NFM Chapter 38

Yu Xingjian had been having a very difficult time these past few days.

If Yan Xi’s suicide two months ago was an accident, and Shen You’s death a month ago was a coincidence, then Tang Feng’s suicide this week left him unable to offend the Principal and others any longer.

“Teacher Yu,” said the Dean of Students, who had once told him, “You have a bright future ahead,” now looked at him with a questioning expression. “Since the establishment of Minghua Middle School, although there have been students who dropped out and a yearly quota for suicides, I’ve never seen a class like Year Three Class C where incidents occur so frequently! Shouldn’t you reflect on your teaching methods?”

Recalling the sharp-tongued woman’s words, he slammed his fist down on the office desk.

“What does she know about teaching methods?” he thought with a cold smile. “Wasn’t it you who praised my teaching methods and tried to promote them throughout the school? Clearly, you are the one who only cares about making money, allowing your relatives to control the supply of teaching materials, forcing students to buy so many useless textbooks…”

Yu Xingjian had come to this middle school six months ago. He was originally a promising graduate from a 211 normal university, but during his first job, he lost control of his frustration and slapped a student, causing the student to become deaf, which led to his dismissal from the school. Fortunately, his family had some money, allowing him to reach a settlement and avoid criminal charges.

Not only was he dismissed from his original school, but even slightly reputable schools in the education sector were reluctant to hire him. After staying at home for a whole year, a relative mentioned Minghua Middle School as a potential opportunity, giving Yu Xingjian a new place to apply his skills.

He initially came to this school with ambitions to redeem himself and nurture talent. During the year he was dismissed, he read many books on psychology and success, eager to put his talents to good use. However, Minghua Middle School was both as he imagined and not at all what he expected.

Yu Xingjian had always believed in encouraging students through mental strength, thinking that only in a good, united class atmosphere could people strive for improvement. However, the atmosphere in Year Three Class C was too gloomy and scattered. Class C was not as good as the top two classes, A and B, but it was better than D, E, and F classes. This unique position gave them more determination to rise and feelings of injustice. As a result, everyone regarded their classmates as rivals, studying like a group of red-eyed fighting cocks, indifferent to each other except for their studies and jealousy.

He had been troubled by this until an accidental event changed everything.

The school had a tradition of awarding hygiene gold medals. Under Yu Xingjian’s relentless efforts, Class C barely managed to meet the excessively strict hygiene standards. However, on this day, Class C was criticized at the school assembly, and all students were punished by losing their evening snack.

In a school like Minghua, where the cafeteria food was notoriously terrible, the evening bread snack for third-year students was the most anticipated treat. The entire class was furious and complained about who had messed everything up. Yu Xingjian then asked the class, “Who was responsible yesterday?”

He asked three times, but no one stood up. Just as his anger was about to reach its peak, a handsome boy sitting in the back row stood up, head lowered, and said, “It… it was me.”

He remembered this person’s name, Yan Xi, who ranked among the top in the class and had been steadily improving, but was introverted and timid to the point of being almost weak, and liked to write novels.

In short, he was the kind of person who wouldn’t resist even when bullied.

He severely punished Yan Xi, making him stand on the balcony and clean the ink off the floor with his sleeve. Yan Xi, with his head down, wiped the floor, his face turning red, and when he stood up, he bumped into a nearby cabinet due to low blood sugar.

The cabinet made a loud noise, but the whole class just looked at him indifferently. Someone laughed first.

“Hahaha…”

Then the whole class burst into laughter.

“Look at him, so stupid and so embarrassed.”

“Always acting like he could get into Class B, but can’t even do hygiene properly. Finally, he’s messed up this time.”

“Hahaha…”

In this wave of laughter, the class achieved an unprecedented unity. And Yu Xingjian, who was originally at the podium, discovered the secret to unity that he had never noticed before. This realization did not change even when he later found out that the person responsible that day was not Yan Xi, but Yan Xi’s “best friend,” his deskmate Tang Feng.

He guided the narrative, framing Yan Xi as the source of all troubles in Class C. He bought seven pots of flowers, claiming each pot represented a girl in the class, but after this idea took root, he deliberately smashed the pot representing the most popular girl and placed the blame on Yan Xi. He invented responsibilities for garbage classification and assigned them to Yan Xi… One small incident after another, the class became very united in this atmosphere of shared animosity.

He achieved great success but did not forget to feign sympathy for Yan Xi. During breaks, he called Yan Xi to the office and told him, “Do you feel it’s unfair what has happened recently? Do you think the teacher’s treatment of you is terrible?”

Yan Xi stammered, “I… I know I was indeed at fault, and I will correct it.”

“That’s good. We are all helping you become a better person,” Yu Xingjian said with a satisfied smile. “Feng Zilu, take him back.”

Feng Zilu was his class monitor and the student who best executed his will. Yan Xi was then taken back to the class, and Yu Xingjian could comfortably continue to enjoy the increasing acceptance and reverence from his students—when people grow to dislike something, the opposite side fighting against it becomes increasingly recognized.

However, he never expected that Yan Xi would jump off a building.

From that day on, everything took a turn for the worse. Shen You died, Tang Feng died, and he was on the verge of being dismissed. His newly established target, Li Xinyi, also became ineffective due to Lin Huai’s repeated interventions.

In recent days, Lin Huai had been entering and exiting Year Three Class C under the pretense of being his friend and investigating Yan Xi’s death, constantly sabotaging his plans. What was even more unbelievable was that in this round of exams, Class F’s average score in Chinese actually surpassed Class C!

