Infinite flow, but I submit myself

The originally noisy barrage suddenly became completely clean, a silent blank.

Tang Mo Bai glanced at the person who had shown no reaction since entering. No matter what he did or said, Deville hadn’t even looked his way.

His gaze was unfocused, staring into the void, as if he was completely immersed in his own world.

This strangely familiar state made Tang Mo Bai’s heart stir slightly. He fixed his gaze on Deville’s eyes and slowly moved closer.

“Hello? My name is Tang Mo Bai. Sorry that we have to meet under these circumstances. Your name is Deville, right?”

“……”

“Hello? Can you hear me? How about we cooperate? You’re not a newcomer, so you should have been here for a while. Do you have any other information? What exactly is going to happen tonight?”

“……”

No matter how he questioned him, Deville gave no response.

He pondered for a moment, then stood up and cautiously approached him.

Three meters… two meters…

He crouched slightly, keeping his hands visible within Deville’s line of sight, until he was within about one meter of him.

At that moment, the previously unresponsive man suddenly sat up straight, a flash of hostility appearing in his eyes as he raised his arm.

Tang Mo Bai immediately took a step back, crouched down, and extended his hand to show he meant no harm.

Deville stared at him. The ferocity in his eyes gradually faded and returned to emptiness.

This time, Tang Mo Bai didn’t attempt to get closer. Instead, he turned to grab the oil lamp on the wooden table. Noticing that Deville’s gaze followed him, he deliberately slowed his movements so that he could see every detail.

He picked up the oil lamp and, in the dark environment, moved toward Deville. He placed the lamp at the one-meter boundary and then plopped down beside it.

Deville looked at him, then at the oil lamp. After a long moment, his shoulders gradually relaxed again, but his expression remained vacant. His focused gaze only lasted a few seconds before he returned to his dazed state.

Tang Mo Bai quietly stared into the darkness. Occasionally, he turned to observe him and, seeing his unchanged state, muttered under his breath, “He really is a lunatic…”

At first, he thought the barrage had been describing Deville’s bloodthirsty state in the arena. But now, he realized they had simply been making an objective statement.

This condition—he was all too familiar with it. So familiar that he almost saw hallucinations from the memories it evoked.

“To survive in this state, you must be incredibly strong.” He murmured, “How nice… I wish I could be that strong too.”

“Hey, what kind of condition do you have? Autism? Or something else?”

“Have you been like this since you got here, or was it before?”

“I thought I was already unlucky enough, but it turns out there’s someone even worse off than me.”

Regardless of what he said, Deville remained silent. He had already gotten used to it and didn’t mind, continuing to mumble to himself. A night with some human voice was better than complete silence.

Deville remained unresponsive, taking out a piece of black bread covered in mold from his pocket and taking a bite.

“Hey, you can’t eat that!” The moment Tang Mo Bai saw this, he instinctively reached out to stop him.

Swish!

He immediately pulled his hand back. A fresh cut appeared on his fingers. If he had been any slower, his fingers might have been chopped off.

Deville’s right hand had somehow turned into a metallic dagger. His expression was cold and alert as he stared at him, quickly finishing the bread like a guarded animal.

Tang Mo Bai said nothing. He blinked, then obediently retreated to his original spot on the straw without attempting to talk to him again.

The environment returned to dead silence.

In the darkness, all negative emotions were amplified.

Less than a minute later, Tang Mo Bai found himself actually missing the barrage of insults and crude words. At least then, the overwhelming emotion was anger instead of unease and fear.

Anger made people want to move forward and throw punches.

Fear only made people want to retreat.

Time ticked by. The deep night brought exhaustion, washing over reason like a tide.

Five meters away from Tang Mo Bai’s house, Xiu Wei Yi drowsily closed his eyes. Normally, newcomers were placed two per room. They had set the oil lamp in the center and lay down on the straw, initially agreeing to take turns keeping watch. But he was too tired. His eyelids kept drooping.

