Night Mist

"Please kill the murderer."

Meng Lan felt uncomfortable, her vision blurred.

Her mind felt like an oil drum about to explode, dull and heavy.

Just two minutes ago, she was drinking.

So, she should be at that bar near Houhai, not sitting in the middle of nowhere!

—I must have drunk too much.

— I really shouldn't have drunk that adulterated fake alcohol!

Her stomach churned, hot and uncomfortable as if it were on fire. She groped in the gloomy wind to stand up, reaching into her pocket for her phone to call a taxi, but her phone wouldn't turn on.

I just charged it before leaving!

The fog was thick, like milky white fish soup. The oppressive damp atmosphere made her feel like a lump of glue was sticking her windpipe together.

—Should I sober up?

Meng Lan rubbed her eyes hard until she was sure she was actually in a fog with a visibility of 5 meters, not suffering from visual distortion due to alcohol.

Where is this?

This doesn't look like a city park.

It's bizarre for such dense fog to float in a bustling city, making it almost impossible for people to doubt they're standing in a chimney. It's not a bustling commercial street, nor is it a quiet main road. Under her feet was damp yellow soil and weeds, occasionally with one or two pieces of tattered white paper money.

Meng Lan pressed her temples and stood still, realizing that the fog was even larger than she had imagined. She looked up, and the blood-red light shone through the fog covering her head, making this quiet night suddenly terrifying. She squinted, searching for the blurry shadow of the moon, and finally, when the wind blew away the haze overhead, the deep red moon suddenly appeared.

Blood moon?

She didn't remember the weather forecast mentioning a lunar eclipse or a red moon phenomenon today.

The red moon gradually changed, as if a lit candle began to melt, drops of wax dripping down the outline of the moon and gradually condensing into horizontal and vertical lines in the white mist below.

She looked at this strange astronomical phenomenon, suddenly remembering a long-forgotten conversation. When she was five years old, her mother said to her, "Lanlan, the blood moon is a bad omen."

Young Meng Lan asked her mother, "What if I see the blood moon?"

"Run."

"What if I can't run away?"

"Then try your best to stay alive."

She had always treated this conversation as a funny childhood joke. After all, in the days that followed, she had seen the phenomenon of the red moon, and the news would describe this astronomical phenomenon with the four words "beautiful and breathtaking," completely unrelated to her mother's "disaster," "omen," and "ominous aura."

But now, she felt inexplicably cold, her hands and feet cold.

Suddenly.

Red light scattered in the rain fell into six big characters in the air.

[Please kill the murderer]

Kill the murderer?

Meng Lan frowned.

—I must be drunk after all. But this dream is too surreal.

She stood there, suddenly feeling something hard in her jeans pocket. Taking it out, she found it was a strange wooden plaque, about half the size of her palm, similar to the jade pendant worn by middle-aged people around their necks.

She looked up at the moonlight. The wooden plaque was not blank. There were faint black lines, but they were indistinguishable.

However, on the back of the plaque, three blood-red characters emerged: [She is him]

—What strange things are these?

—It sounds like a grammatically incorrect sentence.

Anyway, she should find a kind person to borrow a phone and leave this weird place as soon as possible!

Meng Lan was about to leave quickly.

The next moment.

A noisy voice came.

"Damn it, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, my head is about to explode! Anyway, you'll die here. You'll cry then!"

"Jin Long, shut up for a moment. It's normal for the girl to be scared."

Behind Meng Lan, there were men talking, their voices mixed with a girl's sobbing.

She subconsciously turned her head, clenching her fists in a defensive posture.

Three men and a woman walked out of the fog.

At the front of the line was a tall, bespectacled man. When he saw Meng Lan, he hesitated for a moment, then stopped in his tracks.

Meng Lan stared at him, closely watching the group of people behind the man.

The man behind the bespectacled man was cursing.

Wearing a black sports vest and shorts, his muscular arms revealed a tattoo shaped like a talisman. His fiery red hair looked out of place in this eerie atmosphere.

Immediately after.

A slightly chubby man with old-fashioned thick glasses caught up, he had just been comforting the scared girl because of that damn red-haired lunatic who sneered at her, saying, "You're so timid, you'll definitely die here."

"Don't cry." The chubby man comforted.

