Raising a Wife in a Supernatural World [Infinite] – CH9

Chapter 9: Spook High (9)

Students began trickling out of the classroom one after another.

On the surface, the scene looked increasingly indistinguishable from a regular high school in the real world.

The only difference was that this crowd of uniformed youths possessed none of youth’s vibrant vitality; every single one of them was steeped in a pall of death, casting a persistent gloom over the entire campus.

Nan Zhu and the remaining players didn’t immediately join the exiting flow. Instead, they exchanged glances and looked toward Qin Fu’an in unison.

Qin Fu’an swept the question-packed test paper into his desk compartment and stood up to leave.

The moment he moved, the surviving players fell into step behind him. The sight inexplicably mirrored a scene from a campus novel where the school tyrant strutted out flanked by an entourage of loyal lackeys—arrogant and full of swagger.

Yet Qin Fu’an came to a halt right at the doorway.

Turning around, he found his little deskmate still rooted in his seat.

Stepping out into the corridor, Qin Fu’an pivoted and strode toward the other end. Just as Nan Zhu and the others were wondering what he was doing, they saw him lean over that familiar window ledge once more, brazenly harassing his NPC deskmate.

Players: “…”

“See? I told you I wasn’t seeing things,” Bai Song whispered defensively, eager to vindicate himself. “Back during class, I saw the boss getting handsy with his deskmate the whole time!”

His tone was brimming with unwavering conviction.

Possessing exceptionally sharp hearing, Qin Fu’an paused mid-lean. Then, meeting his deskmate’s guarded, suspicious glare, he asked the most mundane question imaginable:

“Aren’t you going to the cafeteria for lunch? What will you do if your stomach starts growling?”

In the next second, he caught the unmistakable flicker of aversion and disgust across Xie Yunhuai’s eyes.

Qin Fu’an naturally chalked that tiny trace of petulance up to a hatred for cafeteria food—it certainly couldn’t be directed at himself.

Ignoring the little deskmate’s warning glare, he lifted a hand. With an easy smile, his palm brushed right over Xie Yunhuai’s hair before shifting sideways, long, well-defined fingers effortlessly picking up the student ID card he had left on the desk.

Just as Xie Yunhuai let out a silent breath of relief, Qin Fu’an mischievously tapped the corner of the ID card against the boy’s desk, producing a crisp, dull rap.

“Little classmate, being a picky eater will really stunt your growth. Are you sure you’re skipping lunch?”

Xie Yunhuai: “…”

He is utterly infuriating.

Yet before Xie Yunhuai could voice a cold refusal to draw a line between them, Qin Fu’an had already retracted his hand, straightened up, and sauntered off toward the stairwell.

It was as if the parting remark had truly been an innocent reminder, devoid of any mocking intimidation.

Watching his figure vanish past the window, the tempest of frustration bottled up in Xie Yunhuai’s chest gradually dissipated.

He knew well enough that skipping meals meant going hungry. But… Xie Yunhuai could not stomach the foul, unchanging slop served day in and day out. Lost in the fractured haze of his memories, trapped in the inescapable cycles of this recurring loop, he had long forgotten how many times he had blindly, muddily choked it down.

Eventually, he realized that starving wouldn’t kill him, just as he realized that even while breathing, he was already dead.

There was no difference. Rather than putting himself through that ordeal, it was better to remain quietly in the classroom and wait for the day of the Gaokao to arrive.

Once the exam concluded, regardless of whether Qin Fu’an lived or died, Xie Yunhuai would finally be rid of his presence once and for all.

At this thought, the pale youth curled his lips slightly into a faint grimace—resembling a smile, yet mirroring a weep.

In the stairwell of the instructional building, scattered footsteps echoed off the narrow walls. Bai Song debated back and forth before he couldn’t help but ask, “B-Boss, is your deskmate some kind of special NPC? Can we unlock hidden instance lore by talking to him?”

What he really wanted to say was: Boss, did you extract any crucial intel from him?

He didn’t have the shameless gall to ask so bluntly, so he thought about probing the NPC himself.

Ahead of them, Qin Fu’an glanced back over his shoulder.

That single, profoundly meaningful look left Bai Song dazed in place for several seconds. When he finally snapped out of it and hurried to catch up, he dared not utter another word about the matter.

Whether it was sheer instinct or paranoia, Bai Song couldn’t shake the feeling that the truth might be wildly different from what he had pictured. He decided it was best to keep observing…

Just then, he heard Nan Zhu offer a clear, level-headed deduction: “I doubt it. The main objective for this beginner instance made it very clear: our goal is to absorb enough material over these five days to secure a passing score on the final exam. This isn’t a puzzle-solving instance where we need to deduce lore to clear it.”

