Gu Mian stroked his chin. "All the students who had downloaded this game before have gone missing..."

He remembered that when he first entered this instance, his deskmate with the bitter-gourd face seemed to have mentioned this matter. But Gu Mian had been in a hurry and left the classroom without much discussion.

It seemed Fatty had come to him after learning about the game's history.

I'd better not ask my deskmate with that perpetually miserable face about it again, Gu Mian thought.

He touched his chin and looked at Fatty in front of him. "Tell me about it."

Suddenly, a bell rang above their heads. The sudden loud noise shattered the quiet of the hallway and was rather frightening.

Luckily, both Gu Mian and Fatty had encountered numerous Mysterious Dungeons by now, so they weren't too shaken up.

That must be the class bell, so the previous one was the warning bell, Gu Mian realized.

He noticed a line of text appearing at the bottom of the game screen as soon as the bell rang.

[The class bell has rung. Teachers and students should already be prepared in their classrooms.]

This is high school. I remember my high school teachers never arrived in the classroom bang on time, Gu Mian recalled. Usually, the teacher from the previous class would drag on for five minutes, and the one for the next class would arrive five minutes early.

During Gu Mian's high school years, those teachers often made life miserable for students suffering from upset stomachs.

Regardless, the teachers at this school were clearly very strict about timing. By this point, the sound of lectures could already be heard from the adjacent classrooms.

Only Gu Mian and Fatty remained in the hallway.

Just as Fatty was about to answer Gu Mian's question, he saw the two small figures on the phone screen start conversing again.

[Wang Panzi: Today is Saturday, and we have the afternoon off. Where are you planning to go?]

[Gu Gu: Probably going to sleep in the dorm.]

Fatty looked at the two small figures on the screen with some confusion. "Don't the characters in the game go home during their vacation?"

Gu Mian continued to read.

[Gu Gu: Where are you planning to go?]

[Wang Panzi: How about we go to the science building in the afternoon? I heard there's something good over there.]

At this point, the two small figures in the game weren't busy with class anymore but were instead going to look for some "good stuff."

Strange. It seems players have no control over the game's progress at all, Gu Mian mused. This 'vanishing game' feels like it's turning into a treasure hunt.

Fatty seemed to want to ask something but answered Gu Mian's question first. "I asked my deskmate... Speaking of which, my deskmate is quite a beauty..."

Fatty coughed twice before continuing, "She told me that in the past, some senior students, both male and female, also secretly brought phones to school. But that was many years ago. Her older sister studied at this school before her, so my deskmate is quite clear about what happened back then."

Fatty furrowed his brows as he said this. "This high school was built a long time ago. Back then, students used phones with keypads. There were more advanced touchscreen phones, but even those usually had keypads too. Students generally couldn't afford those kinds of touchscreen phones with keypads..."

Fatty paused here. "The phones they had back then were similar to our Nokias. By the way, you've seen a Nokia, right?"

Gu Mian nodded. "Yeah, I used it to crack walnuts when I was a kid."

Fatty: "..."

After a brief pause, he continued, "It probably started about ten years ago. There weren't many students who secretly brought phones, only about seventeen or eighteen in the entire school. This game appeared around that time."

It appeared that long ago? Gu Mian pondered.

Fatty continued, "No one really knows who first discovered this game, but it quickly became popular in the school. Later on, almost all of those dozen or so students had this game on their phones."

"Ten years ago, this game was considered quite advanced, and it was rumored that you could find treasure in it. So, everyone would wander around the school during their free time, trying to find the game's treasure boxes or something similar."

"But then, the first disappearance happened... I'm not really sure about the specifics. I only know that after the first person went missing, the other senior students who played this game also disappeared one after another."

"Of those dozen or so people, the last one to disappear was named Liu Qing. She was my deskmate's older sister's roommate..."

Gu Mian stroked his chin. His deskmate's older sister's roommate?

Fatty continued, "In the few days before her disappearance, Liu Qing started acting very strangely. She often rambled about someone secretly following her, wouldn't sleep at night, and would secretly stare at her roommates..."

"My deskmate said that once, in the middle of the night, Liu Qing grabbed her sister's arm tightly. Liu Qing seemed to be raving, saying something like, 'If we don't follow them, we'll die!' After that, she grabbed her phone and rushed out of the dormitory. No one has seen her since."

As he listened, Gu Mian glanced at the two small figures on the phone screen. Could the 'them' Liu Qing mentioned be these little figures? he wondered.

"It's weird, though," Fatty said. "The dormitory building's main doors are always locked, and the windows are secured so that even a child couldn't squeeze through the openings. She shouldn't have been able to get out of the dormitory building."

"But the police searched the entire dormitory building, inside and out, and found no trace of Liu Qing. Everyone suspected there was a problem with the game. The principal and the dean also seemed to have heard something about this game. Although they verbally dismissed it, saying things like, 'Don't believe in such superstitions,' they implemented even stricter controls on mobile phones afterwards."

"Back then, the school administration apparently specially borrowed a mobile phone detector from somewhere else—that's what it's called, right? The machine they use during exams to check if we've secretly brought phones."

Gu Mian nodded. "Call it whatever you like."

Fatty continued, "...They set up several of these machines at the dormitory entrances to check for phones. That year, not a single student's phone made it through."

"About four or five years later, the principal had changed, and several groups of teachers had also left. People grew lax about the phone ban, and that's when the game reappeared... Doctor, you can probably guess what happened next. Some bold students who didn't believe in superstitions deliberately downloaded this game. But later, all these defiant students encountered something terrible and disappeared entirely. Not a single one was left..."

Gu Mian brushed some dust off his school uniform. It's truly remarkable this school has managed to stay open until now, he thought.

"Later, the school banned cellphones strictly again," Fatty said. "Then, after another four or five years, enforcement became lax once more... and then we came along. It seems we're also fated to disappear."

Hearing this, Gu Mian couldn't help but laugh.

Fatty pursed his lips. "Doctor, please stop laughing. You're really creeping me out."

Gu Mian stopped laughing. "Speaking of which... did you know that the character you created can move by itself in the game?"

Fatty's eyes widened slightly. "I didn't know!"

Gu Mian nodded. "Now you do."

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