Carnivore (1): Bus

At eight o'clock on the evening of March 12, one hour remained on the countdown before him.

Qi Si had gotten dressed early and sat on the sofa. His pockets were stuffed with various little tools, like Swiss Army knives, and he held a newly bought chainsaw in his arms, with a gun in his right hand.

The gun had been left behind by Liu Ajiu. It was the most ordinary standard-issue model, but not the kind one could easily get on the market.

Considering that he had "illegally" brought a specially made wristband into his first instance, Qi Si thought there were two possibilities: either there was something special about the wristband itself, or there was something special about him.

He had already asked a "friend" to investigate the first possibility. As for the second... he really wanted to test whether he could bring other things into an instance, too.

As the saying went, "All fear stems from insufficient firepower." Physical attacks might not work on the eerie, but if he couldn't kill the eerie, couldn't he at least kill his teammates?

The time ticked away. Qi Si had nothing pressing to do, so he casually pulled a book from the shelf and began to read.

When the countdown hit zero, he was reading a passage about people eating:

"Once the communal kitchen closed, there was nothing to eat at home, so everyone scrambled to strip bark off the elm trees. My mother was too weak to get any. We chopped the bark into little pieces, dried them in a pan, then ground them into flour and boiled it into soup. That soup was delicious—thick and sticky. Once it cooled, you could suck it up, and finish a whole bowl in one gulp. Isn't it strange? My grandmother had even fallen unconscious and was babbling, but when my sister-in-law put an elm-bark bun in her mouth, Grandma stopped shouting nonsense and started gnawing on it..."[Note]

[The countdown has ended. You are about to enter the next instance.]

An ear-piercing notification sound interrupted his immersive reading.

The world spun around him. The colors before his eyes scattered like drifting sand and vanished into the pitch-black darkness of the universe's birth. Then, at some point, a glimmer of light appeared.

Qi Si found himself standing before a full-length mirror. The reflection in it flashed by and disappeared, replaced by two lines of silvery-white text.

[You have not yet become an Official Player and do not have permission to select an instance]

[Instances are generated at random and do not consume real-world time]

The text remained for fifteen seconds before fading away, leaving only a black vortex slowly spinning in the middle of the mirror.

Qi Si stepped into the vortex.

The moment he entered the mirror, all light vanished, and darkness surrounded him.

[Randomly generating instance...]

[Loading instance... Loading complete]

A jolt, a dizzying jolt.

Bumps and jolts, accompanied by a creaking and groaning, as if they would shatter his bones along with the frame of his body.

The air was thick with the smell of aging leather, mingled with the heavy stench of smoke and gasoline.

Qi Si's mind went foggy for an instant, and a sudden weakness washed over him, like the familiar feeling of blood loss. It was as if he had just dragged himself out of a hazy, muddled sleep.

He opened his eyes and found himself sitting on a medium-sized bus. He had no gun or chainsaw, nor any of the little tools he had specially prepared. All he had were the specially made wristband on his right wrist, the [Rose Heart] hanging around his neck, and the [Pocket Watch of Fate] in his left pocket.

A card, its design interwoven with red and black, hung in the upper-right corner of his vision. On it, a figure with half a face spewing tentacles and eyeballs stared at Qi Si with a faint, mocking smile.

The moment his gaze fell on it, lines of text appeared beneath the card:

[Identity Card: Humanoid Evil Spirit]

[Effect: You will find it easier to establish a connection with Evil Gods, evil objects, evil spirits, and other such entities (hidden effects awaiting discovery)]

Could the Identity Card he'd unlocked in Rose Manor really be brought into other instances? How come no one on the forum had mentioned that?

And what exactly was the difference between Evil Gods, evil objects, and evil spirits? Did this mean he'd have an easier time attracting ghosts?

Qi Si inexplicably sensed that some enormous trouble was brewing beneath the surface.

He shifted his gaze and surveyed his surroundings.

Including the driver's seat, the bus had twelve seats. He sat by the window, with a clear view through the grime-streaked glass of the withered wheat fields and dusty sky outside.

The typical rural scenery rolled by as the bus sped onward. The longer he looked, the more monotonous it seemed.

Every seat apart from the driver's was occupied. Men and women sat with their heads drooping in a drowsy stupor, and now they were gradually waking up. Some looked relatively calm, while others trembled like startled birds.

A scream rang out in the cramped bus. It came from the girl sitting in front of Qi Si.

The girl looked younger than twenty, with a bob haircut and a student-like appearance. Her baby face was covered in freckles, and she wore a long, light-gray down coat that made her look rather short.

Trembling, she timidly looked around at the people nearby and asked in a voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz, "Where is this? Who... who are you?"

"Miss, if you're sitting here, you must've picked up a black card too, right?" The speaker was sitting beside Qi Si. He was a chubby young man in his early twenties, wearing a wool coat. His build was broad, making him look quite burly.

