Chapter 28 Social Darwinism

Qi Si arrived back at his apartment complex at midnight.

The old complex was a scar on the city, rotten from the inside out.

The first wave of tenants had gradually moved away, leaving behind trash that included both the poor and the elderly.

After the poor became poorer, new poor people moved in; after the elderly died, new elderly moved in to wait for death.

Water and electricity were cut off every ten or fifteen days.

The ground was covered in phlegm and bird droppings that hadn’t been cleaned for a long time, and foul water overflowed from the gaps in the trash cans.

There was no need to worry about population mobility, because 99% of the places were just as terrible.

Qi Si had no concept of external labels like wealth or poverty; ugly entrepreneurs could not escape the fate of being sent to a pig farm, while good-looking poor people might find a place in a collection room.

Yet he still hated this poor city, simply because he hated the rainy days here.

The industrial zones that squeezed the city’s resources piled up like clouds, and even the falling rain was filled with heavy metal dust and unidentified particles.

After the rain stopped, it left puddles full of floating pollutants on the ground, reflecting suspicious light spots under the streetlights and occasionally bubbling up like blisters, reminiscent of the poison brewed by a witch in a fairy tale.

No matter where one stood or at what angle one looked, it was hard to see a spot to set foot on, and even a sparrow hopping on one leg would likely sigh in disappointment.

By the time Qi Si walked to the unit door, his pant legs were soaked through.

He pushed the door open, walked straight into the elevator, and pressed “11”.

With a “creak” that seemed to contain a metaphor for disaster, the elevator successfully reached the eleventh floor; then, with another unbearable “creak,” it tremblingly descended to the first floor.

Qi Si stood outside Room 1101, entering the password into the electronic lock.

This was the apartment his parents had bought.

After they passed away in a car accident when he was sixteen, he used some complicated and not-so-legal methods to become the sole owner of the property.

He had lived here for six years; it was unclear whether it was nostalgia or habit.

The couplets on the door had faded to the point where the characters were illegible, tattered like scabs peeling off a wound.

Behind the door, the two-bedroom apartment was exceptionally tidy, with snow-white walls and shiny floors that made one suspect not a single speck of dust could be found here.

The master bedroom had been closed for years.

The space actually put to use was just the second bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom, so cleaning was not a heavy task.

Qi Si threw the suitcase containing the corpse into the bathroom and washed his hands at the sink under the faucet turned to full blast.

Even now, there were still some things he hadn’t quite figured out, like why “Liu Ajiu” had chosen to rob his studio, and why he had been so easily subdued by him, despite his own lack of physical activity…

Well, never mind, that wasn’t important.

Qi Si scrubbed every gap between his fingers with soap, rubbing his hands until they were bright red, before he finally stopped.

He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a pack of instant noodles to boil, slurped them down slowly, and hastily finished his long-overdue dinner.

At 1:30 AM, Qi Si took a shower, put on a white shirt from the uniform row in his closet, and felt drowsy without realizing it.

Although the Eerie Game instances did not take up real-world time, in terms of consciousness, he had been genuinely tense for these past few days.

The final curtain call had been a one-man show, with him busy and acting with passion, and he had even witnessed the collapse of a high-rise building up close.

The lead actor, satisfied, let out a long yawn, took out his phone, and searched for the words “Eerie Game Forum”.

Chang Xu had said before that information related to the “Sera Guild” could be found on the “Forum,” and his words implied that “players entering the game for the second time” could easily access it.

Considering the average information-gathering ability of humans, Qi Si tended to believe that this Forum existed on the public internet and could be accessed through a normal search.

The facts proved his guess was correct.

As the page loaded, excluding the first few irrelevant novels and comics, Qi Si quickly found a webpage with a black background and silver text.

【Selling a prop that might be related to the Main God, DM if interested, federal currency transaction, bring paper money offline】

【I’m a high school girl, have my own team-up props, looking for a big shot to carry me】

【Exposing the unknown facts about Yu Jinsheng, the new Vice Guild Master of the Tingfeng Guild】

【First ne clearance of “Screaming Amusement Park”, 80,000-word analysis guide, including full instance walkthrough】

【Reserved for Fu Jue cheering thread, farming experience, leveling up, hehehe】

…

Just like other Forums, the homepage of this special Forum was also filled with mixed information.

Of course, for Qi Si at this stage, he basically had no use for 90% of the information.