The accommodations given to them by the robed men were extremely crude. Frankly, even rural brick houses seemed better. The cold wind howled through unknown gaps, just as Xiu Wei Yi was about to drift into sleep.

Then, a strange sound reached his ears.

“Hehehe… hihihi…”

It was the laughter of a child. Sharp, childish, but far more eerie and piercing than usual.

But this was a revival match.

Where would a child come from?

He jolted awake, instantly alert. He instinctively turned toward the source of the sound, but he saw nothing—just blood-stained handprints silently appearing on the walls of the broken house.

As if… something was crawling along the walls like a spider.

Those bloody handprints were inching closer and closer to where he was.

He barely held back a scream, swallowing it in his throat.

He instinctively reached out to push the person beside him. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! There’s danger!”

His eyes remained fixed on the direction of the bloodstains while his hand shook the other person’s body.

But then—

The weight of the body felt strangely light.

A chilling touch crept up his palm.

“Heehee… hihihi.”

The laughter was closer now.

As if—

It was right next to his ear.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

His mind went blank. Unable to endure any longer, he grabbed the oil lamp and scrambled away, completely forgetting about the limited oil supply he had noticed earlier. Without hesitation, he lit the lamp.

One house after another lit up, and within the lamp’s glow, the terrifying ghostly shadows temporarily disappeared.

Temporarily.

Inside Tang Mo Bai’s room.

Bloody handprints slowly emerged from the floor. A chilling wind howled through the room, and eerie laughter echoed from all directions.

Pale, contorted children, women, and old people appeared out of the darkness. Their limbs bent at unnatural angles, resembling human-shaped spiders. Their eyes, filled with resentment and oozing black blood, stared at Tang Mo Bai as they crawled toward him.

And yet, despite this, Tang Mo Bai remained incredibly calm.

If this had been him in the past, he would have already bolted out the door in terror or immediately lit the oil lamp.

But now, after two weeks of training, he had learned to maintain his composure in extreme situations. This was his most important lesson—because in moments of danger, emotions only led to misjudgment. Only by staying calm could he analyze the situation and survive.

The oil lamp had been placed back on the table earlier. He resisted the urge to reach for it, his fingers twitching slightly as his eyes flickered toward Deville.

Deville, too, was surrounded by ghostly figures, yet he remained utterly still.

According to the bullet screen messages, he had lived here for a long time, but because he had lost his sanity, he had been confined to this place.

That meant he was at least somewhat aware of what was happening.

Considering this, as the ghostly figures drew closer, Tang Mo Bai hesitated, his eyes wavering. Then, gritting his teeth, he mimicked Deville’s response—closing his eyes and doing absolutely nothing. Only his eyelids trembled slightly in the cold air.

A few eerie, chilling laughs echoed in the room. The ghosts stared coldly at their prey. While a few lingered around Deville, seemingly dissatisfied at being ignored, the majority turned their attention to the newcomer.

Creak… creak…

Scratching sounds came from the wooden door. The only window in the room rattled ominously. Among the ghostly laughter, Tang Mo Bai heard a woman’s desperate cries outside the door.

“Open the door! Open the door! Help me! Please, save me! He threw me out—I’m begging you, open the door!”

He flinched but pressed his fingers against the floor, forcing himself to remain still. This was clearly a trap. Besides, the man in the black robe had explicitly warned them not to leave the room.

“Open the door…” The woman’s voice grew weaker, now dripping with resentment. The pounding against the door became more forceful, as if—

By now, the ghosts had drawn close enough that if they wanted to attack, they could have already taken his head. Yet, they remained at the “jump scare” stage.

Even the traps he had set hadn’t been triggered.

As rational thought took over his nerves, fear gradually receded.

More importantly, Deville was nearly engulfed by the ghosts, yet he still hadn’t moved.

Tang Mo Bai could have sworn he saw a flicker of disappointment flash across the face of one of the ghosts. Then, just like that, the apparitions faded away.

