A black teddy bear.
"How... how did you get the black teddy bear...?"
Hu Jiang’s hands went cold, trembling uncontrollably, as though bound by an invisible force that rendered him immobile.
His voice quivered, clearly terrified by the sight of the black teddy bear.
Xiao Huai gripped the black bear, a smile curving his lips, with eyes glimmering like scattered stars.
"What else? Of course, I got it by playing the game." He squeezed the black teddy bear lightly, and flames burst from the toy. But it wasn’t just fire—it was as if someone was crawling out from within the bear.
Xiao Huai whispered, "Miss Hanako, please."
"Hehehehe." The eerie, ghostly laughter of a young girl emanated from the bear.
The next second, a blood-soaked girl hung upside down from the ceiling. Her eyes were hollow and pitch black, terrifying to behold.
Her mouth stretched unnervingly from ear to ear as she pointed at Hu Jiang. "Will you play hide and seek with me?"
"No! No, no, no!" Hu Jiang’s face turned ashen, his legs buckling beneath him as he tried to push past Xiao Huai and escape. Yet, before he could even touch Xiao Huai, an invisible force dragged him into the darkness.
The timeline rewound to the previous day when Xiao Huai entered the world of hide and seek. He didn’t just participate in one round—he played three times.
Although the school rules and dormitory regulations forbade playing hide and seek, they only prohibited playing at night.
During the day, he was free from those restrictions.
Each round lasted two hours, and he played all three rounds.
When he was too exhausted, he took brief naps with the dormitory supervisor.
Thus, he gathered a wealth of information about this strange world.
Even though the injuries he suffered nearly cost him his life.
At the very least, he uncovered that an unnatural force was at work in this world.
Jiang Shuli was a mentally ill patient. Despite her sisters’ care, her condition worsened over time.
She suffered from paranoia, split personality disorder, and she was also a medical school graduate with extensive pharmacological knowledge.
A high-IQ mentally ill person is far more dangerous than just a mad one.
Behind Jiang Shuli stood her primary psychiatrist, a man with the last name He.
Xiao Huai preferred to call him the most deranged lunatic in the entire Fifth Psychiatric Hospital. He was the one who should have been locked up as a patient.
Through Hanako’s game, Xiao Huai learned that Dr. He used his patients to play games, inciting them to commit crimes.
If Jiang Shuli had laced the cafeteria’s food with drugs before setting the fire, the students would have collapsed after returning to their dorms. All it would take is one match to ignite a deadly blaze.
And the fire she lit quickly spread to the upper floors.
Fires on upper floors spread much faster.
Additionally, such fires are harder to extinguish compared to fires on the ground or lower floors.
That’s why the students were repeatedly jumping from the building.
Some of them may have regained consciousness just before their deaths, desperately trying to escape the inferno.
But jumping wouldn’t save them.
In this illusionary world, the monsters seemed to be reenacting their final moments, repeatedly jumping and repeatedly dying.
Xiao Huai needed to help Hanako find her mother. Her mother didn’t exist in this fabricated world but in the corrupted world of 1987.
He couldn’t stay here.
So, he took a gamble and played Hanako’s game.
Luckily, despite the hardship, he won all three rounds. In return, he earned three game items.
The first was a white teddy bear, a one-time curse item. When placed with the victim’s remains, Hanako would visit them at 3 a.m. to play a game.
The second item:
[Black Teddy Bear]
Item Description: A one-time summoning item. It directly summons Miss Hanako to lock onto a target for a round of hide and seek.
Note: "Hanako likes you and has given you her favorite bear. Make sure to meet Miss Hanako often!"
In all three rounds, Hanako gave him one white bear and two black ones in the subsequent games.
That was perhaps the benefit of growing familiar with Hanako. But if he kept playing with her, he feared it would eventually break him.
Hu Jiang was completely dragged into the shadows and disappeared, his toxic fumes dissipating along with him.
Xiao Huai murmured to himself, “Tsk tsk tsk, did you ever consider you’d meet the same end you inflicted on others?”
With that, Xiao Huai pocketed the red finger with a clear conscience.
At least Hui Yulian had sensed something was off before her death and tried to take Hu Jiang down with her, though she hadn’t succeeded.
The red finger wasn’t limited to use in this particular scenario; it could be brought into other worlds.
It was likely something Hui Yulian had acquired from a different instance, similar to the black teddy bear Hanako had gifted him.
Throughout all of this, He Lecheng never took his eyes off Xiao Huai.
Seeing Hu Jiang dragged away by Hanako didn’t surprise him in the least.
Xiao Huai turned to meet his gaze. “I imagine you won’t stop me. After all, if I were to fight you, I’d be doomed.”
He Lecheng raised an eyebrow. “For the sake of fairness in the game, as long as you don’t break the school rules, I won’t lay a hand on you.”
Xiao Huai looked up at the oil painting. “That’s the passage, isn’t it?”
He Lecheng smiled, making no attempt to deny it.
Xiao Huai walked directly to the painting, and as he took it down, He Lecheng spoke from behind him.
"Remember my advice— the polluted world isn’t as beautiful as you think. Everyone there is insane."
Xiao Huai smirked dismissively. "I’m a madman myself. Maybe the polluted world suits me perfectly."
He had entered and exited that world three times, each time setting a fire upon his departure.
By the third time, even the NPCs had grown weary and decided not to chase him anymore.
As Xiao Huai touched the painting, it felt like his fingertips grazed water, and an overwhelming force began to envelop him.
The world before his eyes blurred as the system emitted static sounds in his mind.
His consciousness fading, he faintly heard a voice.
“Identity detected as...”
“Zzzz... Loading world error...”
“Error, error.”
———
The sun was setting, casting a golden glow across the Ivy League Girls' School, bathing the campus in a warm orange light.
The yellowing tiles of the school and the lush green ivy intertwined, reflecting a soft, golden hue under the setting sun.
Tall evergreen trees in the courtyard cast long shadows in the twilight. As a gentle breeze swept through, the school bell rang.
It was six o'clock.
The vast campus was silent, save for the sound of the bell.
A tall, bandage-wrapped man leaned against a tree. The golden rays touched his face as his dark red eyes slowly opened.
Xiao Huai instinctively turned away from the sunlight and gazed at the campus.
It didn’t look like the world he had played in.
In the game of hide and seek, the sky was always dark—there was no daytime. But here, he saw sunlight.
From afar, there was no sign of fire damage on the campus.
Everything seemed untouched, as though nothing had ever happened.
No monsters, no flames—only silence remained.
At that moment, a voice spoke from behind him.
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