Chapter 14: The Crossroads

Humans truly are creatures with incredible adaptability.

By the second day, everyone had already grown accustomed to life at the Candidate Rest Stop.

Even though it wasn’t a real town, compared to the hunter’s cabin, it was paradise.

There was food, there were beds, stepping outside wouldn’t kill you, and no chickens chased after you screaming about collecting answer sheets.

Across from the rest stop stood a three-story building covered by thick plastic strip curtains. The plastic had yellowed with age and was no longer transparent, allowing only a faint glow from the lightbulbs inside to leak through.

A wooden sign hung outside the building.

General Store

“What’s a general store?” the twin girls asked in unison.

Old Yu was very patient with children, so he explained, “It’s basically a convenience store. Sells a bit of everything. Haven’t you seen one before?”

Not only the girls, but several others shook their heads too. “People don’t call it that where we’re from.”

“Really?” Old Yu muttered.

He became a little more cautious after that. While everyone else went shopping, he deliberately dragged the shop owner into conversation and discovered that the man was actually from the same hometown as him.

Unfortunately, the owner was an extremely unfriendly fellow townsman.

“Brother, I’ll just call you Brother Zhao,” Old Yu said familiarly.

The shop owner Zhao was at most forty years old, definitely younger than Old Yu. He was broad-shouldered, solidly built, and stood perfectly straight. Yet shamelessly, he accepted the title of “big brother” anyway.

With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, he lazily replied, “Whatever.”

Old Yu said, “You’ve been away from home a lot of years, huh? You barely have an accent anymore. Mine’s already pretty light, but yours is even lighter. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen the words ‘general store,’ I wouldn’t have recognized it.”

Smoke puffed straight out of Zhao’s mouth. “Pretty much.”

“You’ve always run a shop here?”

“More or less.”

Old Yu nodded thoughtfully before probing further. “Looking at the way you stand, you used to be in the military, right? How’d you end up opening a shop here?”

For the first time, Zhao glanced at him through the smoke and finally spoke in a complete sentence.

“I wasn’t in the military. But judging from the way you stand, you definitely were. So how’d you get this fat?”

Old Yu: “…”

Zhao took several deep drags, reducing the cigarette to almost nothing before crushing the ashes and saying, “Stop trying to get friendly. That hometown-bond stuff doesn’t work here. Today you’re crying together, tomorrow one of you might already be dead.”

Old Yu: “…”

“If you’re buying something, hurry up. If not, get out.” Zhao flicked out another cigarette and lit it.

…

The first floor of the general store was thick with smoke. Zhou Jin practically coughed his lungs out but still refused to give up the opportunity to shop.

Because the store contained far more things than they had imagined.

It looked like an old, shabby supermarket from the outside, but inside it was practically a giant department store. Clothes, pants, blankets, pillows, pots, bowls, medicine for injuries, internal medicine, external medicine—everything a supermarket would have, this place had too. And plenty of things normal supermarkets probably didn’t carry.

The three-story building was packed full.

Several shopping carts sat on every floor, all coated in dust.

Everyone grabbed one, wiped it down casually, and began frantically stocking up like bandits raiding a village.

“Wait a second, none of this stuff has price tags!” Yu Wen suddenly shouted.

Zhou Jin picked up several bottles of cough syrup and piled on anti-inflammatory painkillers before saying, “I noticed that already… cough… It’s probably like tourist attractions. The prices must be doubled.”

“They know everyone’s scared of dying, so they’re taking advantage of it. Totally normal,” others agreed.

Everyone understood the logic.

But nobody took less because of it.

When money could buy survival, it stopped feeling precious.

Still, Yu Wen felt something was off. He pushed his shopping cart around searching for Qi Yang and eventually found him in a corner of the third floor.

To his surprise, Qi Yang was shopping too.

“Bro, you actually grabbed a cart?” Yu Wen followed him over.

Qi Yang glanced at him with an expression that clearly said: What kind of stupid nonsense is that?

Yu Wen awkwardly waved his hands. “Nothing, I was just looking…”

If even his brother was shopping, then there probably wasn’t any problem.

