The fat man scrambled to his feet, just in time to see Chu Changge standing on the balcony, taking a deep breath of the morning's first lungful of smog.
"Brother Chu, you know what?" The fat man watched Chu Changge's back. "An old man used to live next door to my family. Every morning, he'd go up to the roof to absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Then he got poisoned by the smog."
At that, Chu Changge silently took two steps back, away from the balcony.
Gu Mian's balcony was open-air. Step outside and look up, and you could see the sky.
The weather looked bad today. The sky was gloomy, as if it were about to snow.
The fat man looked past Chu Changge and out beyond the balcony. "Where did Doctor Gu go?"
Chu Changge answered without hesitation. "He went to earn money."
The fat man paused. "The doctor went by himself?"
"Yeah. He told us to dry the meat we bought last night so it'd be easier to carry when we set out."
By then, Gu Mian had already collected his ticket and started matching for a dungeon.
Perhaps because the game had only just begun and there weren't many players entering dungeons yet, it took him longer than usual to get matched.
After waiting in the darkness for a long time, that familiar feeling of weightlessness finally returned.
Gu Mian fell through the darkness for a while before his body touched something solid. It felt like he had landed on a bed.
At the same time, the darkness quickly receded, revealing the scene before him.
He was in a room.
Information about the dungeon began popping up on the panel.
[Dungeon: Desperate Curse] [Description: Have you ever felt something strange watching you? Do you keep hearing faint noises coming from under your bed? Do you always feel like someone is standing behind you? You have all been cursed by vengeful spirits. Do your best to survive the curse! Remember, "it" will keep getting closer to you!] [Number of Players: 5] [Main Mission: Survive in the dungeon for 10 days] [Difficulty: ★★★★☆] [Dungeon Rewards: Game Currency*100, Draw*1, Freely Assignable Attribute Points*2]
"The rewards for this dungeon are a whole tier higher than before." As Gu Mian spoke to himself, he looked around.
It was a small, somewhat old-fashioned room, but it was fairly tidy.
A bed took up half the room. It was made with gray-blue sheets and a matching blanket. There was a writing desk beside the door.
The bed was right next to the window. Gu Mian looked outside and realized he was on the first floor.
The buildings outside all looked dilapidated. In the distance was an open space with a gigantic human statue standing in it.
The sun was slowly sinking, and the evening glow streamed through the window, warming Gu Mian.
His chainsaw, disguised as a guitar case, had landed safely too. It didn't seem to be damaged.
Gu Mian turned to look outside the bedroom door. Beyond it was a small living room, small enough to take in at a glance.
A desktop television sat on a solid wood cabinet. Not far in front of it were a glass coffee table and a small dark red sofa. The sofa looked old, its leather worn and peeling.
Beside the sofa was a cabinet like a bedside table. A landline sat on it, with what looked like a phone book next to it.
It was a one-bedroom apartment, and it looked like the kind of place people had lived in many years ago.
Sure enough, Gu Mian found a calendar hanging in the living room. It was October 2002.
Who knew how time worked in the dungeon? He had no time to think about that. He needed to hurry and look for clues.
"There are five players in this dungeon, but right now, there's no one here except me and the chainsaw?" Gu Mian thought it over carefully.
This dungeon was different from the previous two.
In those, his teammates had been right there in front of him. This time, it seemed he would have to go find them himself.
"Actually, it shouldn't be a big deal if I don't find my teammates," Gu Mian murmured. "This dungeon seems pretty similar to The Ring."
In The Ring, you died seven days after watching the videotape.
In this dungeon, the players were cursed from the start, and "it" would keep getting closer to them during that time.
When "it" reached a player, that meant it was time for them to die.
"There are five players, so there should be at least five ghosts in this dungeon. Otherwise, wouldn't one ghost have to kill all five players? It'd be exhausted."
Gu Mian thought about it seriously.
But while he was still deep in thought, the phone on the cabinet beside the sofa suddenly rang.
"Ring, ring—"
"Ring, ring—"
It was still dusk, and Gu Mian wasn't worried about anything like The Ring happening. He reached out and picked up the phone.
A young man's voice came through at once. "Hello, is this... Gu Mian?"
Gu Mian paused. "Who is this?"
The person on the other end seemed to hesitate for a moment before speaking again. "You're a player too, right?"
He hadn't even gone looking for his teammates, and one of them had already called him. But how had the man found him?
As Gu Mian pondered this, he flipped through the phone book beside the phone. Sure enough, it listed only four numbers. They had to belong to his four teammates.
The man had called by following the phone book.
Gu Mian admitted it readily. "That's right."
As he answered, he looked at the display on the landline. The caller's number was shown there. He compared it with the names in the phone book.
"You're Yuwen Hao?"
Good at Chinese? What kind of name was that?
The man on the other end sounded a little excited. "That's me. You're the most pleasant teammate I've run into here."
Gu Mian was good at drawing conclusions. He could guess plenty of things without needing the other person to spell them out.
It seemed Yuwen Hao had already called some of the other teammates. That was how he could tell Gu Mian was so considerate.
"I called the others just now too. They either rambled incoherently or kept asking questions, like 'How did you get my number?' and 'Who are you?' You're honestly the most pleasant teammate I've talked to."
Gu Mian didn't waste time chatting with Yuwen Hao.
He looked at the other names in the phone book. "You called because you want us to meet up, right?"
The man on the other end choked a little. "Uh... yes, exactly. From what I can tell, the five of us have all been separated and put in our own rooms. So I thought I'd get everyone together first."
"Where should we meet?"
"...Actually, I'm not sure where everyone is. Could you look outside and see if there's any kind of distinctive building?"
Gu Mian looked out the window. "There's a huge full-body statue... Though I'm pretty distinctive too. One look at me and you should recognize me right away."
"What?" The man on the other end made a strange sound.
Gu Mian slung the chainsaw over his back. "A doctor carrying a giant guitar. I'm the doctor carrying a giant guitar."
Fortunately, the dungeon was considerate enough not to scatter the five players too far apart.
When Yuwen Hao led the other three to the statue Gu Mian had mentioned, they spotted the figure that stood out even more than the statue at a glance.
A doctor stood there in a white coat.
The coat was worn, and its edges were even stained with something reddish-brown. Whatever it was, it fluttered in the wind.
He carried a giant guitar that seemed completely unsuited to a doctor's profession. It was a little too big, strapped tightly to his back.
His incongruous outfit gave him an eerie air, but the doctor didn't seem to care.
"Oh my god," Yuwen Hao thought with a sigh. "What kind of weird teammate did I get matched with?"
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