YES OR YES.
The shrill giggling voice of a child in the night sky posed a multiple-choice question, but did not give a negative option.
The humming sound was haunting and creepy:
"Welcome to the Dormitory Survival Game~Happy dormitory life begins!"
“Ah, my phone!”
Guo Guo screamed, accompanied by the sound of her phone being dropped. She pointed downwards tremblingly, only to see that the phone screen was filled with distorted dialog boxes. The bright red text was exactly the same as the content of the nursery rhyme.
Tang Xinjue took out his cell phone - the same thing.
She reacted immediately, first pulling Guo Guo up from the ground, then picking up the nearest chair and propping up the floor-to-ceiling window leading to the balcony to prevent the eyeball monster from suddenly appearing again.
Then she picked up another chair and walked towards the dormitory door.
"Where are you going?"
Guo Guo had completely collapsed in fear, curled up in front of the table and dared not do anything. He became extremely nervous when he saw Tang Xinjue walking away.
Tang Xinjue said, "Wanqing is still outside."
If the power goes out in the entire dormitory area, the public bathroom will naturally be no exception.
Imagine that you are taking a shower in the bathroom and suddenly the power goes out, and then a scary nursery rhyme is heard outside. The shock will definitely be greater for people than for those in the dormitory.
As if in line with Tang Xinjue's words, as soon as she finished speaking, the humming outside the dormitory suddenly stopped.
The cheerful children's voice rang out again, but this time it was clearer, as if it was right next to everyone's ears:
"The good students have already started playing, while the bad students are still playing outside. The educators are already impatient and have opened the test papers—"
"Important reminder: The game is about to begin. All students outside the dormitory, please return to the dormitory immediately! Educators don't like playful bad kids, and will impose punishment~"
"And when the game officially begins, students who haven't returned to their dormitories will be subject to the most severe punishment..."
The child's voice suddenly stopped, the humming tune also disappeared, and the environment returned to silence.
Educator? Test? Game?
Tang Xin Jue memorized all the key words he heard. Suddenly, there was a muffled sound, and both of them were startled and looked up. The dormitory door, which had been ajar, closed by itself!
Tang Xinjue took a few steps forward and reached out to pull, but no matter how hard he pressed the doorknob, the dormitory door didn't budge.
It's like... being locked from the outside.
Guo Guo's terrified voice came over: "Xin Jue, check your phone!"
I saw that the dialog box on the phone screen had disappeared at some point, leaving only a bright black countdown.
Time until game start: 240 minutes.
240 minutes is four hours. It is eight o'clock in the evening now, so four hours later it will be... midnight.
As his thoughts turned, Tang Xin Jue figured out the information given by the strange child's voice:
They were playing a so-called "dormitory survival game," and the game would officially begin in four hours, at midnight. According to the children's voice, only those in the dormitory could enter the game.
So what punishment will those who don’t return to the dormitory receive?
Of course, this could just be a massive prank, a realistic prank. But if it were real... Tang Xinjue stared at the door silently.
Amidst her roommate's howling, she remained remarkably calm. The dormitory door wouldn't open, so she tried banging it with her knees and a chair, only to find that the flimsy, narrow door didn't even tremble.
Although she looked frail, she knew her own strength. Under normal circumstances, it was impossible for this door frame to remain motionless.
If the child's voice was real, then the rules of the game didn't allow anyone inside to leave. The door wouldn't open until someone outside returned.
Ever since the child's voice disappeared, the noisy screams and footsteps in the corridor have never stopped. Tang Xinjue gave up on going out and chose to cling to the door and shout outside:
"Can you hear me? Wanqing, are you outside?"
After shouting several times in a row, there was indeed a response from outside the door. With the sound of footsteps, the response sound came from far away and got closer. Tang Xinjue recognized that it was the voice of his roommate.
There were several loud knocks on the door, and Zheng Wanqing came back. Her usually energetic voice was unusually flustered: "Open the door, open the door!"
"We can't open the door ourselves." Tang Xinjue answered truthfully, but before he could continue, the door in front of him creaked.
The dormitory door opened by itself.
