Chapter Summaries

The Players arrived at Red Maple Leaf Boarding School, where Ms. Medina warned them against witchcraft and the children recited an ominous nursery rhyme. Qi Si used his role as Number 47 to manipulate Ms. Medina and conceal his special identity, then realized Chen Lidong’s philanthropist identity was special too.

• Ms. Medina led the Players through the maple woods past corpses nailed to crosses and warned them not to use witchcraft.
• The Players entered the school, heard the children chant a rhyme about a witch’s curse, and Qi Si secretly recorded it.
• Qi Si told Ms. Medina that Chen Lidong had claimed to be a charity foundation observer, earning a cooking assignment while drawing her suspicion toward Chen Lidong.
• Ms. Medina ordered Qi Si to explain the Rules to the new students, so he repeated the nursery rhyme and told them the Rules were hidden in it.
• Chen Lidong asked Qi Si to conceal his identity, and Qi Si concluded that both their identities were special while planning to use their trust against them.

The Players agreed to explore Red Maple Leaf Boarding School, test its rules, and use NPC 47 to search for clues from the nursery rhyme. Qi Si secretly evaded their plans and a player seeking his uniform, then received a message that Ms. Medina had summoned him to the kitchen.

• Jiang Jue proposed that the Players investigate the different Ms. Medinas, explore the school, and search for clues mentioned in the nursery rhyme.
• The Players decided to send NPC 47 to find samples of the yellow flowers and butterflies, while Chen Lidong agreed to ask Qi Si to help.
• The Players divided into four teams to explore the school floors, leaving the mixed-race boy without a uniform behind.
• Philid followed Qi Si into the maple grove, where a disguised young man pointed him toward the forest depths and the NPC disappeared.
• Qi Si escaped Philid, changed back into NPC 47, and returned near the school building.
• A child’s face formed in water on a wall and told Qi Si that Ms. Medina had sent someone to take him to the kitchen.

Jiang Jue and Zhang Yiyu searched a classroom and discovered that NPC 47 seemed unusually intelligent and dangerous, while Qi Si followed a face to the kitchen and witnessed a vision of graves tied to 47. After the face forgot the episode and left him at the kitchen, Qi Si found that its ingredients shifted between ordinary food and disturbing body parts, then struggled to figure out how to cook.

• Jiang Jue told Zhang Yiyu that NPC 47 seemed too human and suspected he was the Instance's core NPC.
• Zhang Yiyu revealed that her skill showed more black smoke around 47 than around Ms. Medina, and Jiang Jue concluded that 47 was likely a powerful core NPC.
• Jiang Jue and Zhang Yiyu found strange writing and a skull in the classroom, then saw heads appear on every desk and heard them sing.
• Qi Si asked the face escorting him to cook with him, and it claimed that everyone had died because of his grave mistake.
• Qi Si saw graves numbered 1 through 50, including an open grave marked 47, before time and crowds swept past him and the face repeated its original message.
• Qi Si entered the kitchen, saw mushrooms and children's fingers turn into vegetables and rice when he blinked, and began wondering how to cook.

Qi Si returned with poisonous mushrooms as the Players gathered for a mandatory dinner and pieced together clues about Red Maple Leaf Boarding School. Zhang Yiyu discovered that her witch identity required her to gather ritual materials, with sacrificing the “Bad Child” as an optional objective.

• Qi Si finished cooking, returned with three mushrooms from the kitchen corner, and later brought the poisonous mushroom bundle to the cafeteria.
• Philid returned from the maple grove without finding 47 and realized that the white-shirted player had misled him.
• Zhou Datong told Chen Lidong about two concrete-sealed rooms on the second floor, and Chen Lidong described the bloodstained dormitories on the third floor.
• Qi Si warned Chen Lidong that Ms. Medina planned to kill him and bury him in the maple grove, and Chen promised to expose the school's secrets to The Foundation.
• Ms. Medina made the Players eat every serving of Qi Si's revolting vegetable mush, then ordered them to wash up and return to their dormitories.
• The Players compared their findings and rules, and Qi Si revealed a poisonous mushroom; Zhang Yiyu's system identified it as ritual material and assigned her a mandatory gathering quest and an optional sacrifice quest.

