Screech!

A harsh grate of metal echoed through the dim hallway as the lock clicked open and the unoiled door swung inward.

He got home from work, flicking on the living room light as he stepped inside. His gaze immediately fell upon the dining table, where an old mesh food cover sat beside a pink sticky note.

“I made chicken stewed with mushrooms for a late-night snack. Just heat it up and it’s ready to eat. Your loving big sister~”

After reading the note, he lifted the food cover.

Wu Wang’s mouth twitched.

Beneath it sat a single cup of instant noodles, seasoning packet already inside. The packaging proudly declared its flavor: Chicken Stewed with Mushrooms.

So it really was ready to eat after a quick heating, he thought wryly.

He picked up the instant noodles and went to add hot water, grumbling to himself.

“Did I actually hesitate for a second and think that woman would really cook?”

He placed the noodle cup on the dining table to let it steep, then returned to his room and took off his clothes.

He looked at his short-sleeved shirt. It was so riddled with holes it resembled a tattered rag. He couldn’t help but sigh.

“Couldn’t you have just stabbed me in the head? Do you even know how to kill someone? If not, I’ll teach you in your next life!”

These were the holes pierced by the knife of the man who had attacked him in the shop earlier.

That’s right. Wu Wang had made no attempt to dodge, so the middle-aged man’s first stab had pierced his body with perfect accuracy. In fact, every subsequent stab had struck him squarely.

And throughout the entire attack, Wu Wang had shown no signs of struggling at all.

Just as the man was about to leave in disappointment, Wu Wang, who should have been dead, had stood up from the floor unscathed. The expression on his face was even more disappointed than his attacker’s.

At that moment, it was the other man’s turn to be afraid.

This was the secret Wu Wang had discovered upon his first death at eighteen. He couldn’t truly die.

To be precise, the moment he died, his body would instantly return to its peak physical condition.

Even the blood he lost would bizarrely disappear and return to his body, which was why his clothes only had holes and no bloodstains.

Facing a target who couldn’t be killed, how could that murderer possibly win?

“Heh, I must have given that guy some serious psychological trauma right before he died.”

Wu Wang said it with a self-mocking grin.

After tossing the tattered shirt into the trash, he sat on his bed and pulled a damp, soil-stained Spirit Tablet from his pocket.

Although he didn’t watch the news often, he had heard about the recent string of serial killings that had the city in a panic. The person who attacked him must have been the serial killer.

And this Spirit Tablet… could it be the reason he was never caught?

Thinking of this, Wu Wang carefully examined the strange object in his hand. Since he himself possessed an undying ability, he calmly speculated that this item also held some kind of bizarre power.

Hmm… there seem to be some characters carved on it?

He decided to examine the faint characters more closely, subconsciously raising a hand to wipe off the sticky soil.

As the dirt fell away, the characters on the Spirit Tablet grew clearer.

【Holder Wu Wang. Conditions met to register player account】

“What the hell! A doxxing strike!”

No one would expect their own name to appear on a Spirit Tablet carried by a murderer. Even Wu Wang’s nerves, so steady he wouldn’t blink while being stabbed, twitched for a moment.

He honestly thought someone had doxxed him.

Whoosh!

Before he could figure out what was happening, his vision plunged into darkness.

It was a darkness so deep he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. To be more precise, it was a blackness where he couldn’t even feel his own fingers.

Not just his sight, but all five of his senses seemed to have been stripped away, as if he had fallen into an endless abyss.

Am I blind? Can I go apply for a disability certificate now?

The thought flashed through Wu Wang’s mind. Then, his consciousness gradually began to stagnate.

An unknown amount of time passed. It felt like both the next instant and ten thousand years.

Then, a strange voice sounded in his ears.

【Pre-registration Instance No. 1008611 initiated】

【Instance Name – Hide-and-Seek】

【Instance Description – You clap once, I clap once, let’s play a game together. If you can’t catch the ghost, your head will fall!】

【Personal Main Quest – Find three Death Rules within the time limit】

【Clear Reward – The final Closed Beta Player slot】

【Hidden Reward – Conditions unknown】

【May you all find the death that belongs to you】

Why does this voice sound like a Sadako with a thousand-year-old phlegm ball stuck in her throat, squatting and screaming in a public toilet two hundred meters away?

Far from being frightened, Wu Wang instead made a series of abstract, snarky comparisons.

The moment the thought crossed his mind, his vision instantly brightened.

“Ah! My 24K titanium-alloy dog eyes!”

It brightened, all right, but it was a little too bright.

This place was nothing like his gloomy, tomb-like bedroom. The glaring lights stung his eyes, and it took several seconds for them to adjust.

