Setting Out

Chapter Six: Setting Out

"What... is going on?" Du Shangjing furrowed his brow as he stared at Bai Yanliang's name, which had turned so red it looked ready to drip blood.

"Li Mu, have you ever seen anything like this?"

Du Shangjing turned to ask the young man beside him, who looked about twenty-five or twenty-six. He had an ordinary face, but a remarkably well-proportioned build.

Du Shangjing's gaze was complicated. Compared to the others, he understood better than most just how frightening Li Mu could be.

When he had first entered this ghastly place, he had been the forty-seventh person. At the time, Li Mu had already been at the top...

No one knew when Li Mu had entered this place. He seemed never to experience any negative emotions.

Being assigned to the same group as him greatly increased one's chances of survival. He always helped everyone as much as he could.

If the forty-nine people here ever had to complete the same mission, there was no doubt he would have everyone's support.

In this ghastly place, even Zhou Li, who was just as outstanding, couldn't earn that degree of trust.

But in Du Shangjing's eyes, Li Mu seemed to be growing more and more low-key, more and more mysterious.

Strictly speaking, there was nothing wrong with Li Mu's features. Yet together, they made his young face look utterly ordinary.

Even his eyes, the easiest part of the face to reveal one's thoughts, were calm and gentle, without the slightest ripple.

"Li Mu?"

Du Shangjing called to him again.

"Hm? Sorry, I was thinking about something." Li Mu finished speaking, then slowly lowered his gaze from the blood-red name to Bai Yanliang.

"I've never seen anything like this either. In theory, a newcomer shouldn't be able to become a Grudge-Bound under any circumstances... But this isn't a good thing for him."

Li Mu had barely made that brief comment before falling silent again. Du Shangjing looked at Bai Yanliang too, deep in thought.

That was right... Becoming a Grudge-Bound was a good thing, but also something terrifying...

At that moment, though, most people looked far less composed than Li Mu and Du Shangjing—especially the four people grouped with Bai Yanliang.

As Bai Yanliang's name turned completely red, four more names began to change.

Xu Zhi'an, Feng Xinghan, Jiang Li, and... Li Yuejun!

Bai Yanliang looked toward the crowd. Four people with deeply troubled expressions stepped forward.

As for Li Yuejun, she was indeed the woman who had snapped at him earlier.

But now there wasn't the slightest trace of mockery on her face. Instead, she looked pale and terrified, filled with both resentment and fear.

What did it mean when a name turned red first...?

Could I be able to affect them?

Bai Yanliang pondered for a moment. He was just about to ask when Zhou Li spoke, his words coming rapidly, as if something were chasing him:

"Listen up, newcomers. Whatever you do, don't act alone! Also, three lines of text are about to appear. They'll be arranged in order to match the sequence of your three groups. Be sure to remember the text assigned to your group! Study it carefully. It's the key to escaping the 'past'!"

Zhou Li's words left Shen Changrong and Qi Nian bewildered and afraid of the unknown. One showed it plainly, while the other tried to hide it.

Only Bai Yanliang seemed not to have noticed anything at all.

As soon as Zhou Li finished speaking, a gentle voice drifted over from the back of the crowd. "Don't trust anyone."

Everyone turned around in unison, only to see Li Mu standing there with a calm expression. His gaze swept over the three newcomers, but he said nothing more.

Du Shangjing looked surprised. Zhou Li looked the same.

At that moment, the change finally came.

The forty-nine names densely arranged in the air—except for the nineteen that had already turned blood-red—suddenly scattered apart, transforming once more into gray mist.

"Look carefully!" Zhou Li called out again.

Shen Changrong and Qi Nian were bewildered and panicked, but when they saw everyone staring fixedly at the shifting gray mist, they hurriedly looked over too.

Bai Yanliang did the same, though his expression suggested he was deep in thought.

Under everyone's gaze, the gray mist formed from the thirty names quickly gathered again, turning into lines of text.

"One: Hide from the moon in the mountains; fish a coffin out from beneath the water. Limit: three days."

"Two: When you encounter a mirror, don't open your eyes; when you hear a soft call, don't turn around. Survive for one day."

"Three: Sleep with your back pressed to what's beneath you; lose your soul and wake within a dream. Limit: seven days."

Bai Yanliang had one great advantage: an excellent memory.

As long as he deliberately committed something to memory, etching it into his mind, he would never forget it. Except for the tragedy from ten years ago.

So as he read the three lines word by word, he also memorized the lines meant for the other two groups.

As soon as the text appeared, the faces of the people in the second group turned deathly pale.

"Yu Hanzhou... It's a survival mission..."

Du Shangjing looked at the refined young man with a complicated expression.

Yu Hanzhou was the youngest person at Yucheng Affiliated Hospital to earn doctorates in both literature and history. He was humble and courteous, with what should have been a boundless future ahead of him.

But... after he had accidentally entered this wretched place, a normal life had become impossible for him.

In the real world, he was still the same outstanding figure, courteous and elegant as an ancient gentleman.

But no one knew that Yu Hanzhou had been struggling in this bizarre, terrifying world for a whole year...

And now, at last, he had encountered a survival mission.

On the surface, the task assigned to Yu Hanzhou's group—"When you encounter a mirror, don't open your eyes; when you hear a soft call, don't turn around. Survive for one day"—seemed the easiest. The text appeared to make the taboos clear, and the time limit was only a single day.

But almost everyone knew that survival missions were the most terrifying and difficult of all, the ones most likely to drive a person to the brink of madness...

"Hanzhou."

A woman's voice, thick with worry, called from behind Yu Hanzhou. Hearing the familiar voice, he didn't turn around.

One of his groupmates knew a little about what had passed between them and glanced back at the woman.

Su Qian.

A student at Yucheng Affiliated Hospital.

The world was full of strange coincidences. Across a distance of thousands of miles, two of the forty-nine people came from the same city—and the same affiliated hospital.

Perhaps it was their similar circumstances, or perhaps their souls had drawn them together. When she first met Yu Hanzhou after arriving here, Su Qian had felt more joy than fear.

But Yu Hanzhou had never returned Su Qian's feelings, always keeping a polite distance.

Perhaps Yu Hanzhou knew that anyone who entered this place had lost the right to find happiness.

He had read widely and knew the past and present. How could he fail to understand the truth behind the saying, "If I'd known this would ensnare my heart, I would never have met you"?

Yu Hanzhou didn't dare go anywhere near love. After all... they were all trapped beneath a curse.

Beneath the dim light, the forty-nine people stood in silence.

The thirty who hadn't been chosen showed no signs of relief. Instead, when they looked toward Yu Hanzhou's second group, their eyes held the grief of a hare mourning a fallen fox.

Bai Yanliang looked up as the three lines of misty text scattered again, then turned into thick fog that swept toward the nineteen chosen people.

Panic, fear, shock, despair... Their faces showed every emotion imaginable.

At last, dense fog enveloped Bai Yanliang as well. Icy tendrils crept up from his feet until they covered his eyes.

Before the thirty people, Bai Yanliang and the others vanished abruptly beneath the gray mist, leaving only nineteen vivid red names suspended in midair, like an eternal curse.

Everyone knew that if even one of those names disappeared, it meant that person would never return...