The pinned post was a beginner’s guide.

Qi Si spent half an hour reading it from start to finish, roughly understanding a few facts:

First, the Eerie Game first appeared on January 1, 1999, and has existed for thirty-six years; as of today, at least four million people have been drawn into the game.

Players have different opinions on the formation and solution of the game, and theoretical schools have not reached a unified conclusion yet.

But one thing is certain: “rules cannot be defied.”

As for what exactly the rules are, the replies in the thread were arguing heatedly; some said it was rule-based horror, some said it was natural laws, and others said it was the operating principles of all things.

…

Second, players not selected by the game cannot know of its existence, and those who know of the game’s existence will inevitably be selected by the game.

For those innocent passersby, even if you keep talking about the Eerie Game in their ears, they will automatically filter the information—either they can’t hear it, or they think what they heard is a novel plot; even if they see the Eerie Game Forum, they will consciously skip it as if they hadn’t seen it.

…

Third, players have formed various guilds under the endorsement of the Eerie Game based on different philosophies.

Although most guilds bully newcomers and exploit points and props, newcomers without a guild often die faster.

Several more famous guilds are Jiuzhou, Tingfeng, and Sera, and there is also a guild called “Balance Guild,” which has the same name as an illegal church in reality; it is unclear if it is a coincidence.

【We are all human, our fates are connected, our emotions are linked, and we have common stances and pursuits. In the struggle against the Eerie, only by working together and helping each other can we achieve final victory!】

This was the declaration of the Jiuzhou Guild.

Qi Si had been hit in the face with this cheesy rhetoric as soon as he entered the Forum, and in the replies introducing the guild, he encountered a bunch of people spamming this quote.

Combined with his experience in “Rose Manor,” he almost laughed out loud.

…

Fourth, players who have cleared three instances or fewer are considered newcomers.

Only after clearing the third instance can they be promoted to official players and unlock full functions including the Game Space, Player Square, and the Mall.

Newcomers’ instances come from the Novice Pool, and official players’ instances come from the Official Pool.

In terms of average difficulty, the Official Pool is higher than the Novice Pool; but for individual instances, it is not absolute.

There are also death-trap instances in the Novice Pool, and “freebie” instances in the Official Pool.

And it is generally recognized that the third instance is a threshold, with a mortality rate as high as 80%.

Many players die inexplicably before becoming official players, and their deaths are illogical.

Situations where “the strong die, the weak live” often occur.

…

Fifth, it is said that there is a Final Dungeon.

The trigger conditions are unknown, and the content is unknown, but as long as one player clears the Final Dungeon, they can realize any wish, including resetting the rules of the Eerie Game, resurrecting and releasing everyone, or even closing the game forever.

Currently, the player most touted to be able to clear the Final Dungeon is a player named “Fu Jue,” who ranks first in overall strength.

He is the Vice Guild Master of the Jiuzhou Guild and is called “Chief” or “God Fu” in the replies, with countless followers, and there is a trend of him being pushed onto the savior’s throne.

…

“A Final Dungeon? It’s simply a pie-in-the-sky full of loopholes… Would an existence that sets the game rules actually leave behind rules that are detrimental to itself? Interesting.”

Qi Si smiled sarcastically, feeling that this Eerie Game was a mess from its mechanisms to its players.

—It was as if several batches of production teams and planners had changed, each with their own ideas, resulting in a hodgepodge.

He reined in his miscellaneous thoughts and searched for the word “Sera” in the Forum.

Many results were found, and the discussion level was not low.

Most held a condemnatory attitude toward the Sera Guild, as if it were an infallible target, a black sheep in a flock of sheep.

Qi Si learned that Sera, in English “Sariel,” was one of the earliest guilds established in the Eerie Game, with a guild master codenamed “Puppeteer,” whose true identity was unknown and who was elusive.

The entire guild claimed to practice Social Darwinism, advocating for the maximum killing of weak players to counter the Eerie Game’s twisted “survival of the weak” law; at the same time, it tilted resources toward elite players to trigger and clear the Final Dungeon.

What concerned Qi Si the most was that the official account of Sera had stated that once someone killed a member of their guild, if they found out, they would pursue it to the end.

“Didn’t they agree to practice Social Darwinism? Why this now?” Qi Si squinted and complained, “They’ve already huddled together for warmth, yet they still keep their ideology on their lips; is it to satisfy the guild master’s chuunibyou fantasy?”

