Rule Horror: HR Handed Me a Survival Rulebook

On the 183rd day since his older sister vanished, Chen Mu used a fake resume he’d bought for 300 yuan to get a job at the company where she was last seen. HR didn’t give him an employment contract. They only shoved a copy of the Survival Rules into his hands. Rule Number One: After ten at night, do not respond to any coworker who calls your name. They have already been “made permanent.” That night, at 10:07 p.m., the company lost power for seven seconds. A colleague who’d started the same day answered once and turned into a light on the ceiling. Beside that deadly rule, a line of bloody writing appeared, visible only to Chen Mu: “Don’t answer. Don’t look back. Don’t move until the lights come on.” It was signed with a single character: Zhao. That was his older sister’s name. She had been missing for half a year. To bring his sister back from B7, Chen Mu had no choice but to play the most obedient new hire in the Compliance Department while verifying every rule word by word: time, subject, status, responsibility. The rules showed no mercy, but he had to hold them to the words they themselves had written. Until the man who always smiled and always called him by his full name stopped him: “Mr. Chen Mu, your sister also started with the first rule.” “Welcome to Changming.” The company thought Chen Mu had come looking for someone. They had no idea what he really meant to prove: the people who made the rules had broken them too. And Chen Mu soon discovered that he hadn’t snuck in at all. He had been invited.