Midnight.
Su Nian hadn't even had time to process everything in front of her when the emotionless electronic voice sounded in her ears again.
[The beginner scenario has officially begun.]
[Survival condition: Stay alive until dawn.]
[Current number of remaining players: 10.]
[Hint: Do not trust the night.]
As the final sentence faded, the surroundings suddenly fell into an eerie silence.
There was no wind.
No insects chirping.
Even the footsteps they had been able to hear moments ago seemed to have been swallowed whole by something.
Su Nian looked up.
She finally had time to observe her surroundings.
It was an abandoned little town.
Low bungalows lined both sides of the street. Wooden signs hung precariously overhead, their lettering so weathered it was impossible to make out.
Only one dim yellow streetlamp still shone at the far end of the street.
The light flickered on and off.
Like it was about to die.
Ten people stood in the middle of the street.
Aside from her, the other nine all looked awful.
Someone was already crying.
Someone else kept scrolling through his phone, as if hoping the signal would suddenly come back.
Another person was frantically pounding on the System panel.
"This has to be fake, right?"
"It's got to be a prank!"
"I was clearly still at home just now!"
A middle-aged man in a suit suddenly shouted.
"Let me out!"
"Who the hell are you people?"
He turned and ran toward the other end of the street.
"Wait!"
Someone tried to stop him.
But it was already too late.
Boom—
A transparent barrier suddenly rose at the end of the street.
The man slammed into it.
Thud!
As if he'd hit an invisible wall.
His entire body flew backward, and a huge lump immediately swelled on his forehead.
"Damn it!"
"We really can't get out!"
Panic spread in an instant.
The people who had still been clinging to a shred of hope went deathly pale.
Su Nian said nothing.
She simply replayed that hint in her mind.
Do not trust the night.
The hint couldn't be meaningless.
If the System had gone out of its way to say it, then the night definitely had a problem.
But…
What was it?
Just then,
the System sounded again.
[Main quest updated.]
[Survive until sunrise.]
[Friendly reminder: The light cannot go out.]
Everyone froze at once.
The next second,
the only streetlamp burning in the distance—
Pop.
Went out.
The world plunged into darkness.
"Aah!"
No one knew who screamed first.
At almost the exact same time,
from deep in the street,
came the sound of footsteps.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
They didn't sound human.
More like…
someone dragging something heavy slowly across the ground.
The sound drew closer.
Closer.
Everyone stopped breathing.
Suddenly,
a shadowy figure slowly emerged from the corner.
It was an old man.
Or rather,
it had once been an old man.
Half his face had rotted away. The corners of his mouth split all the way to his ears, and his eyeballs hung outside their sockets. His neck was twisted at an impossible angle.
He carried a kerosene lamp in one hand.
The dim yellow flame flickered weakly.
The old man slowly raised his head.
He grinned.
"Someone… didn't light a lamp…"
The old man stretched his mouth into a grin.
His rotting face looked as if someone had torn it open by force, the corners of his mouth pulling unnaturally upward all the way to his ears.
"Someone… didn't light a lamp…"
His hoarse voice echoed through the empty street.
Not one of the ten people dared to move.
Not because they were brave.
Their bodies simply knew instinctively—if they moved, they might die.
Su Nian didn't look at the old man.
The first thing she looked at was the kerosene lamp in his hand.
The dim yellow fire illuminated a radius of less than two meters around him.
Beyond the flame,
there was darkness so complete she couldn't see her hand in front of her face.
The darkness was too dense to be ordinary night, more like something with weight.
She suddenly remembered the System's hint.
The light cannot go out.
So…
The real danger wasn't the old man.
It was the darkness?
As she thought,
a young man standing on the far right finally couldn't take it anymore.
"Screw this!"
"Trying to scare us with cheap tricks?"
He grabbed a wooden stick from the side of the road and charged out.
"I'll beat you to death!"
Su Nian's eyelid twitched.
"Don't!"
But she was too late.
The moment the young man charged into the darkness,
his entire body…
disappeared.
