Seven Items

Inside a circular surveillance laboratory somewhere within the A-Class City research institute.

The surveillance room was divided into seven sections. Each section had more than thirty monitors providing comprehensive surveillance of the seven test participants. Every section team consisted of an experimental team leader, observer, analyst, recorder, and two technicians.

Every hour, the team leaders had to submit the test results to the chief supervisor's specialists for review.

"Pro-031 Yu Jing used Plan D to successfully escape the sealed room and enter the Main Space." On the surveillance screen, Yu Jing held a brass lampstand and smashed through the bathroom wall. After hesitating for a moment, he crawled into the passage and left the room, becoming the first of the seven to escape.

"Pro-030 Yu Xiaoxiao used Plan A to successfully escape the sealed room and enter the Main Space."

On another surveillance screen, the worried Yu Xiaoxiao was in the same dilapidated house. Using some lockpicking technique, she used a lamp filament to open the lock on the iron chain across the door. Beyond the door was not the usual apartment stairwell, but a gloomy, damp passage. It was far more spacious than the tunnel Yu Jing had crawled through, wide enough for someone to walk upright.

This basically confirmed that the test participants were currently located underground or within some enclosed environment such as a mountain.

"The two young ones accepted reality and calmed down quickly enough. Especially this Yu Jing—being able to immediately calm down and analyze the situation despite being a Normal Person, he has promise. I'll give Yu Jing ten points for his Warm-Up Phase performance. If he scores above eighty in the main test, we can consider reporting his information to upper management."

After receiving the records from the experimenter responsible for monitoring Yu Jing, the research institute supervisor gave Yu Jing a high evaluation.

"Pro-033 Wang Yu used Plan B to successfully escape the sealed room and enter the Main Space."

Over the next hour, the selected test participants escaped their sealed rooms through different methods. Among them, the bespectacled office worker found a diary hidden beneath the bedroom bed. Using the information inside, he found the switch to a hidden compartment in the wardrobe and became the third person to escape.

Then, on another surveillance feed, Jiang Tian—the well-built woman in a white turtleneck sweater who had crossed paths with Yu Jing earlier—smashed through the bathroom wall using the same method as Yu Jing and left through the passage.

The fifth was the middle-aged woman who had been suspicious of everyone during the test. Through careful observation, she discovered hidden numbers printed on the wallpaper in every room of the three-bedroom apartment. After pressing the corresponding four buttons on the telephone, a stairway leading underground appeared in the floor.

Only the fat man and the fit sixty-year-old remained.

The old man was surprisingly strong. He first removed all the wooden boards from the window, then used brute force and every handheld hard object in the room to smash a huge hole through the concrete wall outside. He successfully left the room around fifty-eight minutes after the test began.

The final test participant was the fat man who had stuffed himself at the dining table. The food in his stomach seemingly still had not digested, and he could barely move while sitting on the sofa.

An hour passed without him doing anything, and he failed to leave the room.

Dong dong!

Suddenly, violent and continuous impacts came from the door hung with more than a dozen iron chains, startling the fat man. However, he assumed someone had come to rescue him.

Boom!

The next impact was several times stronger than before. Meng Lei's strike punched a small hole through the door, and immediately afterward, a mass of black insects poured into the room through it.

"Help... Help!"

The fat man's bloated body needed ten seconds just to push itself up from the sofa, but countless black insects had already reached his fleshy feet. Their sharp mouthparts tore the flesh from his feet.

Boom! Another violent impact finally shattered the entire door.

The sea of black insects swallowed the fat man whole...

An exit? This entire passage is roughly a hundred meters long, and the walls are damp and resemble underground rock formations. It seems the room I was in was buried deep underground and was part of the testing grounds. I hope this test ends here. This environment makes me feel rather uncomfortable.

When Yu Jing reached the entrance, the air outside carried the scent of rotting wood.

The moment Yu Jing's feet touched the ground, the glaring white fluorescent lights overhead immediately switched on. After crawling through the dark passage for so long, his dilated pupils gradually contracted to adjust to the intense light. In his blurred vision, a figure stood In Front of him.

"Yu Xiaoxiao?" Once Yu Jing adapted to the light and saw clearly, Yu Xiaoxiao was standing motionlessly before him.

Yu Xiaoxiao did not respond to Yu Jing. Instead, avoiding him somewhat, she walked alone toward a corner of the current decaying heptagonal wooden house and stood sideways, seemingly unwilling to speak with Yu Jing—or perhaps she simply wanted to be alone.

All right...

Seeing that she was deliberately avoiding him, Yu Jing did not press the matter. What puzzled him, however, was that when his feet had touched the room's floor earlier, the chandelier overhead had automatically lit up. But he was not the first person to enter. Why had the lights not turned on when Yu Xiaoxiao entered?

Five minutes later, a hidden compartment in one wall of the decaying wooden house Opened, and the white-collar office worker emerged from within, adjusting his tie.

Then Jiang Tian crawled out from another opening and entered the wooden house. The middle-aged woman and the fit old man in his sixties arrived as well.

"Six test participants, first, congratulations on passing this initial small trial. If you could not even escape such a simple sealed room, then the following tests would be a complete waste of time for you. However, your performances during the Warm-Up Phase were all quite good. Next comes the real test."

"After the test rules have been explained, you will have ten minutes to prepare."

Hearing the voice from the loudspeaker, everyone's tense nerves eased slightly. At least they knew they were still under someone else's surveillance, Rather Than having fallen into some deserted place.

"The test has already begun. You cannot withdraw midway and must complete the following tests.

During the test, you will still proceed individually. Based on the special item you choose, you will be sent to a designated testing area. However, there are 'Interactive Areas' between the various areas. Two people who reach an Interactive Area may choose to cooperate to complete the test.

Each scenario contains a 'Dangerous Object.' During your test, you must use the various external conditions in the scenario, as well as your own Physical Fitness and thinking, to eliminate the 'Dangerous Object' and thereby qualify to pass the test.

Note that the death of a 'Dangerous Object' is determined by the test participant who delivers the final lethal attack. Assistants will not receive qualification to pass.

The final test reward can only be obtained by the person who passes with the highest score. Next, please make your selections in the order you entered this room. Each test participant may take only one special item."

Once the explanation ended, the ten-minute adjustment period began. At the same time, a square table five meters long and wide rose from the center of the dilapidated wooden house. Its surface was divided into seven sections, each corresponding to one of seven hair-raising items...