Guo Guo finally understood what it felt like to feel cold from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.

She wanted to ask, if Xiaohong was her, then who was she? But when she opened her mouth, her voice was trembling so much that no sound came out.

As if he could read her mind, Tang Xinjue softly replied, "As long as you have reason, consciousness, self-awareness, and the ability to think, you are still Guo Guo."

Only when you lose yourself and your mind will you truly become "Xiao Hong" as the test suggests.

Guo Guo was stunned. Something occurred to her, and she suddenly took out her phone to check her body information interface.

[Sanity Collapse: Your sanity value has dropped significantly, and the surrounding environment is no longer safe for you]

The words she had already read several times came back into view, and Guo Guo felt as if she had fallen into an ice cellar. The fragmented and vague clues finally came together as Tang Xin Jue presented them, revealing the cold and terrifying truth before her.

Why is it always her?

It turns out that she was the chosen prey from the very beginning.

Tang Xinjue started writing on the paper again, but this time, next to Xiaohong's name was Guo Guo's. The two names were tied on a scale, swaying precariously.

His own identity and the infiltrating identity of "Xiaohong" are superimposed on Guo Guo at the same time, like the two ends of a scale.

Every time the san value drops, every time a hallucination or even a breakdown occurs, the balance will tilt more and more towards "Xiao Hong".

And when the balance is completely tilted... Guo Guo bit his lower lip, "What will happen then?"

Will she become the real "Xiaohong"?

Tang Xin Jue shook his head. "I can't be completely certain, but if the above analysis is correct, this should be the hidden condition of the quest item, and also the implicit logic of the test."

"——Xiaohong needs to get her belongings herself."

That's why their search the next day yielded nothing.

In fact, Xiaohong's reaction at night had already made Tang Xinjue suspicious. The ghost's greed revealed that it didn't really want anyone to help it find the item, but at the same time, it didn't worry about them finding it.

In this case, either the quest item is a scam, or the quest itself is a scam. Or even worse...

"...Zhang You is right. Xiaohong isn't human. Ghosts and monsters have a natural ill will towards us." Tang Xinjue's eyes were heavy. "Now that I think about it, if I were an NPC, I would do the same."

How, how to do it?

Guo Guo collapsed. At this moment, she even wished she had no ability to think, so that she would not be afraid of what was about to happen.

It was almost six in the afternoon, and in less than ten minutes, eight in the evening would fall again. If they didn't get the quest item, they might die. If they got the quest item, they might still die.

It's a death either way?

No... Guo Guo suddenly realized from despair that since Tang Xin Jue could analyze all of this, then perhaps he had found a solution?

She struggled to her feet, holding onto a glimmer of hope and asking, "So, what can we do now?"

Tang Xin Jue was as gentle as ever, yet there was a hidden sharpness in his words that she couldn't understand: "Wait, the time is almost up."

“Remember, even in the most painful times, don’t forget your own name, don’t forget who you are.”

This is the experience Tang Xinjue summed up from countless nightmares.

Unsure if she understood what he said, Guo Guo's eyes fell blankly on the rapidly passing electronic clock interface. She felt her brain begin to swell and ache, and a familiar auditory hallucination rang in her ears. She could only use the last bit of her consciousness to grasp Tang Xin Jue.

"Heart Sutra, if anything happens to me, when you complete the game and return to the real world, you must..."

"What do you want?" Tang Xinjue shook his roommate's hand.

My roommate was barely breathing: "You must delete the contents of my D drive... my P station account... and my Baidu Cloud account..."

Tang Xin Jue: "...Don't worry, you will be fine."

Guo Guo obviously didn't believe it. She opened her mouth sadly and wanted to speak, but her voice suddenly stopped.

From Tang Xinjue's perspective, Guo Guo's eyes began to blur, and an ominous bluish-white color had spread across his face, and his entire temperament suddenly became gloomy.

