Chapter 2

“Are those really clouds?” Zhang Chi pushed open the window to check. In that instant, a blinding white light surged into the room, flooding everything.

The two of them were dazzled so badly they couldn’t open their eyes.

With a thud, the instruction manual in Zhang Chi’s hand fell onto the floor.

As the white light swept across, the words on the pages seemed to come alive. They leapt into the air one after another, more and more of them, until they quickly filled the entire room, wrapping Song Ci and Zhang Chi completely within…

【Beep! Explosion countdown, 30 seconds!】

A sharp pain suddenly pierced deep into his mind, as if a nail had driven through his temple and stabbed straight into the insular cortex of his spine. The agony was bone-deep. Song Ci’s body trembled as he clutched his head and sat up abruptly.

He gasped for breath, running his hands over his temple and the side of his forehead several times, but found no wound.

【Beep! Explosion countdown, 20 seconds!】

The strange electronic voice rang out with rigid precision. Its frequency was fixed, and every ending note carried the same pitch—like a robot from an early science fiction movie, mechanical and monotonous.

Explosion?

Song Ci rubbed his temple and looked around. It was a strange white room, with the floor, walls, and ceiling all seemingly pieced together from square panels of milky-white lacquered glass.

The room was completely empty. His bed, his drawing desk, the newly bought robot vacuum, even Zhang Chi—everything was gone.

Only one box of cola remained, the same box he had been holding earlier.

He wanted to grab his phone to call Zhang Chi, but his pocket was empty. He realized he had tossed the phone onto the bed when he went to open the door.

Song Ci rubbed the floor with his Pikachu slippers. If this kind of glass exploded, the shards alone could stab a person to death.

He had to find a way out before the explosion and then locate Zhang Chi. Bracing himself on the floor, he stood up and walked toward the wall.

【Beep! Explosion countdown, 10 seconds! Please enter the password immediately!】

Password? Could it be a password door? Song Ci frowned and patted the glass wall, trying to find an exit. The first two panels had no reaction, but when he knocked on the one in the center, the glass suddenly lit up like a screen.

A row of glaring red characters appeared above:

【Please enter the correct door password:】

Below were three strange equations.

On the first line was a chibi-style icon, shaped like something between a dagger and a short knife, followed by [=3].

On the second line, the same icon appeared again, but this time there were two of them, followed by [=4].

On the third line, the number of icons increased to three, followed by [=5].

On the fourth line, four icons were drawn, followed by [=door password].

“Boom!”

Just as Song Ci finished reading the puzzle, the room suddenly shook violently, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.

He reached out to steady himself against the wall, his heart sinking. Could it be that another room had exploded?

Song Ci recalled the person who had fallen to their death in front of him two days earlier. At the time, the man had said the password was wrong—was this what he had meant?

【 Beep, remaining time before explosion: 5 seconds! Please enter the password immediately!】

Along with the electronic voice, blinding red lights flashed across the room like alarm signals, stirring up panic and chaos.

Song Ci adjusted the brim of the baseball cap tilted behind his neck to steady his nerves. Taking a deep breath, he quickly wrote the number “7” on the screen.

The surroundings fell into complete silence. The flashing red light and even the air itself seemed to freeze into something solid.

Song Ci fixed his gaze firmly on the screen before him.

【Beep, password correct. Welcome new player to Game Zone 233.】

The electronic voice finally sounded, and the glass panel that looked like a screen suddenly opened with the force of a massive door. Song Ci picked up the box of cola, shuffled in his slippers, and walked out.

Outside the room was an unusually vast space, the lighting much dimmer. Nearby there was nothing at all, and just a dozen steps away the fog was so thick it resembled Silent Hill. When he turned back, even the entrance to the room had vanished.

“Senior! Finally found you.” Zhang Chi suddenly appeared from the side.

“You were locked in a room too?” Song Ci looked him over carefully. Seeing no injuries, he finally relaxed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t know how to explain things to Qi Huan.

“Yes, they made me enter a door password.” Zhang Chi looked like a big, helpless puppy who had just found its owner. He rubbed his shoulder against Song Ci twice before complaining, “The puzzle was insane. They showed me a photo of corn, then underneath were three numbers: ‘15’, ‘16’, ‘17’. Then they asked me to choose how many rows of kernels were on the corn in the picture. I’m a sports major, not a math-counting major!”

