Chapter 7

The food on the table had already spoiled, giving off a foul smell.

Gu Yuhuan stared blankly at these familiar surroundings, her eyes gradually filling with tears. Tears and sweat rolled down together, and she wiped her face clean with her clothes. After steadying her emotions, the first thing she did was try to see if the door could be opened.

She had just reached the front door when she heard the sound of it unlocking.

…Who is it?

The moment Gu Yuhuan saw the person who came in, tears streamed down her face. Covering her mouth, she choked out, “Brother—”

Gu Yuhuan was the second child in her family. She had an older brother named Gu Yixing.

Gu Yixing hugged his sobbing sister tightly.

In truth, ever since the siblings had come to understand the idea of “differences between men and women,” they had rarely been overly affectionate. Even as biological siblings, they seldom hugged like this.

This was a moment Gu Yixing found difficult to hold back his emotions. He had always been a very steady and composed person, rarely this agitated.

His name, Yixing, was derived from the phrase meaning “virtuous and accomplished,” with the character “Xing” replacing “Xin” because he was a boy. The siblings were four years apart.

Gu Yixing had been rather mature and sensible since he was young, excelling at everything he did. He was the so-called “other people’s child”. When Gu Yuhuan was born, their parents were both in the rising phase of their careers and inevitably neglected their daughter. As a result, Gu Yuhuan was almost entirely raised by her brother.

Even as a child, Gu Yixing took excellent care of his younger sister, so it was only natural that she felt closest to him, perhaps even more so than to their parents. The fact that he was still alive was, of course, an immense comfort to her.

Gu Yuhuan’s name also had a story behind it. It was taken from a line in a once-popular novel her mother loved: “You dwell in melancholy (yu), while I dwell in joy (huan).” Both siblings’ names were chosen by their mother, a renowned literary figure in China, famous for several classic detective novels.

After crying her heart out, Gu Yuhuan had her tears and mucus wiped clean by her brother with a damp cloth. By the time she sat down on the sofa, her throat that was already hoarse was now too strained for her to speak at all.

When Gu Yixing had gone to the bathroom earlier, he noticed ashes on the floor. He retrieved two metal boxes from the bedroom, carefully moved a stool aside, and gathered the remaining ashes into the boxes. Then he led his sister to kneel and bow three times in respect.

Honestly, once her brother appeared, Gu Yuhuan felt like she found her backbone again.

During these long days, she had suppressed her thoughts, refusing to think about her parents or her brother, yet her heart had been constantly agonized.

Sometimes she told herself: If I push through, I can return to the real world and reunite with my family.

But deep down, she knew that the chances of her parents—who had disappeared before her eyes—being alive were extremely slim. As for her brother, his fate had been uncertain; he might not have survived either.

Now that she was facing the reality of her parents’ deaths, her emotions were still within a manageable range.

Gu Yixing stayed in the bathroom for seven or eight minutes before coming out. When he did, his expression was normal, and he even handed his sister a box of throat lozenges, telling her to take some.

Gu Yuhuan couldn’t tell whether he had cried inside.

After finishing all this, Gu Yixing sat cross-legged on the floor, pressed his palms together, and began to chant: “Namo Amitābhāya, Tathāgatāya, Tadyathā, Amṛtodbhave…”

When Gu Yixing was choosing his university major, he hadn’t selected the popular fields like computer science, urban planning, or engineering. Instead, he chose the relatively obscure field of religious studies, devoting himself to the study of Buddhism. He was currently pursuing a Ph.D. Although he had not become a monk, he was considered a lay Buddhist and had formally taken refuge.

After finishing the rebirth mantra for their parents, Gu Yixing said to his sister in a low voice, “The dead are gone, what matters most now is how to survive.”

When the miniature smart device wasn’t issuing tasks, it was just like an ordinary watch—useless. Gu Yixing went to the storage room, found the family radio, and started tuning channels while telling his sister about his own experiences.

…

At noon on August 13, 2020, Gu Yixing had just parked his car in the residential garage. The Gu family was relatively well-off. Since both children studied in the university district—especially the son, who had been there for many years—the family had moved there to live. Gu Yixing usually handled his three daily meals at the research center, but every day at noon he would return home for a nap.

Right at twelve o’clock, just after he parked, he saw several chatting staff members in the property management office suddenly turn into ash. After that, he also chose to download the “Eighty-One Deadly Questions” app.

Gu Yixing showed his wrist to his sister. Like Gu Yuhuan, he also had three small red flowers on his wrist.

Gu Yixing said, “My second question was a multiple-choice one: Which of the following characters come from Grimm’s Fairy Tales?”

Gu Yuhuan froze for a moment, but quickly reacted, “Which option did you choose?”

Gu Yixing: “Option C, Rapunzel.”

Gu Yuhuan: “I chose Option B, Bluebeard’s wife.”

