Chapter 5: The First Room

“Jiang Xiaoyu.”

Sprawled spread-eagle on the sofa, Jiang Xiaoyu instantly sprang into a sitting position the moment he heard his cousin call his full name. “What’s up?”

“Go to the kitchen first.” Xiaoqi’s voice was deeper than usual. “The living room isn’t safe. Wait there until I figure out the rules, then you can come out.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me. Hurry up and go!”

Jiang Xiaoyu froze for a moment before a grin broke across his face.

He stood up, walked over to Xiaoqi, and patted her on the shoulder. “Cousin, are you hungry?”

Xiaoqi frowned. “I didn’t—”

“If you’re hungry, just say so. Why beat around the bush?” He turned around, rummaged through his backpack, and pulled out a packet of hot and sour sweet potato noodles, giving it a shake. “I brought provisions. You pick a room, I’ll go cook, and I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

With that, he headed for the kitchen, dangling the packet of noodles.

He glanced back over his shoulder to give her a wink. “Don’t worry, your older cousin is a top-tier chef.”

Xiaoqi opened her mouth but didn’t even have a chance to get a second sentence out.

From the kitchen came the sound of a gas stove being turned on—with a puff, a blue flame flared to life.

Xiaoqi stared at the kitchen door, her face a mask of utter disbelief.

The stove works? Where is the gas coming from?

There were far more abnormalities in this apartment than she had anticipated. She needed to inspect every corner as quickly as possible.

Turning toward the first door on the left side of the living room, she reached out and pushed it open—

And then she froze all over again.

A river of stars.

It was another river of stars.

Only this time, the starlight was thicker, denser, and far more turbulent than in the living room.

The walls were gone, the ceiling was gone, and the floor was gone.

She stood in a boundless expanse of deep space; beneath her feet was a void, and suspended above her head were the stars.

Countless shooting stars trailed silver tails as they flew past her, so fast it seemed they might tear the night sky apart.

The starlight itself had seemingly gone mad, swarming toward her in droves—

One speck, two, ten, a hundred.

It simply wouldn’t stop.

Xiaoqi’s supernatural power surged wildly.

The bottleneck of the early S-rank—crack—shattered.

Her cultivation base broke through like a burst dam, flooding into the mid S-rank and continuing to push upward, faintly brushing against the threshold of the late S-rank.

In just a few short seconds, she had surpassed a dozen years of arduous cultivation.

Xiaoqi’s heart pounded wildly in her chest.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to calm down and began scanning the room for a rule note.

She found it.

There was one pasted on the wall beside the door, the handwriting neat and tidy, the ink a dark red:

[This empty room is habitable, but absolutely do not sleep on the bed. Once you sleep on the bed, you will be latched onto by something strange. It will slowly gnaw away at your vital essence, and there is no way to get rid of it.]

[—Wang Tingsheng, History Teacher.]

Xiaoqi’s pupils contracted.

Wang Tingsheng.

The sickly man who coughed as if he were trying to hack up his lungs during every class—an S-rank aberration capable of dragging people into fragmented spaces and trapping them until they went insane.

Rules left behind by him had to be taken seriously.

However, Xiaoqi’s gaze lingered on the words “empty room.”

Empty room?

She turned her head to look at the sky full of stars, then down at the starlight still burrowing into her body.

How was this place empty?

A thought suddenly sprang to mind, sending a chill down her spine—

Could it be that these rivers of stars… aren’t visible to everyone?

She suppressed the thought and continued further in.

At the very back of the room sat a bed with white sheets that looked both soft and warm. A thin layer of faintly glowing starlight draped over the pillow.

Directly facing the foot of the bed stood a full-length mirror.

Xiaoqi was just about to walk over and check if there were any rules near the mirror—

When she caught a glimpse of a shadow from the corner of her eye.

It flashed past the very edge of the mirror.

Xiaoqi’s black flames flared to life with a whoosh.

A black lightsaber instantly materialized in her palm, its tip pointed straight at the foot of the bed—

Then she saw three massive, blood-red characters written across the surface of the mirror:

DON’T LOOK!

But it was too late.

Her eyes had already seen the reflection in the mirror.

A woman stood within the glass.

She wore a red bridal gown with a phoenix coronet and a red veil, looking for all the world like a zombie bride who had crawled out of a millennium-old tomb.

She stood directly behind Xiaoqi, her head slightly bowed as she stared at the back of Xiaoqi’s head.

Her face was devastatingly beautiful, but unearthly pale.

A dense, freezing aura swirled around her, so cold it even froze the flowing starlight in the air.

Her red lips parted slightly—she was waiting for Xiaoqi to turn around.

It felt as if the moment Xiaoqi turned her head, she would sink her teeth right into her neck.

Xiaoqi’s back was drenched in cold sweat.

Resisting the overwhelming urge to look back, she swept her peripheral vision around the mirror and finally found a rule note.

It had been scribbled hastily, the handwriting messy:

[If you accidentally look into the mirror, immediately walk out of the room as if nothing happened. Do not turn back! The power of the unknown entity can effortlessly obliterate an S-rank aberration. Preliminary estimate: SSS-rank aberration!]

The note was unsigned.

SSS-rank!

Xiaoqi’s mind buzzed.

She extinguished her black flames, dissipated the lightsaber, and forced her expression back to a state of calm.

Then, she turned and walked step by step toward the door.

The moment she stepped out of the room, the door automatically shut behind her.

A faint sigh, carrying a trace of both reproach and resentment, drifted out from within.

Leaning against the wall in the corridor, Xiaoqi closed her eyes and let out a long exhale.

The clothes on her back were completely soaked.

Right then, a scent wafted over.

Spicy, savory, and sour—the aroma of pickled bamboo shoots mixed with chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns, combined with the rich depth of pork bone broth, spilled out from the kitchen, blanketing the entire living room in an earthy, comforting aura of mundane life.

Just as she was about to head toward the kitchen, she heard Jiang Xiaoyu’s voice call out from inside:

“Haha… Cousin, someone’s playing a prank! There’s a sticky note on the kitchen wall too, but I can’t read what it says clearly. Come take a look, cousin!”