Yu Wen immediately relaxed and looked into Qi Yang’s cart.

He had expected to see emergency supplies—flashlights, batteries, ropes, knives…

Instead…

This great expert had bought a change of clothes and a black backpack.

That was it.

“Uh… Bro, aren’t you getting anything else?” Yu Wen asked.

Qi Yang pushed through a clothing rack, picked out a black down jacket, and tossed it into the cart. “That’s about it.”

Suddenly, Yu Wen felt like the guy carrying glow sticks, flashlights, and batteries… looked like a concert scalper.

…

By the time they returned to the first floor, everyone else had finished shopping. People and carts surrounded the checkout counter.

Qi Yang disliked crowds, so he leaned against the wall far away, looking bored.

The elderly woman at the front asked the shop owner, “This is all we’re buying. Calculate the price.”

Zhao had no idea how many cigarettes he’d gone through already. Through the haze of smoke, he glanced over the mountain-like shopping carts and let out a strange chuckle.

“First-timers. Obvious at a glance.”

Nobody understood what he meant.

Zhao raised two fingers. “Most people who come here only dare buy this many.”

“What do you mean, Brother Zhao? Two items?” Old Yu asked.

“Yeah,” Zhao replied. “And that’s already the most generous person I’ve ever seen.”

What the hell kind of prices were these?

Everyone silently looked at their overloaded carts.

Zhou Jin finally couldn’t help asking, “…Can we use WeChat or Alipay? Credit cards are fine too. We didn’t bring much cash.”

Yu Wen added, “I haven’t withdrawn cash in over a year.”

Zhao said, “WeChat, Alipay, cards—none of them work.”

Zhou Jin and Yu Wen immediately looked defeated.

Then Zhao added, “Cash doesn’t work either.”

Yu Wen blinked. “Huh? Then what do we use?”

Zhao pulled out a card from beneath the glass counter. It looked exactly like the inn room cards every one of them carried.

“You all have one of these, right? Use this.” Zhao flicked the card and suddenly became strangely enthusiastic for the first time. “The back of the room card doubles as your admission card, right? It shows your accumulated score.”

“The stuff here? You buy it with points.”

“Not expensive either. Daily necessities and clothing cost 0.5 points each. Food and medicine cost 1 point each. As for knives and sharpened tools that can be used as weapons, those cost 2 points each. Easy to remember.”

“Why don’t you calculate it yourselves first?”

Everyone froze instantly, faces turning pale.

With carts piled that high, they could easily shop their scores into the negatives.

Zhou Jin stared at his cart full of medicine and immediately sucked in a sharp breath before coughing violently.

No wonder…

No wonder the shopping carts were covered in dust.

No wonder even the most generous customer only dared buy two things.

Every point they possessed had been earned by risking their lives. Nobody knew how well they’d do on the next exam.

If they bought one or two extra items here and later ended up just one point short of passing…

They might as well commit ritual suicide.

Zhao clearly saw scenes like this all the time.

After thoroughly shocking everyone, he returned to his lifeless attitude again.

“Alright. Checkout time.”

The moment he said it, the entire crowd around the counter collectively backed away two steps.

“Nobody buying anything?”

Qi Yang suddenly spoke from beside the wall.

Everyone—including the shop owner—turned to look at him.

Qi Yang straightened up, pushed his cart to the counter, and pulled out his room card from his jeans pocket.

“Checkout.”

Zhao: “…”

He stared at Qi Yang’s shopping cart with his mouth slightly open.

The cigarette butt dropped right onto his shoe.

Qi Yang held the card between his fingers and waited for a moment, already looking slightly impatient.

Zhao abruptly snapped back to his senses and hurriedly stomped out the cigarette.

“Let me calculate…”

Innerwear, outerwear, jeans, black backpack, down jacket.

Three points total.

After hearing the result, Qi Yang nodded.

Apparently deciding he still had room in his budget, he glanced at the shelf behind Zhao and added, “One pack of cigarettes and a lighter too.”

Zhao: “…”

Yu Wen finally couldn’t hold back anymore. “Bro, you don’t even smoke. Why buy those?”

