How to clear the game

Unlike the other three players, Su Bai had not lost his memories when he entered Happiness Residential Complex, even though he had also been assigned a role. He knew exactly where he had come from and why he was here.

Perhaps even Happiness Residential Complex itself knew that Su Bai was different from the other players selected for the game. His assigned identity was not a resident of Happiness Residential Complex, but a visitor.

In the background Happiness Residential Complex had created for him, he was indeed an utterly unremarkable young man, as invisible as air-even an Automatic Door would not react when he walked past. Sometimes Su Bai thought he had been given such a role because Happiness Residential Complex itself wanted him to keep a low profile.

Anything bathed in the Red Moon's light would mutate. Buildings changed more slowly, but there were still many buildings and building complexes with bizarre powers, or even self-awareness.

Su Bai therefore could not rule out the possibility that Happiness Residential Complex had a consciousness of its own. He even suspected that the players' memory loss might have a great deal to do with the complex itself.

Returning to the matter at hand, since Su Bai had been assigned the role of a visitor, there had to be someone in the complex waiting for his visit. According to his background, he was supposed to visit an elderly woman in apartment 402 of Building 3. She was his "aunt," unmarried and childless, and her only companions in apartment 402 were a dozen or so stray cats she had rescued.

Because he had not lost his memories, Su Bai noticed something wrong with the digital clock on the wall as soon as he entered Building 3. It was not displaying the time at all, but the strange numbers 100:100.

The instant he saw those two numbers, all his experience with nightmare games sprang into action. He carefully recalled the New Residents' Guidebook the administrator had recited at the start of the game. Combining it with the complex's surroundings and the obviously suspicious clock before him, he already had a vague answer in mind.

Besides the fourth rule, which concerned Memory Confusion, the New Residents' Guidebook contained an even more important fifth rule.

In the fifth rule, the administrator had mentioned that this was a game with a scoring system. Human players were precious, so each was worth ten points, while every other resident was worth one.

If there was a scoring system, there would naturally be a system for deducting points. Since this was a nightmare game, surely ten points would be deducted whenever a player died?

Why would a player die? Because another resident killed them, of course. Apart from humans, nightmare games contained only Strange Creatures. Calling them "other residents" was simply a way of telling the players that, aside from the few selected players, every resident of Happiness Residential Complex was a ghost!

The administrator's rules also mentioned that when the human players' total score fell below that of the other residents, those residents would become dissatisfied. Based on his experience, Su Bai could guarantee that once the humans' score dropped, the Ghost Creatures in the complex would begin to riot.

The lower the humans' score, the more terrifying the complex would become!

Since there was a system for awarding and deducting points, there at least had to be a board distinguishing the Strange Creatures from the humans. After all, Su Bai had barely walked around the complex before sensing countless Ghost Creatures within Happiness Residential Complex.

The last time he had encountered Ghost Creatures packed so densely together had been in a cemetery.

Without question, the digital clock that looked so out of place in the building's ground-floor lobby was the most important scoreboard in this game. When Su Bai first entered Building 3, it had read 100:100. Those had to be the total scores of the supernatural and human sides.

Knowing that both sides had a total of one hundred points made Happiness Residential Complex even more terrifying for the human players... especially Su Bai, who had only just cleared the beginner stage, had little power and no physical strength to speak of, and was, in reality, an ordinary high school dropout!

Each human player was worth ten points. A total of one hundred meant there should be ten players in this game, including Su Bai.

Each Ghost Creature was worth one point. A total of one hundred meant...

There were one hundred Ghost Creatures living in Happiness Residential Complex!

100:100 looked like a perfectly fair match, but for the players, it meant facing one hundred with ten, or ten against one! And whenever the players' total score fell below the Ghost Creatures' total, the Ghost Creatures might suddenly riot.

Su Bai did not know what form their riot would take, but it would surely involve every vengeful ghost and evil spirit remembering what they were, breaking free of the stories Happiness Residential Complex had fabricated for them, and beginning a frenzied hunt through the complex, perhaps even torturing the humans!

After considering it from every angle, Su Bai could think of only one simple way for most of the players to clear the game-

Play their assigned roles properly!

Before the game began, the administrator had stated in the New Residents' Guidebook that "all residents will experience varying degrees of memory confusion." This confirmed that it was not just the players; the Strange Creatures would also suffer varying degrees of memory confusion while inside the complex.

Ideally, as long as the players carefully played their roles, they would avoid provoking the Ghost Creatures around them into rapidly recovering their memories.

As long as the Ghost Creatures did not recover their memories, they would probably not hurt their own daughters, grandsons, or nephews.

That might also be why the New Residents' Guidebook had specifically instructed them to play their roles properly.

