It had been less than three hours since the four of them entered the Game. While they were still in the midst of intense high school revision, Lin Huai seemed to have lived through an entire century. It was as if while they were still immersed in a sea of problems, Lin Huai had already quickly graduated, obtained his qualifications, and become a teacher at this school.
“Why is this happening?!” Li Fen scratched his head. “We entered this high school together, so why can he eat at the second-floor cafeteria while we have to play mind games with the uncle at the first-floor cafeteria?”
“The cafeteria isn’t the main issue!” Qiu Ran said. “The real question is why he gets to be a teacher!”
The two of them pondered for a long time but couldn’t find an answer. Meanwhile, Xia Xingye had already picked up a plate of food that didn’t look too terrifying and blended into the crowd of students having their meal.
“Instead of wasting time on useless dilemmas, it’s better to gather more information during mealtime,” Qiu Ran said, seeing Xia Xingye’s actions. He then took out his student ID and joined the line of students having their meal.
Li Fen looked at his two teammates, facing the plate of food, and swallowed hard.
“Human abilities have limits. From my short life, I’ve learned one thing: the more protein you consume, the more you realize that human abilities have limits… unless you transcend humanity…” He silently consoled himself as he looked at the plate of charred potato slices.
The day passed by in a flash. It wasn’t until evening study session that the three of them finally had time to exchange the information they had gathered.
“Through my inquiries, I’ve discovered the seven mysteries of this school,” Xia Xingye said.
“The first one is the toilet stall with strange holes. The toilet is located on the fourth floor of the fourth teaching building, which is the laboratory building. Someone turned their head while using the toilet and found two holes right at eye level.”
“So…” Li Fen asked, “Did they look through them?”
Xia Xingye shook his head.
His hair was smooth, with long bangs hanging down to his eyes. When he lowered his head to read the paper, his gaze was gentle and focused.
“The second is the music room that emits piano sounds at midnight. The third is the library bookshelf where pulling out a book reveals a pair of eyes on the other side. The fourth is the cafeteria kitchen that emits chopping sounds late at night. The fifth is the sighing sound from the small pond. The sixth is the thirteen steps leading to the rooftop. The seventh is the flagpole on the sports field that has people hanging from it at night,” Xia Xingye counted on his fingers, the diamond earring on his earlobe sparkling like lake water. “…However, what I found out is that there’s an eighth one.”
He lowered his head, his bangs swaying slightly in the night breeze, revealing his smooth forehead. Li Fen swallowed and asked, “What’s the eighth one?”
Xia Xingye looked up at the ceiling, his eyes flickering, and whispered, “The non-existent class.”
“Game objective: Enter Minghua High School, investigate the seven mysterious events, and prevent the situation from worsening before the evil spirits initiate a massacre…” During the evening study session, after perfectly imitating the original teacher from the video all day, Lin Huai stepped out of Class 3F, leaned on the railing, and looked up at the sky. “What a perplexing requirement…”
According to the Game, there are seven mysterious events in this school. Players need to resolve all of them within a month while also identifying one or more hidden evil spirits and stopping them from initiating a massacre to save the people from disaster… Ordinary players would only analyze the Game from the perspective of these events, but for Lin Huai, things were different.
He was originally a vengeful spirit that had taken over a human body, dragged into this Game due to the karma of the original host. For him, fighting seven vengeful spirits wasn’t the challenge; the real challenge was the investigative tasks. As a vengeful spirit rather than a human player, he preferred to analyze this event from the perspective of a hunter.
In his view, the difficulty of this Game was divided into several points. The first was the academic life. If players entered the school as students, they would inevitably be occupied with schoolwork from day to night to maintain their student identity. The headmaster made it clear that violating the time rules would result in “disciplinary action” according to school regulations. And those regulations were likely nothing pleasant.
The academic pressure at Minghua High School was immense. Even for players, the daily tasks were extremely heavy. Under such pressure, they also had to find time to investigate the school’s secrets. Simultaneously, if they failed to complete their academic tasks, according to the headmaster, they would face “disciplinary action.”
In this regard, Lin Huai had already preemptively solved his identity issue. At least in this aspect, he had already stepped out of the Game’s trap.
The second point was the relationship between the evil spirits and the seven mysterious events.
The Game’s objective was to investigate the seven mysterious events and prevent the situation from worsening before the evil spirits initiated a massacre. However, the task did not mention whether there was a necessary connection between the seven mysterious events and the massacre by the evil spirits.
In the afternoon, Lin Huai had already inquired with his classmates and obtained the specific details of the seven mysteries of the school. But this didn’t explain the relationship between the impending massacre by the evil spirits and the seven mysterious events. Did the seven events correspond to one evil spirit, or did each event correspond to a different evil spirit?
And what lifted the restrictions on the evil spirits’ massacre? How were the deaths of the two people at the pond and the rooftop related to the evil spirits?
The third point was the time limit.
The Game provided a time limit of one month, but in Lin Huai’s view, the actual time limit of the Game wasn’t that simple.
Compared to ordinary humans, he had a more acute perception of the outside world and a correspondingly stronger tolerance. It was already autumn, and the weather in Yangshui City was quite cool, yet the school was fully air-conditioned. In some classrooms, the temperature even reached an environmentally unfriendly low of 18 degrees Celsius.
Such temperatures were even a bit low for Lin Huai.
Rather than for human comfort… it seemed more like something was being frozen, or perhaps the occurrence of something was being delayed.
But…
“Still, it’s because of this that the Game is interesting,” Lin Huai leaned on the railing, licking his lips. “In the boring passage of life, encountering something as interesting as a Game makes one can’t help but sigh at the ‘unpredictability of fate.'”
