Do you believe human nature is evil at its core?
Xu Ye does. He is a psychology graduate student, and his thesis is titled “Fear Conditioning and Human Instincts.” He has seen too many people reveal their ugliness under pressure, and long ago stopped expecting anyone to be “good.”
Until one day, a red door appeared along his usual route. The door chases people. He dodged it twice. The third time, it opened in his bedroom. At two in the morning, warm yellow light spilled through the crack, carrying the aroma of braised pork. He pushed the door open, and found the “Peaceful Restaurant” on the other side.
Seven people, one incense stick, forty-five minutes. On the back of the menu were four rules:
· Sit down, order, and finish your meal.
· If you don’t eat, the people outside will come in.
· The meat contains who they are.
· When the incense burns out, the lights go out and the door closes.
With every bite of meat, he sees a memory. Eat too quickly, and you become dust on the wall. Don’t eat, and the things outside will come in. Xu Ye and two others, former nurse Jiang Yue and bankrupt businessman Zhou Changfeng, piece together the truth: seventy-seven children, Huaihua Middle School, seventeen days under lockdown, starved to death in winter. They find the answer: “Huaihua steamed rice, with salt.”
After clearing the level, Xu Ye finds a letter in the lounge. It contains just one line:
“Your grandmother’s death was no accident.”
Gluttony, greed, pride, wrath, envy, sloth, lust: seven doors, each corresponding to a crack in human nature. Those who survive carry “sin crystals” to the next door. Those who die become the walls, mirrors, and dust inside the doors.
The three of them clear each level and make it to the end. The person standing behind the door is named Su Huai, a psychology professor.
