Zheng Zha had always felt as if he were already dead in the real world. Going to work and coming home, eating and relieving himself, sleeping and waking—he didn't know what meaning his life had. It certainly wasn't to be found in the oily grin of his manager, or inside the so-called white-collar women he'd met in bars, and it definitely wasn't in this endless steel jungle of a modern city.
Zheng Zha felt as if he were rotting away, rotting from the age of twenty-four until he grew old, then turning into soil and becoming a name. No—not even a name would remain, because no one would remember him. No one would remember a small-time white-collar worker. Whether he was genuinely refined or just pretending to be bourgeois, he was nothing more than a speck of dust in this world.
He wanted to change something. He wanted his life to have meaning...
"Do you want to understand the meaning of life? Do you want to truly... live?"
When Zheng Zha turned on his computer at work that day, this sentence suddenly appeared on the screen. It was obviously some immature hacker's little trick to attract attention. Whether you chose yes or no, the result would be the same: a virus would be downloaded. Zheng Zha scoffed and was about to close it, but when his finger touched the mouse, a strange pang in his heart made him stop.
"Do you want to understand the meaning of life? Do you want to truly... live?"
Zheng Zha felt lost. An attraction he couldn't put into words drew his finger to the left mouse button. Then he clicked yes, and in an instant, he lost consciousness...
Cold. Shaking...
The moment he woke, Zheng Zha sprang up from the floor. He looked around in panic, the office in his memories suddenly overlapping with the scene before his eyes. But a few seconds later, he had shaken off the confusion.
"Not bad. You're the most capable of the people who came this time." A cold voice sounded.
Zheng Zha turned to look. A black-haired youth was staring at him with a sneer. The youth looked to be about twenty-four or twenty-five, and his appearance was utterly ordinary, but several scars crossed his face, making him look hideously frightening.
The black-haired youth held a cigarette. He took a deep drag, then looked past Zheng Zha at the space behind him. Only then did Zheng Zha notice that five other people were lying beside him: three men and two women. Besides them, more than a dozen foreigners were present in this enclosed space.
They were in a moving train car, traveling at tremendous speed. The cold and shaking sensations came from the car itself.
"Where is this? Who are you people? Why am I here?" Zheng Zha asked them one question after another. Since there were foreigners present, he made a point of speaking English.
The foreigners glanced at him, then looked away. Only the black-haired youth took a deep breath and said, "Think carefully. It should have implanted all of this in your mind already."
Think carefully? Zheng Zha began to search his memories. All he could remember was seeing the pop-up message, "Do you want to understand the meaning of life? Do you want to truly... live?" and clicking yes on his computer screen. Then he'd passed out...
Wait. Zheng Zha suddenly sensed something new in his mind: survival and life...
This was a game. It didn't matter who had made it. Maybe it was the gods, or maybe demons. More likely, it was aliens or people from the future. In any case, he was one of the players—or rather, he had now become one.
The game appeared before people in cities who felt lost and believed they were wasting away. When they chose to play, they were sent into the settings of various horror movies.
"This time it's Resident Evil 1, rookies. You're really lucky. You've landed in such an easy horror movie on your first visit. Even if you die, you should die pretty easily." The black-haired youth took one last deep drag, then crushed the cigarette butt viciously in his palm.
"So you're saying that only our consciousness has entered a computer, like something out of a fantasy novel? If we beat the game, our consciousness will return to our bodies, and we'll come back to life?" A chubby young man sitting on the floor asked.
The black-haired youth pulled a handgun from his coat—a Desert Eagle—and began checking it. As he did, he said, "I don't know if it's consciousness, but you'll feel pain, you'll get hurt, and you can die. And you're wrong about something else, too. Once you finish this game, you'll enter another, unknown horror movie. You may have seen it, or you may not have. Every time, the 'Main God' brings in new members to replace the rookies who died in the previous movie. There are between seven and twenty people each time. In other words, this Resident Evil 1 is a low-risk horror movie, so there are only seven of us altogether."
The chubby young man sneered. "How do you know the people who died didn't just return to their bodies? Maybe they chose to die themselves."
The black-haired youth abruptly raised his head. A cold glint flashed in his eyes. In that instant, he seemed to transform into a black panther. Everyone saw him bend his legs and spring forward. The next moment, he was pinning the chubby young man down, the Desert Eagle shoved into his mouth.
"Then do you want to try dying? Can you imagine that endless terror? I've been through three horror movies. The first was A Nightmare on Elm Street 1. Fifteen rookies took part, along with two veterans who'd survived two horror movies. But do you know how it ended? They were all killed in their dreams. Only me and one other person survived. Do you want to know what it feels like to be killed by an absurd dream? Do you want to see everything around you turn into writhing rotting flesh, and, in a creepy factory, watch with your own eyes as a pair of scissors slowly crushes your body to pieces? You piece of shit! Do you want to die?"
The black-haired youth shouted frantically, the murderous intent in his eyes unmistakable. The chubby young man was so terrified he couldn't move. With the gun barrel stuffed in his mouth, he couldn't even beg for mercy.
Zheng Zha and the other two men and two women pulled them apart. The black-haired youth sneered and returned to his previous seat. He continued handling his gun as he said, "Death in a horror movie is real death. And if the demons in these movies torture you to death, you'll die horribly. So if you don't have the will to live, I'd kill myself right now if I were you."
A young woman with glasses beside them asked, "So there's no way for us to return to our bodies?"
The black-haired youth sneered. "I've been telling you: your consciousness didn't enter a computer. Do you think this game is something human technology could achieve? No. This is the work of a god. We're just bugs in their eyes. They capture us and throw us into horror movies to struggle for their amusement. Our bodies and minds entered this world together. There's no going back. At least, I don't think we can."
