Grand View Garden Survival Rules [Infinite] - Chapter 2

The calmest person among them was likely Huainan Yue.

Oh, and the NPC.

After inviting them into the room, the NPC stood to the side with her hands clasped respectfully. Simultaneously, she directed other coarse-work maids and older matrons to deliver snacks and tea to the yellow rosewood circular table. The entire sequence was fluid and practiced, as if she had performed it thousands of times before.

“Please, everyone, take a seat. Do not be formal,” the NPC said. “My young mistress has prepared some tea and small pastries for you. Please enjoy them at your leisure.”

She smiled with gentle elegance, though the curvature of her lips felt slightly artificial, making one’s skin crawl.

The snacks were comprehensive: water caltrop cakes, chicken-oil rolls, chestnut flour cakes. They looked so good that the group… felt hungry.

And not in a figurative sense—it was physical. They were hungry.

The kind of hunger where one could swallow an entire cow.

Stomach growls began to echo around the table. Someone discovered with horror that even though she had just eaten a late-night snack in the real world, her stomach was now completely empty, like a rice field picked clean by locusts.

“I can’t hold back anymore,” one girl muttered. “Eating this shouldn’t be a problem, right? It’s not like I’ll drop dead instantly.”

She reached for a water caltrop cake, but Rabbit pulled her back.

“Don’t eat. Endure it,” Rabbit shook her head and whispered. “When I was in the last instance, the pro player said it’s best not to touch anything inside the game.”

“How many days did your last instance last?” The girl who had been pulled back gritted her teeth, desperately resisting the tidal wave of hunger.

“Three days.”

“Three days without touching anything? What did you eat when you were hungry?”

“Inside the instance, all physiological needs disappear. If you feel hungry, thirsty, or sleepy, those are just sensory perceptions forced upon us by the instance,” Rabbit explained.

Hearing this, the group became like robots with their mainsprings removed, not daring to move for a moment. However, the hunger did not subside. Instead, it intensified until their stomachs felt like they were being consumed by fire.

Huainan Yue frowned slightly and beckoned to the NPC: “Miss.”

The NPC stepped forward gracefully. “You need not be so polite, Miss. You may call me Xiuju.”

Xiuju?

Wasn’t that the personal maid of Yingchun, the second young mistress of the Jia household? So, this room was within Yingchun’s courtyard?

Countless thoughts flashed through Huainan Yue’s mind like a revolving lantern, but she had no time to dwell on them. Pointing at the water caltrop cake, she said, “This cake seems a bit too sweet. Why don’t you try some, Miss?”

She stared unblinkingly at Xiuju’s face.

Xiuju’s expression was fascinating, like a neon light that changed colors automatically. Huainan Yue watched as her look shifted from surprise to embarrassment, finally settling into an awkwardness of not knowing how to refuse. After a silence, she said, “It is inappropriate for me to eat the guests’ food.”

“What’s inappropriate about it?” Huainan Yue stood up. With lightning speed and brook-no-argument force, she grabbed a piece of cake and shoved it into Xiuju’s mouth. “It’s my treat.”

Xiuju: “…”

Rabbit was stunned. Everyone at the table was stunned.

You can play the game like this?!

Even more shocking was Xiuju’s reaction. Unable to escape, she swallowed a piece of the cake. She looked like she wanted to vomit but couldn’t, her face turned a deep crimson, and then…

She suddenly closed her eyes and collapsed like a boneless doll. Huainan Yue caught her quickly and helped her into a chair. Huainan Yue reached out to check the girl’s breathing.

“She’s alive,” she concluded. “Likely just fainted.”

“So eating the snacks won’t kill you, but it makes you faint.” Rabbit’s eyes were red, looking ready to cry again. “But I’m so hungry, Sister Moon. What should I do? I’m hitting my limit.”

As those around Rabbit patted her back to soothe her, Huainan Yue’s gaze shifted to the teapot in the center of the table.

Clearing an instance was like playing a game—there were no useless props. If the snacks caused sleep, then… what about the tea?

Huainan Yue picked up the teapot, poured a cup, and pried Xiuju’s mouth open to pour it in.

The unconscious girl stirred. Xiuju slowly opened her eyes, her gaze filled with a trace of dazed confusion. As she stood up and straightened her sash, that confusion was washed away by her professional poise as an NPC, quickly turning into an emotion closer to anger.

She glared at Huainan Yue: “Why did you treat me so?”

Huainan Yue lightly swirled her teacup, taking her time to admire the NPC’s expression before saying slowly, “I should be the one asking why you treated us so. We have no grudge against you, yet you served this food. If we had eaten it and fainted, how would that have benefited you?”

Xiuju lost her ground. The indignation on her face subsided, and after a while, she stammered, “I… I did it for your own good.”

“Oh?”

“If you drink the tea first and then eat the cakes, you won’t faint. Instead, you’ll sleep better at night. There have been many strange noises lately. It’s frightening to wake up from a dream in the dark.”

“Then why didn’t you tell us that from the start?”

“I…”

Huainan Yue smiled but didn’t press further. One couldn’t fully trust an NPC, but one couldn’t fully distrust them either. The solution to this puzzle was indeed to drink the tea before eating the cakes, but Xiuju was clearly not as kind-hearted as she appeared.