The room fell silent again.

Only the sound of Tang Mo Bai’s heartbeat echoed in his chest.

That’s it? It’s over?

Tang Mo Bai realized something—these ghosts were most likely illusions.

Normally, when people face terrifying and supernatural phenomena, their instinctive reaction is fear. And fear leads to irrational decisions—running away, lighting the oil lamp too soon.

This was probably the first trap.

Judging by the limited amount of oil in the lamp, keeping it lit all night would be impossible. If the lamp ran out, what would happen to the people inside the rooms in the latter half of the night? That was the real unknown.

Fortunately, in the past two weeks, Tang Mo Bai had gone through countless supernatural survival scenarios.

Maybe it was because he was naturally afraid of ghosts, or perhaps because his previous failed trial run had also been in a supernatural world, but his training had included a lot of horror settings.

To be honest… aside from the fact that these ghosts were real, they weren’t all that terrifying.

The simulated horror tests he had endured had been crafted by world-class horror movie directors, award-winning special effects artists, and A-list actors and actresses.

Top psychologists had personally tailored the scenarios to his cultural background, pinpointing his deepest fears. Even the horror films and games on his computer had been analyzed and refined to make the experience as terrifying as possible.

Aside from being fictional, those ghosts had been scarier than the real ones.

After all, ghosts only wanted to kill people.

The people who designed those simulations? They wanted people to be scared and still pay money for it.

Paid horror experiences were more sincere than ghosts could ever be—because ghosts don’t care about customer feedback.

As he recalled the sheer hell he had endured in training and compared it to these ghostly figures, he slowly regained his calm.

Something’s not right.

If these were just illusions, then why had two people in the other rooms been forced to kill each other?

Unless… this was only the appetizer.

As time passed, the screaming outside gradually faded.

Not everyone was an idiot—soon, others would start realizing that the first wave of ghosts had been illusions. And those illusions were now disappearing.

That was how it was supposed to be.

But then—

A furious shout thundered through the night, jolting Tang Mo Bai to alertness.

His nose twitched, catching a heavy, metallic scent.

Blood.

Blood? But weren’t the ghosts supposed to be gone?

He stared blankly into the darkness, his mind slowly putting the pieces together.

The ghosts were never the real danger.

It was the ghosts inside people’s hearts that had finally come out.

Li Xuelei swung his arm in a full arc and delivered a hard slap to Xiu Wei Yi’s face. A bright red handprint immediately appeared on Xiu Wei Yi’s cheek, but thanks to the pain, he snapped out of the hallucination.

The terror in hi eyes gradually faded, replaced by confusion. He looked at Li Xuelei, who stood unharmed in the lamplight, then glanced around the room. The bloody handprints had all disappeared. Only then did he fully process what had just happened. Lowering his gaze to the lit oil lamp, his expression darkened.

“Didn’t we agree that lighting the oil lamp requires both of us to consent?” Li Xuelei growled impatiently. They had been taking turns standing watch, but when he had woken up to Xiu Wei Yi’s terrified scream, the oil lamp had already been lit.

“I… I’m sorry.” Xiu Wei Yi’s lips trembled as he stammered an apology, but in the end, he lowered his head, unable to say anything more.

But what was done was done. Blaming him wouldn’t change anything. The oil supply in the lamp had already been limited, and they had agreed to use it only in extreme emergencies. Now that it was already burning, it couldn’t be put out, and they had no way of knowing if it would last until the second half of the night.

Irritated, Li Xuelei reached for the oil lamp. “I’ll hold onto this from now on. Otherwise, you might—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

Because he saw the look in Xiu Wei Yi’s eyes.

And because he instinctively flinched away from his hand.

The shack the black-robed man had brought them to had practically no soundproofing—it was even worse than rural brick houses built by hand.

But now, Li Xuelei realized that this flimsy structure had one critical function.

The moment the first scream tore through the night again—

Everyone knew.

The balance had been broken.