"Was the person pushing the door from under the bed Chang Gu? Why wasn't that door dripping with blood?"
Chen Ge's mind was swarming with countless questions. He had never attempted a four-star trial mission before, and he had never seen what a four-star scenario's door looked like.
He had far too little information. All he could do right now was keep a low profile and try not to attract anyone's attention.
"All my employees are in the backpack—Xu Yin, Yan Danian, and all the preparations I made before." Without any trump cards, it was impossible for Chen Ge not to feel a knot of panic. But he had been through enough that his mind had already grown extraordinarily resilient.
"Things haven't reached their worst point yet. At least on the surface, I still have another identity—Lin Sisi." Chen Ge mentally ran through Lin Sisi's experiences, and then he noticed something that sent a chill down his spine.
In the diary, Xiao Lin had ultimately been played to death by all his classmates. Because he loved pranks, his classmates had eventually joined together and played one final "prank" on him.
"Right now my desk mate calls me Xiao Lin. Could the name Xiao Lin be a label of sorts? Is anyone who gets targeted and mocked by everyone simply called Xiao Lin?"
The more he thought about it, the more terrifying it became—but Chen Ge kept his expression carefully blank.
As long as they hadn't found him out, the other party wouldn't撕破脸. This gradual descent into the abyss was, for Chen Ge, possibly the safest window of time he had.
"When humans are trapped in the wilderness, the best way to avoid being targeted by predators is to appear as ferocious as possible." Even though Chen Ge had no hidden cards left, he still had to put on his best act of having everything under control.
"Calm down. The black phone wouldn't issue a mission with zero chance of survival. Even if I'm currently inside a four-star scenario, there should still be a sliver of hope."
Chen Ge instinctively turned his head to look at his shadow. That was where his last hope was hidden.
Under the ghastly white light, Chen Ge's shadow showed no change whatsoever.
"My shadow and appearance haven't changed, and my clothes look the same too. But my desk mate still calls me Xiao Lin—there's something odd about that. How did he recognize me?"
Locking the question away in his mind, Chen Ge slowly organized his thoughts. "The immediate priority is to figure out where exactly this place is, check whether there's any danger nearby, and find a way to blend in as quickly as possible."
Chen Ge's idea was wild—and bold. Anyone else transported here would be desperately trying to escape. But not him. He wanted to infiltrate the group and carve out a path to survival for himself.
"Asking people questions out of the blue would raise suspicion. Besides, I can't be certain that anything they say is true. If I want to understand everything, it's better to investigate on my own." Chen Ge carefully tucked the old-style flip phone into his pocket. "This phone probably contains very important information, but cracking the unlock code won't be easy. I should look through Lin Sisi's personal belongings and her books—maybe I'll find something useful."
To understand the scenario, he first needed to understand himself.
Rationality and composure were the only weapons Chen Ge had left. He lay his head on the desk for a while, and then, as though holding the same position for too long had become tiring, he straightened up and stretched.
He was sitting in the last row of the classroom, by the window—a so-called "prime seat." During regular class hours, it was perfectly peaceful; neither the teacher nor other students usually came to bother him.
His fingertips touched the curtain. Chen Ge hooked the edge of it aside with his little finger and tilted his head slightly to peer outside.
His pupils shrank instantly. Outside the window lay an abandoned school shrouded in night.
The reason it could be described as abandoned was that not a single light could be seen anywhere inside the school. It was pitch black.