Qi Yang stuffed the clothes into the backpack without raising his head. “Just in case.”

Two minutes later, when Qi Yang walked back to the inn carrying the backpack over one shoulder, the accumulated score on his admission card had already dropped to 15.

At the speed of freefall, he had become the lowest scorer in the group.

Looking at Qi Yang’s completely unchanged cold expression, Yu Wen truly felt his brother was insanely fearless.

…

The seven days at the Candidate Rest Stop passed in the blink of an eye.

At exactly 3:12 PM on the final afternoon, everyone was automatically checked out. Boss Chu personally drove them out the front door.

“There. Walk straight ahead. There’s a crossroads about two hundred meters away. Off you go.” Chu Yue waved at them and added, “Don’t delay. If you’re late, your right to choose won’t matter anymore. Hopefully this isn’t our final goodbye.”

After saying that, she shut the inn doors.

The glowing sign reading Lodging • Heating • Food flickered twice and suddenly went dark.

The surrounding buildings still stood within the snowy fog, but not a single light remained lit. They looked like abandoned ruins left untouched for years.

“This seriously isn’t a haunted house?” Yu Wen shivered.

Qi Yang remembered the question he had asked the proctor earlier.

He had asked whether this was some supernatural event.

The proctor had answered no.

At the time, the man had clearly wanted to explain further, but before he could finish speaking, the system issued a violation warning.

So then…

What exactly was this place?

Qi Yang silently considered it to himself.

Once the next exam began, he absolutely had to find a way to trick a proctor into telling the truth.

Hopefully the next proctor would be honest and easy to fool.

…

Two hundred meters wasn’t far.

The group quickly arrived where Chu Yue had directed them.

It really was a crossroads.

In the center stood a lonely security booth, and slumped against the booth was a human figure.

When the man saw them approach, he struggled to stand up.

Only after getting closer did everyone recognize him.

It was the tattooed man who had refused to stay at the rest stop.

But now he looked completely different. His body was covered in bloodstains, his left arm hung limply at his side, and one leg dragged awkwardly as he limped.

“What happened to you?”

Even though nobody particularly liked him, nobody wanted to see him crippled or dead either. After all, they had been strangers with no grudges between them.

The tattooed man rasped hoarsely, “Better than going insane.”

“How long have you been here?” everyone asked while looking toward the security booth.

“Two days.”

“Why didn’t you go back to the Candidate Rest Stop?”

The tattooed man looked awkward and angry at the same time. “If I went back, I’d be admitting I was a coward. Besides… once I turned around, I couldn’t find the road anymore. I retraced my steps and still couldn’t find those buildings. There was only this place.”

“Then why didn’t you keep walking?” Yu Wen asked.

The tattooed man swept his gaze across the area and pointed toward the road signs.

“Look for yourselves.”

Only after he pointed it out did everyone notice that the crossroads led in four directions, and each road had its own sign.

Under normal circumstances, the signs would display street names.

But not here.

The four signs pointing north, south, east, and west displayed four subjects instead:

Chinese

Foreign Language

Mathematics

History

Suddenly, the small speaker inside the security booth crackled to life.

The familiar voice from the radio echoed once more.

【The current examination format is 3+1+1. Congratulations on successfully completing one subject. Four subjects remain.】

【Candidates possess the right to choose and may freely decide the order of examinations.】

【Please make your selection within 30 seconds.】

【Late arrivals will lose the right to take the exam.】

Everyone: “…”

At a crossroads like this, they honestly felt more like standing there until death claimed them.

Yu Wen immediately grabbed Qi Yang’s arm.

“Bro, whichever one you pick, I’m picking too!”

Everyone else also turned to look at him.

Unexpectedly, Qi Yang swept his gaze around expressionlessly and said:

“Choose? All four directions show Foreign Language for me.”

Yu Wen: “What???”

Even more irritatingly, from Qi Yang’s perspective, there was a figure standing beneath the sign in every direction.

The person was tall, standing beneath an umbrella in the snow as though waiting for him.

Qi Yang let out a cold laugh.

His face turned green with anger.