Short Story

Before she died, my closest friend gave me two things.

A piece of skin she had cut from her own body, and her lover.

She asked me to use that skin to make a shadow puppet for the opera…

I think I understood what she meant. She was telling me: Ah Mei, I’m giving you a generous gift. You should return the favor-kill someone for me.

Chapter 0

I unexpectedly entered Wonderland.

But what awaited me was a rules-horror nightmare.

Players who violate the rules will become the red paint used to color the white roses.

Rule 2: Both cookies and potions are poisonous. Please consume with caution.

Rule 3: The hat is the Mad Hatter’s most precious possession. Do not touch it lightly.

Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

Rule 10: Under no circumstances should others be allowed to see your rules.

Welcome to Alice’s Nightmare.

Good luck, Player Tong Yu.

I stared at the playing card that had appeared in my hand at some unknown moment, printed with these bizarre rules, and fell into deep thought.

Five minutes ago, I was still sitting in a theater seat, quietly waiting for the post-credits scene of the movie Alice in Wonderland.

I had seen this animation when I was a child. While shopping at the mall, I had unexpectedly won a free movie ticket, so I stopped by to revisit the classic.

After the film ended, I intended to leave directly like most of the audience, but the theater staff blocked the exit and suggested we stay to watch the surprise post-credits scene before leaving.

Was my memory failing me? In my impression, there were no post-credits scenes at the end of this film.

It wasn’t until the credits finished rolling that the big screen suddenly went blank, and all the lights in the theater extinguished simultaneously.

The next second, a blood-covered, red-eyed rabbit suddenly appeared on the screen.

Accompanied by the screams of the audience, a terrifying giant rabbit crawled out from the two-dimensional screen, opened its bloody maw, and swallowed everyone whole.

When I opened my eyes again, I had arrived in this strange world along with the other audience members.

A mysterious forest and a White Rabbit in formal wear looked almost identical to the scenes from the film.

It had been exactly one week since the last time I entered a bizarre and absurd fairy tale world.

I had thought it was just a premonitory dream.

But the card in my hand with the eerie rules seemed to tell me that this was likely only the beginning.

Standing in the center of the crowd, Mr. White Rabbit glanced at the pocket watch on his chest, cleared his throat, and said:

“Everyone, welcome to the first stage of Alice’s Nightmare Trial: Broken Pocket Watch.”

As soon as the White Rabbit finished speaking, an identical pocket watch suddenly appeared in everyone’s hands.

“Adjust the time to the correct position and press the button on top of the pocket watch to submit your answer.”

I leaned in and saw the time on the pocket watch on his chest.

It displayed a fixed moment that never advanced.

20:27.

I lowered my head and re-examined the rules.

The only useful information was Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

But how could I know exactly how much faster it was?

There are thirteen ranks in a deck of cards, but I had only received four scattered cards.

The other half of the clues for this puzzle should be on the other cards I hadn’t received.

This was a game that required cooperation.

Just as I was planning to look for teammates among the people around me, the man standing in front of me suddenly exploded into a blur of flesh and blood.

Droplets of blood splashed onto my card.

At the same time, explosions began to occur one after another throughout the crowd.

The White Rabbit held a paint bucket, collecting plasma while saying, “A reminder to everyone: once an answer is submitted, it cannot be changed. Please cherish your only chance.”

A friend of mine was developing a residential complex for a real estate company in Xi’an when they discovered an ancient tomb. To avoid delaying construction, they chose to cover it up and report nothing. But none of them expected that someone would write a line on the wall of the work shed in red pen. Rules of the corpse-nurturing ground: 1. Do not feed the corpses raw meat. 2. If you see a child under the age of ten, close your eyes immediately. 3. Eat the rats.

I am blind.

Inside the refrigerator, I felt my boyfriend’s corpse.

And someone was standing right behind me,

waiting to see how I would react.

The first time I killed someone, the blade was dull.

I was fourteen that year. It was winter, and the north wind whipped against my face with a stinging bite.

