Survival

While I was at work, a line of comments drifted over my head: [Huh? Is this player pouring tea for the boss?]

[No way! This is a super SS-rank horror instance!]

The blood-red words swept past overhead, radiating an eerie, ominous air. Not far away, my boss sat with his gold-rimmed glasses on, head lowered as he read the newspaper, just like always.

I stopped looking at the “comments” and, bracing myself, picked up the cup of hot tea. “B-Boss, your tea is ready.”

The man in front of me didn’t take it.

Instead, he stared at me with an unreadable expression.

“Why are you so nervous?”

“Did you see something I can’t?”

I transmigrated into a novel about the Apocalypse and became the daughter of the Zombie Emperor.

However, I awakened a Spatial Ability. When I was five years old, I accidentally teleported myself into the middle of the wilderness. To avoid starving to death, I shamelessly clung to the protagonists’ team, mooching off their food and supplies.

I spent my days spectating their drama and leisurely following them as they fought monsters and leveled up.

Until one day.

They came face-to-face with the ultimate villain, the big boss-

The Zombie Emperor. My dad.

While everyone else was on high alert, bracing for the fight of their lives…

…the Zombie Emperor gave me a sinister smile.

“Nianying, have you had enough fun? If you’re done playing, get your butt over here right now!!”

The Male Lead and Female Lead: “?!”

Everyone else: “?!”

Me: “…”

At exactly midnight, there was a sudden knock on the dormitory door.

I thought it was just the dorm warden doing rounds, but then a cold, mechanical voice rang out in my ear- [Ding-The Zombie invasion has begun. Your first WeChat meme sticker is now your life-saving artifact.]

My three roommates were: an Avatar, Briar, and an Armor Hero.

Trembling, I tapped on my phone… My first meme sticker was my ex-boyfriend’s grinning face.

Back when I drove heavy-duty trucks, I was often the one to lead the way down new, untested routes. In the industry, we call this “Chong Sha.”

Only after I had successfully passed through would other drivers dare to follow.

Afterward, I’d receive a fair share of red envelopes as a token of gratitude.

People always ask me, “Didn’t you ever see anything strange while you were doing a Chong Sha?” I thought about it for a moment. “Nothing much.

Just people constantly trying to flag down the truck in the middle of the night, scammers frequently collapsing in the center of the road to stage accidents, and the occasional cluster of identical villages appearing one after another along the highway…”

When I was a child, my father once gave me a ten-yuan bill as pocket money.

He said he had picked it up on the road.

I remember very clearly that on the back of that bill, written in black ink, was a line:

“There is a pyramid scheme on the fifth floor. Help.”

I took the money to show my father, and he smiled and told me,

“Who knows how many people have used this bill? Who knows when those words were written? Maybe the person who wrote them has already been rescued.”

I was in a hurry to buy chocolate, so I didn’t think much about it.

Because chocolate is sweet, after all.

Not long after, there was a piece of news on TV.

“A man mistakenly entered a pyramid scheme den, was beaten to death, and then dismembered.”

As a child, I stared blankly at the television.

My father also stared blankly at the television.

I asked him what was wrong.

He shouted at me angrily, telling me not to meddle in his business, and then left the house.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on; I just felt confused.

It wasn’t until the New Year, at the family dinner, that my father got drunk and cried uncontrollably. In front of all the relatives, he confessed to picking up that bill.

The place where he found the money was directly below the den mentioned in the news.

In other words, the words on that ten-yuan bill were very likely written by someone who had fallen into that pyramid scheme, possibly even the person who was dismembered.

He sobbed, clutching a bottle of liquor, saying that it was his fault that the man died. The whole family comforted him, but I just stood aside, dumbfounded and at a loss.

So… I used that money to buy chocolate…

Something indescribable seemed to awaken within me.

Throughout my later life, I would often think of that ten-yuan bill.

I wondered, was the original owner of that money alright? Was he really rescued? Or… did that money really come from the man who was dismembered?

If it really came from him, he must have endured painful beatings and inhuman torture before finally seizing a chance one day to write those words for help on the bill and toss it out the window.

He must have clung to hope for rescue until the very moment he died.

Yet my father ignored that hope.

I always ask myself, if I had been the first to find that bill, could I have saved him? Or would I have overlooked the writing, just like my father?

This thought haunts me like a ghost, tormenting my mind more and more as I grow older.

Until that day.

A new “bill” appeared before me.

…

On the night of my wedding, the Queen ordered her guards to pin me down and force those Glass Slippers back onto my bleeding feet. She said that if the shoes were not sated by my blood before the thirteenth bell toll of midnight, she would carve out my heart to feed the mirror. The entire hall waited for me to become a Princess Consort, but only the groom, Su Zhichuan, leaned in and whispered into my ear, his voice trembling and hoarse. He said, “Don’t believe in fairy tales. Kill me before dawn, or you’ll be the one who dies.”

Everyone says my Little Aunt climbed her way to the top using her body.

They claim she used the excuse of caring for me to sneak into my husband’s room every night.

People curse her for being shameless, accusing her of defiling even her own niece’s husband.

But she simply handed me a piece of candy and said, “Yingying, in this life, we will survive together.”

I was trapped in the company building, dying in a loop ninety-nine times.

The ways I died were varied: the elevator falling, electrocution from the copier, a pen tip piercing my brow…

Each time I opened my eyes, it was nine o’clock sharp on the same morning, just as I sat down at my desk.

After seeking help multiple times, my Physics Professor Husband finally believed me.

Following his instructions, I searched step by step for a way to escape the cycle of death.

But on the hundredth time, I saw the Jade Bracelet my husband had secretly bought, worn on the hand of an Aloof Female Colleague beside me.

…

On the 101st attempt, I decided to face the desperate situation head-on, determined to leave the building alive!

After being selected by the Horror Game, I took over a snack stall at the village entrance.

An Eerie opened its bloody maw to take a bite out of me, but I reached back and stuffed a meat-filled Mo into its mouth.

He chewed thoughtfully. “Forget it,” he muttered. “Since there’s Mo to eat, I’ll kill you tomorrow instead.”

The next day, it was fresh, fragrant wontons, stir-fried snails with perilla, peppery pork tripe soup, fried skewers, and spicy Malatang…

Every Eerie that passed by abandoned their hunt, burying their faces in the food and eating like possessed creatures.

The viewers in the Live Stream watched in shock as I survived until the very end, all thanks to a single cooking pot.

When Chu Yue woke up, he found himself thrown into a horror escape game.

A White Fox calmly informed him that this Instance had a one hundred percent mortality rate, and a bratty little kid would try to yank his pajamas off at the slightest provocation. After several days of clawing his way through just to stay alive, Chu Yue finally made it out of the game-only to realize it seemed he’d brought something… unbelievable back with him.

The fancy chocolates a client from the company had given him? Gone.

The jelly his little niece had left at his place? Gone.

The premium whiskey his friend had gifted him for his birthday? Gone.

Chu Yue: “You can eat my stuff, fine, but could you not scare me in the middle of the night?”

Someone: “I have to keep an eye on you. If you suddenly decide to run away, I can always just eat you instead.”

Chu Yue: “…”

A few days later, when he entered the game again, he came prepared.

Chu Yue understood one thing very clearly: he was different from the other players who were dragged into this game.

He was entering the game to have his wish granted-and even more so, to pay off a debt…

“Player 099’s redemption challenge has begun. Are you ready?”