Chapter 1

Chapter 1 The One Thousand and First Nightmare.

“Beep… beep…”

“Sorry, the number you dialed is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later…”

The unchanged busy tone and automated prompt came from the phone.

This was the seventh call Ning Rong had made to her boyfriend Zhou Yujing that day.

But after several hours had passed, no one had picked up.

This was not the first time Zhou Yujing had failed to answer. Thinking of all the strange behavior he had shown over the past month, all kinds of guesses surfaced in Ning Rong’s heart.

Vanishing every few days—the most likely explanation was that Zhou Yujing had changed his heart. Because he was busy accompanying a new lover, he had no time to bother with her, the old darling.

Ning Rong and Zhou Yujing got together in their sophomore year. He had confessed to her first. This year was their third year together. With graduation approaching, Ning Rong had been busy lately submitting resumes in her hometown and looking for work, living apart from Zhou Yujing. And ever since their long-distance relationship began, Zhou Yujing had started becoming unreachable from time to time.

At first, she had worried too.

She worried that something had happened to Zhou Yujing and that was why he could not answer the phone. Because of that, she had even called Zhou Yujing’s best friend.

But before long, Zhou Yujing would always appear before her completely unharmed. No missing hands or broken legs, no car accident, in excellent health, and no other trouble either. She had asked him many times whether he had encountered any difficulties and why he was always unreachable, but every time Zhou Yujing said nothing was wrong. Then he would cling to her, press against her, leaving her with no mind to ask anything else.

Now that she thought about it, Zhou Yujing being so clingy and so passionate back then was probably only because he felt guilty toward her!

And not because he missed her, as she had previously mistaken!

True enough. She was only in the neighboring city, just a little over an hour away by car. If Zhou Yujing missed her, he could drive over to see her anytime. But in the past month, he had only come to see her twice! And each time they were together for only one short hour before he hurriedly left.

Zhou Yujing had a secret.

That was certain.

The only question was what that secret was.

After the call ended automatically once again, Ning Rong could not endure it anymore.

Today, she absolutely had to rush over and see what exactly Zhou Yujing was doing!

Ning Rong was a decisive woman of action. Once she made up her mind, she picked up her phone and car keys, went straight to the garage, got in the car, and drove toward B City. She had just finished an interview yesterday, and tomorrow she still had a written exam for a public institution position. Today happened to be free.

When she arrived in B City, it was still one in the afternoon. The blazing sunlight only made the anger in Ning Rong’s heart grow fiercer.

She did not go to school. Instead, she went directly to the house Zhou Yujing rented.

During their junior year, she and Zhou Yujing had already moved out of campus and lived together. Zhou Yujing paid the rent and utilities. Their expenses were high, and his living allowance was not enough, so he would take part-time jobs on weekends to earn money.

As soon as she arrived at the rental apartment, Ning Rong first looked around carefully.

The shoe cabinet was full of her shoes, arranged neatly. Her daily necessities were all still there as well. No new female toiletries had appeared. The place had been cleaned very well, and there was no long hair on the floor that did not belong to her. In the bedroom wardrobe, all the clothes were hers too.

The rental apartment was not much different from a month ago. The anger in her heart subsided a little.

But the anger Ning Rong had just calmed down flared up fiercely again when she saw an invitation card Zhou Yujing had placed in a drawer.

What kind of important invitation card was it, for Zhou Yujing to store it so properly instead of throwing it away?

There were obvious finger marks on the game invitation card. Clearly, Zhou Yujing had read this invitation more than once. Or perhaps he had held this invitation card in his hand for a long time. Just imagining that scene made Ning Rong’s blood surge upward again.

She forced herself to calm down.

She began reading the words on the invitation one by one:

[Dear Mr. Zhou Yujing:

Hello.

Would you like a bloody encounter on an ocean cruise ship? Would you like a thrilling chase across the boundless wilderness? Would you like an exhilarating duel in the endless dark night?

As long as you come to The One Thousand and First Nightmare, all of the above can be realized.

Here, you will experience speed and passion, romance and fear. However, be very careful not to lose yourself in one dark night after another~

The One Thousand and First Nightmare sincerely welcomes your arrival.

Address: Room 103, Building 3, Industrial Park Suburbs, B City

—The One Thousand and First Nightmare Production Team]

After reading it, Ning Rong unconsciously tightened her grip a little, and the game invitation card became slightly deformed.

“Speed and passion?”

“Romance and fear?”

Was this the rhythm of adrenaline surging wildly?

She had guessed right after all—Zhou Yujing really was up to something!

This so-called The One Thousand and First Nightmare—who knew what kind of play it was, packaged into this strange, game-like appearance. But it absolutely could not be as simple as it looked.

She roughly knew now why she had been unable to find Zhou Yujing this past month.

Most likely because he had been busy playing this “game.” No wonder during their previous two meetings, Zhou Yujing had looked somewhat tired. It seemed this game required quite a lot of stamina.

Thinking of this, Ning Rong did not hesitate. She directly followed the address on the invitation card and headed there. Since he loved playing so much, then she, as his current girlfriend, would naturally accompany him and have a good time too.

She wanted to see exactly what kind of magic this game had that made her boyfriend disappear every few days!

Ning Rong majored in physical education in college, but after graduation she did not want to become a PE teacher, nor did she want to work in any sports-related field.

She had a youthful Barbie-like face, but she was only two centimeters shorter than Zhou Yujing, who was one meter eighty. The arm she stretched out was even stronger than Zhou Yujing’s. There was not an ounce of excess fat on her waist, her abdominal lines were clear, and her legs were long and full of strength. Every time she competed in the school sports meet’s eight-hundred-meter race, she took first place—and by an overwhelming margin.

Whenever she wore a tank top, people unfamiliar with her would always reveal surprised expressions.

Because her figure truly did not match her face. She clearly had the face of an obedient sweet girl, yet her physique was more big-brother than actual big brothers, while Zhou Yujing’s looks and build were refined and gentle.

However, her head-to-body proportions were excellent, so there was not too much sense of mismatch.

Her car window was lowered halfway. Wind blew in through the gap, yet it did nothing to extinguish her anger.

When Ning Rong arrived at the address written on the invitation card, it was a little past three in the afternoon.

At three in the afternoon in mid-May, the sunlight was still intense. She had not brought a hat or sunglasses, so after getting out of the car, she simply narrowed her eyes and examined Building 3 before her.

Very strange. This was clearly a newly built industrial park, yet this Building 3 looked as if it already had many years on it. The walls were peeling and yellowed. Besides patches of creeping ivy, there were also winding brown marks across it. Some places even had cracks, making it somewhat uncomfortable to look at.

Ning Rong took out the game invitation card and glanced at it, confirming it once more before muttering to herself, “This should be the place.”

Just as she stepped forward and was about to go inside, a shrill scream suddenly came from within Building 3.

But very quickly, the scream vanished, as if it had been cut off abruptly, sounding rather eerie.

Ning Rong sneered. “They’re really immersed in the act.” The scream sounded full of fear and despair, as though the person were trapped in some hellish scene. It was performed extremely realistically. She had no idea whether it came from horror movie background music or from a player.

But it did not matter.

She was not here to destroy it. She was here to join it. Very soon, she would know what was going on.

Let her witness this so-called The One Thousand and First Nightmare.

With that thought, Ning Rong calmly stepped through the main entrance of Building 3 and walked straight inside.