Urban Legend Player

"I don't know." In the darkness came the soft rustle of clothing. Baizhi clutched her head with both hands, her slender body curled in her mother's arms. "How would I know..."

Feng Yushu's heart ached. She gently stroked her daughter's trembling shoulder, unsure what to say.

"Ning Zhe, give her a little time, okay?" Feng Yushu said softly. "She... is scared."

Ning Zhe sighed. "Of course I could act understanding here, play the considerate, caring man in front of you two, and tend to your feelings. But ghosts don't do that."

"Ghosts aren't men lusting after your bodies, and they aren't public opinion. They're absolute rules: you either live or die. And death is the greatest fairness in this world."

"Rules won't stop killing just because you're so-called weak women. Hugging each other and crying won't make a ghost stand at attention and reflect on what it did wrong. It'll only bring death closer."

Ning Zhe stood and went to the window, drawing the curtains over the hole he had smashed through.

"Listen, Feng Yushu. I'm not your husband, and I'm certainly not your daughter's babysitter. Strangers who happen to cross paths have no obligation to help you. The only reason I'm here is that I think Baizhi can give me useful information about the situation."

"If her answer is that she can't, that she isn't sure, or that she doesn't know, then all I can do is wish you luck before I leave."

That was that.

"Ning Zhe..." Feng Yushu's heart tightened. Instinctively, she hugged her daughter's shoulders, just as helpless as she had been back in He Family Village.

Never had she understood so clearly that she had nothing Ning Zhe wanted—not money, status, her body, or anything else she could offer. Nothing moved him. He wanted nothing; he had cast aside his humanity. He was an extreme rationalist who put self-interest above all else, so rational that he hardly seemed like a human being of flesh and blood.

He seemed more like a... ghost.

"No wonder you made it out of He Family Village alive." Baizhi's voice came faintly from Feng Yushu's arms. "Only people like you can survive in this world."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Ning Zhe wasn't bothered by her words. "Now that you've calmed down, stop crying and tell me what you know. Why did you dream about He Family Village? And how did you know the ghost's rules in the Manor?"

Only then could the layers of fog hanging over the town begin to clear.

"Have you ever played a Rule-Based Horror Story?" Baizhi asked softly.

"I've come across them, but never actually tried to solve one," Ning Zhe answered frankly. "What does that have to do with what's happening now?"

"Yesterday, I dreamed of a Rule-Based Horror Story set in this Manor," Baizhi said quietly. "Just like when I dreamed about He Family Village before."

"Ever since middle school, I've often had strange nightmares."

"Sometimes I dream that I'm hiding from rampaging mental patients in a remote hospital. Other times, I dream that everyone in the hotel where I'm staying, from the manager to the waitstaff, is dead... Those places are filled with an eerie atmosphere and terrifying details. It feels as if one wrong step will take me to the end of my life."

"And the terrifying places in my dreams often correspond to real locations. The hospital haunted by mental patients was Yongzhou City General Hospital, where I often went as a child. The hotel run by the dead was Xiangzilan Hotel, which my father owns..."

"Whenever I enter a place like that in my dreams, fear and a sense of danger fill my subconscious, as if death is lurking everywhere."

"If I see a freezer in the hospital, I get scared and instinctively feel that I absolutely mustn't open it, or I'll die."

"If I run into a cleaner mopping the floor at the hotel, I feel repulsed. Deep down, I want to avoid the bloody water in her bucket, or something terrible will happen."

"The nightmare scenes are so crowded and stifling that I can hardly breathe... Dangerous death traps are everywhere, and there are ill-intentioned Soul-Snatching Evil Ghosts at every turn. But somehow, I always just barely manage to evade death when it's right in front of me. I curl up in a corner and scrape by until the nightmare ends and the sun rises."

"That's because before every nightmare, I learn the different taboos of each Weird Place in advance, deep in my subconscious. It's like dreaming or giving myself a suggestion."

Baizhi still sounded weak and breathless. Curled up in her mother's arms, she spoke softly.

"It's as if, before entering a Weird World built from a Rule-Based Horror Story, I've already read the author's Survival Manual. The vague warnings are unclear, but they're enough to help me survive the nightmare."

So she solves mysteries in her dreams? That's interesting.

"Do you think you're an Urban Legend Player?" Ning Zhe asked.

"I think I am," Baizhi replied earnestly.

She went on to explain that after she started having nightmares, she searched online for all kinds of horror video games and works of fiction, hoping to find out what had caused them. But she'd never succeeded. The places in her nightmares didn't correspond to fictional games. They corresponded to real places and people.

So she didn't have nightmares because she played horror games. She started looking for horror games because she had nightmares...

"I tried searching for news about the psychiatric ward at Yongzhou City General Hospital. I found a report about a mental patient who sleepwalked one night, attacked people with a knife, and injured one doctor and three nurses."

Baizhi continued, "That same night, I dreamed that I was hiding from a wandering mental patient in that hospital."

In the dream, one doctor and three nurses had died too.

Only the news report said they'd been stabbed.

"Then you dreamed about He Family Village... and last night you dreamed the Manor at Bishuiwan was haunted, right?" Ning Zhe tried to understand how she thought. "What did the Survival Manual tell you this time?"

Baizhi took a deep breath.

1. Light meant danger.

2. Darkness meant safety.

3. Ghosts were afraid of light.

4. Ghosts liked the dark.

"That's about it." Baizhi's soft voice sounded very faint in the pitch-black room. "Ning Zhe, do you have any idea what it means?"

Hearing how quickly she'd calmed herself, Ning Zhe suddenly had a rather amusing thought.

"Do you think you're dreaming right now?"

Baizhi fell silent and didn't answer.

"All right, now I get your strange attitude. You've been treating me and your mom like NPCs in your dream."

Ning Zhe shook his head helplessly. His thoughts whirled as he used Baizhi's four clues to piece together everything he'd seen along the way.

"Ghosts need light to find people and kill them. As soon as someone hides in the dark, the ghosts might as well be blind."

"Ghosts need light to kill people, but they're afraid of it themselves. Like moths circling a candle, they can't resist its pull, yet they resent getting too close."

"What's with the sudden poetic tone?"