"What place is this? What's with the talk about killing murderers? Let me go home! Let me go home!" The girl with red eyes walked quickly, not wanting to be too close to these people, like a cat in a panic responding to a stimulus.

The red-haired man who had just cursed had his hands in his pockets, turned around and sneered at the chubby man, "Zhao Che, you hurry up and comfort the little girl. Oh oh oh look how pitiful she's crying. I bet you don't have a girlfriend yet, this would be a good opportunity to find one."

The slightly chubby man's face turned red, stammering, "Zhang Jinlong, you, you stop talking nonsense!"

The chubby man was called Zhao Che.

The red-haired man was called Zhang Jinlong.

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Zhang Jinlong, who was laughing and cursing, carelessly bumped into the bespectacled man who had stopped in front of him.

"You bastard, don't you have eyes?"

The bespectacled man, who had been staring at Meng Lan, apologetically stepped aside.

With no one blocking him, the red-haired man, Zhang Jinlong, locked eyes with Meng Lan for a moment.

For an instant, the air around them seemed to freeze.

Zhang Jinlong suddenly smiled maliciously, and combined with the indifferent expression of the man next to him, it looked rather eerie.

—What a strange combination.

"Hey." He paused his gaze on Meng Lan for two seconds, then hummed a mocking tune.

The two men's eyes converged on Meng Lan's upper body.

Meng Lan involuntarily glanced at her dark red short top.

—There shouldn't be a problem with the clothes I'm wearing.

Zhang Jinlong scanned Meng Lan up and down, a wicked smile appearing at the corner of his mouth, as if a predator had just caught its prey: "I thought we found the murderer, and the mission is over now."

His mouth was large, his grin reminiscent of a clown from urban legends.

Zhang Jinlong turned around and laughed, "See! I told you that I would be very lucky after getting this talisman tattooed. The mission hasn't even started yet, and we've already found the murderer! The murderer is red, and she is also red. The teacher said, 'If it's a freebie, make sure you get it right,' right?"

He clasped his hands together and bowed mockingly towards the blood letters [Please kill the murderer]appearing above Meng Lan's head.

Meng Lan looked at Zhang Jinlong in confusion.

—This guy seems a bit mentally ill.

But soon she realized that Zhang Jinlong was indeed mentally ill!

After bowing, Zhang Jinlong suddenly chuckled and took out a fruit knife from his pocket, slowly approaching Meng Lan, "Since the mission is going easy on me this time, I'll let you choose a comfortable way to die, Miss Murderer."

"Hey!" Zhao Che suddenly shouted, stepping forward two steps to stop him, "Put down the knife, what are you doing! Zhang Jinlong, don't be so impulsive!"

The bespectacled man standing still also shouted, "Don't cause trouble!"

The girl screamed again when she saw the sharp blade!

Meng Lan's face turned pale immediately as she stepped back.

He stepped forward.

She stepped back.

He pressed on step by step.

Meng Lan looked sideways, glancing behind her. With such thick fog, as long as she accelerated past five meters and hid in the white mist, she wouldn't be targeted like prey.

Her explosive power should be good. In her third year of university, she won the women's short-distance championship.

She frowned, and as she stepped back for the third time, the bespectacled man said again, "Zhang Jinlong, you've gone too far."

But neither he nor Zhao Che moved forward to stop him, afraid that the madman would harm them.

At this moment, Zhang Jinlong was still enjoying the thrill of finding his prey.

Suddenly.

"Zhang Jinlong, you are also red. Why don't you kill yourself first."

A gentle female voice came from the white fog, and a slender middle-aged woman in a Chanel suit walked out, followed by a timid young college student.

Meng Lan looked over and saw two more strangers.

"Tsk, I thought it was someone else. Auntie, nice to see you again." Zhang Jinlong stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw the woman, sneering disdainfully.

"This mission requires us to kill the murderer, not let you kill your companions." Moonlight shone on the middle-aged woman's cheeks, making her look very haggard, like a human skeleton, but her stern voice still intimidated Zhang Jinlong.

"Huh, killing the murderer is simple. I'm not the murderer, you know me! So the red murderer must be her!" Zhang Jinlong suddenly raised his voice, but put away his actions.