Zheng Wanqing squeezed in, steaming all over, and complained loudly, "This prank is too much! The power went out while I was in the middle of a shower, and I didn't even have time to get my toiletries back! It was pitch black when I came back. If I hadn't heard the voice of the Heart Sutra just now, I wouldn't have been able to find my dorm."
Tang Xin Jue: "Do you really think this is a prank?"
Zheng Wanqing was stunned. "What else?"
She had already swiftly groped for the phone on her seat, ready to call and complain: "I don't know what the dormitory security is doing. Doesn't the school conduct any investigation? They even allow such an outrageous prank..."
Zheng Wanqing didn't finish her words because, besides the eye-catching countdown on her phone, she couldn't make the call.
There is no cell phone signal.
Tang Xinjue reached out to pull the door, but the door in front of him automatically closed again the moment Zheng Wanqing came in, returning to its motionless state.
She sighed, "Can a prank block our cell phone signals?"
After a few seconds of silence, Zheng Wanqing rushed over to turn on her computer, but the laptop, which was clearly fully charged, could not be turned on.
Guo Guo said in a trembling voice: "It's useless. I just tried to turn on the desk lamp, but there was no response..."
There was no light in the dormitory, and the pitch-black environment prolonged the anxiety and fear infinitely. The screams outside the dormitory came one after another, but it seemed as if there was a layer of membrane between them and they could not be heard clearly.
Zheng Wanqing fell silent, looking at Tang Xinjue for help. She knew that Tang Xinjue would be the calmest and most rational person at this moment, and his analysis would be the most reliable. However, the dormitory was dark, making it impossible to find him.
"..." She stamped her foot in frustration and raged, "Think whatever you want, but this dorm escape game can't be real!"
After saying that, she groped her way to the balcony and tried to pry open the window: "Don't we share a balcony with the dormitory next door? Go out and ask the neighbors and you'll know."
Guo Guo's voice cracked. "You're just like the cannon fodder in a horror movie. We're on the sixth floor! Tang Xinjue, hurry up and talk this idiot down!"
What if something happened on the balcony... Guo Guo was horrified. Before he could stand up to stop it, he saw Zheng Wanqing suddenly stop moving.
In the dark night, the girl turned her head with an indistinct expression and looked at the wall opposite the sink.
"Here... there is a door."
Guo Guo was about to say something nonsense, "You can knock on the door if you want to, but he realized in an instant that Zheng Wanqing was definitely not referring to the balcony window."
A gust of wind blew by, and Tang Xinjue strode over here as if he was not hindered by his sight.
Before coming over, just in case, she pulled out a hard, long object from the shopping bag on the ground. Although she didn't know what it was, at least it could help her protect herself in a critical moment.
When he arrived at the balcony, Tang Xinjue immediately understood what Zheng Wanqing meant.
Guo Guo also came over tremblingly, and the three of them stood together, looking at the wall opposite the sink.
There was a literal door in this wall. In the dim light of my phone, I could only make out its outline. Nothing special about it.
——However, their dormitory does not have an independent bathroom, and this wall has always been empty, and there has never been any door!
The roommate who firmly believed in atheism fell silent, while the roommate who was obsessed with metaphysics was about to cry, "Prank... can you conjure a door?"
The answer is self-evident.
Tang Xin Jue took a deep breath and spoke in a final voice, "Eliminate all impossibilities. Whatever remains, no matter how unbelievable, must be the truth."
"I tend to think the sounds are real, the game is real, and the rules are real."
Moreover, these scenes had vaguely appeared in her dreams. Tang Xinjue didn't say the latter part. The first thing to do now was to calm down and avoid further panic.
She looked at the door that had suddenly appeared before her. Unlike the balcony window and the dormitory door, this door didn't currently make her feel any danger.
So Tang Xinjue pulled the two dumbfounded people behind him and used the rectangular tool in his hand to push open the door in front of him.
In the light from the phone screen, one could vaguely make out that this was a bathroom, with a fully equipped shower area on the left. Zheng Wanqing whispered from behind, "My toiletries are on the wall!"
