Password

“Has it really never changed?”

Zhu Yan muttered to himself as he stared at the latest message from Tu Shan.

Then he quickly reached out and pulled Qi Yinming over. “Qi, use your ability—can you tell if this guy is lying?”

The floor where the [Key Fragment] was located was bound to have issues.

But Zhu Yan needed to first rule out the possibility that Tu Shan was lying to bait them.

Qi Yinming had actually been standing behind Zhu Yan the whole time. “I’ve been watching. It seems like he’s not.”

He patted Zhu Yan on the shoulder to calm him down, then leaned in to read the message a second time, carefully.

This time, his tone was resolute. “I’m sure that sentence was the truth.”

“That floor really hasn’t changed for a long time.”

Qi Yinming looked thoughtful. “It was the same with the floor where the [Memory Supermarket] was… we thought it would change quickly, but—”

But it didn’t change for a long time, until the creature from the horror world inside it was killed.

Zhu Yan silently finished Qi Yinming’s sentence in his mind.

But every floor’s situation was bound to be different.

…

Upstairs.

The lights in the dormitory for ten people were glaringly bright, but the smell was unbearable.

Tu Shan had been holed up in there for a while, but the faint stench of decay and sweat still assaulted his nostrils like a biological weapon.

He looked down at his chat with Zhu Yan on his phone, growing irritated. He stood up, swept aside the crudely hung blue nylon curtain, and twisted open the door for some air.

The hallway was eerily silent. The white light from the dormitory stabbed into the pitch-black void outside, only to be swallowed up quickly.

A cold wind, carrying a faint, elusive smell of blood, rolled into the dormitory. Tu Shan felt a bit better.

“Something’s off, boss,” said the guy next to him, sniffing.

“We’ve piled up so many bodies we don’t want in the hallway—why’s the smell so faint?”

Tu Shan didn’t think much of it and looked down at the new messages popping up on his screen.

Zhu Yan: “What did you do?”

Zhu Yan: “Not an accusation. Please honestly list everything you’ve done—I suspect your floor is not simple.”

Zhu Yan: “Either there’s something coveted by a [Hunter], or there’s a horror creature you haven’t discovered yet. Coincidentally, I’ve run into both scenarios before.”

Tu Shan stared at these words, then lifted his head to gaze at the hallway shrouded in darkness.

There was no reason for Zhu Yan to lie about something like this.

That meant…

Tu Shan’s eyes lit up.

It meant that this hallway, terrifying to others, might actually hold a huge opportunity for him as a [Hunter].

If it was the former, it might attract that senior [Hunter], and he could cozy up to them.

If it was the latter, there wasn’t much to worry about. After all, [Hunters] and horror creatures were essentially on the same side.

The previous [Hunter] only got a bounty placed on their head because they likely stole something from a horror creature.

If he kept his head down and behaved, the hallway would probably stay silent forever.

So, all he had to do was wait, find Zhu Yan, and then kill him…

That would be the best move for him.

Tu Shan lowered his head and typed casually into the chat with Zhu Yan.

“There are ten dormitories here.”

“I’ve opened six of them, taken the supplies, and gathered all the survivors into my room.”

That wasn’t a lie.

The people he hadn’t killed—how could they not count as survivors?

“The remaining four rooms are girls’ dorms. They won’t open up, and we can’t get in either.”

Tu Shan added.

Zhu Yan understood now.

Tu Shan was saying he’d killed everyone he could and then looted the supplies.

“Disgusting,” Yang Zhanbai commented.

Zhu Yan was calculating how much loot Tu Shan had grabbed and how many credits would be on the campus cards.

His ability [I Must Take This Bargain] could siphon money from campus cards, so if all went smoothly…

Zhu Yan’s eyes gleamed.

On the other end of the screen, Tu Shan’s message popped up.

“Big shot, may I dare ask—can you find out the directive for changes on your floor?”

“We want to come over. This whole thing is getting too terrifying.”

Yang Zhanbai sneered. “He wants to come over and kill us. He can’t even beat me—who gave him the guts?”

Xu Tongguang frowned, his voice weak. “Can I ask what’s going on with this guy? I don’t know the full story—what if he’s genuinely asking for help?”

“Impossible,” Qi Yinming shook his head and briefly explained the past conflicts between the group and Tu Shan.

Zhu Yan, however, stayed quiet.

In his view, it didn’t matter whether they went to him or he came to them—the [Key Fragment 3] would move with Dormitory 106 regardless.

What he had to worry about was always just how to throw Tu Shan into the main line.

He pulled out his phone and tried searching online for how to use an old-fashioned telephone.

If he could just call back the most recent call, they could find a way to reunite with Tu Shan.

“Don’t bother searching,” Chen Zhaoxing suddenly leaned in, grinning mischievously right next to Zhu Yan’s ear.

He stared intently at Zhu Yan’s search page, which was blank, with a loading icon spinning endlessly.

“In a dungeon, you can only send texts. There’s no signal for the internet. But I’ve seen this kind of old phone before. To redial, you press these two buttons plus the pound key.”

Chen Zhaoxing pointed out three buttons to Zhu Yan, a look of almost eager mischief spreading across his face.

“Zhu Yan, when do you think they’ll get here? Will they actually come?”

Zhu Yan didn’t understand what Chen Zhaoxing was so excited about.

He tried pressing the buttons Chen Zhaoxing had indicated, lifted the receiver to his ear, and waited nervously.

A few seconds later, an actual ringing sound came through the phone—“Ring—ring”—and then it was picked up.

“Hello, this is the office. How can I help you?”

It was a woman’s voice, businesslike and official.

Zhu Yan guessed it might be a pseudohuman, because the tone bent oddly at the end of each sentence.

“Hello.”

Zhu Yan tried to keep his voice as hoarse as possible.

“I’d like to ask—what’s the directive for the floor where Room 303, Building 15, West Court, [Xishan University] is located?”

The woman’s voice paused briefly. “Are you looking for a [Hunter]?”

Zhu Yan’s heart leaped, but the voice kindly added, “The [Hunter] isn’t necessarily on that floor, sir. Also, the [Bounty Order] has been lifted.”

Zhu Yan relaxed.

He’d been terrified, thinking some entity had been tracking his every move.

“I’ll check it out anyway,” he insisted. “I’m not looking for a [Hunter].”

“The passcode is: Cool to the Core, Heart Soars,” the woman said. “Are you departing from the floor where the [Memory Supermarket] is? If you’re in your own house, the house will move with you.”

Of course not.

But Tu Shan was in his dormitory.

Zhu Yan would welcome Dormitory 106 sliding over to him.

He didn’t bother replying to the woman’s voice. He hung up decisively.

Chen Zhaoxing was rubbing his hands together behind him like a fly. “When are you gonna tell that Tu guy?”

Zhu Yan shot him another look, finding it even stranger.

Why was Chen Zhaoxing so worked up all of a sudden?

Qin Yang got up on his own initiative and went to check the door.

"It's locked," he said, nodding to Zhu Yan over his shoulder. "Brother Zhu, if they come over now, there shouldn't be a problem."

Zhu Yan swiped through his phone and sent the passcode to Tu Shan.