Play your role well

"Ding-"

When Feng Ling fled Room 602, the elevator beside it opened on its own, even though no one had pressed the button.

Looking at the light spilling from the elevator, Feng Ling did not dare step inside. For an ordinary person, taking the elevator would certainly have been the quickest and easiest way downstairs. But now that she remembered she was in the Nightmare World, she had no intention of entering an enclosed space like that.

Feng Ling turned and headed straight for the stairwell marked "Emergency exit."

There were plenty of ghost stories involving stairs, too, but even if she really encountered something in the stairwell, at least she would have a chance to run.

With that thought, Feng Ling stopped hesitating and pushed open the stairwell door.

Unlike the stairwells in horror stories, the one in Happiness Residential Complex was brightly lit. Potted plants stood beside the windows at every landing, and the clean, clear windows were not locked shut. If she really encountered something uncanny, she could still escape at the cost of her legs.

As she ran down the stairs toward the first floor, Feng Ling imagined all sorts of horrifying scenes. But nothing happened even by the time she reached the second floor, and she began to calm down a little.

Before Feng Ling could breathe a sigh of relief, however, footsteps came from the first-floor stairwell.

Feng Ling immediately stopped beside the window on the second-floor landing and quietly opened it, even glancing at the soft grass below.

The footsteps drew closer. Feng Ling saw a woman in a red dress coming up the stairs, carrying a supermarket shopping bag and walking with her head lowered. Feng Ling reassured herself that the woman might live on the second floor and had simply been too impatient to wait for the elevator after returning from the supermarket.

But as the woman in the red dress climbed step by step and came alongside her, Feng Ling, who had been watching her closely, noticed that she was barefoot, yet she kept walking on tiptoe.

The only reassuring thing was that the woman kept her head lowered as she walked on tiptoe. Even when she reached Feng Ling, she did not stop, but continued up the stairs.

Like someone who had encountered a vicious beast in the forest, Feng Ling barely dared breathe. She kept her eyes fixed on the woman in the red dress, planning to wait until she reached the third floor and put some distance between them before fleeing to the first floor.

The stairwell lights shone on the woman in the red dress. Feng Ling looked up and saw the shadow of the woman with her lowered head on the stairwell wall.

The shadow on the wall was a little different from the woman in the red dress. A thick rope was tied around its neck, suspending it high in midair, as though it were... the shadow of someone who had hanged herself.

Looking again at the woman's constantly lowered head and raised heels, Feng Ling was so frightened that her body began to tremble.

The woman kept climbing and soon disappeared from Feng Ling's view. But Feng Ling remained frozen in the corner of the landing for quite some time. Only after even the footsteps had completely faded did she suddenly spring into motion and race toward the first floor.

If she had not been afraid of tumbling down the stairs, Feng Ling would have jumped straight down.

Pushing open the first-floor stairwell door, Feng Ling returned to Building 3's bright, spacious lobby after only a short absence-the place where she had met the young man in black earlier.

The lobby was completely empty. Not a single person was there.

For a moment, Feng Ling had no idea where to go.

Feng Ling knew she could not be the only player taking part in the Nightmare World game. But Happiness Residential Complex was so large, with so many buildings, that she truly had no idea where to look for the other players.

"Hah-cough, cough-cough, cough-"

Just as Feng Ling was at a loss about what to do next, she suddenly heard panting and coughing very close outside Building 3. Although she knew that not everything making noises in the Nightmare World was human, she still edged closer to the entrance, pressed herself against the inside of the glass door, and cautiously peered out.

Through the apartment building's glass door, Feng Ling looked at the landscaped grounds beneath the Red Moon's nighttime glow.

Although streetlights stood every few steps amid the lush greenery of Happiness Residential Complex, there were so many trees that it was still difficult to see exactly what was happening outside.

Feng Ling adjusted her glasses. All she could make out was someone carrying something on their back along the path toward a nearby tree.

Judging by his build, the person seemed to be a man. The thing on his back was nearly as large as he was and must have been extremely heavy, weighing him down so much that he could not straighten his back. He could only pant heavily and struggle forward, coughing now and then as though he were in poor health.

When he reached the tree he was heading for, he flung the thing off his back.

Only then did Feng Ling see clearly that the man had been carrying another person!

Judging by her clothes and build, it was a woman.

For the final stretch, the man dragged the woman roughly along, then threw her straight into a pit that had already been dug beneath the tree. He picked up the shovel beside the tree and began filling the pit with the dirt piled nearby!

The man was going to bury the woman alive!