Three bandits had scaled the wall of my grandfather’s courtyard, intent on stealing the last half-sack of millet he had hidden in the cellar.

My grandfather was blind. Hearing the commotion, he called out my name: “Shen He, Shen He!” He was using my alias.

My real name is Shen Heyi, and I am a girl. But the bandits didn’t know that, and Grandfather pretended not to know either.

He just kept calling, his voice urgent and hoarse, sounding like an old crow being strangled by the neck.

I fished out that Bone-Cleaver from beneath the stove.

Its edge was curled and nicked, so dull it couldn’t even slice through sheepskin cleanly.

But a human neck is softer than sheepskin.

I didn’t think about that day again for a very long time-not until I met Xie Changgeng.

The first time I went to a nightclub after starting university, I ran into the neighbor who had disappeared a year ago.

He had his arms around two scantily-clad beauties, looking like a total delinquent.

When he saw me, his gaze flickered across my chest before he let out a soft, dismissive “tsk.” Later, he pinned me against a corner. His finger pressed against my lips as he leaned down, demanding I call his name. It was only then that it dawned on me. He wasn’t my Zhou Yanzhi.

The Supreme God cultivated the Path of Ruthlessness. He was without desire or longing, stern and impartial.

To prove that she held a place in the Supreme God’s heart, the Fairy Maiden deliberately slaughtered Meng Family Village.

Kneeling on the ground, she wept like a rain-drenched blossom. “Your disciple has committed a grave sin. Master, please punish me. Grind my bones to dust and scatter my ashes.”

The Supreme God stared blankly at that beautiful face. In the end, he could not bring himself to do it.

He summoned the Nine Nether Yin Fire to burn the village and destroy all evidence, then ordered his disciple to return and copy scriptures in repentance.

I crawled out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, selling my soul to the Evil Demon for one thing alone: revenge.

The Evil Demon’s voice was beguiling. “What do you want?”

I looked back at the roaring flames behind me. “I heard that a thousand years ago, the Supreme God killed his wife to prove his Dao. Give me a face identical to his dead wife’s.”

I was the founding Imperial Tutor of a dynasty.

I came here burdened with a mission from the System: to save a collapsing, chaotic realm.

In the end, all I earned was the hatred of countless people.

The young chief minister I had known since our youth became a stranger to me, standing against me at every turn.

The Guardian General I had personally promoted despised me for monopolizing power and ruling the court as a dictator.

And the Young Emperor, the boy I had raised with my own hands… He hated me most of all for tearing him away from the one he loved.

So they laid a trap for me and forced me to drink poisoned wine, driving me to take my own life.

Then, after my death… They summoned a shaman to call forth my memories.

They wanted to expose every evil deed I had ever committed to the world.

But later, after each of them had seen my memories… Every last one of them went mad.

They told me it was only a game, and had me wipe out the male lead’s entire household.

But when the NPCs’ blood splashed onto me, it was so scalding, so searingly hot, that I finally realized this so-called full-dive game was connected to a real world.

A real village. Real people. And a real young male lead who blushed as he asked me what flowers I liked.

Behind me came the sound of frantic, uneven footsteps.

Covered in blood, I turned around-only to see the young man staring at me in a daze.

In his hands, he was still holding a bouquet of dew-damp white begonias.

In the second year of the famine, just before my father was about to sell me at the human market, my mother secretly ran back to her maiden home.

The night she returned, she was covered in blood.

There was a hole in her belly, and one of her legs was gone.

She handed my father the tripod cauldron she had carried on her back.

“Take it. With this, you won’t go hungry. Don’t sell Ah Yu.”

The tripod cauldron was not very large, but it was packed full inside.

With one tug, a snow-white leg came out.

If you threw in a piece of cloth, an identical piece of cloth would come out.

If you threw in a chicken, another chicken would come out too.

My father was so overjoyed he nearly went mad.

He never noticed that, before my mother breathed her last, she said one final sentence to me.