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

The day he left the haunted manor, Zhou Lang spent the whole day at school feeling listless.

Zhao Qiang, slumped over his desk, glanced at him out of the corner of his eye: "What did you do last night? You look terrible."

"dream."

"What kind of dream could lead to something like this?"

Zhou Lang ignored him. Zhao Qiang was used to it, so he rolled over and continued lying on his stomach.

After school, Han Yingying messaged him, asking when the next dungeon run would be. Zhou Lang replied "Unsure" and turned off his phone.

Back in his rented room, he neatly organized the items he'd brought from the dungeon. The oil lamp still had fuel, the scissors could be used three more times, and the chainsaw only had one bar of battery left. He'd save up 1200 game coins, waiting for the shop to refresh to see if there was anything worth buying.

I took a shower and lay down in bed.

There was a crack in the ceiling. He stared at it for a while, then slowly closed his eyes.

My mind is filled with images of my sister before she disappeared. That morning, she even fried eggs for him, saying she'd make braised pork when she got back in the afternoon. And then, nothing happened.

My phone vibrated.

Han Yingying: [Have you noticed that the frequency of strange occurrences has increased recently?]

Zhou Lang typed a few words, then deleted them, finally replying only: 【Yes.】

He had indeed noticed it. It used to happen about once every twenty days, but recently it had shortened to about ten days. He hadn't yet figured out what this change meant.

-

On Han Yingying's side, things were progressing much faster than he had expected.

She got home, washed up, and had barely lain down when all the streetlights outside her window went out. Not just one or two, but the entire street went out at once.

A line of red text popped up on the phone screen.

[A strange phenomenon occurs.]

[Instance: Bone Village.]

Difficulty: Unknown.

[Rules: Find the village's secret within seven days and leave alive.]

Han Yingying sprang out of bed. The last instance had only ended three days ago, how come it's happening again? Before she could think any further, her vision began to blur and distort.

When she could see clearly again, she was walking on a muddy dirt road.

All around were low, mud-brick houses. The sky was an unnatural gray-white; there was no sun and no wind. The air had a sweet, fishy smell, as if something had been rotting for a long time.

A girl in her early twenties was squatting by the roadside, hugging her knees and trembling.

Han Ying walked over. "Are you a player too?"

The girl looked up, her face streaked with tears: "Where am I? How did I get here? This is my first time here..."

Han Yingying squatted down: "Don't panic, tell me your name first."

"Su Qing".

"What number?"

Su Qing was taken aback: "What number?"

A newbie. Han Yingying glanced at her equipment inventory—it was empty, not a single item.

"Follow me." Han Yingying pulled her to her feet. "Let's find the others first."

They walked along the dirt road toward the center of the village, passing several houses with their doors and windows tightly shut and clothes hanging out to dry in the yards, but there wasn't a single living person in sight. The clothes were gray, as if they hadn't been washed in many years.

Su Qing followed behind, her legs still trembling, but she stopped crying.

After turning a corner, Han Ying saw two people standing in front of the stone tablet at the entrance of the village.

One was tall and thin, wearing glasses, and was writing something in a notebook with a pen. The other was shorter and stockier, with his hands in his pockets, and his relaxed expression didn't seem like he was in a dungeon.

The tall, thin man spotted them first, adjusting his glasses: "New here? How many times have you been here?"

"This is my fourth time," Han Yingying said. "It's her first time."

The short, stocky man whistled, "Entering unknown difficulty on the fourth try, not very lucky."

"And you?"

The tall, thin man closed the notebook: "Lin Yuan, twenty-three times. This is Fang Xu, nineteen times."

Han Yingying was stunned for a moment. Twenty-three times?

In her understanding, very few players could survive ten dungeon runs. The top ten players on the forums had only managed fifteen or sixteen runs at most.

"you……"

"Don't ask why I'm not participating in the S-rank assessment," Fang Xu interrupted her. "It's because I'm afraid of dying. The S-rank assessment requires challenging specific dungeons, and the death rate in those dungeons is over 80%. I've discussed it with Lao Lin, and it's better to play it safe."

Lin Yuan nodded and calmly added, "Living is more important than anything else."

Han Yingying found the two of them rather interesting. This kind of mentality is considered unusual among high-level players.

Su Qing then asked in a low voice, "What are you talking about? What S-rank?"

Fang Xu glanced at her, then looked at Han Yingying: "Is this girl really a virgin?"

"real."

"Then she was even less lucky than you," Fang Xu said. "In dungeons of unknown difficulty, the survival rate for newbies is less than ten percent."

Su Qing's face turned pale.

"Don't scare her," Han Yingying said. "Just stay with me."

She spoke casually, but Fang Xu raised an eyebrow and remained silent. Lin Yuan glanced at her again, but said nothing.

After nightfall, the five of them found a relatively intact house to stay in temporarily.

Han Ying read the rules again. Seven days to find the secret and leave alive. No further hints.

Fang Xu leaned against the wall and suddenly asked, "Sis, what's your ID?"

"Ying".

"Tsk, it's not you," Fang Xu muttered to himself. "I thought I'd run into a big shot."

Han Ying ignored him.

Fang Xu got excited: "Do you know 'Lang'? You know that guy on the forum. He soloed an A-rank dungeon on his second run and got a perfect rating on his third. I watched the replay video three times; his skills are beyond what a normal person could pull off."

Lin Yuan rolled his eyes beside him: "Here you go again."

"You don't understand, that's faith." Fang Xu said seriously, "Some people on the forum have analyzed his route selection, every step is precise to the second. But that's not the most outrageous thing—the most outrageous thing is his ghost-scaring style. Everyone else is running away, but he's chasing after ghosts and grabbing them."

Han Yingying's fingers paused for a moment.

Ghost-scaring style.

wave.

She thought of the man chasing ghosts with an oil lamp in the haunted manor, and the matter-of-fact expression on his face when he turned back to her on the stairs and said, "Follow me."

"What's wrong?" Fang Xu noticed that she was lost in thought.

"It's nothing," Han Yingying said, lowering her eyes. "I'm sleepy."

She rolled over to face the wall and clenched her fist in the darkness.

Coincidence? Or...?

Forget it. Now is not the time to think about these things.

Tomorrow, let's figure out the details of the dungeon first.

The next morning, Han Yingying took Su Qing to explore the eastern part of the village. Lin Yuan and Fang Xu went west, agreeing to meet at the stone tablet at noon.

The village of bones was larger than I had imagined, with mud-brick houses lined up one after another, but all of them were empty. There were no people, and no ghosts. This silence was rather unsettling.

Su Qing walked beside her, calmer than yesterday: "Sister Han, this dungeon... doesn't seem too dangerous?"

"Don't let your guard down." Han Yingying stopped in front of a house. There were some words carved on the door. She leaned closer to take a look.

It's the date. Carved into the wood stroke by stroke.

"On the seventh day of the third month, it rained heavily. On the eighth day of the third month, someone died."

Su Qing leaned closer to look and shivered.

Han Yingying continued reading.

"On the ninth day of the third month, two more people died."

"March 13th, seven people left."