Sticking close to Nan Zhu’s side, Zhao Jiayue asked curiously, “Sister Zhu, are there really that many different types of instances?”

This was a question everyone harbored, including Qin Fu’an. Nan Zhu was visibly the player who possessed the most information about the game.

With Qin Fu’an walking ahead, however, no one could read his expression or fathom what was passing through his mind.

Seeing the interest, Nan Zhu dropped the secrecy she had held at the start of the trial. On the way to the cafeteria, she shared as much intel as she could. As for how much the other players could absorb—or whether they would survive long enough to use it—that was beyond her control.

“From what I’ve gathered from others, instances come in a dizzying variety of classifications. Just by category alone, there are Beginner, Normal, Hard, Special-Grade, Unique, Competitive, Cooperative, Timed, Long-Term, Serialized, Event, Special-Invite, Double-Points…”

“Aside from these broad formats, the core gameplay modes are actually simpler. The main ones are Survival, Puzzle, and Containment. But as the instance tier climbs, the lethal elements within scale up and often stack together.”

At this point, Nan Zhu cast a glance at Qin Fu’an’s back before speaking in a grave tone to her attentive listeners: “Yet compared to instance formats, what we as players truly need to understand are the categories of eldritch entities.”

“Eldritch… categories?” The pure novice, Zhao Jiayue, echoed blankly. “Aren’t they all just ghosts?”

“The reality is the exact opposite of what common sense suggests,” Yake interjected, adopting a light tone to keep the atmosphere from turning too grim. “In my very first beginner instance, what I faced wasn’t humanoid at all. It was a pack of inanimate entities that relentlessly hunted and butchered players.”

“Mine wasn’t humanoid like the ones here either,” Bai Song added with a bitter grimace.

The girl named Chen Qi remained quiet throughout, though she had never dragged her feet whenever danger struck.

Nan Zhu waited until they had shared their snippets before gradually recounting the information she had pieced together from veteran players.

“During my second instance, I ended up in a Remnant Instance.”

She briefly explained the concept: a scenario where players from a previous run hadn’t all died, keeping the instance from fully collapsing, which occasionally drew new players in to fill the roster.

“I managed to save a veteran during a crisis, and she shared this knowledge with me.”

“Eldritch entities take countless bizarre forms, but players have roughly categorized them into five broad types: Humanoids, Beasts, Flora, Inanimate Objects, and Detached Organs.”

“Humanoid anomalies are largely similar to what we’re encountering here. But broken down further, there are hundreds of distinct variants—disguised humanoids, true humanoids, and intangible spectral forms that can be seen but never touched.”

“Beasts and Flora are equally unpredictable. Sometimes it’s an inconspicuous weed by the roadside, or a stray cat darting out from an alley… Any living thing our eyes behold could be a lethal, apex entity. Before entering any scenario, one must carefully assess the environment and eliminate potential threats immediately.”

“What I really want to warn you about, however, are Inanimate Entities. In the Remnant Instance I cleared, it was an inanimate horror that had trapped those veterans indefinitely.”

Recalling that previous run, Nan Zhu’s brows knitted tightly into a grim knot. “Inanimate entities are the ones veterans dread and despise most. Communication is utterly useless against them, and they are nearly impossible to harm, let alone destroy. In most cases, the only option is temporary containment.”

“I don’t know the full spectrum of inanimate horrors, but in my last run, we faced an eldritch manor that forced players to play table games with it. If you couldn’t maintain a winning streak, once your chips ran dry, you paid with your life. That veteran told me about several similar instances she had survived—a computer that never stopped executing scripts, an automated incinerator that devoured living bodies…”

Her narrative caused the listening players to furrow their brows in mounting dread.

They were merely novice players freshly tethered to the streaming platform. They had assumed that surviving a handful of games would earn them a return to an ordinary, peaceful life. Yet after hearing Nan Zhu describe these incomprehensible horrors, the despair and unease pooling in their chests grew suffocating.

Could they truly keep surviving game after game?

These grotesque, distorted abominations… were they truly not just trapped in an endless nightmare?

“Th-then… can I still go home?” Zhao Jiayue’s trembling voice cracked with tears as she broke down in a muffled whimper. “My mom is waiting for me at home. And my dog… he’s still at the vet clinic. If I don’t go pick him up, will he end up on the street? Do we really have to keep playing this game forever? Isn’t there any way to quit?”

Having just entered this realm, she had no concept of what this game truly was. Terrified since the early morning, she had tried her hardest to remain brave, but the horror clawing inside her was finally tearing through her composure.

Yet coincidentally, the question she had voiced was the exact one Qin Fu’an wished to answer as well.

Once tethered to this so-called livestream system… was there truly no way back?

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