There was no scream.
No struggle.
Like a drop of water falling into the ocean.
Gone in an instant.
Everyone froze.
"W-Where is he?"
"He was just here…"
The next second,
crack.
The sound of bones breaking came from the darkness.
Once.
Twice.
Then faster and faster.
As if someone were slowly snapping every bone in his body.
Then—
plop.
A hand
fell out of the darkness.
The severed end was impossibly clean.
Blood was still dripping from it.
A girl screamed.
Someone vomited on the spot.
The hand was still tightly gripping the wooden stick.
And on the stick,
there was now a row of deep bite marks.
Su Nian's stomach churned.
It wasn't as if she'd never seen a dead body.
But watching a living person disappear right in front of her eyes
was a completely different kind of shock.
The old man acted as if he hadn't seen anything.
He continued carrying the lamp
and slowly walking forward.
He muttered to himself.
"The lamp…"
"Mustn't go out…"
"When the lamp goes out…"
"It will find you…"
Su Nian's pupils contracted sharply.
It wasn't him!
There was something else in the darkness!
The thing actually killing people was hiding where there was no light!
She immediately shouted.
"Get closer to the lamp!"
Everyone stared blankly.
"All of you, get into the light!"
"Don't stand in the darkness!"
She was the first to rush toward the old man.
Not to attack him,
but to step into the area illuminated by the kerosene lamp.
Sure enough,
the darkness that had been roiling nonstop
stopped outside the circle of light.
As if some living thing were watching from beyond it.
The others finally reacted.
They all ran over.
Ten people.
In the blink of an eye, only nine remained.
No.
Eight.
The young man from before was already dead.
Su Nian drew a deep breath.
Her mind began racing.
She wasn't the strongest person there.
But she'd always firmly believed in one thing.
There were no dangers in this world without patterns.
As long as there was a pattern,
there was a way to stay alive.
The old man hadn't attacked anyone.
He was only carrying the lamp
and slowly walking forward.
Like he was making his rounds at night.
And the darkness
only swallowed those who left the light.
In other words,
the only safe method for now was to follow the old man.
At that moment, a middle-aged woman spoke in a trembling voice.
"So… so we just keep following him?"
Su Nian didn't answer right away.
Because
if the scenario really were that simple,
it wouldn't be Infinite-World.
She lowered her eyes to the kerosene lamp in the old man's hand.
The flame
was slowly shrinking.
A terrible premonition suddenly rose in her heart.
"That lamp…"
she said quietly.
"It looks like it's almost out of oil."
Everyone's faces went deathly pale.
(The story continues.)
The old man still didn't stop walking.
The kerosene lamp swayed faintly in his withered hand, the flame brightening and dimming as if it could go out at any moment.
Su Nian stared fixedly at the flame.
She noticed something.
Every time the old man took a step, the flame dimmed a little more.
It wasn't her imagination.
It was actually getting smaller.
"That lamp…"
she said softly.
"It's almost out of oil."
Everyone's hearts sank to the bottom of their stomachs.
"W-What does that mean?"
"It means…"
Su Nian looked toward the darkness around them, so thick it seemed impossible to disperse.
"Once it goes out, we're all going to die."
The air seemed to solidify.
No one doubted her judgment anymore.
The young man from before hadn't even had time to scream before the darkness swallowed him. The sight was still seared into their minds.
This place was a world that couldn't be explained by common sense at all.
"Then what do we do?"
A bespectacled young woman spoke in a trembling voice.
Su Nian didn't answer.
Because she didn't know either.
She had only discovered the pattern earlier than the others. That didn't mean she'd already found a way to break it.
The old man suddenly stopped walking.
Everyone's hearts clenched.
He slowly turned his head.
The eyeball that looked ready to fall out wobbled as if he were examining them one by one.
At last, he split his mouth into a grin.
"Oil…"
"It's gone…"
Pop.
The kerosene lamp dimmed another notch.
The flame was barely larger than a soybean.
Just then,
Su Nian suddenly caught a scent.
Very faint.
