After escorting Shi Tianzhu and the female player back to the dorm, they returned.
It was around eleven at night by the time they got back to the dorm. By then, many people had already returned.
The third floor was occupied entirely by players, and tonight it was much livelier than usual.
As soon as they went upstairs, they heard excited shouts.
The noise was coming from Dorm Room 302. The door was wide open, and a faint smell of blood drifted out from within.
"Hold him down! Don’t let him move!"
"Pin his arms down!"
"Why is he still shouting? Cover his mouth so the dorm supervisor doesn’t come after us!"
Inside Room 302, a group of players had gathered.
They were holding down a male player who had lost his memory and were engraving characters onto his skin, while a crowd of male players on the outside watched excitedly, egging them on.
Ji Zeming, who had arrived before the three of them, explained, "This player is about to completely lose his memory. Since he hasn’t engraved any characters onto his body, they’re forcibly engraving them for him."
To create markings that would last more than a month, the cuts obviously couldn’t be shallow.
With various stationery knives and fruit knives slicing into warm skin, fresh blood instantly welled up, trickling down fingers and onto the messy floor.
"At first, they were just carving his name and the character [解] (meaning ‘liberation’ or ‘release’), but then they started…”
Carving characters onto one’s body had begun with the first group of players who had lost their memories, following Zhou Xiang’s lead.
At that time, they didn’t know what it would be like to experience complete memory loss. They didn’t know if it would leave them with a permanent blank mind, lost and vacant.
It was an act of resolve they made from the heart before they lost their memories.
The first batch of players who lost their memories confirmed that they did indeed suffer complete amnesia. After losing their memories, they were like small children who knew nothing. However, once they experienced total memory loss, the invisible monsters would leave their bodies. After that, they could retain new memories, like children, and could even be taught to fill in their names, class, and exam numbers on the test papers.
In other words, they didn’t actually need to engrave anything.
However, the second group of players who lost their memories, wanting to show their determination to the others, also carved those unnecessary characters onto their bodies, just like the first group had.
This turned “unnecessary” into “necessary.”
This led to the situation where a player who hadn’t carved the characters was forced to do so.
Randomly carving characters onto someone’s body seems to create a twisted sense of control.
At first, they just carved that player’s name and information, but then someone etched their own name onto him. This sparked cheers and laughter, and others began to imitate.
If inscribing his exam information was barely justifiable, then carving other people’s names onto his body was blatant bullying and humiliation.
The skin exposed on that male player was covered in bloody scars.
"This player willingly entered the game. They probably never intended to help him recover his memory," said Ji Zeming.
Exactly.
Right now, no one knew how to recover memories.
Even if they did, given the way they were treating him, they wouldn’t help him leave the instance. And if he did manage to escape and regain his memory, he would surely seek revenge.
They were treating him as if he were already dead, yet wouldn’t let him truly die because they needed him to participate in the exam, taking up one of the bottom 100 spots in the grade.
This male player would eventually die in the game instance after repeated humiliation and abuse, and his friends back at the base would never know how he met his end in the game.
Lu Yue wanted to step in and stop it.
Ning Changfeng said, “You’d better not. There are still over fifty days left in this instance. Can you stop it every single time? Are you going to abandon your studies and caring for Zhou Xiang just to follow him around all day?”
Ji Zeming, who had seen this kind of thing many times in previous instances, said, “If you stop them openly once, they’ll only escalate their bullying when they get annoyed or frustrated next time.”
They were originally all equal players, and it was even possible that the bullied male player was stronger than them.
But now he had been turned into a “fool”—like an infant, doomed to die within this instance. Naturally, he had become their scapegoat, their punching bag to vent their frustrations.
Lu Yue looked at the player who was pinned to the ground, his white school uniform stained with blood, his face filled with confusion, pain, and fear, hesitating as he struggled with what to do.
Ning Su said, “Don’t intervene directly, but you could inform a teacher or the dorm supervisor; they’re afraid of being sent to the Reflection Hall for violating rules.”
This round of bullying ended only when someone yelled, “The dorm supervisor is coming!” temporarily halting the abuse.
The group returned to their dorm.
Ning Changfeng remarked, “I expected this to happen sooner or later, but I didn’t think it would come so quickly.”
Having been through many instances, he had witnessed too much of the evil that emerged under the pressure of these games. He turned to his son and said, “It’s almost unavoidable. Even if we tried, we couldn’t stop it all.”
Ning Su let out a soft "hm."
When interests erre imbalanced and there’s a disparity in strength, relationships naturally wouldn’t be equal.
He had long understood that humans were just like this.
Ning Su rubbed his face, looked up at Ling Xiao, and saw that his face was devoid of any emotion—no sadness, no joy, not a single trace of feeling.
Ning Changfeng noticed this too, which was why he had always wanted Ning Su and Ling Xiao to get closer.
Sometimes, Ling Xiao seemed like a god, powerful and unaffected by anything external.
Other times, he seemed like the ultimate player, someone who had completed every level and weathered countless challenges.
He was the most reliable, the one who brought the greatest sense of reassurance.
Ning Changfeng nudged Ning Su and said, "Why don’t you both get on the bed and teach Gui Sheng some math?"
Ning Su: “…”
The word had spread, and now everyone knew that Gui Sheng had scored zero in the math placement test at Yinhua Primary School.
Gui Sheng lay buried under the quilt, one pitch-black eye peeking out from a gap, surrounded by a round eye socket.
Late into the night, Lu Yue and Ji Zeming were still diligently studying.
Meanwhile, many players on that dorm floor had stopped staying up to study.
Once they learned memories could be transferred, a lot of players changed. If they had time to bully others in the dorms, it meant some players had relaxed their studies.
For players who had only managed to score 400 or 500 in the college entrance exams back in their original world, two months wasn’t enough to score a 600 after years of forgetting almost everything.
So they focused their energy on memory transfers instead.
However, obtaining a way to transfer memories was no simple task, and placement tests were held weekly. Players who didn’t put in the effort would end up in the Reflection Hall, where they’d lose their memories.
This situation—hope barely out of reach in front of them and death looming behind—created a particularly anxious, fearful atmosphere.
Consequently, more players who had lost memories found themselves bullied.
This situation came to an abrupt halt on Friday.
