Chapter 197 Red Maple Boarding School (34) “Survival Ain’t Easy”

Red Maple Boarding School.

Jiang Junjue and the other two had dozed off for a moment outside the kitchen; when they woke, the prompt 【main quest Completed】 never arrived.

Their faces turned grim in unison; countless dire guesses flashed through their minds within seconds, yet a sliver of unrealistic hope still clung to their hearts.

As they walked toward the concrete building and spotted two corpses blanketed by flowers and butterflies, plus a cast-iron pot rolling on the ground, that last shred of hope shattered into shock and dread.

Without doubt, Chen Lidong had failed; the mission to brew a healing potion was dead in the water.

The clear-cut route to clear the instance shown on the system interface couldn’t be wrong; if the quest failed, the only explanation was a flaw in the prescription.

“How could the prescription be wrong? We were all cured…” a Tingfeng Member muttered, shoulders trembling faintly.

Jiang Junjue stayed calm, cigarette clamped between his lips. “Either Zhang Yiyu withheld crucial info, or we missed some detail while copying the formula, botching the translation.”

“Whichever it is, getting the real formula again is next to impossible. Zhang Yiyu is locked in the Isolation Room—probably dead by now; the original script was burned yesterday… We’d better scout the area while we’re still feeling okay and see if we can crack the world-view to finish the other main quest.”

Back inside the concrete building, the trio received bad news from Ms. Medina: the Foundation had cut off water and power to the school.

Losing electricity was bearable; losing water could be fatal.

The scorching weather kept climbing; tropical heat steamed the energy out of them. Within minutes Jiang Junjue’s throat was parched, lips cracking.

He twisted the tap on the cafeteria sink; the rust-eaten pipe only coughed up dry gray sludge, wheezing of water’s scarcity.

Most players took water for granted; none had imagined the Eerie Game would weaponize drinking water, so none had stocked up. Exploration had to be postponed—finding water became the urgent priority.

The concrete floors and walls stayed damp, beaded with jade-green droplets like oily sweat, yet no one dared lick the unknown liquid.

They scoured Maple Forest but found no spring or brook; they could only pluck maple leaves and chew them for moisture.

The brief relief was meaningless. Jiang Junjue told his companions that wilderness survival was missing the point—the only cure was to exit the instance ASAP.

All day June 5 the three split up and combed Maple Forest inch by inch, uncovering no new clues, let alone a way to deal with Ms. Medina.

During the day all three began bleeding: the woman’s phlegm showed blood threads; the bespectacled man started peeing blood; Jiang Junjue had it worst—skin in unexposed areas peeled off like over-boiled potato, cracks sprouting mushroom-like herpes.

It seemed a continuation of the terrifying insomnia syndrome—no longer immediately lethal, but stubborn and excruciating.

Finding a cure for insomnia syndrome remained crucial; the trio re-entered the school’s fourth floor to search.

This time they found useful clues: once, a group as desperate as them had experimented on indigenous children, frantic to crack the disease.

Disappointingly, those people made zero progress; the files they left served only as evidence of their crimes.

They never found the true prescription—or rather, the prescription died along with the language that carried it… On the morning of June 6, tormented by pain, hunger, and thirst, Jiang Junjue wearily told his two companions, “From here on, every man for himself. Split up now; if we meet after noon, show no mercy.”

The curtain on mutual slaughter rose; the instance’s narration had made it clear: only one lucky child can escape this earthly purgatory… Memorial Hall for Indigenous Victims, Graveyard.

After signing the Contract, Qi Si pulled the recorder from his inventory and handed it to Chang Xu.

Chang Xu lay in the coffin hugging three documents and the recorder while Shuomeng slid the lid shut and shoveled earth into the pit.

Now the last scoop of soil crowned the mound; rows of ashen tombstones stood on black earth like the teeth of a dying old man.

Under blood-red moonlight Qi Si tilted his head toward Shuomeng and spat six words: “Take me to the Isolation Room.”

“You sure?” Shuomeng froze, glancing around. “I just paper-talismanned a safe zone; from here to the Isolation Room it’s nothing but demons and ghosts—basically a nightly parade of fiends…”

Even as he complained he crouched to support the half-dead Qi Si.

Qi Si, looking ready for burial, slumped onto Shuomeng’s back and croaked, “Fine, skip the Isolation Room—let’s see if Chang Xu can burst from his coffin alone or finish his life and let his soul clear the instance.”

Shuomeng clearly didn’t share the gallows humor.

He sprinted toward the Isolation Room with Qi Si on his back, forcing a grin uglier than a sob: “Don’t mention it—we signed the Contract; a trifling favor like this is my word of honor, guaranteed…”

Night wind carried a chill; against a patient’s body temp it sucked warmth away. Qi Si fell silent, letting awareness drift between waking and dream.

Wind from the run poured into his airway; he coughed violently, gouts of blood spraying. A thread of crimson slid down his lip, splashing onto the soil and blooming into a scarlet flower.

Next second Shuomeng yelped in panic, “Buddy, don’t screw me over… can you hold on? Don’t die on my back, that’s terrifying!”

So Qi Si went still, quietly playing a proper corpse.

Shuomeng: “…6.”

The violet-black sky looked demonically eerie; slick mud formed a jail that hampered every step. The whole land seemed alive, stubbornly intent on trapping any living trespasser to death.

From Graveyard to Isolation Room wasn’t far, yet not near. Barely three hundred meters lay beneath a sweep of Maple Forest, whose withered branches clawed like demon hands, raking bloody scratches across travelers.

Scarlet maple leaves carpeted the ground like leaping flames, surging like a crimson sea, suddenly animated into countless red hands grasping at Shuomeng’s ankles.

