chapter 2

A moment later, the man froze. He seemed to have seen something horrifying. One rigid arm pointed through the window as he backed away in terror, harsh gasps rattling in his throat.

Cheng Miao glanced at him, gritted her teeth, and approached the door.

A pane of glass about the size of a palm had been fitted above the service hatch. It was so thickly caked with grime that the scene outside was almost impossible to make out.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

One bloody handprint after another suddenly slapped against the filthy window.

The sight of those crimson prints on the cramped, grimy glass made Cheng Miao’s heart pound.

“Help! Open the door! Please, open up!” The same words sounded far more terrifying when screamed by the people outside.

Holding her breath, Cheng Miao stepped back. Several faces shoved and jostled for space against the glass. Their flesh was mangled beyond recognition.

Multiple pairs of hands thrust through the hatch, desperately clawing their way inside. Some fingernails had split down the middle from the force. Just looking at them hurt.

The hands were coated in blood and mud, as if their owners had been crawling and struggling across the ground.

Wounds torn open by their attempts to squeeze through the tiny opening lay exposed. White bone was faintly visible in some of them.

“Ahhh!” Deafening screams erupted behind Cheng Miao. She bit down hard on the soft flesh inside her cheek, suppressing the cry already rising in her throat.

The world abruptly spun. A voice that was neither clearly male nor female, and devoid of any emotion, sounded beside her ear: [Solo Instance Abandoned Courtyard activated. Loading player Cheng Miao…]

The smell of mildew and rotting wood made Cheng Miao sneeze several times as she regained consciousness.

Realizing she had already been loaded into the so-called Game, she immediately tensed every muscle. She scanned the area in all directions and confirmed that, for now, she was alone.

An apartment building in an old residential complex stood before her. A blue metal address plate hung crookedly on its concrete wall, the white lettering reading: Minsheng Lane Building 4.

Cheng Miao stood in the dilapidated courtyard outside the building. The flowers that had once grown there and the vines climbing the front gate had all withered to a dead, blackened color.

It was obvious no one had visited in a long time. Fallen leaves blanketed the ground, mingling with the dust beneath a murky gray sky and lending the place a suffocating air.

The courtyard was unnaturally quiet. There was not even the sound of wind, and the leaves on the ground, not yet fully decayed, lay as lifeless as the dead.

It was as though someone had drained the place of color, reducing it to the faded gray-white tones of an old photograph. Cheng Miao felt as if she might be sealed inside it at any moment. The thought made her frown.

Suddenly, a hazy red figure flashed past in the distance.

Startled, Cheng Miao looked again, but it had vanished.

She did not dare lower her guard in a place like this. Yet after checking repeatedly, she had to admit that the ominous red shadow was truly gone for now.

As she continued surveying her surroundings, a voice abruptly spoke right beside her ear.

[Welcome, player Cheng Miao, to the Solo Instance Abandoned Courtyard. Please uncover the courtyard’s secret and escape as soon as possible.]

[Hint: Humans are not human. Things are not things. Dust returns to dust, earth returns to earth.]

When the announcement ended, a hint of life gradually returned to the courtyard, which had seemed like a frozen image.

It was still frighteningly silent, but at least Cheng Miao could now feel the faint brush of a breeze against her cheek.

Several children of eight or nine appeared around her. Their clothes had gone out of fashion long ago and looked like styles from ten or twenty years in the past.

“Hu Zi, is this Minsheng Lane Building 4? It looks so creepy.” A grubby little boy beside Cheng Miao sniffled as he spoke.

This was a Solo Game, so these children were probably NPCs meant to guide the story.

“You’re scared, Er Gou? You’ve got less courage than Niuniu, and she’s a girl.”

A slightly taller boy beside Er Gou curled his lip. He was holding the hand of a little girl with a bowl cut. She looked thoroughly frightened, clutching his shirt so tightly that she was on the verge of tears.

