Chapter 164: Red Maple Boarding School (1) “You’re a naughty child who loves to lie.”

【instance Name: Red Maple Boarding School】

【instance Type: Team Survival】

【Pre-Notice: Disasters repeat; survival is never easy. To live is luck, to die is fate.】

Qi Si opened his eyes to a rust-covered iron door.

He was in a cubicle of less than five square metres, windowless, only a cracked seam in a corner of the ceiling leaking a sliver of daylight.

Outside it was broad day, but inside the light was dim; the iron door was set into the dusty-grey wall, its edges impossible to make out.

【Special Notice: In this instance, you may obtain the Identity Card “Crimson High Priest” through role-play.】

【Role-play Key: Calamity, not salvation; behind the scenes, not on stage.】

【Note: This hint is private; you may choose whether to disclose it.】

Crimson High Priest card? Because I glimpsed it once in the Hopeless Sea, the prompt gets triggered?

Qi Si sat against the wall, head spinning so badly his thoughts scattered.

His stomach cramped, bitter bile rising—the instance’s imposed physical condition.

Hunger, long-lost yet intimately familiar; once felt, the body judges it at once.

The Identity Card could wait; the immediate crisis took priority.

Qi Si wobbled to his feet and looked down: still the white shirt he’d worn entering, but the body inside had shrunk, visibly malnourished.

Expressionless, he pinched his own skin-and-bone arm as a hoarse, low male narrator spoke beside his ear.

【You fainted from hunger in the detention room, then woke to hunger again; some memories seem lost.】

【Memory matters little in this school; just obey Ms. Medina and never break the rules.】

【Priority one: find food. You’ve eaten nothing for three days; if you don’t eat within two hours, you will starve.】

【Humans are such fragile creatures, aren’t they?】

The narration was unhurried, emotionless, carrying a creator’s haughty contempt for lesser beings.

Immediately, three lines of prompt refreshed on the system interface:

【Side quest refreshed】

【Side quest (Mandatory): Eat】

【Time limit: 1 hour】

Three days without food can’t kill; Qi Si knew that from experience.

At sixteen his aunt and uncle sent him to an illegal factory—locked in a tiny room five full days, yet he’d clung to life. Clearly, this instance ignored basic biology; if he failed to eat soon, the system would erase him even if starvation didn’t.

Qi Si pulled the hiking backpack from his inventory and unzipped it.

The moment he entered, the pack had been stowed automatically—whether for plot convenience or to warn him not to reveal too much that didn’t belong here.

The backpack occupied only one slot, yet every item—towel, paper, pens—was present.

From a hidden pocket he fished out a candy tin, unscrewed the lid, and popped a gummy into his mouth.

The hunger didn’t budge; new text appeared:

【You may need bread, biscuits, or rice.】

A tactful way of saying candy wouldn’t cut it.

“So I have to scavenge inside the instance, huh?”

Qi Si dragged his weak body to the iron door; by the faint ceiling light he finally saw it had no handle.

The handle must be on the other side—so even if he picked the lock, he couldn’t push it open.

His world now was less than ten cubic metres of cell.

Qi Si’s gaze swept the room and settled on a greyish heap in the corner.

He shuffled over, steadied himself against the wall, and saw only a tangle of clothes—no food.

Still, unwilling to give up, he lifted the garments and shook them out.

Nothing fell—only a prompt popped up:

【Name: Red Maple Boarding School Uniform】

【Type: Item (cannot be taken out of instance)】

【Effect: Makes you blend in, look more like a student of Red Maple Boarding School】

【Note: Rule 3—Students must wear uniform while on campus.】

Qi Si recalled the narrator’s “never break the rules” and eyed the filthy clothes.

Plain grey cloth, crudely stitched—little better than a sack.

He doubted donning them would magically open the door, but “no harm trying” won. He peeled off his white shirt and pulled on the grimy uniform top.

Two minutes passed—nothing. He swapped trousers for the uniform pants; still no miracle.

The pain and nausea in his gut sharpened; cold sweat soon coated him.

Starting at the edges, he felt every inch of wall and floor.

When he had covered every reachable corner, the stomach agony peaked then ebbed; his limbs went limp, vision darkening.

Half an hour left. No hidden chamber, no mechanism—nothing but the uniform.

“Did I miss a clue… or is the ceiling the only way out?”

Exhausted, Qi Si slumped against the iron door and stared upward.

No visible device overhead; whether a path existed would need a closer look.

But even at his best he couldn’t reach the ceiling unaided—let alone now.

The iron door seemed the sole exit. He hurled his full weight against it; the door didn’t budge, the impact jolting pain through his back.

“Did the Eerie Game notice I was undermining it and decide to bury me here?”

He cracked the joke to himself, unconsciously licking his dry lips.

The place had cracked from lack of water and even bled; when he licked it the taste was salty-bitter, forcing the school instance to feel like a wilderness survival exercise.