Shuomeng snatched a fistful of paper talismans from his backpack and flung them skyward.

The yellowed papers ignited mid-air; orange sparks flashed briefly then died, ash drifting down to pave a passable path.

Shuomeng stepped onto it.

Qi Si cracked his eyes open a slit. “The mall actually sells talisman paper? I never noticed.”

“Not from the mall.” Shuomeng, still striding ahead, answered without suspicion. “Lately every big guild’s been trying to craft their own items. Our Vice Guild Master gave talismans a shot—turned out pretty well. Expect a small forum launch in a few days.”

“Is that so?” Qi Si stared into the distance.

The Maple Forest thinned on either side, revealing a squat concrete block standing alone on the wild plain, tinted a flirtatious rose by the blood-red moon.

Mushrooms wedged in the wall seams drank the moonlight; the lit parts bruised pale violet, the shaded parts deep emerald—perfect complements.

Qi Si watched for a moment, then his gaze drifted, consciousness sinking like a drowned corpse; his eyelids slid shut.

Shuomeng felt the man on his back go limp again—alive or dead, who knew—and the misery in his heart deepened.

He dashed into the concrete hut with Qi Si. The instant a sludge-and-twig arm reached for Qi Si’s back, he whipped out two Nails, drove them diagonally into the doorframe left and right, and laced their heads with Red Thread.

The arm touched the thread and jerked as if burned; every aberration froze at the invisible plane of the doorway, barred by a sudden wall.

“How long do you need?” Shuomeng bounced the load on his back, trying to jolt Qi Si awake. “This prop lasts ten minutes max; after that we’re trapped rats.”

“Ten minutes is enough.” Qi Si opened his eyes—pupils empty, unfocused.

Yanked at times from lucid dreams, hurled at others into uncontrolled free-fall, his mind, reason, and perception had all been flung out of his body; only a weary soul dragged the heavy flesh along.

He slid from Shuomeng’s back, staggered, steadied himself, and lurched forward like the walking dead.

In a remembering tone he said, “When the instance began I was locked in the Isolation Room on the 20th-century timeline—three days starving, one step from death… and nothing to eat, not even a mushroom.”

Shuomeng gave a non-committal grunt; something felt off about Qi Si, but they barely knew each other. He’d only studied Chang Xu and watched the public replay of the Hopeless Sea instance—he couldn’t pin down what was wrong.

Qi Si walked on, crushing mushrooms that sprouted mid-corridor; broken caps burst with a reek of rot, clinging like a vengeful ghost.

Shuomeng pulled a Perfume Atomizer and sprayed the air several times. “And then?”

“As I was dying I saw visions of the 21st-century timeline—saw you, Chang Xu, the guide; the Isolation Room’s door stood open, tourists in bright clothes drifting in and out—an exquisite, hollow dream.” Qi Si chuckled softly.

His voice thinned to a whisper, almost a dream-murmur: “I thought of the Little Match Girl—she too saw illusions of stoves, roast goose, Christmas trees before death. Perhaps dread gods feed only on pain, doling out final mercy to the dying like alms.

“Nailed to the cross, while in another time the god pulls the Nails and leads him down. So he carves those signs again, repeating the crucifixion. Starving, he glimpses a beautiful future, gains the will to live, yet never reaches it…”

Shuomeng listened to the flat, toneless voice; in this place it sounded like a ghost-story told in a Graveyard—hair-raising.

The speaker was too cold, too detached, surveying people and events from on high, stripped of human feeling.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Qi Si suddenly laughed. “If pain and death are the bridge between timelines, why bother praying to a god at all?”

Golden vine-phantoms drifted through pitch-black void; a tree of Soul Leaves shimmered with each shift of light.

Zhang Yiyu sat hugging her knees amid ulcerated poisonous mushrooms. Fever painted her cheeks a sickly crimson; blood from her cough blotted her pale-green clothes like scarlet ink.

Extreme hunger brought nausea. She spat gobs of bloody mucus, drifting consciousness stitching visions that dragged her back to Sub-level Five of the Eerie Investigation Bureau… “Zhang Yiyu, come to the door,” a clear, calm voice called from nowhere.

She braced against the wall, stood with effort, and shuffled toward the entrance.

Qi Si counted the Isolation Rooms, stopped at the one whose base bore the scratched number 47, and gently pulled the door open.

Zhang Yiyu blinked; silhouettes flickered past like over-exposed snapshots, overlapping for an instant.

The shadows settled into two blurred figures—one in the corridor, one by the door—edges jittering like a failing projection.

And the door that had been shut now stood ajar.

Qi Si brushed the tip of a golden leaf and silently thought: Next I’ll open the door ahead-right of you; you may feed first.

Zhang Yiyu crept out and stood in the narrow, gloomy corridor, glancing left and right.

She saw the iron door on her right open by itself, revealing a corpse laid out inside.

The body exuded an alluring aroma that, to a specter, meant restored strength and fewer debuffs.

She stepped over, scooped chunks of flesh with her hands and stuffed them into her mouth. Blood spattered her clothes, mingling with the blood she herself had coughed up—impossible to tell apart.

The fresh meat quickly filled her stomach; the discomfort of insomnia syndrome eased, her vision cleared, and she could move again.

She heard Qi Si’s voice again, now with a hint of praise: “Good. Wash your hands and mouth, then go to the Graveyard and dig up the man buried behind gravestone forty-seven.”

Shuomeng watched Qi Si open doors—first one, wait, then another—never speaking a word, and could make no sense of it.

Then the young man turned his head, pupils black and vacant. “All right, back to the Graveyard—time to dig him up.”