Social Darwinism

By the time Qi Si returned to the residential complex where he lived, it was already midnight.

The old residential complex was a festering wound on the city, rotten through and through.

The earliest residents had gradually moved away, leaving behind the refuse that included the poor and the elderly. As the poor grew poorer, new poor people moved in to replace them. When the elderly died, new elderly people arrived to wait for death.

Ever since countries around the world had been downgraded to commanderies and brought under the Federation's rule, poverty had spread across the globe like a plague. Apart from a few important regions, most places had truly achieved an average level of prosperity.

The water and power were cut off once every ten days or half a month. Spit and bird droppings were left uncleaned on the roads, and foul water overflowed from the gaps in the trash cans. There was no need to worry about population migration, because ninety-nine percent of places were just as utterly awful.

Qi Si had little concept of outward labels like rich and poor. An ugly entrepreneur could not escape the fate of being sent to a pig farm, while a good-looking poor person might find a place in a collection room.

But he still hated poor cities, if only because he hated rainy days here.

Industrial zones that had drained the city's resources hung overhead like clusters of clouds. Even the falling rain was full of heavy-metal dust and particles of unknown composition.

After the rain stopped, puddles contaminated with pollutants remained all over the ground, reflecting suspicious patches of light beneath the streetlamps. Every so often, a few blister-like bubbles swelled up, bringing to mind the poison brewed by witches in fairy tales.

No matter where you stood or which way you looked, it was hard to spot a single place to set foot, even with the streetlights to help. Even a sparrow hopping on one leg would probably have sighed in disappointment.

By the time Qi Si reached the building entrance, his trouser legs were already soaked through.

He pushed the door open, went straight into the elevator, and pressed "11."

With a creak that seemed to carry an ominous hint of disaster, the elevator made it to the eleventh floor. Then, amid a fresh round of unbearable squealing, it trembled its way back down to the first.

Qi Si stood outside Room 1101 and entered the password on the electronic lock.

His parents had bought this apartment. After they died in a car accident when he was sixteen, he used a few rather complicated and not entirely legal methods to become the sole owner of the property.

He had lived here for six years now. He could not say whether it was nostalgia or simply habit.

The couplet on the door had faded until its words were unreadable, peeling and tattered like scabs falling from a wounded person.

The two-bedroom apartment behind it, however, was exceptionally tidy. The snowy-white walls and gleaming floors made it hard to believe there was even a speck of dust to be found.

The master bedroom had been closed for years. In practice, the only spaces he used were the second bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom, so cleaning was not much of a chore.

Qi Si tossed the suitcase containing the corpse into the bathroom, then stood at the sink and rinsed his hands beneath the faucet turned all the way up.

Even now, there were still things he could not quite figure out. For instance, why had "Liu Ajiu" chosen to rob his studio, only to be subdued by him so easily...

Well, forget it. It did not matter.

Qi Si rubbed soap into every gap between his fingers and scrubbed his hands until they were red before finally stopping.

He went into the kitchen, grabbed a packet of instant noodles, and cooked it. Then he slurped it down slowly, in small mouthfuls, and hastily took care of his long-overdue dinner.

At one thirty in the morning, Qi Si took a shower, pulled on one of the uniformly white shirts in his wardrobe, and gradually began to feel drowsy.

Although the Eerie Game's instances did not take up any time in reality, he had still been under intense mental strain for days on end.

And in the final curtain call, he had been rushing around on his own, giving it his all, and had even witnessed the collapse of a high-rise building at close range.

The leading man, returning home after an eventful performance, yawned languidly, fished out his phone, and searched for the words "Eerie Game forum."

Humans were creatures who liked to huddle together for warmth. They were good at sorting themselves into groups through all kinds of labels, whether to shut outsiders out or find others like themselves.

Most players who were unexpectedly dragged into the "Eerie Game" would feel helpless and despairing. To soothe their sense of imbalance, they were bound to seek out others who had been just as "unlucky" and share their miserable experiences.

Chang Xu had mentioned earlier that he could find information about the "Sariel Guild" on the "forum." From the way he had spoken, he seemed to assume that "players entering the game for the second time" could easily access it.

Considering the average information-gathering ability of people these days, Qi Si was inclined to believe the forum was on the public internet and could be found through an ordinary search.

As it turned out, his guess was right.

Once the page loaded, Qi Si quickly found a black webpage with silver lettering, after passing a few unrelated novels and comics.