After the group drank the tea and ate the snacks, their hunger finally vanished. Xiuju took a moment to pull herself together, eventually returning to her initial gentle demeanor. Just as she was about to say more, hurried footsteps sounded outside. Someone burst into the room, leaning on their knees to catch their breath, and cried out:

“Sister Xiuju! Sister Siqi sent me to tell you—the Young Mistress is gone!”

The Young Mistress was gone? Yingchun was missing!

Huainan Yue’s eyes flickered in the shadows. The work has arrived, she thought.

Three seconds later, a surround-sound electronic voice boomed in her head.

Main Quest: Find the missing Yingchun within 48 hours

Quest Points: 1,000 total, distributed based on contribution

Now announcing the Basic Survival Rules for Grand View Garden Players:

Rule 1: Please do not leave your room after 10:00 PM unless necessary.

Rule 2: Loud shouting or noise is prohibited after 6:00 PM.

Rule 3: If you go out to relieve yourself at night, the dark shadow near the large rock is a golden pheasant. Under no circumstances should you mistake it for a person.

Rule 4: The words of those wearing blue skirts are absolutely correct. Please trust them unconditionally.

Supplement: NPCs are not bound by Player Survival Rules.

Instance Specific Rule: If someone wants to play a game of Go with you, it is best not to refuse.

Current Points: 0. Method to obtain points: Complete side quests.

The electronic voice stopped, and the static hiss faded. For a long time, no one spoke.

It wasn’t until Huainan Yue took another sip of tea that Rabbit asked tremulously, “Did you all hear that voice?”

The group looked solemn and nodded in unison.

Rabbit continued: “Based on my experience, we are essentially a team clearing the instance together. As long as one person finds Yingchun, we complete the mission. As for the points… you can exchange them for items after the instance, but they don’t seem to have much use inside.”

Everyone had different expressions, lost in thought.

“But first, we have to make sure we stay alive,” Rabbit added as a final note.

Indeed—48 hours, two full days. The instance was full of hidden dangers, and they were all novices. Simply surviving would be difficult enough.

Including Huainan Yue, there were five people left: three women and two men. The remaining girl wore round-framed glasses and had an ear-length bob cut. She looked like a “good girl”—the type who never skipped a class in college and was never late for work. When she introduced herself, she said her name was Xue Xi.

However, appearances were deceiving. As soon as the “good girl” spoke, she sounded like a seasoned ruffian.

Xue Xi: “Holy crap, what do we do now?”

One of the men replied: “Didn’t the NPC say she would assign us lodgings later? We just follow her. Survival is victory.”

But when he finished speaking and turned around, he found that Xiuju had vanished.

“Where is she?” He started to panic.

“Gone to look for her mistress, I bet,” Xue Xi said bluntly. “Hey Rabbit, generally speaking, are instances like games where the difficulty increases over time? Meaning, are we relatively safe for the first night?”

Rabbit clutched her water cup and said timidly, “Maybe. But in my last run, the pro was so good at defusing traps that we didn’t encounter any fatal dangers. I couldn’t really tell if it was ‘safe’ or not.”

Huainan Yue idly rubbed the rim of her cup, listening to the chatter. Without the NPC around, the atmosphere lightened significantly. Everyone had a “since we’re here, let’s just talk” kind of air—until Xiuju walked back in gracefully.

Panic and apology fought for space on her face. She curtsied to the group, her voice slightly raspy as if she had just been crying. “I am sorry. There has been a sudden incident at home, so I may not be able to host you properly. I have had two rooms prepared for you. If you do not mind, please follow me to rest.”

The rooms were easy to divide: the two men in one, Huainan Yue and the girls in the other.

The room contained a set of tables and chairs, a cabinet, and a kang bed. On the bed were three sets of quilts, sun-dried until they were fluffy and soft—perfect for a good dream.

Except no one intended to sleep.

“Sister Moon, I’m a bit scared,” Rabbit whispered. “According to the experience from the last instance, strange things always seem to appear at night.”

You don’t need ‘experience’ for that, Huainan Yue thought. Ghost stories at night are common sense.

“So I won’t sleep. You guys sleep, and I’ll keep watch. If anything happens, I’ll wake you up,” Rabbit continued. “Anyway, physiological needs don’t exist in the instance; I won’t feel sleepy even if I don’t sleep.”

“Forget it, your voice is shaking while you say that,” Xue Xi laughed, leaning against the bed frame. “I’ll watch, you guys sleep. Or let’s just not sleep at all and chat. Didn’t the rules say ‘do not leave your room unless necessary’? If we listen and stay inside, the danger should be smaller.”

As the two of them argued until they were red in the face about who should keep watch, they heard a heavy bell tolling from afar.

The bell struck ten times.

“Ten o’clock,” Rabbit yawned, her voice slowing down. She didn’t notice her tone becoming slurry as her eyelids grew heavier.

Rabbit and Xue Xi collapsed onto the bed together. They were fast asleep.

Huainan Yue forced herself to maintain her dwindling consciousness. She pulled some wrapped tea leaves from her pocket and chewed them quickly, her mind clearing instantly. She had swiped the tea leaves from the round table earlier.

They were useful, as expected.

She tucked the two sleeping girls in and slowly walked out of the room.

The Grand View Garden rules said “unless necessary,” not “prohibited.” Furthermore, it had supplemented the rule with “going out to relieve oneself at night.”

Gains always coexist with risks.