Surviving Rule-Horror Tales by Bluffing

**At 11:30 p.m., the lights in the capital's Dragon Kingdom Library gradually went out.**

At the window-side seat in the last row of the psychology section, Chen Mo closed the copy of "Nonviolent Communication" in his hands. The edges of its pages had worn white, clearly showing it had been read countless times. He took off his silver-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with a soft cloth, his movements slow and focused. Outside the window, the city's neon lights blurred into hazy patches of color in the rain. Tonight's rain felt unusually heavy and clinging, like some kind of omen.

Just