Wu Wang was shocked to find himself in a plainly decorated lecture hall. A ring of stage spotlights on the ceiling shone as dazzlingly as the sun, illuminating the entire room as if it were daytime.

Neatly arranged tiered seats filled the room, facing a lectern at the very front. A lone microphone stood on it, as if waiting for someone to passionately begin a speech.

Even more bizarrely, there were dozens of people lying scattered about the floor. He had probably been in the same position just moments ago.

A quick glance was all it took for Wu Wang to count a total of fifty people in the room, including himself.

A man closest to Wu Wang groaned, slowly waking up and rubbing his head.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw a handsome youth with a pair of utterly incongruous dead-fish eyes leaning in, almost face-to-face, staring at him.

The two stared at each other for a moment.

The youth revealed a gratified smile and spoke first.

“Not bad. You’re the rookie with the best mental fortitude I’ve ever seen.”

Gratified my ass!

The line, so familiar it could be found in most infinite-flow novels, made the man’s head ache. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if the problem was the situation or this strange youth.

But after instinctively patting his waist, his expression became noticeably calmer.

Before he could make his next move, he saw the youth run up to another person who had just woken up.

“Congratulations, the frontal lobe severing surgery was a great success. You’ve already forgotten that you’re an idiot.”

“Huh? But I was never an idiot in the first place!”

“See? A successful surgery!”

“…”

Within two minutes, everyone in the lecture hall had woken up.

The ones Wu Wang had spoken to all wore strange expressions.

They were hard.

Not only were their expressions stiff.

Their fists were fucking hard, too.

However, while they were pondering where this live wire with a scattered mind and a trash mouth came from, they had no idea that Wu Wang had already vanished into the crowd.

He had already formed a rough guess.

These people are all murderers!

He had carefully observed them as they woke up. Without exception, everyone he had spoken to had a very peculiar reaction after their initial confusion.

Some touched their waists or pockets, likely feeling for a weapon that put them at ease.

Others, in their anger, sized up his neck artery and his heart, as if ready to kill him at any moment.

Still others, while showing no extreme reaction, were unnaturally calm. They showed none of the panic a normal person would feel. Instead, they were composed and tried to get information out of him.

They tried to hide it, but Wu Wang was all too familiar with the gloom in the depths of their eyes.

The middle-aged man from the shop who had tried to torture and kill him had the exact same look.

These people were all cut from the same cloth.

What are the conditions for entering this so-called Instance? Killing people with a Spirit Tablet? In other words, besides me, all these people are homicidal maniacs who were hiding in cities, holding Spirit Tablets?

As far as I know, there’s only been one homicidal maniac in Mingyang City recently, and I’ve already taken care of him. So, they must be from other cities.

Wu Wang quickly mulled over their identities.

The others, meanwhile, were uneasy. No one spoke. They were all just wary of each other.

About ten minutes later.

Thud!

A sudden thud echoed through the classroom, shattering the dead silence.

Everyone looked toward the sound.

They saw a man lying motionless on the ground. His face was so trampled and ravaged it was beyond recognition, but they could still make out a twisted expression, as if he had witnessed some great horror before his death.

“He’s… he’s dead!?” a woman standing closest to the body spoke in terror, her hand covering her mouth.

Although she didn’t go over for a closer look, the man on the floor was bleeding from all seven orifices, his chest no longer moving. He had clearly lost all signs of life.

The horrific sight frightened her so much that her legs gave out and she collapsed to the floor. A nauseating stench of urine rose from between her legs as a pale yellow liquid soaked her skirt.

Not every murderer has strong mental fortitude. In the end, some were just ordinary people.

But no one pointed fingers at the woman. Instead, they all wore grave expressions.

Because they had all noticed a key point.

There was no one around the dead man.

Even the closest person, the woman, was a full three meters away!

Who could beat a man into that state from such a distance? It couldn’t be that Jotaro summoned Star Platinum and ORA’d him to death, right?

Everyone’s heart skipped a beat.

They subconsciously recalled the main quest.

【Find three Death Rules within the time limit】

Could it be that he triggered one of the so-called Death Rules?

As murderers who roamed the darkness of the city, they had all experienced the miraculous power of the Spirit Tablets and used them to unleash the beastly desires in their hearts. Therefore, upon inexplicably arriving in this classroom, most had remained relatively calm.

Cowards like the woman who had wet herself were in the minority.

But now, the situation had changed.

Besides their wariness of one another, an inexplicable panic began to spread. It was the fear of an unknown danger.

Humans and ghosts. It was clear who should be afraid of whom, unless you were a complete idiot.

And they couldn’t even see the ghost.

Weren’t they just lambs to the slaughter?