Since he was seeking excitement, he might as well go all the way. Lin Huai had never thought of using brute force to solve all the problems in the Game. Since he had joined this Game, he naturally intended to play it within the rules as a player.
He pushed off the railing and turned around, continuing to ponder the Game in his mind. However, when his gaze swept over the depths of the corridor, he noticed that the staircase door leading to the rooftop, which should have been closed, was now open.
The third teaching building was laid out from east to west as follows: the staircase for going up and down, the toilet, Class E, Class F, Empty Classroom 1, Empty Classroom 2, and the staircase leading to the rooftop. Currently, Class F was in the middle of their evening study session. After completing the lesson plan for the next day, Lin Huai had gone to the front of the classroom to lean on the railing and gaze out, so as not to disturb the students’ studying.
After reporting in, Lin Huai had seen on the original NPC’s teaching contract that Minghua High School was formerly a public school that had relocated. Minghua High School adhered to the principle of “inheriting the glorious traditions of revolutionary predecessors,” maintaining all the teaching facilities as they were originally. The staircase before him was a culmination of dilapidation.
For the safety of the students, the school had installed iron railings at the entrance of the fourth-floor staircase, with a small iron gate that only allowed one person to pass through at a time. The gate was secured with a large brass lock. A month ago, after the mysterious death of a student from Class 3C, the lock was further reinforced.
But now… the gate that should have been locked was open.
Generally speaking, in horror movies, when a door opens, it means something has happened…
Human fear is the best bait for spirits. The heavier the fear of the prey, the lighter their innate yang energy that resists spirits, and the more delicious their scent becomes.
This is why many spirits, consciously or unconsciously, create terrifying scenes before hunting.
In a way, high-level spirits are also quite delicious meals for other spirits, which can promote evolution after consumption. However, in most cases, the strong evil aura of high-level spirits acts like wasabi in sashimi, enough to deter most low-level spirits with ill intentions. At Lin Huai’s level, for most spirits, he was a pure, additive-free, pungent…
Wasabi.
“Do you want to eat me? But I probably don’t taste very good…” Lin Huai looked at the open door, somewhat puzzled.
To disguise himself as a human, he had deliberately suppressed his spirit aura. Without the sweetness of a living soul or the spiciness of a spirit, he should be nothing more than bland boiled cabbage to ordinary spirits.
Moreover, in this dungeon, there shouldn’t be any spirits of a higher level that could consider him a post-meal snack.
Perhaps there was a spirit of a lower or equal level that could see through his disguise, peel back the layers of his heart like an onion, and discover…
He was a lump of wasabi.
Lin Huai decided to meet this peculiarly discerning spirit. He turned on his phone’s flashlight, illuminating the path ahead, and cautiously headed towards the depths of the corridor.
To others, this might seem like cautious exploration, but for Lin Huai, his caution was only because…
He didn’t want to scare away this peculiarly discerning spirit.
Although the most likely scenario was that this spirit mistook him for a human and was desperate enough to not even let bland boiled cabbage pass. Still, Lin Huai preferred to think the best of others. He believed this spirit must have taken a liking to his unique soul… no, spirit.
There were no lights in the corridor, so after a few steps, the entire staircase was engulfed in darkness. As he passed the classrooms, he caught a glimpse of a group of students in white uniforms studying in one of them.
Very quiet, truly deserving of being Communist Youth League members—Lin Huai thought, genuinely pleased by this.
With this in mind, his fingers touched the iron door leading to the rooftop.
The door, long neglected, seemed to have rusted. The touch was a bloody red. Lin Huai rubbed off the rust from his hand and raised the flashlight to illuminate the darkness above the staircase.
“Thump, thump.”
There was the sound of footsteps above, was it a person, or a rat?
Before entering the rooftop, he took two steps forward and, using the light from his phone, examined the screws that secured the iron door. After getting a sense of the situation, he pulled out the stainless steel spoon and fork he had casually picked up during lunch at the second-floor cafeteria and quietly but forcefully dismantled the iron door.
Following the usual horror movie trope, when the protagonist goes up the stairs with a flashlight to investigate, the only exit—the door to the rooftop—would inevitably lock. So by removing the iron door, there wouldn’t be any issues with the door locking when trying to retreat.
He thought this as he carried the dismantled iron door, initially planning to casually place it in the corridor. But after some consideration, he felt that if any students came out to use the toilet during the evening study session and saw this iron door lying in the middle of the hallway, they would be greatly frightened.
Having accepted the school’s salary, he felt it was his duty to be a responsible teacher. As such, he decided to put in a bit more effort and hide the door in a nearby classroom.
He hoisted the iron door onto his shoulder, pushed open the door to Empty Classroom 2, and stuffed the iron door inside. After surveying the empty classroom, he found an old baseball bat in the pile of garbage behind the door.
Though it wasn’t the legendary physics-defying holy sword or the dinosaur-extinguishing tennis racket, finding a baseball bat was better than nothing. After leaving Empty Classroom 2, he turned on his phone’s flashlight again and began ascending the dusty staircase towards the rooftop.
By evening, a light drizzle had started at Minghua High School. Amidst the sound of the rain, there was a continuous, short, and persistent sound of crying.
The crying was faint, mingling with the rain, as if coming from a great distance, yet also seeming omnipresent. Lin Huai swept the flashlight across the rooftop, seeing only the night sky, no sign of anyone.
He was about to leave empty-handed when, as he approached the staircase, he noticed someone standing at the previously empty exit. The person was dressed in a blood-stained blue and white school uniform, head hanging low, standing in the dark entrance.
“Oh?” Lin Huai put his phone back into his suit pocket and narrowed his eyes.
The “person” moved their lips but couldn’t produce a sound clearer than the sharp crying. They opened their bloodied mouth, shouting silently at the sky.
‘Leave this place!’ it said. ‘Leave this place!’