Like diesel, or maybe kerosene.
She followed the smell and looked down.
On the ground the old man had walked across,
there was a trail of dark marks.
Like thin lines left by dripping liquid.
Her pupils contracted.
Lamp oil!
The kerosene lamp in the old man's hand was leaking!
The System's hint flashed through her mind.
The light cannot go out.
If all the lamp oil leaked away…
then naturally, the flame would die.
Which meant—
what the quest really wanted them to do wasn't simply follow the old man, but find a way to keep the lamp burning!
"Find oil!"
Su Nian suddenly shouted.
Everyone stared at her.
"Find kerosene!"
"There has to be some in this town!"
"Hurry!"
The moment she finished speaking, the old man took another step.
And that tiny flame dimmed another degree.
The others finally understood.
"Hurry! Find it!"
"The stores!"
"Go to the stores!"
Several people rushed toward the buildings along the street.
But no one dared stray too far from the light.
They could only search one shop at a time along the edge of the circle of light.
Su Nian didn't rush in.
She first observed her surroundings.
Every shop on both sides of the street was tightly shut.
The wooden doors were rotten.
Dust coated the windows.
The lettering on the signs was still barely legible.
General store.
Pharmacy.
Tailor shop.
Cafeteria.
This wasn't an illusion.
It was more like a real town that had been abandoned for many years.
Suddenly,
an excited voice rang out.
"A lamp!"
A burly man carried an old-fashioned kerosene lamp out of the general store.
But before he could celebrate,
the lamp lit up on its own.
The flame was a ghostly green.
The next second,
a woman's laughter came from inside the lamp.
"Hehehe…"
The burly man's smile froze.
"Who is that?"
There was no answer.
Only the laughter drawing closer and becoming clearer.
As if someone were pressed against his ear.
"Can… you see me?"
The burly man shuddered from head to toe.
He lowered his head.
Inside the lamp's glass chimney,
at some point,
a woman's face had appeared.
Pale.
Bloated.
Her eyes stared straight at him.
"Aah!"
The burly man instinctively threw the lamp away.
Crash!
The kerosene lamp shattered.
The green flame went out instantly.
And at the exact moment it did,
the woman vanished.
In her place was—
darkness.
The darkness came alive and suddenly lunged at the burly man.
"Save me!"
The burly man turned and ran.
But after only two steps,
something suddenly grabbed his ankle.
He slammed to the ground.
The darkness rapidly swallowed him.
Only his hands remained, desperately clawing at the ground.
His fingernails scraped across the stone pavement with an ear-piercing screech.
"Pull me up!"
"Please, pull me up!"
No one dared go over.
It wasn't because they were heartless.
The thing holding him was extending toward the circle of light too.
Like a pitch-black arm.
Su Nian clenched her teeth.
She knew that rushing over would only get one more person killed.
The next second,
the hands suddenly stopped struggling.
Only two long streaks of blood remained on the ground.
The burly man was gone.
Remaining players:
Eight.
The System's icy notification rang in everyone's ears.
[Current number of survivors: 8.]
[First-night survival rate: 80%.]
[Keep up the good work, players.]
That emotionless voice sent a chill down everyone's spine.
In the System's eyes,
human lives were nothing more than a percentage.
Su Nian slowly clenched her fists.
She suddenly realized something even more frightening.
From the moment they entered the scenario until now,
neither of the two people who had died had been killed by the old man.
The thing truly killing them…
had always been the rules.
Break the rules, and you die.
And the rules hadn't all appeared yet.
She raised her head and looked ahead.
The old man carried the nearly extinguished kerosene lamp to the end of the street.
There stood a pitch-black ancestral hall.
Its wooden doors were half-open.
A thread of dim yellow candlelight seeped through the crack.
The old man stood before the doors and slowly pushed them open.
"The lamp…"
"Can be refilled now…"
As his voice faded,
dozens of synchronized footsteps suddenly came from deep inside the ancestral hall.
As if a great many "people"
were walking toward the entrance,
one step at a time…