At 10:30 p.m., the entire Qingyi Middle School was enveloped in darkness.
The campus was silent, with no laughter or chatter. The students had begun their second round of studying after their evening self-study session. At Qingyi, studying was their sole purpose; their lives revolved entirely around academics.
A mix of misery and contentment.
The self-study room was equally silent.
What they were facing was no longer the simple kind of studying that defined a typical student’s life.
When it came to deciding who would live or die, no outsider would speak up.
No one knew how much time had passed when a player who hadn’t lost their memory said, “I’ve already been to the Reflection Hall twice. If nothing unexpected happens, I’ll probably end up there a third time. I’m about to end up like them. I don’t want to be some useless person waiting for someone to save me. While I still have my memory, I’ll use this exam to go to the Reflection Hall and see how they transfer memories.”
Due to shared information, all the players now knew that memory transfer likely happened in the Reflection Hall.
Without any skills or weapons, they couldn’t resist the NPCs armed with black tree whips. If they wanted to understand how the memory transfer worked, the only apparent way was to observe the wealthy students during the placement exams in the Reflection Hall.
Who would go, and how they would do it, was the critical issue.
Everyone in the self-study room looked at him.
The male player’s name was Hong Zhenjiang. His grades hovered around the bottom 100, and he had indeed been to the Reflection Hall twice—during the first and second placement exams when he scored in the bottom 100.
During the second placement exam, when a player in the bottom 100 resisted being sent to the Reflection Hall, they were brutally subdued by the instructors.
Hong Zhenjiang understood better than anyone how terrifying the black whips wielded by the instructors were.
To observe how the wealthy students transferred memories, they would inevitably face many instructors wielding black tree whips.
Another player, a small and thin girl who had also been to the Reflection Hall twice, clenched the hem of her shirt and said softly, “I’ll go too.”
Ning Changfeng said, “If you go again, it’ll be your third time. That means you’ll definitely lose all your memories. And with the black tree whips in the hands of the instructors and security guards, it wouldn’t take much for them to beat you to death.”
Hong Zhenjiang said, “I know. If I go to the Reflection Hall a third time, I’ll completely lose my memory. But I can still tell you what I see before that happens.”
He continued, “This is the value I can offer before I lose all my memories. If I don’t die, I hope you’ll help me leave this instance in exchange for what I contribute. You can consider it an equivalent trade. If I die, it’s my choice.”
In reality, the two players who had been to the Reflection Hall twice were there because of their performance in the first two placement exams. By the time of the third exam, both of them had already scored in the bottom 100.
Even if they couldn’t score 600 points, there’s still a chance they might avoid landing in the bottom 100 in the remaining mock exams. In other words, they still have hope to preserve their memories until the end. Who knows? There might be another chance for survival.
“No way!” Lu Yue said. “If you two go, it’s a dead end. There’s no way to get past that many instructors.”
“And me!” The young man who had just said they didn’t need to rescue him stood up again. “If it weren’t for Hong Zhenjiang, I wouldn’t have realized that I could still be useful.”
“And me!”
“Me too!”
“Count me in!”
“It’s only right for us to go!”
“Yes, we’re the ones who need to transfer our memories, so it’s our responsibility to go!”
“It’s perfect for us to go. We’ve already lost our memories anyway. The black room doesn’t mean a thing to us—we could go a hundred times, and it wouldn’t matter.”
The players who had lost their memories earlier, the same ones who had given up on themselves, now stood up one by one, raising their hands to volunteer.
If they still remembered the situation of this dungeon and retained their reasoning ability, they would have realized how dangerous it was to go. They might very well lose their lives. But even so, they still stood up.
Earlier, they had all told the players with memories to abandon them and not to save them.
What was danger to them now?
The older man, the one who had earlier offered to give up his chance for the younger players, did not stand up this time. Instead, he sat at the table, writing something.
“Uncle Liu, what are you writing?”
Liu Kun replied, “I’m about to completely lose my memory. While I still have some time, I want to write this down... What is this called? A declaration? Or a pledge?”
Hearing this, the people around him lowered their heads and looked over.
[At this moment, I, Liu Kun, still have a clear mind and retain my memory of this dungeon. I now pledge that after I completely lose my memory, the ten players who still retain their memories can order me to go to the black room as they see fit. I am willing to do anything that helps complete the mission, regardless of life or death.]
After finishing his writing, Liu Kun held the fountain pen still on the small piece of paper for a long time. At the end of the paper, a black ink blot gradually spread out.
Perhaps it was due to his age, but he was accustomed to using a fountain pen. His memory wasn’t very good anymore.
He always carried a square little notebook with him, filled with English words, mathematical formulas, and ancient poems—things that now felt so far away.
It had been more than thirty years since he’d taken the college entrance exam. Among the players, he was one of the worst academically, no different from the younger ones who had never even taken the exam.
He never gave up on learning. All the fragmented moments were spent studying and memorizing. Even after realizing his memory loss, he kept a thick little notebook in his pocket.
But it was all in vain.
Despite his significant progress, he still ranked in the bottom 100 in three consecutive mock exams.
When he looked up again, he held a small piece of paper torn from his notebook, a trace of confusion on his face.
This confusion was partly due to memory loss, but more so because he didn’t know who to hand it to.
Who would be willing to accept it?
Holding his written promise, he said, “I-I just want to say, don’t feel burdened, just use me however you need.”
In the last few minutes of retaining his memory, he summarized his blurred recollections with a single sentence:
“When I first entered the game, I was nearly fifty years old. Back then, a lot of players disliked me and didn’t want to team up with me.”
Memories fade, but some feelings don’t.
He might have already forgotten how others rejected him, but he remembered the pain of being rejected.
Perhaps it was just like how players with intact memories now looked down on those who had lost their memories.
He smiled, the deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes showing clearly. “But I still cleared the game... seven or eight dozen dungeons, including those advanced dungeons that others couldn’t enter back then. So, yeah, that girl was right—don’t give up...”
After he finished speaking, the confusion on his face deepened. When he opened his mouth again, he didn’t know what else to say.
The young man tore another page from his little notebook and wrote his own promise.
More and more memory-lost players in the study room began writing promises.
At the end of every one of their promises, there was the phrase, “Regardless of life or death.”
They had all seen how memory-intact players bullied memory-lost players, bullied them to the point of jumping off buildings to their deaths.
Now, they wrote “regardless of life or death,” handing over the power to bully them, the power to decide their lives and deaths, to others.
It was for themselves, at least for the chance to carve out a path of survival for even one memory-lost player.
