In 2019, 20 members of Z University’s “Night Tales Literature Club” played a “live-action role-playing writing game” in a QQ group. Each person wrote the horror novel “Bloodstained Page Numbers” using their real name and a fictional identity, agreeing that “a character’s death means leaving the group.” The group leader, Su Mian (the female lead), and her boyfriend, Chen Mo, were in charge of coordinating the project. Club member Lu Chen (the male lead) had a secret crush on Su Mian, and wrote a plotline in which “the villain strangles Chen Mo.” On Christmas Eve in 2020, Chen Mo fell to his death at the library. The scene matched Chapter 3 of the novel exactly, and a bloodstained page of manuscript at the scene read, “Page 3 has been torn out.” On the winter solstice of 2021, the document, which had not been updated for a year, suddenly began updating itself. After Chapter 1, “Drowned in the Bathtub,” was posted, club member Zhou Xiaoyu died mysteriously in the bathroom, her phone screen still displaying the novel’s page. From then on, every new chapter corresponded to the death of a club member. The manner, time, and place of each death matched the novel’s description exactly, while the document’s editing IP address led to an abandoned printing factory that all 20 members had visited together. Hidden there was the “Living Soul Pact” they had buried while playing “Spirit of the Pen” back then. A story full of mystery, suspense, horror, and science fiction unfolds.