Qi Si and the other Players followed the Rules into Red Maple Leaf Boarding School’s bathroom, where a supernatural attack exposed an extra person among them. After the player was consumed by mud, the system revealed their main quest: kill Ms. Medina.

• Qi Si hid the mushroom and followed the Players toward the bathroom after the Rules required them to wash before entering the dormitory.
• Water-stain figures blamed Forty-seven for bringing evil and disease, while Jiang Jue led a group of Players into the bathroom despite the warning that its visitors died.
• As the Players washed, dirty water gathered around their feet and a mushroom-shaped gray stain appeared on one player’s back.
• Jiang Jue and Qi Si realized there were ten people in the bathroom although only nine had entered, and another Player recognized the extra man as someone Ms. Medina had placed in solitary confinement.
• Faces rose from the water and devoured the extra player, who crumbled into dirt, and the system updated the main quest to kill Ms. Medina.

Chang Xu entered the Indigenous Victims Memorial Hall with Dream Teller and discovered Qi Si’s portrait among the dead children’s photographs. Meanwhile, Jiang Jue’s group debated how to kill Ms. Medina, and Qi Si noticed his uniform had changed to bear the number 47.

• Chang Xu arrived alone at the Indigenous Victims Memorial Hall, met Dream Teller, and joined Ms. Medina’s tour of the former boarding school.
• Chang Xu examined photographs of the dead and recognized Qi Si’s face in a portrait numbered 47.
• Jiang Jue asked Qi Si whether Ms. Medina could be injured, and Qi Si recalled her falling down the stairs and later punishing students.
• Jiang Jue warned the Players that mud might have killed the student who died in solitary confinement, while Chen Lidong disputed his theory and urged caution about attacking Ms. Medina.
• The Players finished bathing and headed back to the dorms, where Qi Si noticed a maple leaf emblem and the number 47 on his uniform.

Qi Si found evidence of an Evil God and signs that the maple-forest soil had infected him, while the dormitory rules turned deadly after lights-out. The chapter left Philid suffering as a plant grew out of his back.

• Qi Si identified Dormitory 10 as the room for Players 46 through 50 and found bags of maple-forest soil and strange papers in its cabinets.
• Qi Si discovered a card identified as the remains of the Scarlet High Priest and considered whether the school’s witchcraft involved summoning an Evil God.
• Chen Lidong entered the dorm, and Qi Si frightened him with a brief performance before they settled into their assigned beds.
• After lights-out, Qi Si noticed that the skin on his feet had darkened and roughened like soil, suggesting he had been infected.
• Philid, isolated in Dormitory 11, turned on a flashlight and spoke after lights-out, violating the rules as a face appeared on the wall.
• Philid’s back erupted in pain and itching as a plant grew from his flesh and began consuming his life and strength.

Qi Si endured a night of insomnia and ghostly encounters in the dormitory, then followed Chen Lidong out to investigate the Instance. In another dormitory, Jiang Jue watched Sun Lin die after a ghost appeared and chose not to use his life-saving items to help him.

• A ghost appeared beside Qi Si's bed after lights-out and accused him of killing them, while another ghost materialized on an empty bed.
• A dorm inspection passed at midnight, and Qi Si noticed that the ghost vanished in the light but returned in the darkness.
• Chen Lidong slipped out of the dormitory to investigate, driven by his need to earn enough points to save his terminally ill wife.
• After hearing Chen Lidong leave, Qi Si followed him, heading toward the stairwell and passing an iron door that gave off a trace of bloodstain.
• In Dormitory No. 4, Sun Lin panicked at a ghost, fell from his bunk, and suffered a gruesome death as yellow flowers and butterflies emerged from his body.
• Jiang Jue watched Sun Lin die without using the items he carried that could have saved him.

Qi Si searched the archives room, burned its books to expose hidden evidence, and discovered a record hinting that the Players had all developed insomnia. After Yamakawa Nobuhiro was killed, Qi Si found that he had been Number 36 and uncovered an old report about an arsonist being executed as a scapegoat.