This time, it was Gu Yixing who was shocked. He had never imagined that he and his sister at home had ended up answering the exact same multiple-choice question. He had chosen the more familiar Rapunzel, leaving the more difficult option to his sister. The thought sent cold sweat down his back. Of course, none of this had been their conscious choice. At the time, neither of them knew who the other participants were. Apart from marveling at the coincidence, there was no point dwelling on it now.

Gu Yuhuan first told her brother in detail about what she had experienced in the Bluebeard scenario. She explained everything carefully—after all, there were many questions left, and the more clear things were, the better their chances of clearing future scenarios.

After listening, Gu Yixing said calmly, “The way to clear the Rapunzel scenario was to leave the tower within ninety-six hours. When I woke up in the tower, I received a note listing six ‘Rapunzel Laws’… First, Rapunzel’s hair shortens by five meters every day; second, her singing attracts the prince; third, the godmother can imitate the prince’s voice; fourth, the godmother truly loves Rapunzel; fifth, the godmother has a favorite pair of high heels that she spends six hours a day maintaining; sixth, Rapunzel must not let the godmother discover her desire to escape the tower.”

“Rapunzel” might sound unfamiliar to some, but if you call her the “long-haired princess”, almost everyone has heard of her.

As for what happened in the Rapunzel scenario…

Gu Yixing thought for a moment, then summarized briefly: “An escape room game.”

Gu Yuhuan: “A cross-dressing escape room game?”

Gu Yixing: “…”

Who else could Gu Yixing have played? Rapunzel, of course.

He coughed lightly and changed the subject: “Do you know what the earliest chosen Option E was? And was Option A correct or not? Which story does it belong to?”

Gu Yuhuan had inherited her mother’s strengths, with a genuine love for literature. When she was in her teens, her mother had signed her up for the quiz show “Who’s Still Standing,” where she could answer almost any literature-related question. She defeated five contestants in a row and returned home with the prize. In fact, Gu Yixing’s own reading habits had been cultivated by his sister. Because she loved reading, he used to read fairy tales aloud to her when they were young, continuing until she turned eight.

As for “Mr. Korbes,” he truly had no recollection.

Gu Yuhuan went to the study and brought out a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales for her brother.

The story of Mr. Korbes roughly goes like this: a hen and a rooster set off together to visit Mr. Korbes’s house (the tale is also sometimes translated as “The Hen and the Rooster”). Along the way, many objects keep joining them, forming a large traveling group. When they arrive at Mr. Korbes’s house, each settles into a place they like.

When Mr. Korbes returns home, he doesn’t notice all these “uninvited guests” in his house. He goes about his usual routine, but mishap after mishap occurs. Through a series of coincidences, he suffers numerous injuries, and in the end, he is killed when one of the “guests”—a millstone—falls on him.

What terrible luck! The final line of the story says: “This Mr. Korbes must be a real villain.”

It was pure dark humor.

When players entered a scenario, they would find that while it differed from the original fairy tale, it still followed the same basic template. For those who chose option E, the countless coincidences would become a major disaster.

Gu Yixing said, “People who choose E will have a hard time getting out of the scenario.”

Gu Yuhuan replied, “So it’s not just about answering correctly… When faced with multiple-choice questions, which option you pick also matters.”

For example, Gu Yixing’s cross—well, tower escape. The horror elements weren’t as intense as in the Bluebeard scenario, and the overall danger level was much lower, so he managed it with relative ease.

“Bzzz—bzzz—bzzz—”

Both of them turned their attention to the radio.

“Bzzz—Attention… the library is open all day… the military will drop supplies at fixed locations daily… drop points include XXX Community, XXX School…”

Gu Yuhuan wrote down every fragment of information she could catch, especially the supply drop points near their neighborhood. In fact, when she had just come upstairs, she had already noticed that many doors were open with no one inside. For now, food and water weren’t an immediate problem, but that was only temporarily. After all, most food would spoil.

The radio didn’t say anything else. It just repeated these same lines over and over, offering no explanation whatsoever about that damned “Eighty-One Deadly Questions” app.

Gu Yuhuan said, “Option A is ‘The Water Nixie in the Pond.’”

Gu Yixing found the story and read through it. After finishing, he thought for a moment and said, “Based on what we know so far, I have a few guesses… First, answering questions may trigger scenarios, though the exact conditions are unclear. Second, each triggered scenario provides a set of rules—these rules are key hints for clearing it, though there may not always be exactly six. Third, the system indicates that completed scenarios are single-player, which suggests that multiplayer scenarios may also exist.”

Gu Yuhuan added another point: “There are both multiple-choice and single-choice questions. For multiple-choice, you just need to pick the correct options, but the number of correct answers affects the difficulty… I also have another question about the difference in time flow between the scenarios and the real world.”

Their gazes shifted to the dishes on the table, which had already changed color.

Author’s note:
Gu Yuhuan: “Trash app. No beginner’s tutorial.”
Gu Yixing: “All the rules have to be figured out by yourself. Heh~!!!”