The five people immediately rushed out of the room.
They saw other players gathered at the doorway of the room next to theirs, with varying expressions.
Without exception, none of their faces looked good.
Some were shocked, some were distressed, and some were frightened...
"What happened?" Dong Yue hurriedly asked.
"You all... come quickly and look..."
The five of them walked over, and upon seeing the scene inside the room, they felt their scalps tingle.
The room was covered in blood - on the bed, walls, and windows. The interior was in complete disarray, as if there had been an extremely violent fight the night before.
Most importantly, the five people who had been in the room were all gone.
Not even their bodies remained.
"Just the first night, and five people are already dead..." a young girl began crying uncontrollably. "What are we going to do? Will we all die here?"
"Stop crying! It's so annoying!" a middle-aged man said impatiently. "At a time like this, what good does crying do? You'd be better off thinking about how to get out of this instance!"
"She's young, it's normal to be scared facing something like this. Why are you being so harsh?"
"Yeah, we need to stay united if we want to safely escape this instance."
"Heh, when the ghost comes to kill her, it won't care how young she is!"
Seeing that everyone was about to start arguing, Gu Wanyin quickly said: "Stop fighting! At least we now have one clue - if Sister Yuan comes knocking at night, don't open the door under any circumstances."
"How do you know?" someone immediately asked.
Gu Wanyin explained what had happened the night before, then asked: "Didn't you hear anything?"
Everyone shook their heads.
At least having obtained one clue made everyone feel a bit more at ease.
At this moment, they heard footsteps behind them.
They turned around to see Sister Yuan.
She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and smiled at everyone: "You're all up already? How diligent! Well then, get ready quickly - it's time for work!"
Having heard Gu Wanyin's story, many people were now afraid of her.
But Sister Yuan seemed not to notice, smiling as she turned and left.
After Gu Wanyin and the others finished washing up, they sat at their desks.
Breakfast was already prepared - a bread and a carton of milk for each person, placed on their desks.
While drinking his milk, Bai Shuwen casually opened a drawer beside him.
"Hey, is this a Spirit Orb?"
Gu Wanyin turned to look - indeed, what Bai Shuwen held was the Spirit Orb she had seen before.
"Yes, that's it," Gu Wanyin nodded.
Others also pulled open their drawers.
Sure enough, there was a Spirit Orb in everyone's drawer.
But this made people even more anxious.
"An instance where Spirit Orbs are so easy to find... looks like I won't make it out alive," a red-haired man muttered.
"That's not necessarily true. You can't judge an instance's difficulty just by the Spirit Orbs," someone nearby consoled him. "Just be careful."
Just as they finished speaking, Sister Yuan walked over.
"Everyone, finished with breakfast? Then it's time to start working. I've just sent a file to each of your computers. You need to calculate all the data before noon today. If the work isn't completed..."
Sister Yuan grinned with an eerie smile: "There will be punishment."
With that, Sister Yuan turned and left.
"What does she mean?" Zhuang Xiaoxia felt uneasy. "Does this mean we'll die if we don't finish the work?"
"No way, would there be such a straightforward way to die?" the fat man didn't seem to agree.
"Whatever the case, let's finish the work first. Don't take any risks."
"Okay."
Gu Wanyin opened her computer and indeed saw a new file on the desktop.
Opening it, she immediately understood.
Simply put, they had to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division on the data in each row according to requirements, then input the results in the final column.
However, for some reason, they couldn't use any formulas to calculate, and neither the computer's calculator nor their phone calculators worked.
In other words, they could only calculate manually.
At first, the numbers were simple, but they became increasingly difficult towards the end.
The players weren't incapable of calculating, but under such high pressure, to calculate every row's data completely accurately... it seemed quite challenging.
Everyone stopped chatting and focused on their work.
The red-haired man who had been muttering earlier seemed very nervous, his legs constantly trembling and sweat beading on his forehead.
However, surprisingly, he was the first to finish calculating.
There was still over half an hour until noon.
Others also only had a few calculations left to complete.
"Sister Yuan, where are you? Sister Yuan? I'm finished!" the red-haired man called out.
The fat man advised: "Why don't you check it again? What if there are mistakes?"
"She only said to complete the work, not that it had to be perfect! It's almost time, I need to tell her I'm done quickly. I'm scared! You all better hurry too!"
Just as he finished speaking, they heard the sound of high heels.
Sister Yuan had arrived.
"I just heard someone has finished their work?" Sister Yuan asked with a smile.
"Yes, it's me!" the red-haired man immediately said. "I've finished, Sister Yuan, come look!"
"Alright, let me see."
Sister Yuan told the red-haired man to stand up, and she sat at his desk, checking the completed file.
During this time, others weren't idle, trying to quickly finish their own work - after all, it was almost noon, and if they really would die for not finishing, who could they complain to?
After a few minutes, Sister Yuan turned her head and gave the red-haired man an eerie smile.
The red-haired man felt uneasy, sweating even more: "S-Sister Yuan, what's wrong?"
"Three mistakes," Sister Yuan said. "You must be punished."
The red-haired man immediately shouted: "That's not right! I completed it, I just made some mistakes! And it's not noon yet, I still have time to correct them!"
"No," Sister Yuan shook her head. "You yourself said you were finished, so you can't make changes anymore."
"But, but I did complete it..."
"Can a file with mistakes be considered completed work?" Sister Yuan's expression turned cold. "You haven't actually finished, yet you tried to deceive me and waste my time. I must punish you!"
As soon as she finished speaking, the red-haired man suddenly exploded!
Yes, literally exploded - flesh and blood splattered everywhere, much of it landing on nearby people!
"Ah!" someone couldn't help but scream.
Fortunately, Gu Wanyin and her group were sitting slightly farther from the red-haired man, so they weren't affected.
But their expressions were still quite terrible.
Who could handle watching someone explode right before their eyes?
Sister Yuan, however, acted as if nothing had happened, standing up and smiling: "If work isn't done properly, punishment must be given. It's almost noon now, everyone better hurry..."
(Seeing that everyone doesn't like reading side stories, and hasn't had enough of the apocalyptic management part, I'll speed up the side stories and then start a second volume with a new apocalyptic management story.)
