Global Collapse.

Chapter 958 Chu Changge, Despair of Life

The food pick-up area then pushed out five more trays before stopping to ensure one tray per person.

They found a long table and sat down. At the next long table, another group of people were sitting. Brother Chu noticed that their plates also contained that dark red, unidentified substance.

The person in Jing's team who had only been there for a month and a half said, "The food has decreased. I remember when I first came in, each meal was the size of my palm. After a while, it suddenly started to decrease, gradually reducing to half the size of my palm, and now there's only this small lump left."

His nickname is "Jiajiawang Grain and Oil Store," which probably means he opened a small store with the same name before the global game started, and then simply used the store name as his nickname when he entered the game.

Curly had already devoured the food on his plate: "About a month ago, the food in the cafeteria started to run out. Do you think they'll stop providing us with food altogether in a while?"

No one has yet found a way to leave the instance. If their food supply runs out, they will either be killed by the demons or starve to death inside.

Upon hearing this, everyone else showed worried expressions.

The instance won't let people leave, and now food is running out; this can't go on.

"Do you know where this food comes from?" Chu Changge's voice came from the side.

Jing turned to look at him and saw that Chu Changge hadn't touched the food on the plate; he was just staring at the lump of food as if he were studying it seriously.

"I don't know. We don't even know what this stuff is. We've never seen the cafeteria transport any food into it. All we know is that this food is harmless and filling," Jing said.

She has been eating it for a year and has not yet died from the poisoning.

"It's really baffling that the terrifying dungeon inexplicably provides us with food for survival. When we were the first group to enter the dungeon, we were just as cautious as you and didn't immediately eat these things."
"But we endured many days here without finding a way to leave. We were really going to starve to death if we didn't eat, so people started trying to eat these things. The first person ate them and was fine, so we started eating them too. Surprisingly, they were edible and didn't taste disgusting."

As Jing spoke, Chu Changge extended a finger, dipped it into the unidentified dark red substance in the plate, and rubbed it between her fingertips.

This stuff is crushed into very small pieces, and after being ground up, it looks like wet soil, with some hard particles still inside, making it impossible to tell what it is.

He sniffed the crumbs on his fingers; a familiar scent.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Jiajiawang stared at Chu Changge's plate.

Chu Changge glanced at him without saying a word, and directly pushed the plate in front of Jiajiawang.

"Thank you, thank you..." Jiajiawang was still thinking about how to phrase it when Chu Changge immediately understood what he meant.

Seeing this, Jing did not try to persuade Chu Changge. People who come to this instance will not eat heartily in the canteen on the first day. They will have to go hungry for a few days until they are really starving before they can eat.

Besides Chu Changge, there are other newcomers in the cafeteria who have only arrived in the last few days.

Looking around, all those who were fidgeting and looking at the food with fear were newcomers. Chu Changge remained relatively calm.

"By the way, take this opportunity to see if you know anyone in this cafeteria. Didn't you say your friends came in too?" Jing said to Chu Changge.

Newcomers to the instance don't know where the canteen is or what the schedule is, but if a newcomer is lucky enough to run into other experienced players in the instance, the experienced players will guide the newcomer through the daily tasks.

If Chu Meiren's friend is lucky enough, she will be brought into the cafeteria by a veteran player.

New players who are unlucky enough not to encounter experienced players explaining the rules to them upon entering the instance often die because they trigger the killing patterns while aimlessly wandering around the school.

Jing thought about Chu Meiren's reckless teammate who had turned on a powerful flashlight. She had just scanned the cafeteria but hadn't spotted him.

The players were all in the dormitory at night, so it was impossible for that reckless guy to run into the experienced player who was explaining things to him outside. He has most likely already triggered the ghost's killing pattern and been killed.

After thinking about the brute for a while, he began looking for other new faces in the cafeteria.

Jing has already memorized the faces of the new players who came here a few days ago.

If any unfamiliar faces appear now, they must be the group of new players who entered at the same time as Chu Meiren last night.