But her toiletries were clearly left in the public bathroom, so how did they appear here?
After a few seconds of reaction, Tang Xinjue realized: This game gave them a private bathroom?
Is there such a good thing?
The three of them closed the door and retreated to the "safe zone" in the middle of the dormitory, standing under Tang Xinjue's bed number four. No one spoke for a while.
Guo and Zheng were so shocked that they were speechless, while Tang Xinjue was frowning in thought.
The situation was so bizarre, and the information available was so limited: what exactly was this game, and what did it want them to do? They had no idea.
Facing the fear of the unknown, being trapped in a dark dormitory and having to wait passively is not a pleasant feeling.
Moreover, there was a bad feeling lingering in his heart, and Tang Xinjue always felt that he seemed to have forgotten something.
An unknown amount of time passed before Guo Guo, who had been frightened to the point of losing his soul, managed to calm down a bit. He suddenly slapped his thigh and said, "Oh, right, Zhang You just told me half an hour ago that she's already left the subway station and will be at school soon!"
At the same time, Tang Xinjue also remembered something he had forgotten:
Their dormitory is not full now because the fourth roommate, Zhang You, who was delayed by the flight, has not returned yet!
The other two were obviously thinking the same thing. Guo Zhi shuddered and babbled incoherently, "That voice said there would be a punishment for not returning to the dormitory, right? So, if, if Zhang You is also in the dormitory area, doesn't she have to come back quickly?"
Tang Xinjue looked out the balcony window again, and the deep darkness seemed to be even thicker.
The countdown on the phone had already passed thirty minutes without me noticing. The minute hand reached 8:30 and suddenly stopped.
At the same moment, without warning, a child's voice rang out again: "Dear classmates, thirty minutes have passed. Let me see which bad students haven't returned to the dormitory yet. Hey, there are so many!"
The crisp voice suddenly changed its tone, becoming hoarse and sharp. "Educators hate disobedient children the most. Punishment and danger will come early. The dormitory is the only safe zone... Hehehe, but who can guarantee that it is absolutely safe?"
"After all," the childish voice added, "only the students who are still alive can successfully enter the game—"
"Ding, the first rule has been unlocked: Please protect your own dormitory!"
The sound in the air died down again, but this time the silence didn't last long. Even more tragic screams and chaotic footsteps rang out from outside the dormitory door:
"Help! Something is chasing me!"
Tang Xinjue's sixth floor room belonged to the Finance Department, and many of the dormitories were occupied by classmates and close friends. She quickly discerned a familiar voice amidst the clamor.
Holding Tang Xinjue's arm tightly, Guo Guo also whispered: "Is the person who just shouted Sun Jia from the next dormitory? She is still outside now, right..." Was she punished?
Tang Xinjue frowned and remained silent. The noise in the corridor soon disappeared. However, for the people in the dormitory, the silence at this moment was even more eerie.
“Bang, bang, bang!”
The sudden knock on the door nearly made everyone in the dormitory jump. Tang Xinjue picked up his roommate, who had fallen off his knees, and asked loudly, "Who is it?"
"It's me."
A familiar female voice sounded outside the door: "I'm Zhang You, I'm back."
It turned out to be my roommate.
The other two breathed a sigh of relief. Zheng Wanqing hurried to open the door, but Tang Xinjue grabbed her wrist.
Zheng Wanqing didn't understand: "There's danger outside, we have to open the door quickly!"
Tang Xinjue didn't let go and walked to the dormitory door. "Zhang You, wasn't your flight from Chengdu delayed? How come you're here so early?"
The voice outside the door paused for a second, then replied, "I'm on my way very quickly. Besides, aren't you all worried about me?"
In the darkness, the voice outside the door was soft and gentle, and it was indeed Zhang You's voice.
But Zheng Wanqing and Guo Guo inside the door shuddered at the same time, and Zheng Wanqing withdrew her hand that was about to open the door as if she had been electrocuted.
——Because they knew that Zhang You’s flight was from abroad and had nothing to do with Chengdu. But when Tang Xinjue said this, there was no response from the voice outside the door.
Outside the door...is it really Zhang You?
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