Having held his breath, Zhao Che, the chubby man who dared not provoke Zhang Jinlong, saw that there were many people around and thought that this lunatic couldn't do anything, so he shouted angrily, "Zhang Jinlong! This isn't a place for you to do whatever you want!"

Although Zhang Jinlong stopped in his tracks at the voices of the crowd, he disdainfully glanced at Zhao Che, "You didn't stop me just now. You only made a move when Li Xiaoqing came. Actually, do you also want to kill her to test her strength? Or do you want to play the hero? With your weight, you probably can't find a girlfriend in real life! Fatty, are you interested in her?"

"You're talking nonsense!" Zhao Che's already swollen cheeks turned red like a balloon.

The middle-aged woman glanced at Meng Lan and sighed with relief when she saw that she was fine.

Although Zhang Jinlong didn't continue his attack, he looked at the fruit knife in his hand with interest, "My hidden card clearly says so, but it doesn't matter if I don't kill."

The bespectacled man said coldly, "She is our teammate."

"Oh, now you're trying to stop me," Zhang Jinlong sneered, "You were just waiting to watch the show earlier, weren't you?"

The bespectacled man remained noncommittal.

"Heh, anything can happen in the mission. There have been cases of ghosts pretending to be teammates before. Let's just kill them all!" Zhang Jinlong said with a smirk.

The frightened girl ran to Meng Lan's side, her throat hoarse from crying, "Are you okay? Let's move away." She tremblingly pulled Meng Lan a few steps aside, increasing the distance between her and Zhang Jinlong.

The crisis was temporarily averted.

The middle-aged woman stood in front of Meng Lan, protecting the young girl behind her. Her vocal cords were tense from nervousness, apparently surprised by her own impulsive actions earlier in standing up for a stranger!

Meng Lan looked at her brown curly hair and teardrop-shaped pearl pendant, guessing that this woman must usually take good care of herself and lead an elegant life.

Zhang Jinlong put on a smile. "Li Xiaoqing, didn't you see the hint on the hidden card in this mission? Our suspicions are reasonable and lawful." He pointed to the blood letters hanging in the sky, his playful expression turning serious.

Hearing this, Meng Lan thought of the small wooden card that inexplicably appeared in her pocket.

The middle-aged woman's name was Li Xiaoqing. She took out the hidden card mentioned by Zhang Jinlong from her pocket and examined it for two seconds.

Meng Lan, standing behind her, could clearly see that the woman had taken out a "hidden card" exactly like the one in her own pocket, but there were no patterns or words on the surface of the card.

—What's going on now?

Seven people gathered in the mist.

The red-haired lunatic Zhang Jinlong, the chubby good guy Zhao Che, the aloof bespectacled man Qi Huan, the middle-aged woman Li Xiaoqing, Meng Lan, the college student brought by Li Xiaoqing, and the girl still crying.

The girl, with a trembling voice, finally spoke, "Excuse me, where are we? What are you talking about?"

"Do you three have hidden cards?" Li Xiaoqing asked, "It's a small piece of wood."

Meng Lan pretended to take it out.

The girl screamed.

—She didn't remember where this thing came from! The red letters on it were terrifying as if they were smeared with blood.

[Red murderer]

"What does 'red murderer' mean?" The girl looked at Meng Lan, pointing at the blood letters on the hidden card, her voice trembling, "Can you see it? What does it mean?"

Li Xiaoqing said, "She can't see what's written on your card. Only you can see it."

Meng Lan lowered her eyes, her face showing no suspicious expression.

—If this is a game of "who's the undercover agent," then she must be the undercover agent. In this case, she couldn't raise her hand to ask why the information on her hidden card was different from others'.

Because, what was written on her card was: [She is him].

Why was it different?

What was going on?

The girl clenched the stiff wooden card, her expression bewildered as she asked, "What murderer? Murder is illegal, let's call the police!" She took out her phone, but the screen remained black and couldn't be turned on.

The college student standing silently on the side panicked when he heard words like 'murderer' and 'murder', his eyes full of confusion.

Zhang Jinlong took out a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and continued, "The mission has begun again. I wonder how many people will die this time?"

"That's enough." Qi Huan spoke up, "Stop scaring others. We're all teammates, there's no competition here, just stay alive."

"So where are we exactly? What's the mission?" Zhao Che stepped forward slowly and said, "First of all, welcome everyone to the hidden world."