NFM Chapter 11

The reasoning event came to a pause, but the Game was still ongoing. At 7:50 PM, everyone gathered in the living room on time.

“One more minute until the delivery arrives,” Huang Lu murmured, glancing at her watch.

The rain outside had not stopped, and a chilling wind blew, making Huang Lu feel inexplicably anxious. She opened her phone and double-checked her purchased items.

According to the discussion results from yesterday, she had bought a Safety Item categorized as a second-class item, an unremarkable handbag. Compared to the flashy first and third-class items, the description of the handbag was very brief, and the whole bag exuded a half-dead vibe of a desperate clearance sale.

Description: A bag that can hold things.

With thirty seconds left until the clock struck eight, the panel covering the delivery entrance began to move on its own without any wind. With a sound that made one’s teeth ache, the first package was “spat” out through the opening.

After dropping that package, the ghostly hand seemed to hurry back in.

The instigator, Lin Huai: …

Everyone exchanged glances, but no one stepped forward to confirm the ownership of the package.

Then came the second, third… By the time the eleventh package was spat out, the blood-red entrance quietly closed, and the white panel “slapped” back over the entrance.

In this extreme silence, Lin Huai was the first to walk over. He extended two fingers and lifted a T-shirt wrapped in a black plastic bag, forming a silent shape with his lips towards the bag.

“Bang.”

With that sound, the package, which had been slightly wriggling, instantly flattened out, sensing the danger.

Lin Huai’s smile held a bit more sincerity as he squatted down and looked back at everyone: “Aren’t you all coming to get your packages?”

Only then did everyone wake up from their daze and gather around, picking up their respective packages according to the names on the list. As they tore open the black plastic bags, a variety of daily necessities piled up on the floor. Huang Lu counted each item according to the shopping list provided by everyone and said after a while, “Everything is correct.”

Everyone then breathed a sigh of relief. Although the towels and toys piled on the floor showed no signs of any abnormalities, none of the players had the intention of using them. Seeing that everyone was a bit tired, Huang Lu said, “Then what should we do next…”

“Zii—zizizizi—”

At that moment, the television in the living room flickered with static. A hoarse and aged voice echoed again: “It is now 8:00 PM Beijing time, hehehe, congratulations to all players for surviving the first day…”

“Let me count the number of people? One, two, three… ten people. It seems everyone is a good child, not many have violated the Game rules… I’m quite happy…”

“There are still three days left, please follow the market rules and complete this Game… Of course, even if you fail to complete it, you can still leave this villa in one piece, but in the form of meat sauce. By the way, meat sauce is wet garbage.”

“Next, please continue to actively purchase, or identify the real ghost as soon as possible. PS: Remember to take the purchased items back to your rooms at night, or unpredictable things will happen.” The television flickered playfully, “And your previous friend has now flowed to… let me see where she has flowed to? Woo…”

If there is a type of person in the world who exists solely to make others unhappy, then this old man must be a prime example. Before everyone’s faces turned even paler, Chu Tian shrugged and walked towards the chattering television with a wrench in hand.

In the next moment, the television went black as if startled.

Chu Tian knocked on the television with the wrench but received no further response, feeling somewhat regretful: “I wanted to ask a few more questions.”

The others, already accustomed to his astonishing actions, remained silent.

Lin Huai, however, stared at the television, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Well then, today should be about it,” Huang Lu said, now feeling a bit of a headache. She picked up the handbag she had ordered from the ghost APP and decided to go upstairs.

As for the packaging paper and exchange slip inside the package, she casually tossed them onto the coffee table.

With the first day gone, aside from receiving the information that “rules cannot be violated” and the fact that one person had died, there were no further developments. After discussing until eleven o’clock, everyone decided to go to bed, to rest and prepare for tomorrow’s buying spree.

“Tomorrow, I must grab the most expensive item…” Before leaving, Lin Huai still heard Scene Kid mumbling to his phone.

Once in their rooms, Lin Huai and Chu Tian fell asleep immediately. Ye Xian placed the small fan he had purchased aside and also prepared to sleep.

Just as he closed his eyes, he felt a tap on his forehead from the person next to him.

“?”

“It’s nothing, just wanted to remind you of something.” Lin Huai lay beside him, looking at him with a smile in his beautiful peach blossom eyes, “Don’t touch the T-shirt hanging in the wardrobe at night, okay?”

Ye Xian looked at him in confusion: “Oh… why?”

“Nothing, just afraid it might break all your bones.”

Ye Xian turned to the other side, where Chu Tian was hugging a pillow and sleeping soundly.

…For some reason, he suddenly felt a bit superfluous…

Late at night.

“Swish, swish, swish…”

In his dreams, the faint sound of fabric rubbing against the ground woke Huang Lu from her slumber.

She had always slept lightly, accustomed to the 996 work schedule, and aside from no longer having thick hair, she had long lost the ability to enjoy a good night’s sleep. Hair could be saved with ginger shampoo, but sleep was beyond remedy. In the Game, this upside-down ability was further amplified, adding an extra layer of vigilance to her slumber.