#Selling an item that might be related to the Main God. DM me if interested. Federation currency only; bring cash for an in-person deal#

#High school girl here, got my own team-up item, looking for a big shot to carry me#

#Let's dig into the secrets of Yu Jinsheng, the new vice president of the Listen Wind Guild#

#First NE clear of Screaming Amusement Park, 80,000-word analysis guide, includes a full walkthrough of the instance#

#A fan thread for Fu Jue, just here to boost my post count and level up, hehehe#

Just like any other forum, this forum with its unusual subject matter was filled with all kinds of information, both good and bad.

Of course, at this stage, about ninety percent of it was useless to Qi Si.

The top post was an introductory guide for newcomers. Qi Si spent half an hour reading it from beginning to end and got a rough grasp of a few facts:

First, the Eerie Game had first appeared on January 1, 1999. It had been thirty-six years since then, and as of that date, at least four million people had been drawn into the game.

Players had all sorts of theories about why the game had formed and how to clear it. Even after all this time, the theorists had yet to reach a consensus. But one thing was certain: "The Rules must not be defied."

As for what the Rules actually were, the replies beneath the post were full of heated arguments. Some said they were Rule Horror, others said they were natural laws, and still others said they were the operating principles of all things.

Second, players who had not been chosen by the game could not know it existed. Anyone who knew the game existed would inevitably be chosen by it.

As for innocent bystanders, even if you kept telling them about the Eerie Game right beside their ears, they would automatically filter out the information. Either they would not hear you at all or they would think they had heard a story plot. Even if they saw the Eerie Game forum, they would unconsciously scroll right past it as though it were not there.

No wonder Qi Si's earlier investigation had hit a crucial point and ground to a halt.

Still, according to the forum, Qi Si should not have found even the slightest clue. For some reason, reality had turned out quite differently.

Third, players had formed various guilds based on different beliefs. Although most guilds bullied newcomers and squeezed them for points and items, newcomers without a guild tended to die even faster.

The most famous guilds were the Nine Provinces Guild, the Listen Wind Guild, and the Sariel Guild. There was also a guild called "the Scales," sharing its name with an illegal religious group in the real world. It was unclear whether that was a coincidence.

[We are all human. Our fates are linked, our feelings in common, and our positions and aspirations shared. In our struggle against the uncanny, only by weathering the storm together and supporting one another can we achieve final victory!]

That was the Nine Provinces Guild's motto.

Qi Si had been hit in the face with that nauseating speech the moment he entered the forum. Then, in the replies to a post introducing the guild, he ran into a whole pile of people spamming the same quote.

Thinking of what he had experienced in Rose Manor, he had nearly burst out laughing.

Fourth, players who had cleared three instances or fewer were considered newcomers. Only after clearing their third instance could they advance to Official Player status and unlock the full range of features, including the Game Space, Player Plaza, and shop.

Newcomers got their instances from the Novice Pool, while Official Players got theirs from the Official Pool. The Official Pool had a higher average difficulty than the Novice Pool, but that was not necessarily true of every individual instance.

The Novice Pool had instances that could get you killed, and the Official Pool had instances that practically handed out points.

It was generally accepted that the third instance was a hurdle. Many players inexplicably died before becoming Official Players, and their deaths made no sense at all. It was common to see the "strong die, the weak survive."

Fifth, there was said to be a final instance. Its trigger conditions and contents were unknown, but if even one player cleared it, any wish could be granted. That included rewriting the rules of the Eerie Game, resurrecting and releasing everyone, and even shutting the game down forever.

The player most widely believed to be capable of clearing the final instance was a player named Fu Jue. He ranked first on the Comprehensive Strength Ranking and was the vice president of the Nine Provinces Guild. Replies called him "the Chief" or "God Fu," and he had countless admirers. It looked very much as though they were preparing to elevate him to the throne of a savior.

"The final instance, huh? What a plot full of holes. Would the being that made the game rules really leave rules that could work against it? Interesting."

Qi Si gave a sardonic laugh. He thought the Eerie Game was a complete mess, from its mechanics to its players.

—Like it had gone through several different production teams and planners, each with their own ideas, until the whole thing turned into a hodgepodge.

He pushed aside his scattered thoughts and searched the forum for the word "Sariel."

A great many results came up, all with plenty of discussion. Most took the Sariel Guild to task, treating it as a target that could do no right, a black sheep among a flock of lambs.

Qi Si learned that Sariel was one of the earliest guilds established in the Eerie Game. Its president, codenamed "Puppeteer," had an unknown real identity and was rarely seen.

The guild claimed to follow Social Darwinism. It advocated killing as many weak players as possible to counter the Eerie Game's bizarre "survival of the weak" law. At the same time, it funneled resources toward elite players in hopes of triggering and clearing the final instance.

What bothered Qi Si most was that Sariel's official account had declared that if anyone killed one of its guild members and the guild found out, it would pursue the matter to the very end.