• Qi Si avoided the Players investigating the office and entered the archives room, where he found a hidden page describing how Number 36 had been blamed for a school fire.
• Yamakawa Nobuhiro wandered out of his dormitory and was pulled into the archives room by Qi Si, who introduced himself as Qi Wen and began burning the books.
• Qi Si told Yamakawa Nobuhiro that the books were likely a smokescreen and burned the archives in under a minute while Yamakawa Nobuhiro chose to stay with him.
• A sudden blow killed Yamakawa Nobuhiro, and Qi Si found the number 36 beneath his school badge.
• Qi Si burned the page about Number 36 being executed as a scapegoat, then opened a hidden iron box containing records, including the line, “They have all developed insomnia.”

Qi Si read records describing the Insomnia plague that destroyed Red Maple Leaf Boarding School and realized the Players faced a similar fate. After examining the disease and uncovering a secret about the Native Residents Charity Foundation, he received a mandatory side quest to determine its scheme.

• Qi Si connected the records of the boarding school's past to the real history of indigenous children being abducted and abused.
• Qi Si discovered that he was infected with Insomnia and examined Yamakawa Nobuhiro's corpse, where mushrooms had grown from a spreading stain.
• Qi Si read a scientific report describing Insomnia's transmission, symptoms, and deadly handling recommendations, then inferred that the Players' fates might mirror the recorded deaths by June 8.
• Qi Si found the name Ed Tolson and the Native Residents Charity Foundation engraved on the iron box, prompting the narrator to reveal that the foundation was behind the abuse and slaughter.
• Qi Si triggered a mandatory quest to determine the foundation's scheme and an optional quest to kill the Philanthropist.

Zhang Yiyu’s nighttime hunger drew her to a corpse, while Qi Si investigated the school’s hallucinations and discovered a note in his own handwriting that he could not remember writing. Meanwhile, Chen Lidong and Zhou Datong found strange symbols near a sealed room, leaving their meaning unresolved.

• Zhang Yiyu left her bed in a hunger-driven trance and found a corpse in the archives room, where she nearly gave in to the urge to eat it.
• Qi Si used the Pocket Watch of Fate and his notes to reason that the school’s hallucinations might overlay the real world rather than form a dream.
• Qi Si found a folded note in his backpack stating that the date was June 1, 1869, but he did not remember writing it.
• Chen Lidong and Zhou Datong went to the second floor to break into a cement-sealed room.
• Chen Lidong and Zhou Datong discovered delicate symbols scratched into cement near the sealed door, which Chen suspected had been carved with fingernails.

Chang Xu and Dream Teller received a memorial hall quest to decipher Indigenous documents, while Qi Si faced mounting memory loss at Red Maple Leaf Boarding School. After establishing a contract to record everything, Qi Si poisoned breakfast and questioned what counted as reality in the Instance.

• Chang Xu recalled his near-death encounter with Qi Si’s Sea God Scepter and remained wary of Qi Si, while the system assigned him and Dream Teller the task of deciphering the memorial hall’s documents.
• Qi Si feigned sleep through the night as the male Players showed signs of insomnia, then realized he was forgetting details and could no longer recall where he had put the poisonous mushrooms.
• Ms. Medina questioned the Players about a nighttime visit to the archives, and Zhang Yiyu admitted she had gone before Ms. Medina dismissed her and ordered Qi Si to prepare breakfast.
• Qi Si found notes throughout the school and concluded that he had repeatedly forgotten information, so he made a contract with himself to record every detail he encountered.
• Qi Si saw a vision of a child being killed beside the kitchen, found the poisonous mushrooms in his backpack, and crushed them into the breakfast pot.
• Qi Si reasoned that the kitchen mushrooms symbolized pathogens in the food and wondered whether illness depended on the Players’ condition in reality rather than inside the illusion.

During a lesson at Red Maple Leaf Boarding School, Zhang Yiyu gave in to her hunger and ate Yamakawa Nobuhiro’s corpse, only to be caught by 47, who was actually Si Qi. Si Qi tricked her into signing an Evil God Worship Contract and offered to keep her alive in exchange for obedience, leaving Zhang Yiyu trapped under his influence.