Thus, it was evident that as long as one puts in effort, there would be a return; this was proven not only by Wang Zhaojun’s singing but also by the many real-life experiences.

Huang Lu slightly opened her eyes. The room was still dim, but the wind had blown the curtains open, and the bright moonlight illuminated the room.

This should have been a beautiful night, but she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t opened the window before sleeping.

The hairs on her body stood on end, and she heard the sound of a heartbeat and heavy breathing.

In a place she could not see, the handbag she had purchased from the app was now struggling to climb up onto the bed from the foot of it.

“Hu ha… hu ha… hu ha…”

The brown genuine leather that had been brown during the day was now flesh-pink, and with the strange breathing sounds, the blue veins on the bag pulsed. The zipper opened in the direction it was pulled, the jagged teeth moving like jaws at her feet.

Seemingly dissatisfied with its own weight, the bag “thought for a moment” and flipped itself inside out. The thing that resembled human skin stretched out, and the shadowy skin, devoid of facial features, accurately crawled towards Huang Lu.

Huang Lu froze, realizing she had nowhere to escape, and instead closed her eyes.

There were many cases in the Game where playing dead led to survival. She silently prayed for the bag to leave, cold sweat streaming down her back and soaking the bed.

Leave quickly, leave quickly, leave quickly… she chanted in her mind. Unintentionally, she recalled a line from the product description.

“Genuine leather handbag, large capacity.”

Large capacity… does it mean it can hold even a person?

Or is this bag meant to hold people from the start?

Lost in her thoughts, Huang Lu felt that the human skin had stopped beside her, its slippery “hands” propping up against her side. The human skin had no heartbeat, no warmth, but she could feel that “person” tilting its head to examine her.

She was forced to adopt a heroic demeanor, standing firm against the storm, silently counting numbers in her heart.

“One, two, three…”

By the time she counted to five hundred, the “human skin” seemed to have finally given up on observing her, and the rustling sound came again. The “human skin” crawled along the bed, gradually moving towards the window.

She waited another thousand seconds, the time feeling extremely long, long enough for her to count to nine hundred ninety-nine several times. After counting to nine hundred ninety-nine for the last time, she slightly opened her eyes in the silence.

The room returned to dimness. She no longer saw any traces of the human skin ghost, and the relief of narrowly escaping made her let out a long breath.

It felt like a nightmare… and wasn’t what we bought supposed to be a safety product?

With this question in mind, the nearly exhausted Huang Lu moved her fingers.

But at that moment, a drop of liquid “plopped” down from the ceiling.

Huang Lu slowly raised her head, only to see a faceless human skin hanging from the chandelier, staring back at her.

She let out a scream and pushed Ni Xiao, who was sleeping beside her, with all her might. However, the latter seemed to be in a deep sleep, not moving an inch despite her efforts.

Fear spread in her heart. Huang Lu stumbled out of bed, and the human skin moved along the ceiling, as if alive, following her.

Perhaps due to panic, the doorknob that used to turn easily now felt as heavy as a thousand pounds. Just as the human skin was about to envelop her, Huang Lu finally pushed open the door.

The villa was silent at night. Perhaps someone heard the commotion, but clearly, no one was willing to risk being hunted down to come out.

Or perhaps, this hunt had isolated others’ perceptions.

This was the Game’s consistent tactic; an attack only targeted one person at a time. She had once woken from a sweet dream only to find that her bedmate from the night before had been torn to pieces by a ghost.

She never expected that this time, it would be her turn.

Huang Lu hurriedly ran down the corridor, forgetting how dangerous it was outside her room at night; all she could think about was escaping this corridor.

Beyond her room was where Lin Huai, Chu Tian, and the others stayed, and beyond that was the staircase. The moment she saw the staircase, Huang Lu tripped and fell to the ground.

“Ah—!”

With no time to react further or lament Murphy’s Law, the “bag” lunged at her, swallowing her entire lower leg.

As the intense pain hit her, in her moment of near despair, a door directly in front of her swung open.

A young man with black hair and eyes, wearing pajamas, yawned and looked down at her.

“Lin Huai!!”

She had no time to think about how Lin Huai was still awake; she could only cry out for help in despair.

Lin Huai, upon whom all her hopes were pinned, paused when his gaze met that of the greedy human skin.

Then he closed the door.

Huang Lu: …

She closed her eyes in despair again. Just as she prepared to face death, the door was opened once more.

The young man in the T-shirt waved his black pajamas and struck her lower leg, and at the moment the human skin made contact with the pajamas, it curled up into a ball, letting out a wretched scream.

She had never heard such a piercing scream, as if all life had been taken away. The human skin rapidly dehydrated, turned black, carbonized, and ultimately became a shriveled mass.

…Finally collapsing to one side.

Huang Lu gasped for breath, her eyes reddening. The young man with black hair squatted down, extending his long fingers to lift the human skin, holding the blackened carbon-like object up to Huang Lu.

“It’s all right now.” He said, bringing the carbon-like object in front of her, “You can take a look…”

Huang Lu rolled her eyes and ultimately fainted.