[Health value -70, negative status obtained: critically ill]

[Severe Mental Collapse: The environment has become extremely dangerous to you, and some force has eroded your will and self... Are you still yourself at this moment?]

The cell phone fell to the ground, but Guo Guo was completely unaware of it. She stood up stiffly, ignoring everything outside, and turned to look at her desk.

Guo Guo seemed to be drawn to a certain part of the desk, and she became extremely interested. She rushed over and slowly opened the vertical cabinet door under the desk.

Just when Guo Guo had the hallucination, there was an object quietly displayed in the place where there was a ghost in the screaming cabinet.

The moment he saw it, Tang Xinjue's pupils shrank.

That's a human head!

“Chuckle…”

Fear flashed in Guo Guo's eyes, but a strange smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. He involuntarily reached out to touch the head.

"Guo Guo!"

When Tang Xinjue grabbed her, it was too late. Her head had already fallen into Guo Guo's hands. Her long black hair was parted, revealing the face underneath - a blank space.

This head has no face?

"Found it, I found it."

Guo Guo smiled foolishly. At the same time, a chill ran from her arm to Tang Xinjue's body. The cold and sticky touch like ice made Tang Xinjue subconsciously withdraw his hand.

She then realized that the chill came not only from Guo Guo, but from the entire house.

The temperature in the dormitory dropped sharply, as if a thin layer of cold fog rose from the ground, covering the entire field of vision. And beneath the fog, an indescribable sense of danger gushed out -

Tang Xinjue pulled Guo Guo hard, causing the latter to stagger. The head in his hand fell to the ground and rolled two meters away.

The next second, she clearly saw a giggling mouth appear on the blank face of the skull, followed by the texture of the skin, and then downwards... a hand stretched out from the ground below the head, with five pale fingers spread out.

"Dear roommates, congratulations on finding what I lost..."

Tang Xin Jue looked at it coldly: "Did you lose your head?"

That was really careless.

The corners of the head's mouth drooped. It didn't expect that Tang Xinjue would dare to talk back at this time. Below it, a crack silently opened up on the dormitory floor, and two pale hands groped out, with a twisted and thin body behind the arms.

——Exactly the same as "Xiaohong's" body at night.

Tang Xinjue could feel that with the appearance of cracks in the ground, a certain boundary between the dormitory and the outside world, day and night was broken.

Ever since "Xiaohong" used a human head to enter the dormitory during the day, the rules and restrictions no longer apply to it.

This is the biggest danger and trap in the entire test.

Xiaohong crawled faster and faster, and in a flash, most of her body appeared in the dormitory. At the same time, the head on top of her body began to grow a human face, but the eyebrows, eyes, and facial features became more and more similar to Guo Guo.

However, Guo Guo, who was standing next to Tang Xinjue, seemed to have his facial features covered by mist, becoming increasingly blurred.

"To thank you for helping me find the items, I decided to let you stay here with me forever, okay~"

Xiaohong raised her face, and a pair of eyes had already grown on it. The next second, she giggled and opened her eyes.

"Did we catch you...?"

Everything before my eyes was dark.

Xiaohong's smile froze. Could it be that the chosen one was blind?

Then it realized that it was not a problem with its eyes, but something covering its face, causing darkness in front of its eyes.

Not only that, that thing seemed to have held all of its facial features, and the facial features that had not yet fully grown were suddenly blocked from growing and forced to stay in place.

Xiaohong: “?”

It shook its head subconsciously, but the suction force on its face was stronger than it had imagined. The two forces in opposite directions pressed against each other, causing its facial features to be flattened and sunk into its skull.

Xiaohong: "...Ahhhhhhhhh!!! I'm going to kill you all!!"

Where it couldn't see, Tang Xinjue held the toilet plunger, and the rubber plug was tightly fastened to Xiaohong's face, firmly blocking its forward steps.

Feeling the weight in his hand, Tang Xinjue looked cold and spoke softly.

"I got you."