Chapter 333: Beware of the Rabbit (VII) – Lonely Night Wanderer

Through the narration, Qi Si roughly understood the setting of this instance.

Lingzi was destined to die within seven days. Someone tried to save her by constantly resetting the timeline, but failed every time; meanwhile, Lingzi’s corpses from all these failed loops remained.

Combined with the note on the Rabbit God Statue, Lingzi’s death was likely due to being sacrificed to the Rabbit God. As for the person trying to save her, it was most likely the original body, Lu Ming.

Lu Ming created the game “Escape from Rabbit God Town.” Although it’s unclear what connection it has to the world of Hope Middle School, it was likely an attempt to forge another path to save Lingzi outside of the doomed timeline.

Unfortunately, the one currently controlling Lu Ming’s body is Qi Si, who has no interest in rescue missions. The main task is simply to watch Lingzi die and collect seven corpses… If the game allowed it, he could even kill Lingzi four times himself to gather four bodies.

What made Qi Si pay attention was that the two tasks, “Attend the Fireworks Festival seven days later” and “Collect all of Lingzi’s corpses,” were mutually interchangeable.

Except for the ‘Colosseum’ instance, where the difficulty of the two main tasks differed due to the intervention of the 【Dark Judge】 card, the interchangeable tasks in other instances usually have comparable difficulty.

Even if one seems simpler, various troubles will be encountered during the actual process of completion.

While “Attend the Fireworks Festival seven days later” clearly involves mortal danger, “Collect all of Lingzi’s corpses” seems unremarkable apart from being disgusting. He wondered where the hidden trouble lay.

“Are the locations particularly tricky and hard to find, or will something happen once they are all collected?” Qi Si pondered, then ignored Lingzi’s corpse and headed toward the dormitory building.

White streetlights flickered sporadically along the road, but the darkness persisted, clinging around him like the sticky tentacles of a monster, blocking the light source.

The dormitory building was a four-story structure housing both male and female students; the third and fourth floors were for males, and the first and second floors were for females. Since the stairs were located on opposite sides of the corridors—males using the left side and females the right—they generally didn’t interfere with each other.

The iron gate of the dorm building was wide open, but the interior was pitch black, clearly not yet ready to welcome students.

However, on the flat ground outside the gate, a row of projection screens was glowing stark white, playing a promotional video for Everlasting Technology Corporation.

Inside a laboratory, white-coated researchers were dissecting a snow-white rabbit.

The rabbit lay silently on the operating table, motionless and soundless. Its chest was slowly sliced open by a scalpel; blood stained its white fur, revealing the still-beating heart beneath.

The next second, the screen flashed, and the rabbit in the footage turned into a patient in a hospital gown, surrounded by a circle of masked doctors.

This transition was too sinister, conveying a suspicious sense of doctors dissecting patients as if they were rabbits, leading Qi Si to immediately think of darker possibilities.

“Which class are you in?” A sharp reprimand came from inside the dorm building, and a woman, skinny and elongated like a bamboo pole, stepped out of the darkness.

She wore a gray coat that flared out like sparrow feathers, her graying hair was coiled at the back of her head, and her wrinkled face held a pair of hawk-like eyes. She scrutinized Qi Si sternly: “Why are you running over here instead of being in class for evening self-study at this hour?”

Qi Si glanced at the employee badge hanging on the woman’s chest.

【Name: Qian Dali】

【Position: Hope Middle School Dormitory Administrator】

In one second, he adopted a timid expression and weakly called out, “Teacher Qian… hello!”

The young man’s voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, and combined with his ghostly pale complexion, he looked utterly frail.

The Female Dorm Administrator stared blankly as the young man’s face grew worse, his body listing and unable to stand straight.

She didn’t dare say anything more for a moment. If he died right in front of the dorm building, whose responsibility would it be?

“I feel a bit dizzy and can’t catch my breath. The teacher told me to go back to the dorm and lie down for a while,” Qi Si gasped, shuffling sideways to lean his entire body against the wall.

Seeing him exhale more than he inhaled, the Female Dorm Administrator quickly stepped forward to support him: “Student, if you’re like this, hurry home and have your parents take you to the hospital!”

Qi Si lowered his eyes and let out a faint sigh: “I don’t have parents.”

The Female Dorm Administrator: “?”

“I grew up in an orphanage and studied with sponsorship from Everlasting Technology Corporation.” Qi Si stopped there, smoothly weaving a lie. “Teacher Qian, you don’t need to worry about me. It’s just my arrhythmia, an old problem, nothing too serious. I’m in the third year of junior high now, and I can’t afford to waste time…”

He paused for a moment, then looked up and gave the Female Dorm Administrator a grateful smile: “But thank you for your concern!”

The Female Dorm Administrator was clearly receptive to this act, and her attitude softened further: “Hurry back to your dorm to rest. If anything happens, be sure to tell a teacher immediately.”