Song Ci: …

Math isn’t just about counting, you know! But the answer was actually pretty simple—16.

Zhang Chi glanced at Song Ci’s thin arms and legs, then automatically took the box of cola from him. He continued, “In the end, I didn’t care about anything and just picked 16.”

Song Ci patted Zhang Chi’s shoulder. “Lucky.”

“Senior!” Zhang Chi’s single-lidded eyes suddenly widened into perfect circles, staring nervously behind Song Ci.

“What is it?” Song Ci’s neck stiffened, and his breathing grew heavier.

“This place… there’s nothing here at all.”

Song Ci: ...

“Can you talk properly? You’ll scare someone to death acting like that.”

“What exactly is Game Zone 233?” Zhang Chi tapped the palm of his hand against his phone, its screen black. He still had his phone with him, but strangely it had shut down on its own and wouldn’t turn back on no matter what he tried.

Song Ci shook his head—he had no idea either. In front of them stretched what looked like a massive, long-sealed warehouse. The air nearby was gray and hazy, and the farther toward the corners they looked, the darker the light became. He squinted hard with his 200-degree myopia and 50-degree astigmatism, but still couldn’t make out anything clearly.

Sunlight, plants and animals, recognizable landmarks—there was nothing at all to help them figure out where they were.

But wherever this was, it definitely wasn’t his loft-style apartment.

For a moment, Song Ci even wondered if they were inside the clouds outside the window. However, the solid feeling beneath his feet made him dismiss that thought.

The two of them wandered aimlessly for several minutes. Gradually, the fog began to thin, and in the distance a lamp lit up. Its cone-shaped beam shone dimly on the ground, barely illuminating a small circle around it.

That beam of light was like a flag, guiding people toward it. Halfway there, they could already see many figures moving from all directions toward the light.

The restless movement of the crowd made both of them feel a little more at ease.

By the time they reached the area near the light, nearly a hundred people were already gathered there.

“Damn it, if I ever find out who did this, I’ll kill him for sure. ********!” A middle-aged man in a bathrobe, his hair wild and messy, shouted a string of curses that would have been censored on any online platform.

Staring at the bathrobe man’s hairstyle, Song Ci instinctively touched the red baseball cap pulled low on his head. Luckily, he had put it on before opening the door—otherwise his own hair might not have looked much better.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

A long row of elevators stood silently just a dozen steps away. Aside from the number labels on the doors, they all looked almost identical. Some people were pounding and kicking at them, trying to force them open, but the elevators didn’t budge at all.

Zhang Chi leaned close to Song Ci and whispered, “Senior, I asked a few people. Everyone’s completely confused. Nobody knows how they got here.”

Song Ci was just about to speak when a sharp, piercing sound suddenly rang out above them—like the high-pitched feedback of a microphone pressed too close to a speaker. A stabbing pain shot through his temples.

The noisy crowd instantly fell silent.

Along with the shrill screech, an electronic voice sounded above the crowd:

【Game Zone 233, new players have assembled. The first task is the beginner’s exam. Wishing everyone success.】

Like a stone dropped into water, the announcement stirred up waves of chaos. As soon as the voice stopped, the people gathered near the light erupted.

“An exam? I’ve got a contract to sign at eleven, I don’t have time for this! Let me out!”

“Who is it? Who’s hiding back there sneaky and secretive? If you’ve got guts, come out!”

“Split me open! I hate exams, especially the college entrance exam.” Zhang Chi clutched his head. “It’s the biggest shadow of my life. I still have nightmares about it.”

Song Ci rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the pain caused by the screech. “Nightmares?”

“It’s that kind of dream, you know. I wake up and I’m still sitting in the exam hall for the college entrance exam. Either my pen breaks or the test paper gets eaten by the person in front of me. The more anxious I get, the harder it is to wake up. It’s nerve-racking!”

Song Ci: ???

If your pen breaks, fine—but what kind of grudge makes the person in front eat your test paper?

Zhang Chi lifted his single eyelids with a pitiful look, hoping for sympathy. “Senior, you don’t have this kind of trauma?”

“No.” Song Ci shook his head firmly. The dangling strap of his red baseball cap bounced playfully with the motion. “I spent most of the time sleeping.”

“You dared to sleep during the college entrance exam?”