Su Bai was no saint who would save everyone from disaster. Given the choice, he would rather look after himself in peace. But if every other player was killed and the score representing the players fell all the way from one hundred to ten, the hundred-odd vengeful ghosts and evil spirits throughout Happiness Residential Complex would all start hunting him alone.

In his current condition, Su Bai probably could not withstand a riot in Happiness Residential Complex.

Keeping as many other players alive as possible therefore offered him every advantage and no downside!

Of course, "play your assigned role properly" was only an idealized strategy for clearing the game. Since some players were beginning to recover their memories, there would naturally also be one or two vengeful ghosts or evil spirits who had recovered theirs.

To keep those one or two vengeful ghosts beginning to bare their fangs from causing a greater disturbance, and to prevent these unexpected incidents from affecting most of the Ghost Creatures in the complex, Su Bai chose to borrow the power of his Vengeful Ghost Puzzle and quietly eliminate them.

Since this was a forty-eight-hour battle of endurance, and A Xi, the Ghost Bride he knew and trusted most, was still asleep, he chose a Vengeful Ghost Puzzle piece named Black Umbrella, one of the few young men in his puzzle.

Black Umbrella had two fatal injuries: a ligature mark around his neck, and a left eye that had been gouged out completely.

Whenever Su Bai borrowed Black Umbrella's power, those two wounds would appear on his body, just like the hole in the Ghost Bride's chest. Black Umbrella also had some troublesome personality quirks. He would only lend Su Bai his power if Su Bai agreed to dress according to his tastes.

In fact, as long as Su Bai satisfied his clothing preferences, he could borrow Black Umbrella's power at very little cost. Even as he was now, Su Bai could use that power for a long time.

In his previous life, Su Bai had considered himself lucky just to have clean clothes to wear in the Nightmare World. He had never had enough fancy outfits to satisfy Black Umbrella's tastes. In this life, however, the Mist Shop's storeroom could create anything from the human world, including clothes.

Although Black Umbrella's tastes took some getting used to for Su Bai, who preferred simplicity above all, they did make the ribbon around his neck that covered the ligature mark and the eye patch concealing his missing left eye look less strange.

Black Umbrella's power was also very useful in this game. Not only could he make minor changes to Su Bai's complexion and hairstyle, but his gouged-out left eye could also see through the disguises of Strange Creatures. His power could further enhance Su Bai's stamina and the strength of his body and limbs, as well as improve his skill when using a longsword or other rod-shaped objects.

This was far from the strongest Vengeful Ghost Puzzle piece within Su Bai, but at this particular moment, it was certainly the most suitable.

After using Black Umbrella's power to eliminate one or two evil spirits that had recovered their memories and rescuing Feng Ling along the way, Su Bai changed his complexion and hairstyle with the same power. Then he changed his clothes and slipped back into the temporary team Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie had formed. There was certainly no shortage of doors and doorknobs in this complex, so Su Bai could return to the Mist Shop to change clothes almost anywhere, at any time.

Whatever kind of people Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie were, as long as they took the lead in gathering the players together, Su Bai did not mind quietly improving some players' chances of survival. Even if Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie themselves began showing abnormalities, Su Bai, hidden within their team, would deal with them without hesitation.

The memories of everything he had experienced during this time flashed through Su Bai's mind, while he remained seated on the sofa with the same shy smile as always.

"Su Bai, what Trait do you have?" Having received no answer, Fang Xiujie asked again.

Su Bai immediately lowered his head and said in a deeply embarrassed tone, "Sorry, my Trait is 'enhanced puzzle ability.' I spent a long time thinking about it after I got it, but I just couldn't figure out how to improve a Trait like that."

Su Bai had not chosen to invent a strange Trait. His real Trait was already strange enough. Without the help of A Xi, the Ghost Bride, he might have died in a nightmare game before he ever figured out what his Trait did.

"...Puzzles?" Fang Xiujie's expression suggested that Su Bai's Trait had stumped him too. "Sorry, I may need some time to think about that as well. Hopefully I can offer you some help."

As he spoke, Fang Xiujie tore off a sheet of paper, wrote a string of numbers on it, and held it out to Su Bai and Feng Ling.

"This is my contact number in the real world. You can memorize it. If you make it back to the real world, send me a message. I'll send you the research directions I've organized and a plan with as much detail as possible." Fang Xiujie sighed again. "Items with special powers can be taken into the real world, yet ordinary objects can't be brought in or taken out. We still haven't figured out the reason behind that."

"Ugh." Curled up in an armchair, Ning Yan rolled her eyes with practiced elegance. "A researcher and newbies? This game is going to be so hard!"

"Next, I'll explain our specific plan for clearing the game." Fang Xiujie seemed not to have heard Ning Yan's complaint, the same affable smile still on his face.