Qi Si softly hummed in acknowledgment, feigning “effort” as he dragged his legs into the dormitory building.

His footsteps were light, but they still triggered the sensor light.

With a “crack,” pale light suddenly flooded down, illuminating the floor, which was mottled with gray-black stains, and the walls, where the paint was peeling.

The ground floor lobby was cluttered with cleaning supplies, various cardboard boxes, and garbage bags. The staircase on the left slanted crookedly into the unlit gloom, and the glass of the duty room on the right was covered with dirty papers, some wrinkled from being soaked in sewage, others half-torn off, leaving white residue.

Qi Si walked a few steps toward the stairs, then seemed to remember something and turned back to the duty room. He smiled at the Female Dorm Administrator, who was walking toward him: “Teacher Qian, do I need to register for returning to the dorm early? Could I trouble you to get the roster? I’d also like to check our dorm’s deduction status.”

The Female Dorm Administrator had no suspicions, only finding this student both obedient and self-aware. Only an orphan not spoiled by parents would be so compliant.

She entered the duty room, retrieved a thick roster from a drawer, and handed it to Qi Si along with a ballpoint pen clipped to it.

Qi Si took it with both hands and turned to the page for Junior High Grade 3, Class 9.

Unlike most other classes where students boarded, Junior High Grade 3, Class 9 only had one assigned dorm room, grouping the four boarding students together, which was quite reasonable.

Qi Si silently noted down the original body’s dorm number, and also the names and bed numbers of his three roommates.

He drew a circle next to the name “Lu Ming” with the pen, then put down the roster and politely bid farewell to the Female Dorm Administrator.

He “weakly” turned around and “laboriously” ascended the stairs, holding onto the railing.

As he walked, his footsteps echoed, and the sensor lights above him flickered on in response, leading the way a few steps ahead, casting down pale light one after another.

Upon reaching the second floor, the friendly smile vanished completely from Qi Si’s face, replaced by indifference.

He suddenly realized that when the Female Dorm Administrator walked out of the dorm building earlier, she hadn’t triggered a single sensor light.

But that was no longer important. Whether the NPC was human or ghost held little significance for this instance.

Qi Si gathered his thoughts, quickened his pace, and rapidly ascended to the fourth floor.

Perhaps due to poor ventilation, the air was mixed with the stench of fermented disinfectant. He felt soaked in the musty atmosphere, as if he were about to rot along with the building.

The corridor, long and narrow like a monster’s intestine, stretched out before him. The room doors resembled the iron cabinets in a crematorium.

Qi Si looked up, counted the dorm numbers, stopped at the door of Dorm 0415, and pushed it open.

Inside the coffin-like narrow dorm room, the iron door with a small glass window faced the window in the washroom, which was covered by wire mesh. Four narrow beds were squeezed into the space of less than twenty square meters, appearing as four dark shadows in the dim light.

Qi Si pressed the light switch. The strip light flickered twice before coming on, revealing suspicious yellow stains and insect corpses along the edges of the tube.

Under the stark white light, gray scratches and pale yellow stains were clearly visible on the walls, and the iron bed frames and wardrobes were heavily rusted. All the furnishings were visibly old, and a damp, decaying odor assaulted him.

Qi Si walked straight to Bed Number Three, which was closest to the toilet—Lu Ming’s bed—and began to examine it by feel.

To his relief, Lu Ming maintained good personal hygiene; at least there was no dust, strands of hair, or human skin residue on the bedding.

The blue and white striped bedding was folded neatly into a square, with a gray pillow placed perfectly in the center.

Under the bed was a suitcase containing some changes of clothes and miscellaneous items like soap and shower gel, apparently serving as a storage cabinet.

Tucked into a layer of the suitcase was a document: “Everlasting Technology Corporation Sponsorship Agreement with Lu Ming.”

Qi Si quickly read through the document.

It stated that if Lu Ming could pass the entrance exam for the best high school in the city, he could continue his education all the way up and eventually become an employee of Everlasting Technology Corporation.

If he failed, he would have to stay at Hope Middle School and work as a volunteer until he repaid the company for the expenses incurred on him.

The document’s terms did not specify what a student with only a junior high education would be expected to do.

Since “his own” bed could be searched anytime, Qi Si decided not to waste too much time on it.

He began to search his roommates’ beds one by one.

Under the pillow of Roommate 1, the Dorm Leader, was a copy of the school rules, which were all clichés—nothing more than nonsense about attending class on time, studying hard, respecting teachers, and being friendly to classmates.

Along with it was a time-table, the same kind posted in the classrooms, which was not very useful.

Under the mattress of Bed Number 2 was hidden a crumpled old novel titled “Dragon Raja.”

Qi Si quickly flipped through it and found that this roommate had diligently filled it with annotations, essentially manually activating a comment section.

