen people were standing on the fifth floor, staring at them in eerie silence.
One particular user claimed he had once stayed there for a night.
That night, he was awakened by the sound of footsteps. At first, he ignored it. But the footsteps grew louder and continued without stopping.
Eventually, he opened the door to see who was walking in the hallway.
What he saw was an elderly man without a head, walking backward on the staircase—constantly going up and down.
When the headless old man noticed him, it rushed toward him at terrifying speed, running down the stairs backward.
The user slammed his door shut in fear.
Then he heard knocking.
The knocking lasted the entire night.
Only when dawn began to break did it finally stop. The user was so frightened that he did not sleep at all that night, and he moved out the very next day.
The more Zhao Mingyue read, the more horrified she became.
If she had known all this before renting the place, she would never have moved here—no matter how cheap the rent was.
It was simply too terrifying.
Ever since that incident, the building seemed to have become some sort of taboo location. Internet users rarely mentioned it anymore.
Thinking that she would have to face these ghosts tonight, Zhao Mingyue’s expression turned bitter.
She was just an ordinary high school girl.
How had she opened the door to another world within just two days of her vacation?
“I can’t be afraid. I have help. I can’t be afraid. Everything will be fine… it’ll be fine.”
She encouraged herself silently.
In truth, she was rather fortunate. She had lived here on the fourth floor for quite a while without encountering anything strange.
But now that she thought about it… the sound of footsteps going up and down the stairs was something she had heard fairly often.
Closing the computer, Zhao Mingyue pulled open the curtains and stood by the window.
Before long, she saw a car driving toward the building and stopping downstairs.
“Lu Liangting?”
At this hour, the first person she thought of was him.
“I wonder why he came to such a creepy place. Could he also be searching for someone?”
“The sky is completely dark now. The mission will begin in a little over an hour.”
“The mission says I need to survive inside Tomorrow Apartments until dawn. If I never leave my room, wouldn’t that still count as being inside the apartment?”
“But if I do that, the completion rate would probably be very low… just like in a game.”
Zhao Mingyue kept analyzing the details of the mission.
“If I want a high completion rate, those ‘sub-tasks’ must be the key. But how am I supposed to complete them? There isn’t even a clear objective. Or do I just have to experience everything once?”
“Wait… do I have to kill these ghosts? Or fulfill their wishes?”
“Forget it. I shouldn’t overthink it. When the cart reaches the mountain, a path will appear. As long as I don’t stay inside the room, I should be fine. I need to believe in myself.”
“No… actually, that’s not right. Since I accepted the mission, staying inside the room probably isn’t safe either. Rather than letting the ghosts come into my room, it’s better to go outside.”
After thinking it over again and again, Zhao Mingyue decided to wait for the time being. She would listen to the activity outside and observe what Lu Liangting and the others were doing.
There was no rush to leave until midnight.
Just as that thought crossed her mind, the lights in the room suddenly went out.
The apartment—and even the hallway outside—plunged into darkness.
“Did the power go out again?”