Lin Wan, you speak first.

This time, the Merciless One did not simply flash past, but lingered at the window for a long while. It wasn’t until Lin Wan and Chen Hao noticed his presence that he vanished like the wind.

Chen Hao turned his wide-open mouth toward Lin Wan, seemingly searching for answers in her expression. Lin Wan’s brows were tightly knit, clearly indicating that she had never encountered such a strange creature as the Merciless One before.

“Zi Jian,” she called, “do you know something?” Lin Wan turned to ask me, because although my surprise was obvious, it differed from theirs. My shock was a fearful recognition, while theirs stemmed from encountering something wholly unfamiliar. I simply recounted my previous experience with the Merciless One, as well as the time Tan Tou and I were nearly attacked.

Upon hearing this, Lin Wan showed little interest in the Merciless One, but took a particular interest in Tan Tou. If she hadn’t explained further, I might have thought she’d taken a fancy to him.

“Zi Jian, don’t you think Brother Zhenyu seems quite different from how you described him before?” Her question caught me off guard. Indeed, Tan Tou had changed, though I hadn’t paid much attention because the differences were so subtle.

Before I could sort out my thoughts, Chen Hao cut in, “I don’t think Zhenyu has changed much. He’s just a bit colder since the last game, but before that he was fine—he even saved me once.”

True enough, in previous games, Tan Tou had stood out, helping us weaklings survive and saving us several times. Yet, this was precisely what felt strange. The Tan Tou I knew was not so heroic. He was an optimist, always seeing the best in things, fond of showing off but also afraid of death.

Like the time we encountered the old corpse in the restroom—Tan Tou first awakened the power of Block A, taunting the corpse to attack him, only to flee when the power failed. That foolish, swaggering Tan Tou was the Zhou Zhenyu I recognized. But since his return from Phoenix Ancient Town, he had changed completely.

Though he’d grown colder, he still looked after us.

“Zi Jian, don’t you really think there’s something wrong with Tan Tou?” Lin Wan pressed again. I snapped back from my memories and gazed into her deep eyes. Instead, I asked her a question.

“Lin Wan, how did you suddenly recover?”

Lin Wan was taken aback, though she smiled and kept her eyes fixed on mine, never wavering.

“So you suspect me?”

Chen Hao, meanwhile, was utterly confused. Lin Wan and I exchanged only a handful of words, and he couldn’t follow our conversation at all. Indeed, it is simpler to talk with clever people.

My last memory before fainting was fleeing from the Horse-faced Messenger with Han Xue, Chen Hao, and Lin Wan.

After that, I was knocked unconscious without explanation, and when I awoke again, I found myself inside a dream. Why was I the only one who entered the dream? Since both Chen Hao and Lin Wan woke up before me, it was clear only I had been attacked by the Nightmare Demon. But why?

Who knocked us out, and what happened afterward? This was crucial. If someone among us was colluding with the Nightmare Demon, they could easily have the demon attack us in our sleep. My experience proved that wounds received fighting the demon in dreams reflected in reality. If you are killed by the Nightmare Demon in a dream, there is a high probability you will die in reality, falling into eternal sleep.

This was a ticking time bomb—I couldn’t let such a threat remain close to me.

“Lin Wan, tell me what happened after you woke up and before I did.”

“And you, so astute, must have figured out who knocked us out.”

“I suspect the failure of our operation was also because of a traitor.”

I fired off three questions in succession, but Lin Wan’s expression didn’t change at all; it was clear she had already considered these possibilities. Without hesitation, Lin Wan told me what she had discovered.

“If I tell you these things, you must tell me yours too.”

“The story about the playing cards.”

Lin Wan’s lips curled in a smile. “Since we’re friends, shouldn’t we open up and share our secrets?”

Regarding the “Fifty-four Playing Cards,” I distinctly remembered never mentioning it to Lin Wan. It was my secret, containing descriptions of the abilities of most contract holders among ghosts, corpses, monsters, and spirits.