• Jiang Jue estimated that the Instance would last about six days, while Ms. Medina made the Players recite a lesson in the cafeteria.
• Zhang Yiyu slipped away to the archives room and ate Yamakawa Nobuhiro’s corpse, overwhelmed by her hunger and resentment toward the Investigation Bureau.
• Qi Si found Zhang Yiyu and admitted that he had set the archive-room fire after she threatened to expose him.
• Qi Si presented Zhang Yiyu with an Evil God Worship Contract promising to help her survive, and she signed it, gaining an Evil God Follower marker.
• Qi Si removed his human-skin mask and revealed himself as Si Qi, then told Zhang Yiyu he would ensure her survival if she obeyed him.
• Qi Si urged Zhang Yiyu to reject human control and serve as his agent, promising that the anomalous would one day run rampant across the world.

Qi Si forced Zhang Yiyu to help dispose of a corpse and coached her to claim she had mistaken it for dirt, diverting suspicion from himself. The Players debated the nursery rhyme’s meaning while Zhang Yiyu feared Qi Si might use her as a hostage or kill her to keep her silent.

• Qi Si told Zhang Yiyu to eat the corpse so they would leave no traces, then made her rehearse a story that framed the killing as an accidental result of eating what she thought was dirt.
• After Ms. Medina left, Qi Si and Zhang Yiyu joined the Players’ morning reading, and Zhang Yiyu told Jiang Jue she had eaten a corpse in the archive room.
• The Players connected Zhang Yiyu’s story to the nursery rhyme about good children eating dirt and speculated that the dirt might be corpses.
• Qi Si threatened Zhang Yiyu with her soul before easing the pressure, then persuaded her to mislead the Players to protect her own chance at freedom.
• The Players ate the cafeteria food and continued debating the rhyme while Zhang Yiyu worried that Qi Si might use or kill her.

The Players considered how to complete the quest to kill Ms. Medina, but her lethal power stopped them from attacking. Qi Si used Zhang Yiyu’s Soul Leaf to spy on Jiang Jue’s discovery of letters between Ms. Medina and Baron, whose most striking phrase was “the natives’ witchcraft.”

• Jiang Jue asked the Players whether they had items that could boost their combat power, and the group discussed attacking Ms. Medina.
• Ms. Medina ordered Players 11, 25, and 41 to the detention room; when one Player charged at her, flowers and butterflies consumed his body.
• Jiang Jue deduced that the three Players had broken the rule about knocking before entering the office and invited others to follow him to see the clues he had found.
• Qi Si warned the Players that Ms. Medina assigned classrooms by number, then went to classroom 47 and used Zhang Yiyu’s Soul Leaf to observe Jiang Jue.
• Qi Si saw Jiang Jue retrieve letters exchanged between Ms. Medina and Baron, including a reference to “the natives’ witchcraft.”

Jiang Jue uncovered letters revealing that the Foundation had used Red Maple Leaf Boarding School to confine indigenous children and pursue experiments into supposed witchcraft. Qi Si completed a side quest by explaining the Foundation’s scheme, then reasoned that the school contained multiple spaces and set out for the cemetery to investigate how to reach another one.

• Jiang Jue examined Philid’s mushroom-covered corpse, found hidden letters, and explained that Foundation factions had used the school to confine indigenous children for experiments.
• Chen Lidong read experimental records and received mandatory and optional quests to find witchcraft that could cure illness and bring a witch’s corpse back to the Foundation.
• Qi Si concluded that the Foundation’s factions both supported confining indigenous children, completed his mandatory quest, and speculated that Chen Lidong’s optional quest targeted Zhang Yiyu.
• Qi Si reasoned that another space might contain a more vulnerable Ms. Medina and headed toward the cemetery before the ten o’clock assembly.

Qi Si explored the cemetery and found an empty coffin beneath tombstone 47, whose inscription promised rebirth in two hundred years. He lay inside to set a trap and instructed Zhang Yiyu to open the coffin if he did not return by ten o’clock, then heard familiar voices approaching.