Now that she was in the instance, reluctant or not, Cheng Miao pulled herself together and tried to draw out information. “Why did you bring her along for something like this? Look how scared she is.”

Er Gou grinned foolishly. “Sister Miaomiao, you know what Hu Zi’s like. He takes Niuniu everywhere. It’s not a big deal, anyway. She might as well come.”

Niuniu glanced timidly at Cheng Miao. She was clearly wary of this much older girl.

NPCs were bound to possess useful clues. Cheng Miao watched the three children while keeping part of her attention on their surroundings.

“So what exactly are we here to do?” Time was short. Cheng Miao remained alert for any horrifying scene that might appear without warning. All she wanted was to clear the instance quickly and escape the courtyard.

“Sister Miaomiao, you weren’t listening to me again. Aunt Song’s little boy went missing a couple days ago, remember? Lots of children have disappeared from this courtyard in Minsheng Lane before, so we thought we’d come look for clues. Maybe we’ll find out where he went.”

Hu Zi stroked Niuniu’s head, pulled her closer, and started walking inside. “Let’s hurry. My mom only let me bring Niuniu around here because she knew you’d be with us. I still have to get home for dinner.”

Children their age were brimming with curiosity. They might claim they wanted to help Aunt Song find the missing boy, but it was more likely that they simply wanted to know what lay inside the courtyard, with a dash of heroic ambition thrown in.

It seemed the instance’s backstory involved child trafficking.

Cheng Miao silently repeated the hint to herself several times. Nothing came to mind yet, so she committed it to memory and turned her attention to the courtyard.

It was not large. Everywhere she looked, flower vines had nearly rotted away, moss covered the stone tables and stools, and a thick carpet of leaves blanketed the ground.

She scuffed aside the leaves with her shoe, exposing a patch of earth and uneven ground. Nothing stood out as especially noteworthy.

It looked exactly like a courtyard abandoned long ago. The presence of several NPCs even made it feel surprisingly ordinary.

Yet that very normality made Cheng Miao twice as cautious.

Behind her, the iron gate suddenly creaked and groaned, whether from the wind or something else.

Cheng Miao whipped around. Nothing was there.

The gate stood open a crack, as if someone had just squeezed through sideways and forced the rusted metal to give a dying protest.

Cheng Miao stared at it for several seconds. Only when the children urged her onward did she turn back, pressing down the gruesome possibilities in her mind.

She did not possess beauty capable of toppling kingdoms. She had not been born with superhuman strength, nor was she some emotionless person incapable of fear.

But she did have one advantage many people lacked: the greater the pressure from the outside world, the calmer she became.

Even when she was terrified to death, she could keep her face cool and impassive while teasing apart every clue.

Cheng Miao used to joke that it was because she was a properly trained corporate drone.

Now it had become her greatest strength.

There was nothing in the courtyard she could use as a weapon. Cheng Miao had no choice but to steel herself and enter the pitch-black stairwell.

It was dark inside, and her eyes struggled to adjust after the sudden transition. All she could smell was dampness, rot, and dust.

A beam of light suddenly cut through the gloom. Beside her, Er Gou grinned mischievously. “Hehe. I knew we were going exploring, so I snuck out with my dad’s flashlight.”

Cheng Miao took it and carefully examined the stairwell in the beam.

The walls were filthy, covered in muddy footprints and stains of unknown origin. Several yellowed sheets of paper had been pasted over the few clean patches.

Cheng Miao went over and carefully peeled them all down. They were missing-person notices. The photographs had weathered badly, but she could tell they showed both boys and girls, all around six or seven years old.

One little girl’s notice appeared more often than any other. Her hair was tied into two hornlike pigtails, she wore a red dress, and she held a jump rope.

The face in the photograph had faded into a rough gray-white blur. Under the flashlight, it looked distinctly eerie.

Cheng Miao studied the girl’s red dress thoughtfully. Red… The fleeting figure she had seen upon entering the instance had been red as well.