【Greetings, residents of Nameless City! The Scavenger Project is a mandatory initiative for every citizen. Purifying the world is our shared duty. Please participate in the Scavenger Project in an orderly manner; your results will determine your fate. Believe in this: Eden is waiting for you!】
The speakers on the streets continuously looped the propaganda slogans. Nan Yue walked slowly, silently reciting the words in her heart.
Pedestrians on the street hurried to and fro, everyone familiar with these slogans.
For as long as Nan Yue could remember, the same words had been playing on a loop throughout Nameless City.
Even if one wasn't walking the streets, the same banners were everywhere: television, schools, books, newspapers...
"Scavenger Project."
This was a mandatory project for all residents. Every citizen would join the Scavenger Project and become a scavenger upon reaching the age of twenty.
The government raised all residents for free, providing them with an education at the Scavenger Training Academy. There, they were taught how to better complete tasks within the Scavenger Project and purify the world.
Nan Yue felt this was normal. This was how everyone lived.
Today was her twentieth birthday, and also the day of her Scavenger Project assessment.
Nan Yue took her ID card and headed toward the Scavenger Project assessment hall. The hall was located in the central district of Nameless City. It was small, and there was always a queue.
Nan Yue had once wondered how such a small hall could accommodate so many people.
"Are you also here for the assessment today?"
The boy standing in front of Nan Yue in the queue seemed a bit bored and struck up a conversation.
"Yes..."
Nan Yue nodded slightly, showing no intention of chatting further, but the boy seemed to have found a confidant and began to talk incessantly.
"Do you think the assessment is hard? The teachers said the success rate is seventy percent, but I'm so worried I'll fail."
"I don't want to die yet. I want to go to Eden. You know about Eden, right? It's the top tier city state! I heard that as long as you earn enough money in the project, you can move to Eden one day."
The boy was only repeating what was taught in school, but Nan Yue didn't interrupt him. She could tell he was nervous.
If they failed the assessment, they would die.
Or rather, from the moment they began participating in the Scavenger Project, they were all hovering on the line between life and death. A single mistake could lead to their end.
But dying during the assessment was too tragic. It was like studying for twenty years only to die at the doorstep before even entering the real battlefield.
The queue moved quickly, and it was soon the boy's turn. He stopped talking, took a deep breath, and raised a fist toward Nan Yue.
"Good luck."
"Good luck."
Nan Yue watched the boy swipe his ID card and enter the hall. His figure vanished the moment he stepped inside.
A few seconds later, the machine at the entrance made an emotionless announcement.
"Nan Yue, FCY091452."
Nan Yue stepped forward and swiped her ID card. With a beep, the glass doors opened. The moment she entered, her body felt weightless, and she was instantaneously teleported to another space.
She arrived in a room filled with a sense of advanced technology. The pure white room had no visible seams, as if it had been naturally formed.
Before her was a wall sized screen displaying her photo and basic information.
"Nan Yue, ID number FCY091452, residence Nameless City, project: Qualification Exam."
"Single player assessment task, Code 04: Sweet Home."
"Objective: Grandmother is sick. I must find a way to escape..."
"We wish you a successful assessment. Eden is waiting for you."
The voice broadcasting from the darkness was female and very gentle, yet Nan Yue found it somewhat eerie.
It didn't sound like a human voice, but rather like something non-human imitating one. The more it resembled a person, the more terrifying it became, like the uncanny valley effect amplified into a bizarre sense of wrongness.
Nan Yue remained calm. She remembered what the teachers had said: the goal of the Scavenger Project was to purify fear.
Regardless of which project they drew, the events they encountered would be filled with the bizarre, the bloody, and the terrifying.
Therefore, the most important thing was to remain calm throughout. Only by staying calm could one discover the chance of survival within the project and complete the purification work.
She had the highest psychological value in the history of the school. The teachers all said she was a natural born scavenger and would surely achieve great things in the Scavenger Project.
But no one knew that Nan Yue actually lived in fear every single day.
Unlike the artificial scares and horror scenes created by the school, hers was not a thrill of soaring adrenaline, but a sense of helplessness constantly shrouded by the strange and by death.
Every day of her life had been like this, so other things rarely caused her psychological value to fluctuate.
However, it seemed that after entering this place, the sticky, cold sense of suffocation that always hung over Nan Yue had dissipated slightly?
Before she could figure it out, the surrounding scenery gradually changed.
It was like a thick black mist slowly dispersing, revealing the hidden scene.
Nan Yue appeared to be in an old residential apartment. She was in the living room, facing a sofa that could barely seat two people.
The sofa was quite old, with several corners torn open to reveal yellowed cotton padding.
A colorful embroidered towel blanket was spread over it, though its colors were no longer vibrant due to its age.
Beside the sofa was a small, peeling side table with an old fashioned black rotary phone on it.
The sofa rested beneath a windowsill, which held several half dead plants and a circular fish tank.
The water in the tank had turned green with a thick layer of grime, and there were no fish.
A circular clock hung on the left wall, ticking away. Beneath it hung an old photograph of a wrinkled elderly woman.
This must be the grandmother mentioned in the objective. She was smiling at the camera, but Nan Yue felt a sense of unease.
The old woman's lips were curved upward, but there was no mirth in her eyes, which looked sinister.
A small television set faced the sofa, covered with a white cloth. The TV cabinet held some small ornaments covered in a thick layer of dust.
Dim yellow light filtered through the window, hitting the sofa and casting shadows across the dust covered table.
Nan Yue looked at the fruit bowl on the table. It held two apples that looked shriveled, yet they fit the room strangely well.
It seemed to be evening. The twilight light should have felt warm and cozy.
But Nan Yue didn't feel that way. She felt the light was just like the house: old, yellowed, and smelling of rotting wood.
The dust motes floating in the light were dense. Nan Yue felt as though this was a long abandoned house where only she and the dust remained.
"Amin, why are you just standing there? Come, come and sit."
A hoarse, aged voice suddenly rang out. Nan Yue turned around to find a short elderly woman standing behind her.
The old woman looked exactly like the one in the photo: small, somewhat shriveled, with a smile on her face, but her eyes were wide and staring fixedly at Nan Yue.
This was the grandmother.
Nan Yue was certain she had been the only person in the room just a moment ago.
So, where had Grandmother come from?
Rate on N.U.