"Weren't they supposed to be all about Social Darwinism? Why are they pulling this now?" Qi Si complained with narrowed eyes. "They're huddling together for warmth, yet they still keep talking about their ideology. Is it to indulge the president's chūnibyō fantasies?"

Being targeted by a bunch of unreasonable lunatics was definitely no good. It would be a real pain.

Although Qi Si knew full well that he was not exactly a reasonable, normal person himself, he still thought it was poor form for an old guild to go after a newcomer like him.

Yes, he sternly condemned this double standard.

Bored, Qi Si searched for the keyword "Rose Manor" as well. A huge number of walkthrough posts came up. It seemed this instance had been thoroughly studied.

What was interesting, though, was that dozens of walkthroughs all recorded [Normal End—"Bloody Bond"], with the method of clearing it given as following the rules and making sure you survived until the end.

One player had written in a post, still shaken:

[This was my second instance. There were only three players, including me, but we had eight whole rules to follow! To put it bluntly, the only way to test which rules were real was to stake lives on it. The other two were on their third instance. I never thought I'd make it out alive!]

[For the first two days, I followed the rules very carefully. They broke more rules than I did, and died one after another during the night. Honestly, at the time, I didn't believe in the Minimum Death Quota mechanism at all. They were both dead, and I still couldn't find any way to clear the instance. Was I supposed to go up to the third floor?]

[On the third night, Miss Anna broke down the door and came at me with a scythe two meters long! Just when I thought I was done for, a red dress suddenly flew out from under the mattress and vanished right before my eyes. I found that time had gone back five minutes!]

[I thought that instead of waiting to die in the room, I might as well see if I could get out of the manor, so I went downstairs right away. I left the castle, only to find Miss Anna waiting in the garden, waving her blade as she chased me! I ran for my life, and an old woman in red appeared from nowhere and held Miss Anna back, telling me to hurry and leave...]

[The Butler showed up too. I thought he would help Miss Anna come after me, but instead he led me to the entrance, opened the door, and let me go. I cleared the instance in a daze. After I got out, I came down with a high fever and nearly lost half my life...]

Judging by the posts on the forum, all the players who had matched into the Rose Manor instance before had cleared it by triggering the "Minimum Death Quota" mechanism. They had only a vague understanding of the conditions for triggering the time-reversal mechanism.

Still, that post answered some of Qi Si's questions:

So the red dress he had found beneath the mattress was not only a clue, but also a one-use lifesaving item.

When a player encountered a death point, the red dress would automatically be consumed to reverse time for a short while.

If they cleared the instance via the TE route, they would use up the red dress in the first room on the third floor, just like Qi Si and Chang Xu, and safely obtain the clue about Miss Anna's parents.

If they cleared it via the NE route, they would, like the original poster, muddle through the third night's deadly game, somehow save their own lives, and escape.

As he pieced things together, Qi Si could not help snorting. "Could I really be the first to clear it with a TE? No way. No way, right?"

In the recommendations, a call for submissions posted by the Nine Provinces Guild popped up at just the right moment.

Qi Si clicked it without thinking.

It was an old post with tens of thousands of replies. Its basic message was a call for all players to record their experiences in each instance and how they had achieved each ending.

[Right now, we are like lone boats in a sea of people. Those who have not been chosen by the game do not know what we are going through, and we cannot expect them to understand.]

[Leave your records here. Show the way to those who come after you, or leave proof that you were here. Let all of us remember that you existed.]

[One day, we will clear the final instance and shut down the Eerie Game. The sealed past will come to light again, and neither contributions nor sacrifices will be buried. Our memories will endure, our souls will live on, and together we will look toward a future without the uncanny!]

Qi Si spent two seconds reading the motivational essay in the main post and was thoroughly disgusted. He immediately went looking for a block option.

After searching for ages and failing to find one, he could only close the post, full of irritation, and exit the game forum.

Whatever happened, he had no intention of being a good person and posting a walkthrough of how he had cleared the instance.

Who knew what power was behind the forum? He could post something now, and have his address leaked the very next moment.

After reviewing information security from beginning to end in his mind, Qi Si reached under his bedsheet and felt around, then pulled out an enormous rubbing sheet and held it up before his eyes.

The words "Go die" and "You're not human" were printed on the sheet, clawing and slashing as though they might break through the paper at any moment and slap the young man holding it.

Qi Si admired it, fascinated, for a while. At last, he escaped the false atmosphere of goodwill fostered by the Nine Provinces Guild and returned to the malice of reality.

Satisfied, he yawned, turned off the light, wrapped himself in the quilt, and fell into a deep sleep.