chapter 4

Qin Nan frowned and thought for a moment. “How many Points do you have right now?”

“Two thousand two hundred. I’ve already been through seven worlds. The one with the most Points in our group right now is Xia Zeqin-he’s probably got close to six thousand, but I don’t know how much he’s spent.” Jian Fan didn’t hide anything.

Points were slow to save and fast to burn. Ten thousand might not sound like much, but actually accumulating that many was hard.

Qin Nan’s mind worked quickly. “So this time, I’m the only New Player?”

Jian Fan nodded. “Xia Zeqin and I were the earliest ones-we started out in the same world. A lot of people died in between, and new ones joined. The people around him now, including the two who just died, all joined in later worlds. As for the other four, they were only matched into this world. They haven’t shared any information about themselves, but I suspect they were together in the previous world.”

So aside from Jian Fan-who seemed to have some kind of grudge with Xia Zeqin and chose to go solo-everyone else had already formed a clique. And now there was also him, the newcomer. Even so, Jian Fan was still Qin Nan’s best option. Teammates could be few or many, but they had to be reliable.

“You can only unlock the Points system after clearing a stage? That’s way too unfriendly to New Players. There has to be some other rule,” Qin Nan said, certainty in his voice.

Hearing that, Jian Fan actually laughed. “You’re smart.” As he spoke, he extended his hand. “Welcome to being my Partner.”

Qin Nan reached out and lightly clasped Jian Fan’s fingertips.

After Jian Fan withdrew his hand, his expression quickly turned serious. “Beginners don’t have a Points setting, but before entering a world, they receive some important information. The puzzle is very likely hidden in that message.”

Jian Fan’s words made Qin Nan’s expression turn strange.

That corpse he’d seen falling from the sky, smashed into a bloody mess-was that really an important clue? Or was it a notice of his own death? With a complicated look, Qin Nan told Jian Fan everything from start to finish, beginning with the private message he’d received, leaving out no details.

“No.” Jian Fan rejected his guess. “The game won’t explicitly set a Player’s method of death or the order of who dies first. You might die, but not necessarily that way. And who goes first and who goes last will inevitably be the result of their own choices.” As he spoke, his gaze dropped to the Script in his hands.

At that glance, a thread in Qin Nan’s mind suddenly connected. “If today’s death had a Death Premonition, then what about yesterday on set? If what I saw was also a Death Premonition…”

The answer was in this Script.

As long as they didn’t trigger a Death Setting, they could at least hang on until the end-at minimum, they’d buy themselves more time. That meant the Death Premonitions in the Script were crucial clues.

The Script’s timeline had been scrambled. Scenes from the same location would be filmed together, so they had to do one thing first: flip through the entire Script and reconstruct the original chronological order.

It took some time, but it wasn’t difficult.

Jian Fan went back to his room to get his Script. The two of them each paged through their copies, divided up sections, and worked together.

Since they were inside this world, they had to follow its rules-which meant they’d soon have to return to set and keep working. Their time was limited. A film Script wasn’t short, so they decided to focus on finding the early parts first-however much they could manage, they’d take.

Following the Script’s chronological progression, the story began on set.

Everyone bustled around, preparing for the upcoming shoot. Then an accident happened without warning: an employee carrying a vase tripped. As he fell, his neck caught on a wire, and from the momentum, his head was sliced clean off.
The accident threw the whole crew into chaos. They called the police, dealt with the aftermath, and by the time night fell everyone was exhausted as they dragged themselves back to the hotel and into their own rooms.

Then came the scene where Qin Nan opened the Script for the first time-room 3909, a shattered lampshade, an artery sliced open, bleeding out on the floor.

Another “accident” layered fresh gloom over the production, but filming still had to go on. Qin Nan quickly skipped past the boring dialogue and went straight to the third person to die.

The next turn of fate also happened on set.

The third victim died when he suddenly had a heart attack on set and stopped breathing after just a few seconds.

That should be the next Death Premonition. Which meant someone else was going to die today. Qin Nan wanted to flip further ahead, but a knock sounded at the door, followed by Old Wang from logistics shouting, “Quit dawdling, scene change.”

Qin Nan looked over at Jian Fan.

“Let’s go first,” Jian Fan said. “In the Realm of Death, you can’t predict how you’ll die. I once saw someone get wiped out on the spot just for not following an NPC’s instructions. Until we figure out the rules, we’d better do what they say.”

That killed whatever thoughts Qin Nan had. He meekly left the hotel with Jian Fan.

On the way to set, Qin Nan still walked at the back with Jian Fan.

“What do you think triggers the heart attack?” Qin Nan asked.

Jian Fan glanced at him. “The first person died hugging a vase. The second died after checking into 3909. As for the third…” He paused, then asked in return, “Do you remember what the victim was doing when the heart attack hit in the Script?”

Qin Nan’s memory wasn’t bad, especially for things this critical.

“Moving props,” Qin Nan answered quickly. “Moving props is grip work. For that position, if you exclude Fatty, who died yesterday, plus me, there are three people total. Only one of them dies, so the trigger shouldn’t be the act of moving props itself.”

Thinking that far made Qin Nan irritable. If jobs were assigned according to yesterday’s choices, then the third victim would be one of the three grips, him included. That was definitely bad news. Right now he could only hope they’d be reassigning roles today.

Jian Fan didn’t refute him. “There’s another point-the cause of death.”

The third victim died of a heart attack.

What kind of behavior would correlate with a heart attack? Qin Nan had no clue for the moment, and by then the group had already reached the filming location.

Role selection was the same as before.

Qin Nan silently cursed. At the very beginning there hadn’t been any Death Premonition, so choices were pure luck. The game had already begun the moment they stepped off that bus; every single choice had critical consequences.

Clearly, his luck wasn’t great.

“Take care.” That was the only kindness Jian Fan could offer for now. With that, he headed for the makeup room. For the moment he was safe, and he didn’t seem all that concerned about whether Qin Nan lived or died.

The production quickly kicked back into motion.

A grip was basically a general dogsbody; their work was more than just hauling props. The only thing Qin Nan could do now was avoid prop-moving tasks as much as possible.

Including him, there were three people assigned as grips today. The other two were also men, both Game Players outside of Xia Zeqin’s little circle.

They were Old Players. Whatever Qin Nan had noticed, they had clearly caught as well. All three of them were racking their brains to steer clear of any prop-moving work.

However, set dressing was an indispensable part of filming.