The Game Begins

In the distance stood a bus station, empty inside.

No buses, no uniformed staff in sight.

The sky was gloomy, a light rain falling, and a small group of people had gathered on the wide platform.

Four or five people, likely travelers.

The station's dilapidation was obvious—from the platform with exposed red brick to the worn-out rain shelter.

This also meant the few travelers had to huddle in one corner of the platform to stay dry.

At that moment, all the travelers were staring in one direction.

About thirty meters away, through the curtain of rain, stood a man holding an umbrella.

The man hadn't moved, holding that same pose for a full ten minutes.

Just as the travelers were murmuring among themselves, the man suddenly stirred and walked toward the platform.

Closer and closer.

He was indeed a man, with a well-proportioned build and decent looks. He wore a work jacket several sizes too large for him, and below...

Below, he wore a pair of plaid pajama pants, with cartoon fuzzy slippers on his feet.

The slippers were soaked through, making a squelching sound with every step.

Folding his umbrella, Jiang Cheng, who had been hastily brought here from his sleep, looked up at the people before him.

Rainwater streamed down the umbrella fabric, pooling into a single stream that dripped onto the platform.

A petite girl with a pure appearance asked cautiously, "Are you a newcomer?"

"Don't ask stupid questions," a burly, full-bearded man shot the girl a glance, then let his eyes linger on Jiang Cheng's slippers for a second before focusing on his face.

He looked at Jiang Cheng with the kind of gaze one uses to appraise prey. After a long moment, he said, "Interesting newcomer. Showing up here this calm."

Five people total.

Jiang Cheng didn't see anyone else near the platform for now.

Besides the girl and the bearded strongman who had already spoken, there was a thin-lipped woman around thirty-five.

The woman had a mole on her lip, her features plain.

A balding, somewhat sleazy middle-aged man around fifty.

And a young man dressed like an office worker, his hair combed immaculately.

Unlike the others, the young man looked like he had just been crying—traces of tears lingered at the corners of his eyes, and his posture was unnaturally hunched.

Jiang Cheng swept his gaze across each face before him, finally fixing it on the bearded strongman. "Where is this?"

"We call it the Nightmare World, because every visitor comes here from a dream," the strongman answered.

Jiang Cheng nodded. That matched his own experience. "What do we need to do?"

"Based on the scene that appears, find clues and complete the task. And in the process, try your best to survive," he said, looking out at the rain. "The Nightmare World is just a name given by the first people who encountered this place.

Don't ask what this place really is or where it is—even if you ask, we can't answer, because we don't know either.

All you need to know is that in the Nightmare World, you might see a village, a tall building, or even a forest, a snowy plain, or a wilderness.

Every scene that exists in our real world can appear here."

"Every scene from our world can appear in this world?" Jiang Cheng asked back.

"Yes."

"Then what's the difference between here and our world?"

Jiang Cheng raised a fitting but tricky question.

"But our world would never have two identical versions of ourselves at the same time." The strongman's voice was a bit muffled.

His words sounded awkward, but they weren't hard to understand—at least for Jiang Cheng. He frowned. "You're saying someone met themselves in the Nightmare World?"

"Yeah."

Whether the strongman was afraid to talk about it, or thought it was pointless to tell a newcomer who might not even survive this mission, he ended the topic there.

"After the mission, we go back to the real world?"

"Yeah," the strongman nodded, his gaze drifting toward the rain.

The rain seemed to be getting heavier. The whole world was steeped in gray tones, and the sky was gradually darkening.

"Newcomer," the woman with the mole on her lip looked at him, "if you die in this world, you're erased from the real world. Aren't you afraid?"

"More accurately, you go missing," Jiang Cheng corrected.

The woman's eyes widened slightly, a hint of interest flickering in them as she looked Jiang Cheng up and down.

As if trying to find something different about him.

"If you survive this one, I hope you don't mind making a friend," the woman said.

Jiang Cheng directly ignored her and turned to look at the Strong man.

The Strong man stood at the edge of the rain curtain, his gaze constantly sweeping the vicinity, a hint of anxiety creasing his brow.

"You're waiting for someone," Jiang Cheng said to the Strong man. "Someone hasn't arrived yet."

The Strong man turned back, startled. "How do you know?"

"Mm, I also know the person you're waiting for is a fat man, very agile."

The expression on the Strong man's face could no longer be described as mere surprise. "Someone really hasn't shown up yet, which is why the mission hasn't started. But I want to know—how do you know? Especially being so sure he's a fat man, very agile, with that level of detail?"

Jiang Cheng didn't answer the question. Instead, he walked to the Strong man's side, cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone, and shouted toward a direction outside the station: "Hey! It's safe over here. Come out, we're just waiting for you!"

As soon as the words fell, a figure sprang up from about several dozen meters away in the rain curtain, then dashed toward the platform under everyone's stunned gaze.

Two legs like sausages swung nimbly, dodging every puddle, and with a final leap, landed steadily on the platform.

At that moment, a single line popped into everyone's mind: Damn! A fat man who's really agile, no kidding!

As soon as the fat man got up, he fixed his eyes on the work coat Jiang Cheng was wearing. He only had a khaki shirt on his upper body, already soaked through by the rain, and was shivering from the cold.

"Can I—"

"No!"

Jiang Cheng decisively cut off the agile fat man's fantasy, then pulled his coat tighter around himself.

"What's... going on here?" The Bald man, who hadn't spoken until now, asked, looking completely baffled.

"I met him on the road. I came to scout in his place, at the cost of a coat and an umbrella," Jiang Cheng said very frankly.

The shivering, freezing fat man didn't make for a good impression, so no one bothered with him. Only the girl, taking pity on him, lent him a scarf to wrap around his neck.