• The chapter recounted how 47 preserved his tribe’s language and worship of the Evil God despite brutal punishment at the boarding school, and how the teachers eventually sent him and other children for secret experiments.
• Qi Si, feverish and suffering from worsening memory loss, found unfamiliar writing across the ground and recognized that he had copied it onto paper without remembering doing so.
• Qi Si found tombstone 47 and read the coffin’s inscription: “I will be reborn in two hundred years.”
• Qi Si climbed into the coffin, tried its sturdy lid, and told Zhang Yiyu to claim she was a witch if questioned by Jiang Jue and to open the coffin if Qi Si was not in class by ten.
• As Qi Si drifted in the darkness, he recalled being buried alive at sixteen and heard two men outside discuss summoning native ghosts; he recognized one of their voices.

Dream Teller and Chang Xu investigated the memorial hall and cemetery, finding evidence that insomnia was a disease and hearing a disturbing nursery rhyme. Meanwhile, Jiang Jue uncovered the Players’ illness and pressured Zhang Yiyu into revealing her witch identity and quests, then identified Zhou Datong as a likely key to the Philanthropist mystery.

• Dream Teller and Chang Xu read the memorial hall rules, examined documents, and found a report describing insomnia as a bacterium that harmed Indigenous people.
• Dream Teller copied Indigenous writing, and he and Chang Xu went to the cemetery, where they heard children singing a rhyme about poisoned mushrooms, yellow butterflies, and a witch’s curse.
• Jiang Jue found Qi Si’s iron box in the burned archives and read that insomnia caused sleeplessness, fever, memory loss, hallucinations, and death.
• Jiang Jue told the Players to seek a cure or kill Ms. Medina, outlining plans involving infection, witchcraft, or reaching another space.
• Jiang Jue confronted Zhang Yiyu, who revealed that she was a witch with quests to kill the Philanthropist and summon the Evil God.
• Jiang Jue connected Zhang Yiyu’s quests to the Instance’s clues, suspected Zhou Datong was the Philanthropist, and noticed the mirror in his hand.

Ms. Medina punished a Player for stealing her original letters, then the Instance entered a new stage with a five-day countdown to a massacre and a new quest to find a cure for insomnia. As the group went to investigate documents and ghostly children, Zhang Yiyu left to try to free Qi Si from the coffin after receiving no reply from him.

• Ms. Medina killed a Player with yellow flowers and recovered the original letters Jiang Jue had claimed were copies.
• Ms. Medina accused an unknown Player of burning the archives, then announced free activity time before leaving with the letters.
• Jiang Jue explained that he had infected the letters with soil from his body to infect Ms. Medina, and denied intending for anyone to die.
• The Instance entered a new stage, revealing a June 8 massacre, a five-day mission timer, and an optional quest to prepare medicine for insomnia.
• Jiang Jue led the Players toward two rooms containing documents as ghostly children appeared and discussed the illness and the fourth floor.
• Zhang Yiyu left the group and headed toward the cemetery to open Qi Si's coffin after receiving no response to her messages.

During a murder-mystery game, Qi Si explained his cynical view of morality to Ning Xu. In the Instance, Zhang Yiyu hesitated to rescue Qi Si from the cemetery, but Chen Lidong caught her and forced her to lead him to Gravestone No. 47.

• Jin Yusheng, Qi Si, and Ning Xu played Three-Day Manor, where Qi Si was exposed as the murderer in the scenario.
• Ning Xu and Qi Si debated whether morality mattered when people could escape the consequences of killing, and Qi Si said he hated trouble.
• Zhang Yiyu approached the cemetery but reconsidered risking her life to find Qi Si, recalling that he had given her little help and kept her uninformed.
• Chen Lidong followed Zhang Yiyu, held a dagger to her throat, and accused her of helping the supposedly NPC 47, whom he suspected was a Player.
• Zhang Yiyu told Chen Lidong that Si Qi had ordered her to find Gravestone No. 47 and open the coffin behind it, and the Ring of Truth confirmed her answers.
• Chen Lidong forced Zhang Yiyu to lead him deeper into the cemetery toward the grave.