Chapter One: Seven Viewers at Midnight

Failure: all System bonuses frozen for seven days.] “Sunrise?” Zhou Lan surveyed the empty lobby. “Five hours.” Lin Ran righted a fallen sign and wrote: MIDNIGHT TRIAL—PAY AFTER YOU TRAIN. “Twenty thousand people are watching. Ten of them must be unable to sleep.” At 1:17, a food courier entered. Then came an insomniac couple, a taxi driver, a nurse off the night shift, and three students filming everything. As the fifth registered, the guard crossed the room. His badge said Han Zheng. He limped slightly, but Lin Ran remembered the precision of his single instruction. It had contained range, weight, and timing. Ten minutes before sunrise, the ninth visitor collapsed happily onto a mat. “One short,” Zhou Lan said.