Feng Ling clamped a hand over her mouth. She did not know whether the man was actually "human," but the woman had still been struggling when he threw her into the pit. Could she also be a player who had just entered the Nightmare World?

"Crash-"

Just as Feng Ling was at a loss about what to do, the deafening crash of a large pane of glass shattering suddenly came from another direction.

The "man" filling the pit seemed very worried about being caught. After hearing the sound, he glanced toward its source, then, as though he had seen something, hastily threw the shovel into the pit and scrambled into the nearby bushes.

Feng Ling even saw the "man" emerge from the other side of the bushes and rush into another building in the complex.

Once she was certain he would not return anytime soon, Feng Ling looked again at the pit beneath the tree. Although the light was very limited, she still thought she could see something struggling inside.

The woman might still be alive!

Feng Ling could no longer stop to think. After checking her surroundings, she rushed straight out of Building 3's entrance and soon reached the tree. Only a thin layer of dirt covered the bottom of the pit, so once she approached, she could clearly see that the person buried inside was a middle-aged woman covered in blood. All the blood on her body came from a wound in her neck.

Because the blood kept flowing, Feng Ling could not make out exactly what was wrong with the wound, but judging by the amount of blood, she almost thought the woman's neck had been pierced clean through.

Despite her severe injuries, the middle-aged woman could still see. She was even looking at Feng Ling, who had hurried over, her mouth opening and closing as though she were saying something.

Feng Ling was about to help the woman up when the woman caught her wrist instead. Holding up her badly injured neck, she spoke in a very faint voice, her urgency suggesting that she had some secret she simply had to tell Feng Ling.

Feng Ling could only crouch down and lean closer, trying to hear what the woman was saying.

"Why?"

"Is making people die really that entertaining?" Even though her neck had already been pierced through, the woman could still clearly finish an entire sentence.

At that instant, Feng Ling realized she was doing something utterly foolish. She should never have come here, should never have approached this woman. Her pointless kindness might truly kill her right here and now!

Feng Ling let go of the hand she had been using to support the woman and began pulling back with all her strength. But the woman's hand still gripped her tightly, and she could even feel those red fingernails about to pierce her arm!

"Let go of me!"

Feng Ling desperately tried to break free of the woman... or rather, the female ghost in the pit. Instead, the ghost dragged her straight into it. As though she were not injured at all, the ghost sat on top of Feng Ling and clamped both hands around her throat.

"I remember now. I've already died once. Why does he want to kill me again?"

"Is killing people really that much fun?" As the female ghost spoke, she let the blood from her neck drip onto Feng Ling's glasses.

As the ghost's grip around Feng Ling's throat gradually tightened, Feng Ling began to feel that she could no longer breathe. Even the Red Moon she could see through the gaps in the branches began to blur. She felt she might be about to fail the game.

"Ngh-"

Just as Feng Ling thought she was certain to die, she saw a sword pierce the female ghost's neck through a gap beside her glasses!

Yes, a sword!

A sword had pierced the wound in the ghost's neck once again.

Feng Ling watched as the enraged ghost turned her head, even releasing her grip on Feng Ling's throat. Then, in the next second...

In the next second, the sword's owner kicked the female ghost away.

"Run on your own. I can't hold out for long." The sword's owner then pulled Feng Ling out of the pit with one hand.

Through a gap beside her blood-smeared glasses, Feng Ling recognized the person holding the sword who had rescued her. It was actually the young man in black she had met in the lobby earlier. Feng Ling did not consider herself particularly thin, yet this handsome young man not only carried a sword, strange as that was, but had also hauled her out of the pit with a single hand.

Without waiting for him to say anything else, Feng Ling scrambled clear of the pit and backed away several steps.

Then Feng Ling saw the young man in black raise his sword again. The moment the female ghost tried to climb out of the pit once more, he pierced her neck with it again. This time, he drove the sword forcefully into the bottom of the pit, using the longsword like an enormous nail to pin the ghost firmly inside!

"Her neck is her weak point. As long as no one pulls out that sword, she won't be able to get up."

The young man in black showed no intention of retrieving the sword. Instead, he approached Feng Ling and stared at her with the eye that was not covered by his eyepatch, warning her one word at a time, "Miss Feng, if you want to survive, play your role well."

"You... who are..."

Feng Ling still had so many questions to ask, such as whether he was human or a ghost, and how he knew her surname was Feng.

But before Feng Ling could say anything, the young man in black had already slipped into the darkness deep beneath the trees, vanishing completely in the blink of an eye.

Who was he, really?