Roommate 4 was likely interested in campus mysteries. He had a notebook hidden inside his pillowcase, where he referred to himself as an “Investigator” and meticulously recorded various “strange occurrences.”

【”The Cursed Land”: Hope Middle School was built on cursed land. Legend says a deity once brought down divine punishment during a fireworks festival, killing all who worshipped Them and cursing their descendants living on this land.

The Chairman of Everlasting Technology Corporation bought this plot of land cheaply to save money when investing in the school’s construction. The Investigator spent a month surveying the area and discovered that crying sounds could be heard near the inner lake late at night. Upon approaching, faint ghostly figures could be seen moving at the bottom of the lake.】

It sounded ridiculous. The campus mysteries circulating among students always followed the same old tropes: the school was either built on a graveyard or on a hospital foundation; someone inevitably drowned in the lake.

However, in this instance, these records might very well be true.

System prompts don’t lie. Something did happen at the Fireworks Festival in Rabbit God Town seven days later, as described in the game “Escape from Rabbit God Town.” Only an event like a deity bringing down divine punishment could kill everyone.

What Qi Si hadn’t expected was that Rabbit God Town actually existed and was once located within the boundaries of Hope Middle School.

He continued reading.

【”The Boy Haunted by the Supernatural”: The Investigator discovered that roommate Lu Ming’s behavior has been quite strange recently. He often sneaks out late at night. The Investigator tracked him and found that he repeatedly went up to the rooftop and looked down from the corner in the nine o’clock direction. He is suspected of being haunted by the supernatural, pending further observation.】

Qi Si: “…”

He was basically certain that the person who wrote these notes suffered from a bit of *chūnibyō*.

However, the information provided in the notebook was worth noting. What exactly was Lu Ming looking at when he went up to the rooftop every night?

Qi Si’s attention was drawn to the third strange tale.

【”The Rabbit God’s Curse”: Lu Ming found the Investigator before his disappearance, claiming he had made a wish to an entity known as the “Rabbit God” and was about to suffer misfortune because of it. Based on the outcome, the Rabbit God is extremely dangerous; contact is advised to be cautious.】

The notes mentioned “Lu Ming.”

Originally, based on the behavior of Li Fang and Lingzi, Qi Si had guessed that Lu Ming wasn’t a real person but an alternate personality of “Lu Ming” (Ming)—the young man who created the game “Escape from Rabbit God Town” for him to play.

But now, it seemed Lu Ming (Ming) and Lu Ming (bright) were not the same person after all.

Did he make a wish to the Rabbit God and sacrifice himself, causing him to vanish directly from everyone else’s memory?

What kind of existence was he, and what wish did he make to the Rabbit God?

There were too few clues, and not much information could be inferred.

Qi Si suppressed his scattered thoughts and patiently restored the dorm room’s furnishings one by one.

Estimating the time, evening self-study had ended, but it would take a while for the students to pack up their homework and rush back.

He went up to the rooftop, stood in the nine o’clock direction as described in the notes (the west side of the rooftop), and leaned over to look down.

From this angle, he could see the Natural Lake that had been preserved during the school’s construction. The small, amber-like surface of the lake reflected shimmering light under the streetlights.

The area outside the Natural Lake was hidden by dense, lush forest, which inexplicably reminded Qi Si of the footage at the beginning of the instance—a similarly impenetrable forest, with layers of branches and leaves making it difficult to find a path.

“It’s a good place for murder and burial,”

Qi Si chuckled softly, climbed down the rusted ladder, and returned to the dorm room.

He unfolded Lu Ming’s Bed Number 3, and a lined notebook fell out at that moment.

The first few pages had some crookedly written numbers, likely recording daily expenses.

The later pages began recording daily events in red ink, mostly unpleasant encounters.

【Name: Lu Ming’s Diary】

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

【Note: ##ERROR##】

The prompt text refreshed on top of it, accompanied by scenes and human voices that sounded like auditory hallucinations.

“Lu Ming is a harmful monster! He should be kicked out!”

“Lu Ming is seriously evil; anyone who gets close to him won’t end well…”

“I see him carrying those rabbit bones all the time. Is he trying to curse someone?”

Statements full of disgust, instigation, and hearsay mixed together, directing maximum malice toward “Lu Ming.”

The young man “Lu Ming,” wearing a white school uniform, sat quietly in his seat, his face blurred. On the desk in front of him were three rabbit skeletons.

He held a handkerchief, wiping the stark white bones with near-elegance, his movements gentle and compassionate… Qi Si blinked, and the scene dissipated like smoke, as if it were an illusion.

He quickly flipped back a few pages in the diary.

One page had a corner folded over, and written prominently on it was a creepy nursery rhyme.

【The head sinks to the bottom of the pond; the four limbs are hidden in the east, west, and south.】

【The girl died on August sixth; the corpse is buried deep within the woods.】