"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"
"..."
"Bang!" "Bang—"
It was New Year's morning. Beside the First Inpatient Building, something shattered—not a sound more or less, but exactly eighteen.
After those eighteen crashes, everyone looked toward the ground and saw eighteen flowerpots smashed to pieces beside the building.
They were the kind of shattered that left them in fragments, and it was obvious at a glance that they'd fallen from a high floor.
Strangely, the eighteen pulverized flowerpots formed a crooked line, with a young man in a white coat standing at its far end.
Gu Mian, male, twenty-two years old, was a surgical intern at Lianhua Hospital. Everyone liked to call him Doctor Gu.
Of course, he had an even more popular nickname: Lone Star of Calamity.
Gu Mian had come from Qidian Orphanage. He stood over 180 centimeters tall and had the sort of face rich women would happily keep as a lover. He should have been a promising flower of the motherland's future, but his own bizarre luck had nearly snapped him in two.
He'd been through car crashes, explosions, shipwrecks, food poisoning—all sorts of minor mishaps. And worse.
Like eighteen flowerpots falling straight at his head, one after another.
Gu Mian dusted off his white coat and looked up at the eighteen flowerpots that had failed to hit his head. "Everyone, move along. There's nothing to see here."
The passersby around him had clearly been stunned by the eighteen smashed flowerpots.
After a long while, an old man finally spoke up, his neck stiff with indignation. "How can you just let this go? That was attempted murder!"
Gu Mian sighed. If that counted as attempted murder, then every day of his life since birth had been a real-life Jing Ke's Assassination of Qin.
Of course, he was the unlucky King of Qin.
Perhaps he'd inherited the King of Qin's luck: none of life's attempts on his life had ever succeeded. Otherwise, Gu Mian wouldn't be standing here today.
He'd barely managed to calm the panicked passersby when, at the corner, he ran headlong into life's next attempt on his life.
Other people turned corners and found love. Gu Mian was different. Every corner he turned hid an assassin lying in wait.
For example, right now—
A van suddenly appeared in Gu Mian's line of sight, barely three meters away and heading straight for him.
It looked like the driver wouldn't have time to brake.
A normal person would probably have frozen in terror by now, maybe even watched helplessly as they were sent flying.
But Gu Mian wasn't normal.
The intern leaped aside with practiced ease, and the van just barely missed him.
It managed to stop only after traveling another ten meters. A fat man tumbled out, still clutching a large bag. He was probably the driver.
Gu Mian dusted off his white coat and didn't hold the fat man responsible. He turned to head into the nearby inpatient building.
But Gu Mian didn't go after the fat man. The fat man came trotting over to him instead.
"Hey... Doctor, wait up..."
The fat man came huffing over. "Sorry, buddy. My junker suddenly wouldn't stop just now. Sorry I scared you..."
Panting hard, he looked up at Gu Mian.
To his surprise, the doctor who'd nearly been killed didn't look the least bit shaken. He was still perfectly calm, as if certain that if the van had hit him, it would have been the van that died.
The fat man's words caught in his throat. For a moment, he couldn't even tell whether this was the person he'd nearly run over.
"Don't worry about it." Gu Mian put his hands in the pockets of his white coat. "I wasn't scared."
I can tell that without you saying so! the fat man howled inwardly.
"If that's all, I'll be going." Gu Mian had to get back to writing his medical notes.
"Wait, wait!" The fat man grabbed him from behind. "Buddy, do you know which building the Psychiatric Surgery Office is in? A young lady called and said the sink in the Psychiatric Surgery Office had fallen off. I'm here to fix it."
He spoke between gasps and coughed a few times. It was peak flu season, so he was probably coming down with a cold.
Gu Mian stopped and glanced at him. "As it happens, I'm in neurosurgery. I'll take you there."
The fat man grinned happily. "That'd be great."
He followed Gu Mian into the First Inpatient Building and over to the elevator.
The big fellow didn't look the least bit weak. The bag he carried held a demolition hammer about a meter and a half long, which looked to weigh a good ten pounds.
He carried the thing as if it weighed nothing. He must have been used to it.
The elevator had arrived. Gu Mian stepped inside, and the fat man hurried after him.
Neurosurgery was on the eighteenth floor. Gu Mian reached out and pressed the button for level eighteen.
"Say, buddy..." With only the two of them in the elevator, the fat man began sizing up the man beside him. "You've got some impressive reflexes. You jumped aside in a flash, and you looked pretty practiced."
"Of course," Gu Mian said. "I've had plenty of practice over time."
"Huh?" The fat man didn't get it at first. "Do you practice long jump every day?"
Gu Mian suddenly laughed. "Not exactly. Let me put it this way—"
"Has your car ever caught fire while you were driving?"
"..."
"Have you ever drunk from a cup washed by a waitress who used paraquat instead of dish soap?"
"..."
"Have you ever rented a place only to find out the landlord was a murderer?"
"..."
"Could you spend seven days and seven nights listing your bad luck without repeating a single thing?"
The fat man shook his head, then managed to answer with difficulty. "I really couldn't..."
"That's why I've gotten extremely good at avoiding danger. Otherwise, I wouldn't have survived this long. And I guarantee you, if you put my experiences on Qidian, no protagonist could beat me for bad luck. No one—"
As he spoke, Gu Mian rubbed his hand.
The fat man nervously swallowed. "From the sound of it... wouldn't I be unlucky just by being around you?"
At the thought, he couldn't help worrying about his own safety.
"Of course." Gu Mian smiled faintly. "I never know when life's next attempt on my life will come. Maybe it'll be right now."
As soon as he finished speaking, as if to prove his point, the entire elevator suddenly went dark. It was so pitch-black he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.
The fat man yelped and darted as far away from Gu Mian, the walking calamity, as he could.
Then, a point of light suddenly appeared in the dark elevator. A translucent screen had somehow appeared in front of the fat man.
Naturally, an identical one had appeared in front of Gu Mian, too.
The screen looked like the kind used by a system in a story, but Gu Mian knew this wasn't a system.
Because a few lines of text were popping up on the screen right now.
[Welcome to the Global Evolution Game. This game was initiated by Earth, and all of humanity are its players.]
[After testing, 99% of humanity does not meet the standard specifications for organisms in the universe. This game aims to help humanity evolve through horror games.]
[During the game, the world will undergo abnormal changes, creating instances, events, side quests, and hidden missions. Players can earn rewards by completing instances and other tasks, improving their physical abilities.]
[When the overall capabilities of the remaining humans meet the standard, this game will shut down automatically.]
[The beginner's tutorial is about to begin. Please prepare—]
Wait, had life really gone this far to kill me?
Before you continue