Jing's gaze swept over each face; they were all familiar, no new faces seemed to be among them. Were Chu Meiren and her group just that unlucky? Only Chu Meiren encountered these veteran players, while the others were just wandering around the school?
Based on Jing's experience over the past year, new players entering dungeons are likely to spawn in areas with many veteran players. So when they saw the newcomer Chu Meiren in the dormitory last night, they were only surprised for a moment, and then quickly accepted it.

But Chu Meiren's friends...

As Jing was pondering, she suddenly noticed a person standing in the corner of the cafeteria.

When she glanced over earlier, the person seemed to be there. Jing frowned and focused her gaze on the strange person.

She was a tall woman, dressed in a style Jing had never seen before.

Jing couldn't see her face because she had her back to them and seemed to have been holding that position for a long time.

Upon seeing this scene, a bad feeling immediately flashed through Jing's mind.

She remembered the ghost that always turned its back to people on the road near the dormitory. The ghost would kill people as soon as they turned around. One of her first teammates was killed by that ghost.

And now, the figure standing in the corner is as strange as a ghost looking back.

"What's wrong, Sister Jing?" Curly noticed that Jing had been looking in one direction, so he turned his head to look in that direction as well.

At first glance, he was startled. It was already strange for someone to be standing in a corner facing the wall, let alone in a supernatural scenario, and it looked very much like the ghost they had seen before.

"Could it be a ghost that keeps turning back?" Curly-haired guy immediately moved halfway off the stool. "But there's never been a record of ghosts turning back in the cafeteria!"

“A ghost that turns back? It’s not in the manual,” Chu Changge asked.

Curly-haired man noticed that Chu Meiren glanced at the corner where the woman was standing, but didn't show the slightest surprise, as if she already knew there was someone there. That's right! Curly-haired man remembered that Chu Meiren had been looking around the cafeteria from the window earlier; could it be that she saw that person in the corner then?
"You saw her a while ago, didn't you?" Curly's eyes widened.

Chu Changge remained noncommittal: "Have you finished eating? Let's go, which classroom are we going to?"

"Hey, are you even listening to me?! And if there's a ghost in the cafeteria, we might not be able to leave now even if we wanted to." Seeing that Chu Changge was treating him and the ghost like they were invisible, Curly was getting a little frustrated. Of course, although he said he might not be able to leave, his butt was still honestly raised, ready to run away at any moment.

“No, that’s not a ghost that turns back; its movements are different,” Jing suddenly said.

The ghosts they had seen that turned back were all stiff and stood upright, but the woman in the corner of the cafeteria with her back to them was moving when they looked closely. She had her hands outstretched as if she was holding something, and at the same time, her head was slightly lowered as if she was looking at what she was holding.

"Let's go." Chu Changge suddenly stood up.

Jing looked at him with suspicion; Chu Meiren's behavior was a bit unusual.

Although it wasn't outwardly apparent, Jing sensed that he was different from his usual composed demeanor; he seemed a bit impatient now.

Even if a ghost were at the dormitory window last night, I still wouldn't see him and I wouldn't get a second thought.

At this moment, Jing noticed that a player actually went up and patted the woman in the corner.

The player knew that Jing had been in the dungeon for quite some time and would never let her guard down and approach something that she couldn't be sure was human or ghost.

The only explanation is that the player knew the woman was not in danger, which is why he dared to approach her.

How did you determine that? Did you open the player panel of that thing?
The person in the corner turned around because they were tapped on the shoulder.

Jing saw an unfamiliar face, one she had never seen at school before, but then she realized something and opened her eyes wide. No, the face wasn't completely unfamiliar.

At the same time, she felt a sway beside her, and Chu Changge sat back down in his seat with a blank expression.

She glanced at him and felt something was off. What was going on? Why did she sense an atmosphere of utter despair emanating from Chu Meiren?

Damn it, I dreamt I was being choked by a ghost! You really shouldn't make oaths so easily. I swear I'll never make another oath.