In the upper-left corner of his vision, the words “Quest Timer” displayed the stark, cold numbers: 00:27:57.

Qi Si stayed calm and reviewed what he knew.

“The narration said I ‘lost some memories.’ Did it mean the role I’m playing in this instance, or my real self?”

“I have to listen to Ms. Medina and not break any school rules; am I locked in here because I was disobedient and broke the rules?”

“A normal school, even if it disciplines students, wouldn’t let them starve; but Red Maple Boarding School doesn’t seem to care…”

Starving to death was too horrible a fate; Qi Si shuddered at the thought.

He pressed a hand to the door and tapped it idly, the raps echoing crisply.

There was no way out inside the room, so he had to find a way through the outside.

Make some noise, draw something—anything—over; even a monster would be better than the current situation.

Time trickled away, and apart from the knocking nothing else could be heard.

It seemed there was no one here at all.

Qi Si smiled in amusement and blinked—only to suddenly glimpse several human silhouettes.

They appeared to be illusions, gone in an instant.

He tried blinking again and again, and the room flickered like a slide show.

Everything was silent; light brightened and dimmed, tall and short shadows flashed across the walls—sometimes Qi Si was alone, sometimes the place bustled with people.

They wore bright T-shirts of red and green, walking around the room; for a moment he even saw the iron door open, with a guide waving a little flag standing outside.

Among the crowd he spotted a familiar face, absurd in this setting.

“Is this the life-flash before death, or did I trigger some hidden event?”

Qi Si had no answer.

He watched the thin line of light from the ceiling crawl across the room, a straight golden thread bisecting the space until it reached the corner and suddenly dimmed.

Muffled in the distance, two voices sounded one after another, apparently in conversation.

“Xiao Zhou, let your bro teach you a lesson: team instances are just talk. To fill the death-quota they won’t hesitate to screw you.” The voice was thick yet flamboyant, full of self-satisfaction. “Strength is everything; grab the key clue first and the rest will have to listen to us.”

The other voice sounded rather simple. “Th-thank you, Brother Chen! But if we leave like this, what if there’s an important clue over there?”

“You don’t get it. With a dozen of them over there, even if something happens it can’t stay secret. Once most people know, everyone knows; following the herd in a instance is the dumbest move. Important clues never come to you on their own.”

“Really? But what if they gang up and hide stuff from us? Acting so unsociable might leave a bad impression, right?”

“Xiao Zhou, we joined Sera already—why care about good impressions? Don’t you trust Brother Chen? Tell me, every tip I’ve given you, which one didn’t pay off?”

“Brother Chen, I—I trust you! Haha, last time if you hadn’t reminded me, I never would’ve thought to stock up on food…”

Food, huh?

Qi Si caught the key word and a plan formed in his mind.

He squeezed out the last of his strength, stuffed his removed white shirt into the backpack beside him, and then stowed the backpack in his inventory.

Leaning back against the iron door, he silently recited: “I’m a student at Red Maple Boarding School. I broke the rules and made Ms. Medina angry, so she locked me in solitary. I’m in poor health; after fainting from hunger I lost most of my memories, remembering only my identity…”

As he perfected the background, the Human Skin Mask shifted the position of his facial features, molding an appearance that fit the role.

“Red Maple Boarding School Uniform” prop detected; completing a plausible identity for you.

Silvery text floated before his eyes. Qi Si raised an eyebrow—he hadn’t expected wearing the uniform by accident would bring such a benefit.

Identity “Bad Kid” has been loaded.

A flood of notification text refreshed in the upper-left corner of his vision, obscuring part of his sight:

“You are a student at Red Maple Boarding School. Your number is 47, and that is your name here. Your memory is poor; you’ve long forgotten your original name.”

“You’re a lying Bad Kid; your clumsy lies often anger Ms. Medina. She has scolded you many times, yet you refuse to reform and even enjoy it, so she gave you three days’ detention to teach you a lesson.”

“All this is what Ms. Medina told you. You don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter. Ms. Medina runs the entire school and is never wrong. Only Bad Kids get punished, so you must be a Bad Kid.”

“During your detention no one brought you food; you guess the student on duty ate your share. But there’s nothing you can do—Ms. Medina doesn’t bother with such trifles.”

“You’re about to starve, but someone has arrived and is talking about food. You want to ask them for help and see if you can get some bread.”

A kraft-paper Identity Card hovered in the upper-right corner of his vision.

On the card, a ragged child stands with a crimson mist behind him; blood-red eyes gaze from the sky, and long fingers cover the child’s eyes and ears.

Qi Si lowered his eyelids and knocked on the iron door once more.

This time he put on a half-dead tone and spoke in a faint breath: “Classmates, please… please tell Ms. Medina I know I was wrong… I haven’t eaten for three days; I’m so hungry I’ll die if this goes on…”