The chubby man spoke with a Northeastern accent and sounded rather friendly. "The card I picked up said this is the Eerie Game, and that you can have a wish granted if you clear it."

The girl wiped her tears, her voice turning tearful. "I don't want a wish granted... I thought it was a dream, so I said 'yes'... I just want to go home now. Please, can you let me leave?"

"If you just want to get out, try to survive a few more days and see if you can clear the final instance." The speaker was a middle-aged man in a green military overcoat. His hair was oily and disheveled, and stubble covered his angular face. The weathering of the years had turned it half white.

"W-what is the final instance?"

"I don't know. I only heard about it. It's been thirty-six years, and I've never heard of anyone clearing it." When the middle-aged man finished speaking, he turned away to gaze at the wheat fields outside the window.

The square-faced woman in a black tracksuit sitting beside him patiently explained, "Little girl, the final instance is the ultimate trial of the Eerie Game. Any Official Player who has cleared three or more instances could trigger it at any time. If even one player clears it, the Eerie Game will shut down and all the players will be released."

"H-how do you clear the final instance?"

"We all want to know, but unfortunately, no one has the answer. But don't worry too much, little girl. Once you clear an instance, you can wish to leave the game. I heard you just need to save up ten million points. Once you become an Official Player, you can also earn points through investments and businesses, and choose to enter easy instances. I heard things will be no different from ordinary life by then..."

As the woman spoke, a blond young man who had been curled up in his seat asleep seemed to have been woken by the noise. He shouted irritably, "Can you keep it down? Are you going to let me sleep or not?"

Everyone exchanged glances for a moment.

To be sleeping so soundly in an instance, he was either completely unworried or a big shot.

Then the blond young man sleepily opened his eyes and looked around. His eyes suddenly widened. "Fuck! What kind of place is this? Where's my gear?"

He shoved a hand into his pocket. The next second, he let out an even more anguished wail. "Oh my God! Where's my phone?!"

Well, it seemed this one was a newcomer too—and the kind who still had no idea what was going on.

What caught Qi Si's attention was that the young man was white, with a Western appearance, yet everyone there could understand the standard Mandarin he spoke.

Was he a native speaker with a high-level command of Chinese, or did the Eerie Game provide translation?

"Sir... our foreign friend, don't panic. Apart from your body and clothes, nothing else can be brought into an instance." A thin man with a refined appearance smiled as he spoke. "Think carefully about what you know of this game. The invitation should have told you the basics."

The white young man quieted down, apparently remembering some information.

After he figured out what was going on, he looked as if he'd witnessed a miracle and kept muttering under his breath, "Wow! Supernatural events! Cool!"

The girl, another newcomer, still hadn't stopped crying. She wiped her tears, looking so fragile she might topple over in a breeze.

If they'd seen her acting like this outside the game, most of the men present would have felt a powerful urge to protect her. But in the game, the first thought that crossed their minds was: Will such a useless teammate drag the whole team down?

Fortunately, despite being scared, the girl had enough sense not to do something suicidal like demand that the bus stop.

Of course, she couldn't have asked the bus to stop anyway. The driver's seat was empty. Either it was on autopilot, or this was a genuine paranormal occurrence.

There were eleven people aboard in total. Most of them, including Qi Si, remained coldly silent.

In the stifling atmosphere, the instance information finally arrived.

[Instance Name: Carnivore]

[Instance Type: Team Survival (11 players)]

[Main Mission: Survive for five days in Su Village]

[Preliminary Hint: The blood-soaked truth is buried in the villagers' casual remarks. Reconstruct the truth from their words and repeat it at the appropriate moment, and the villagers will be unable to harm you]

Four lines of text appeared on the system panel. Qi Si stared at the three characters "Su Village" with a listless expression.

He hated the countryside, especially dusty Chinese villages like this.

After his parents died, he'd been sent to live in the countryside for nearly a year. The experience had made him pathologically nauseous at the thought of it.

Now, he didn't want to stay here for even a single day.

"I wonder what the Minimum Death Quota is. Would one person a day be enough? If not, what about two?"

Qi Si maliciously weighed the possibilities, but soon realized with disappointment that, given the players' physical condition, the most he could do was bully the elderly, women, and children—and only if he caught them alone.

His options were to take advantage of the instance's mechanics, like when he'd become a "Humanoid Evil Spirit" in Rose Manor, or to play nice, gather clues, and try to figure out the world's rules as soon as possible...

Qi Si touched the Pocket Watch of Fate in his arms, discreetly shifted his gaze, and looked toward the empty driver's seat.

Their destination was Su Village, yet the players had to be sent there by bus. It seemed rather unnecessary...

[Note] Quoted from Yang Xianhui's Tales of the Dingxi Orphanage.