Fault

It is now 12:03 in the middle of the night.

Gu Mian and the other three had long since handed in their test papers and waited by the entrance, but the road test did not begin immediately. The instructor waited by the door for the others for a short while.

It was only after midnight passed and he was certain no one else would come out that he turned to look at Gu Mian and the three others, a slight smile on his face:

"To be honest, this instance is accepting players for the first time. I didn't expect the survival rate to be so high beforehand; it seems the difficulty is still too low."

The Fatty muttered, "I feel like this probably has nothing to do with difficulty..."

"Next, the road test is what you four players will undergo. From now on, you will randomly choose one of these three vehicles and drive three full laps on this road. As your instructor, I will sit in the front passenger seat and evaluate you."

"Remember, stalling or stopping for any other reason during the road test will be judged as a failure. You must complete three full laps without interruption."

Things had reached this point, practically making it clear that fierce ghosts would appear to obstruct them while driving.

As the instructor spoke, he picked up a piece of paper that looked like a form: "Next, the order of appearance will be determined by player Game IDs. Let me see, the first player to go should be..."

"Gu Mian, ID... ID... is 1?"

A crack appeared on the instructor's face.

He stared intently at the form in his hand, seemingly looking for the number after 1, but what followed was a very conspicuous blank space.

He raised his head: "Which one is Gu Mian?"

Gu Mian raised his hand neatly, looking precisely like a student about to answer a teacher's question: "I am."

The instructor lowered his head to look at the player information in his hand, then raised his head to look at Gu Mian: "Your Game ID..."

Gu Mian spoke very decisively: "That's right, I've checked. The ID is only a single digit, and the gender is also not quite clear."

The instructor frowned slightly, his face clearly spelling out the sentence, "How can there be such an ID?"

Yet he didn't delay any longer either, pointing to the three vehicles by the roadside: "Three cars, pick one."

Gu Mian also turned to look at the three cars that had been parked by the roadside all along.

A hearse, an ambulance, a prisoner transport van.

Not a single one of them looked like a fuel-efficient car.

He chose the ambulance with great decisiveness: "I'm quite familiar with the ghost in that car."

The instructor gave him a suspicious look: "Then cut the nonsense and get in. I'll sit in the front passenger seat the whole time to score you."

Chu Changge and the others all retreated a bit, stepping back to the edge of the road to watch Gu Mian get into the car.

"Brother Chu," the Fatty asked Chu Changge beside him with some concern, "won't the doctor run into any more accidents this trip?"

Chu Changge, however, stepped back a few more steps: "If he didn't run into accidents, then he wouldn't be called Gu Mian. Besides, if he does run into an accident, the people next to him generally end up sharing his bad luck..."

As he spoke, he looked toward the suit-and-tie-wearing instructor.

At this moment, Gu Mian and the instructor were already seated properly in the car.

It was midnight here, with only two dimly lit streetlamps by the road, and the headlights of this ambulance seemed to be broken as well.

Road conditions were extremely vague; conducting a road test under such circumstances was extremely disadvantageous to the examinee.

Without much hesitation, Gu Mian started the car.

A sound of a car starting echoed in the dark night. Within seconds, that blood-stained ambulance drifted from the side right into the middle of the road.

That's right, it was a drift.

The instructor beside him was caught completely off guard by this drift, nearly slamming his head straight into the car window: "What is wrong with you?!"

Gu Mian's driver's license was obtained back when he was in college, but even after getting his license, he hadn't touched a car many times.

It wasn't because he had no money to buy a car, but rather because of his special constitution, which made him extremely prone to driving accidents. For the sake of his own personal safety, Gu Mian had never even entertained the thought of buying a car.

Consequently, Gu Mian's driving skills were naturally unpolished.

"Don't worry, instructor," Gu Mian looked straight ahead, unfazed: "This is nothing."

Hearing his words, a sudden sense of foreboding welled up in the instructor's heart.

In the pitch-black night, sparrows would occasionally perch on the streetlamps, only to take flight again as if startled.

The dilapidated ambulance drove slowly along the dim road, as if wanting to melt into the darkness, somewhat terrifying.

One lap...

The first lap passed without incident.

The instructor in the front passenger seat frowned slightly; he seemed to have been waiting for something the whole time, yet also wore the expression of someone who hadn't waited for it.

Amidst the instructor's rather strange expression, Gu Mian began the second lap.

The car accelerated slightly, the engine emitting a soft "rumbling" sound.

When the second lap was halfway through, the expression of the instructor beside him became increasingly strange.

He seemed extremely perplexed, perplexed to the point of an urge to speak his mind.

Gu Mian heard him make a very soft sound nearby: "Still not coming?"

"What are you waiting for?" Smiles bloomed across Gu Mian's face.

Waiting for a ghost?

Then it might not come.

The instructor immediately cast a doubtful gaze at Gu Mian: "Did you do something?"

Yet he immediately dismissed his own thought.

What could a player possibly do?

This was his instance; he knew best that the three ghosts in the building were unsolvable. Running into them meant you could only flee, and the only thing one could do was run away.

Just an ordinary player, unable to do anything no matter what they wanted to.

It should suddenly appear on the last lap... The instructor thought to himself as he turned his head back.

Before long, the car finally entered the third lap.

It was still very smooth, with no accidents appearing whatsoever, not even a single bump; it merely accelerated a bit more.

When the third lap was more than halfway over, the instructor's expression finally became somewhat difficult to maintain.

What was going on? He looked ahead with some unease. Just a little further driving and the three laps would be over, yet up until now, the obstructions that the road test ought to have featured had still not appeared.

A drop of cold sweat trickled down the instructor's forehead. Exactly what... had the ghost in this car disappeared?

The vehicle moved forward smoothly, eventually crossing the finish line.

Gu Mian's voice came from beside him: "Instructor, the three laps are already over. This counts as passing for me, right?"

Only then did the instructor snap out of it and look ahead, but he suddenly discovered that at this moment, the car was not stopping and was actually driving a fourth lap.

He looked at the person in the driver's seat with startled suspicion: "Why aren't you stopping?"

Gu Mian tilted his head slightly: "I wanted to make it stop just now, but the brakes seem to have failed, and this car keeps accelerating on its own."

This was also within expectations.

With his kind of bad luck, driving a car that didn't experience a failure would truly be seeing a ghost.

Gu Mian himself had witnessed decades of tumultuous storms, so he could face it calmly as well.

However, the instructor beside him was a different story.

His face first froze, and after a few seconds, an expression of astonishment rapidly surged across it. Immediately afterward, his entire face distorted, and then he opened his mouth to emit an incredulous sound:

"How is that possible!"

"Such a malfunction absolute cannot appear in the instance!"