A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

After leaving the manor instance, Zhou Lang stayed in the real world for three days.

On the third night, he was pulled into the game again.

This time it wasn't a manor, nor some old house. He opened his eyes and found himself sitting on a bus. Outside the window were endless mountain roads, and the sky was either dusk or overcast, gray and gloomy, as if someone had splashed a layer of dirty water on it.

There were about ten people scattered around the carriage.

Zhou Lang glanced around and spotted Han Yingying near the back. She saw him too and nodded slightly.

Zhao Qiang is not here.

The dungeon notification has already popped up—

Welcome to the instance: Mountain Inn

【Destination: Songlinling B&B】

[Task: Survive in a guesthouse for three days and complete assigned tasks]

[Note: Please abide by all the rules and regulations of the guesthouse.]

[Additional Reminder: Do not touch anything in the car.]

After reading the instructions, Zhou Lang leaned back in his seat and looked at the other passengers in the carriage.

A middle-aged man in a suit sat in the front row, dozing off with his head against the window. A few rows down the middle were occupied by five or six young people, some looking around nervously, others talking in hushed tones. These were likely gamers.

Looking further ahead, the driver in the driver's seat was wearing a baseball cap with the brim pulled low, obscuring his face.

Han Yingying moved from the back to the empty seat next to Zhou Lang.

"We've run into each other again," she said.

"Fate," Zhou Lang replied with a single word.

Han Yingying didn't respond to that, but lowered her voice and said, "Have you noticed that there are a few passengers on the bus who are acting strangely?"

Which ones?

"The one in the suit in the front row, and the woman in the hat by the window in the third row," Han Yingying said. "They haven't moved since they got on the bus. They've maintained the same posture the whole time."

Zhou Lang looked around. The man in the suit hadn't changed position since he woke up, and the woman in the hat was even more outrageous—she was facing the window, her hands on her knees, looking like a decoration.

"NPCs, or something else," Zhou Lang said.

The carriage fell silent for a moment.

It was an unnatural silence. No one spoke; even the engine noise subsided.

The woman in the third row wearing a hat turned her head.

Her movements were slow, so slow that you could hear the cracking of her neck joints. Crack, crack, crack. She turned her face, but the brim of her hat obscured most of it, revealing only a smile.

She wasn't smiling at Zhou Lang.

She was facing a young man in the fifth row, near the aisle. The man was wearing a tracksuit, looked to be in his early twenties, and was quite muscular, but his face was as white as paper.

"You...you touched my bag," the woman in the hat said, her voice thin and shrill, like fingernails scratching glass.

The man in the tracksuit trembled violently: "I didn't, I didn't touch it!"

"You touched it." She smiled again, stood up from her seat, and walked towards the man.

With each step she took, the floor beneath her feet made a dull thud, not like the sound of a person walking, but more like something moving with her from under the floor.

It was only then that Zhou Lang noticed a black handbag on the third-row seat. The zipper was open, and it was pitch black inside; he couldn't see anything.

The man in the tracksuit shrank back, his eyes filled with fear.

Han Yingying gripped the armrest of the seat, glanced at Zhou Lang, and her meaning was clear—did he need help?

Zhou Lang shook his head.

Han Yingying frowned, but didn't move.

The woman in the hat walked up to the man in the tracksuit, bent down, and the brim of her hat almost touched his face. Even though they were so close, the man in the tracksuit couldn't see what was under her hat.

"Don't touch other people's things next time." After saying this, she straightened up, turned around and walked back to her seat, sitting down facing the window again.

That concludes the entire process.

The man in the tracksuit was slumped in his seat, his back completely soaked. But he was indeed unharmed; not a single hair on his body was missing.

The sound inside the carriage returned to normal.

Han Yingying released the armrest, her palms sweaty: "Why wouldn't you let me help him?"

"The instructions said not to touch anything in the car. He broke the rules first, but that thing was just a warning, not a threat to his life," Zhou Lang said. "Rushing in might just make things worse."

Han Yingying thought for a moment and then said nothing more.

The bus drove for another forty minutes, and it was completely dark outside.

The car headlights illuminated the mountain road ahead, flanked by dense pine forests. Finally, a three-story building appeared by the roadside, with a wooden sign hanging at the entrance—Songlinling Homestay.

The car stopped.

The driver turned around, revealing a blank face beneath his baseball cap. He said, "We're here. Get off. Remember, take your own luggage, and don't take the wrong one."

The group filed off the bus. Zhou Lang counted; excluding the two stationary NPCs, a total of nine players disembarked.

An elderly woman with gray hair stood at the entrance of the guesthouse, wearing a blue apron and smiling. She looked like the kind of warm-hearted hostess commonly seen in the countryside.

"Welcome, welcome! Are you all here to sketch in Songlinling? Come on in!"

Sketching?

Zhou Lang looked down at himself. He didn't know when he had acquired a drawing board and a box of paints.

Looking at Han Yingying, she was also carrying a painting box and a canvas bag on her back, dressed exactly like an art student.

New identity information popped up—

[Your Identity: Art Student - Wandering Around]

You and your classmates came to Songlinling B&B for a three-day sketching and art-collecting trip.

One painting must be completed and submitted each day.

Please abide by the rules of the guesthouse.

Zhou Lang glanced at the other players' reactions; they were all looking at the art supplies that had suddenly appeared in their hands, their expressions varied. The man in the tracksuit hadn't recovered from what happened in the car; his hand holding the paintbrush was still trembling.

Upon entering the guesthouse, the elderly lady assigned rooms to everyone at the front desk.

"Boys on the second floor, girls on the third floor. Don't walk in the corridor after midnight, don't open the windows, and don't—" The old lady's smile remained unchanged, but she paused for a moment, "Don't draw anything you've never seen before."

Zhou Lang was assigned to room 203 on the second floor, while Han Yingying was assigned to room 302 on the third floor. After the rooms were assigned, the old lady brought out a pot of steaming noodles and invited everyone to have dinner.

At the dinner table, Zhou Lang looked around at the other players.

The man in the tracksuit, the one who was frightened on the bus, was barely eating noodles, but his hands were shaking.

A tall, thin boy wearing glasses looked very calm as he ate noodles while writing something in his notebook.

A couple was being comforted by the man, whose eyes were red and swollen.

There were also two middle-aged people, a man and a woman, who didn't seem to know each other, each eating their own food.

The last one was a bald, burly man who ate noodles the fastest and even asked the old lady for a second bowl.

Han Yingying sat opposite Zhou Lang. She didn't rush to eat, but stared at the noodles in her bowl for a while.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Lang asked.

"There's something in the noodles," Han Yingying whispered.