The young woman with glasses had a composed air about her. She thought for a moment, then said, "From the way you put it, does that mean there really is a chance to go back?"
The black-haired youth glanced up at her. "This batch of rookies really is impressive... That's right. There is a chance to go back."
At his words, all six people, Zheng Zha included, held their breath. They stared intently at the black-haired youth.
"Every time you complete a mission—that is, survive a horror movie—you'll receive one thousand Reward Points. Those one thousand Reward Points can be exchanged for all kinds of things. For example, you can exchange them for the right to live in this horror movie's world for a hundred days..." the black-haired youth said calmly.
A middle-aged man beside the woman with glasses said, "Who in their right mind would want to spend more time in a world this terrifying? Isn't that just asking to die?"
The black-haired youth sneered without replying, but the woman with glasses touched her forehead and said, "No, I think I understand what he means. There are many different kinds of horror movies. One kind is a science-based horror movie like Resident Evil, where everything can be explained scientifically, without anything supernatural or demonic. In other words, except for the place where the story is happening, everywhere else should be a normal world..."
The black-haired youth snapped his fingers. "Bingo! Correct. Those extra hundred days really would be a hundred days living a normal life elsewhere in this world. Just imagine: after enduring several trials of life and death, you get to live peacefully and without fear in a normal part of the world. What kind of happiness would that be..."
Zheng Zha shuddered. He seemed to understand why this world existed. Yes, it was his dull, pointless life that had made him feel as if he were rotting away. After experiencing countless terrors and deaths, an ordinary life really would be the greatest happiness he could hope for.
The black-haired youth continued, "Besides exchanging points for days of life, you can exchange them for all kinds of other things. Take this Desert Eagle with unlimited ammunition, for example. It only costs one hundred points—that is, the right to live for ten days. You can also spend one day of living rights to raise one point in any of a person's six basic attributes: Intelligence, Mental Power, Cell Vitality, Nerve Reaction Speed, Muscle Strength, and Immunity Strength. Each of an ordinary person's six attributes is at one hundred. In other words, if you survive this horror movie, you can double your strength compared to now. If you survive a hundred horror movies, you'll become a superhuman!"
The woman with glasses asked calmly, "Then, to return to our original world—to go back to our own lives—how many Reward Points would that take?"
"Fifty thousand points!" The black-haired youth pulled another cigarette from his coat and lit it. He took a deep drag and said, "If you don't spend a single Reward Point, you'll have to survive fifty horror movies to go back."
Several people fell silent. Based on what the black-haired youth had said, surviving fifty horror movies without using Reward Points to strengthen yourself was practically impossible.
"Of course, one thousand points for each horror movie is the basic reward. You can earn extra points during the movies, too. For example, I just explained all this to you. According to the 'Main God's' rules, explaining them to rookies earns me one hundred Reward Points. You should also have noticed that you're wearing a strange watch, right?" The black-haired youth raised his left hand. A black watch made entirely of metal was fastened to it, its design simple and old-fashioned.
Everyone looked at their own left hands. The watches showed several things. First was a countdown of three hours and seven minutes, followed by a list of data labels, such as the number of zombies, the number of Lickers, and the number of rookies...
"Every ten zombies you kill earns one Reward Point. Each Licker earns one hundred Reward Points. Each rookie you kill... earns one thousand Reward Points..." After saying this, the black-haired youth looked at Zheng Zha and the others with ill intent. Of them, only Zheng Zha and the woman with glasses met his gaze calmly.
"Of course, those points are negative."
The black-haired youth sneered at Zheng Zha and the woman with glasses. "All right, ask whatever else you need to quickly. This horror movie is about to officially begin."
The woman with glasses looked at Zheng Zha. He gave a slight nod, and she continued, "I have two or three more questions. I've seen Resident Evil 1, too. At the end, the T-Virus escapes from the lab and infects Raccoon City. So before that happens, if we escape the lab on this train, shouldn't it be easy to survive?"
The black-haired youth nodded. "Look at your watches. Is there a name in the upper left corner? Read it aloud."
"Matthew Addison!"
Several people said it at the same time. Then, to their amazement, a Black man among the foreigners began to glow faintly. The light lasted only a moment, then the man returned to normal.
"He's the commander of the mercenaries in the movie. This is a location-specific horror movie, so the story only takes place inside this lab. To limit the difficulty, the 'Main God' won't let us get too far from the story's setting. If we go more than a hundred meters away from Matthew Addison, we'll... blow up and disappear. Got it? When he dies in the story, this restriction moves to another character, one after another. All we can do is fight to survive in this horror movie," the black-haired youth explained.
Zheng Zha suddenly asked, "What is the 'Main God'? You've been talking about it this whole time."
"The 'Main God' should be the thing that manages the cycle of sending us into these horror movies. It gives us Reward Points, and exchanges happen there, too. The 'Main God' is a ball of light. To be honest, I have no idea what it actually is." The black-haired youth waved his hand.
The woman with glasses nodded. "One last question... What does this number mean?" She pointed at the countdown on her watch.
"It's the amount of time you have to stay in this horror movie. When the time runs out, you'll return alive to the 'Main God' and collect your reward. Then you'll face the next horror movie." The black-haired youth took a deep drag from his cigarette.
Just then, the train car began to slow down. The black-haired youth finished off his cigarette in a few quick drags, then pulled the Desert Eagle from his coat. "All right, the story starts now. From this moment on, they can hear what we're saying. Remember, if they hear us talking about this, we'll lose ten points for every sentence. Any negative points will be deducted from the rewards you earn next time. Rookies... try to stay alive!"
Before you continue