“Relax. I calculated my scores first. I knew I had enough, so then I slept.”

Zhang Chi: …

Polite? Is this polite to those of us who struggled bitterly in the exam hall?

As emotions boiled over, a circular screen appeared in midair. On it scrolled a huge message:

【 The exam will officially begin in five minutes. New players, please hurry to enter the exam hall, collect your number, and take your seat.】

At the bottom of the screen was a green countdown ring. With each passing second, a segment about half a finger’s length disappeared.

Seeing that line of text, Zhang Chi grew even more agitated. “What the hell do they mean by ‘sit down immediately’? Are there even seats here?”

“Over there.” Song Ci gestured toward the elevators.

The elevators that had stubbornly refused to respond earlier had, at some point, opened their doors all at once.

The dim light smeared the silver stainless-steel cabins with a sinister gloom, giving off a dangerous aura—like a row of monsters with gaping mouths, waiting to swallow people whole.

Yet, given the current situation, they had no better choice.

The two picked the nearest elevator, number 7. Just as they reached the doorway, a fat man in a suit suddenly cut in front of them and stepped inside first.

Zhang Chi steadied Song Ci, who had nearly been knocked over, but before he could speak, Song Ci patted his arm, signaling that he was fine.

【 Exam number 2】. As the fat man entered, a mechanical voice announced his number.

【 Exam number 3. Exam number 4.】 When Song Ci and Zhang Chi stepped in one after the other, the same announcement echoed inside the elevator.

So that’s what “taking a number” meant. Zhang Chi, mocking himself, raised four fingers at Song Ci and cracked a lame joke: “Wanderful—number 4 greets you!”

Song Ci: …

Inside the elevator, a man in his forties wearing glasses was already standing there. Hanging from his chest was a large jade Guanyin pendant. When he saw them enter, he stepped back into the corner.

The elevator’s interior looked very ordinary: a floor made of nine marble tiles, walls and doors of silver stainless steel, with clean, sharp lines. The frosted texture only allowed faint, blurred reflections of the passengers’ silhouettes.

If there was anything unusual about this elevator, it was the row of buttons.

Normally, elevator buttons are round or square. But here, the buttons were shaped like stars. From top to bottom, there were six of them, with no numbers at all.

“Why doesn’t this elevator mark the floors?” The fat man who had taken the front position casually pressed the third star. The star lit up with the number “4.”

“Don’t press randomly. What if these buttons have problems?” The man with glasses instinctively tried to stop him, but it was already too late.

The fat man scoffed with a dismissive “Tch.”

At that moment, a thin man in a checkered shirt stepped into the elevator, right on the heels of the fat man’s scoff.

【 Exam number 5.】

The man in the checkered shirt entered with a dark expression. His gaze swept across the four people in the elevator like a knife, then he stood to the left of the fat man, facing him across the doorway.

Next, a young professional woman with delicate makeup stepped in. [Exam number 6.] The mechanical announcement echoed again.

Seeing that the front and back rows were nearly full, she had no choice but to stand in the second row.

The green countdown ring had only a quarter of its length left, yet more than ten people were still standing near the light, cursing and refusing to move.

“Hello, rookies. Need me to help you clear the stage?” Someone leaned lazily against their elevator door with one hand.

“Clear the stage for us?” The young office woman looked at him suspiciously.

The short man blocking the door had a buzz cut, looked about twenty-five or twenty-six, and wore a flashy Hawaiian-style shirt. He didn’t look reliable at all.

“Of course. I’m already a veteran who’s been up to the second floor. Helping you through the beginner’s exam is no problem. Pretty lady, you’re so beautiful—how about I give you a twenty percent discount?” The buzz-cut man grinned.

Song Ci raised his brows slightly. The second floor?

“I’ll pay. Just get me out of this damned game quickly. Fifty thousand or a hundred thousand, name your price.” The fat man glanced anxiously at his gleaming gold watch, speaking with the air of someone rich and impatient.

“Money?” The buzz-cut man gave a cold snort. “Money is useless here. In other games, if you throw enough cash around, maybe you can summon the wind and rainand act like a big boss. But not here.”

“Why not?” The fat man glared.

The buzz-cut man curled his lips in a mocking half-smile. “Because in this game, you can’t pay with money. You can only pay with your life.”

Everyone in the elevator turned pale. What? Pay with life!!!