During my library visit before I met Zhang Yisheng, I did not come away empty-handed. At the deepest part of the bookshelf, covered in dust, was a book titled “Ghosts, Corpses, Monsters, Spirits.”

I flipped through a few pages, which told stories of the four ancient races—existing even before humanity.

Clubs: The Yin Capital Ghost Lineage, masters of curses, drawing power from anger and hatred. Though called ghosts, they are noble, high-ranking beings above ordinary spirits.

Diamonds: The Tibetan Corpse Mansion, skilled in physical enhancement, refining their bodies into weapons. Millennia-old corpses, cultivating into human form.

Hearts: The Sacred Beast Monster Dominion, adept at summoning sacred beasts and wielding their innate powers, inheritors of ancient sacred beast bloodlines.

Spades: The Artifact Shrine, turning objects into spirits, commanding the forces of nature, inheritors of ancient relics.

The four races kept each other in check, until one day, a fifth race appeared: Demons.

Demons were powerful, easily slaughtering the four races. United, the four races created a deadly seal to imprison the demons underground.

The fifty-two warriors who participated in the sealing left behind their legacy; their descendants must strengthen the seal every century.

But then, the sudden appearance of the Merciless One caused me to lose the book. By the time I came to my senses, it was gone. I searched for it several times afterward, but it never turned up.

I had no idea how Lin Wan learned of these matters. For now, maintaining harmony in our small group was most important. We would need each other’s help in the future, and lack of mutual trust could spell disaster in upcoming games.

“Lin Wan, you go first.”

Chen Hao, seeing our grave expressions, said nothing more, grabbing a stool to sit beneath the bed and listen in.

Lin Wan took off her shoes and sat on my bed, starting to recount what happened after she woke up.

Her dormitory was some distance from ours. Chen Hao and I lived in the southern residential area of D University, where the non-engineering colleges clustered, while the northern area housed engineering and science students.

Lin Wan lived over there, and her temporary dorm with Lu Ling was right next to the faculty offices.

Upon waking, Lin Wan’s first action was to get out of bed and look for Lu Ling. But seeing Lu Ling’s empty bed, she was instantly reminded of the events in the class competition. Her eyes welled with tears. She had wanted to grieve alone, but hurried footsteps outside the door caught her attention.

Few people lived in their engineering dorm by now; most participants had not survived the games. On their floor, only Lin Wan and Lu Ling remained. Suddenly, the sound of footsteps—this was likely not a student.

But the faculty offices were seldom visited. Since the incident, the only teacher who had appeared was their new homeroom teacher, Mr. Wang.

Was Mr. Wang’s office in this building? Lin Wan’s first instinct was to think so.

But she quickly dismissed the idea; Mr. Wang’s office couldn’t possibly be in their nearly abandoned dormitory.

Lin Wan crept to the door, making no sound, even suppressing her breathing.

She reached the door, placed her hand on the handle, and slowly twisted it, opening a small crack.

Peering outside, she saw a long corridor, unlit and dark. Since the last game, her building had lost power completely.

Her dorm, facing the sun, was still bright, but the hallway was pitch-black.

Lin Wan could hear the sound coming from the far end of the corridor. According to the floor plan, it originated from the third-floor platform, a spot bathed in sunlight.

It was eight rooms away from Lin Wan’s dorm.

Her vision was poor, so she saw only a blurry figure, likely the person who just passed her door. To get to the bottom of things, Lin Wan stealthily drew the Six of Spades; the ancient ruler’s “Speed” activated!

“A step away, a world apart!”

Silent as a shadow, Lin Wan dashed past seven dorms and hid in the room closest to the platform.

She quietly switched on her phone’s front camera and slowly raised it to the window above the door.

In the faint sunlight, Lin Wan saw, through the camera, the Horse-faced Messenger who had hunted her, Mr. Wang, and the contract holder White Wuchang, who had appeared in previous battles.