Being targeted by a group of unreasonable lunatics was definitely not a good thing; it would be very troublesome.

Although Qi Si knew that he was not a reasonable normal person either, but… he still thought it was unsportsmanlike for an old guild to target a newcomer.

Well, he strongly condemned this double-standard behavior.

Bored, Qi Si searched for the keyword “Rose Manor” again and found a bunch of guide posts.

It seemed this instance had been studied to death.

However, interestingly, dozens of guide records were 【Normal End – “Bloody Bond”】, and the clearance method was to follow the rules and ensure one lived to the end.

A player wrote fearfully in a post:

【This was my second instance. Including me, there were three players, but there were a full eight rules to follow! To put it bluntly, you have to fill in the truth of the rules with human lives to test them out. The other two were on their third time; I really didn’t expect I could survive!】

【For the first two days, I carefully followed the rules, while they violated more rules than I did and died one after another at night. Seriously, at that time, I didn’t believe in the minimum death count mechanism at all. They both died, and I didn’t find any clues to clear the instance. Did I have to go to the Third Floor?】

【On the third night, Miss Anna broke the door open and came to hack me with a two-meter-long sickle! Just when I thought I was dead, a red dress suddenly flew out from under the mattress and disappeared before my eyes. I found that time had actually reversed to five minutes ago!】

【I thought instead of waiting for death in the room, I might as well see if I could run out of the manor, so I went downstairs immediately. I walked out of the ancient castle, and unexpectedly, Miss Anna was waiting in the garden, wielding a knife to chase me! I ran for my life, and an old woman in red appeared from nowhere, entangling Miss Anna and telling me to leave quickly…】

【The butler also came. I thought he would help Miss Anna deal with me, but I didn’t expect him to lead me to the door and open it to let me go. I cleared the instance in such a daze. After coming out, I had a high fever and almost lost half my life…】

From the posts on the Forum, players who had previously matched into the “Rose Manor” instance had all cleared it by triggering the “minimum death count” mechanism, and they were also ignorant of the trigger conditions for the time reversal mechanism.

However, this post answered some of Qi Si’s questions:

It turned out that the red dress he found under the mattress was not only a clue but also a one-time life-saving prop.

When a player encountered a death point, the red dress would automatically be consumed to perform a short-duration time reversal.

If one cleared it via the TE route, it would be like Qi Si and Chang Xu, using the red dress in the first room on the Third Floor to steadily obtain clues about Miss Anna’s parents.

If one cleared it via the NE route, it would be like the original poster said in the post, muddling through the Battle Royale segment on the third night to save their life and escape.

Qi Si touched his chin seriously: “Could I be the first one to achieve a te clearance? No way, right? No way, right?”

In the related recommendations, a recruitment post released by the Jiuzhou Guild popped up at the right time.

Qi Si clicked on it casually.

This was an old post that had already reached tens of thousands of replies, the gist of which was calling on all players to record their instance experiences and the ways to achieve each ending as much as possible.

【We are now lonely boats in the sea of people. Those not selected by the game do not know what we are experiencing, and we cannot hope for them to understand.】

【Leave your records here to point the way for those who come after, or as proof that you have been here, so that we can all remember your existence together.】

【One day, we will be able to clear the Final Dungeon and close the Eerie Game. The dusty past will see the light of day, contributions and sacrifices will not be buried, memories will remain, souls will be immortal, and we will look forward to a future without the Eerie together!】

Qi Si looked at the mobilization essay in the main post for two seconds and was successfully disgusted, immediately looking for the block option.

After searching for a long time without finding it, he could only, with a belly full of displeasure, close the chicken-soup-filled post and exit the Game Forum.

In any case, he did not intend to be a good person and post to share his clearance insights.

Heaven knows which force was behind the Forum; if he posted, his address might be leaked the next second.

Qi Si sneered in his heart, reached under the sheet to grope, and pulled out a huge piece of rubbing paper to hold in front of his eyes.

The paper was printed with words like “Go to hell” and “You are not human,” which were so aggressive that they seemed like they would break through the paper at any moment and slap the young man holding it.

Qi Si admired it with satisfaction for a while, letting himself be dragged away from the cheerful delirium and fall back into the ocean of reality’s malice.

He let out a long yawn, turned off the room light, wrapped himself in the quilt, and fell into a deep sleep.