Yu Xingjian, as a Chinese teacher, took pride in Class C’s performance, which, although not as good as Classes A and B overall, had always surpassed Class B in Chinese, only a few points behind Class A. Yet this time, Class F surpassed them by a mere 0.1 points!

On the day the scores were released, he couldn’t hold back and directly questioned Lin Huai in the office. The new substitute teacher merely shrugged and said, “Actually, the answer is quite simple…”

“One is the genuine copy, and the other is a fake.” Lin Huai held up two fingers. “This story tells us not to use counterfeit goods.”

When Yu Xingjian continued to question him, the other party replied, “The Chinese exam paper was prepared a month ago, right? It has been sealed in a bag that no one can see since then, hasn’t it? According to your logic, I should have been lurking in this school a month ago, watching you prepare the exam paper from behind your back… Stop struggling, waste. This behavior of throwing a tantrum when you can’t handle losing is really ugly.”

After saying this, the latter yawned, jumped off his desk, and was about to leave. Yu Xingjian, disregarding everything, rushed up and grabbed his arm. “You—ah!”

An uncontrollable scream escaped his lips. The pain from his wrist being twisted made him instinctively clutch his arm, rolling on the ground and shouting. The handsome young man in a suit stood at the door, his black eyes emotionlessly watching him on the floor, and after a moment, he let out a laugh.

“Does it hurt?” he asked. “Which do you think is harder to accept, physical pain or the feeling of failure?”

“Trash is trash no matter where it is, Teacher Yu. You might think you are a god to the students in Class C, using your position as a teacher, your age difference, and the information asymmetry to manipulate and mock ignorant minors. But here… the peak of your life might just be the day you received your acceptance letter from the normal university from EMS.” Lin Huai said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “But I think it’s better for you to learn to admit your failures, after all, you’ve always been an irredeemable failure.”

“You… what kind of person are you?”

“A new century college student, a rule-abiding player in the game, a dedicated teacher.” Lin Huai said casually. “By the way…”

He picked up Yu Xingjian’s wallet and pulled out all the money inside.

“Instead of causing trouble for me, you might as well think about when your death date will be.” He waved the cash in his hand, casually threw the wallet on the ground, and disdainfully stepped on it. “This money is compensation for you dirtying my clothes.”

After showing off as he left the office, Lin Huai stuffed the money into his pants pocket and found a nearby restroom to wash his hands frantically.

“So dirty, so dirty… I’m dirty…” he muttered to himself while washing, “This jacket can’t be kept, throw it away.”

Although he had already gone out to buy clean clothes on the second day of arriving at Minghua Middle School to avoid readers thinking, “This story is great, but the protagonist has been wearing the same suit for thirty days,” he was still very pleased to have new income.

‘Since cases of suicide can’t be reported successfully in this game, then reporting a robbery for money must be even less likely to succeed. Although I’m not afraid, I just don’t want to spend a day in a detention center without even a bed.’ With this thought, he began counting the money in the restroom. ‘One hundred, two hundred… two thousand, two thousand and fifty… two thousand two hundred and ninety-one… this person is really poor, I just saw a few coins in the wallet, I should have brought the wallet out instead of showing off…’

Muttering to himself, Lin Huai put the two thousand two hundred and ninety-one into his wallet. Despite Yu Xingjian being dirty, money was never wrong. He now had a total of five thousand four hundred and thirty-nine yuan and two jiao, including the money he had received after kindly asking the Principal for an advance on his salary one night, which had moved the Principal.

‘If it weren’t for the fact that money earned in the game can’t be taken out, I would really want to abandon this game mission and go rob a bank for income.’ After organizing his bulging wallet, Lin Huai traced his mouth with his teacher ID card, daydreaming, ‘Then put on some red paint, wear a purple suit, and shout “whyserious” at the police cars outside… In any case, once I leave the game and enter reality, no one will remember my face, and I won’t have to worry about being chased by police cars.’

Having imagined this, he felt a small thrill of excitement.

Xia Xingye stood in the corridor, watching Lin Huai walk by, frowning.

In the past few days, this person seemed to have completely lost interest in preventing the remaining NPCs from dying and continued with the ordinary game process. And all of this…

Started with Tang Feng’s death.

On the contrary, he increasingly chose to interact with Xu Chi and others, becoming friendly and chatting.

Did he discover something? Or did he already know the truth of this game?

However…

“As long as it doesn’t obstruct my plans, feel free to play however you want.” He rested his chin on his hand, contemplating, “As long as I can get…”

What I need, that’s all.

“Xingye, what are you looking at?” Qiu Ran’s voice came from behind him.

“Nothing.”

Turning around, he was once again the gentle and considerate Xia Xingye. The gentle and considerate handsome man smiled at the shy girl: “I was thinking about the instance event, we…”

“Don’t put too much pressure on yourself,” Qiu Ran emphasized. “We are teammates, and I will help you.”

Xia Xingye was taken aback for a moment, then smiled as well.

“Okay.”

The second week at Minghua Middle School was just as peaceful. Lin Huai walked down the fourth-floor corridor, and several students chatting in the hallway greeted him from afar.

“Actually, I feel really lucky that our class has Teacher Lin,” Fang Cheng said to Chen Haoyu, who was sitting in front of him in Class F.

It was a rare moment of casual conversation after morning exercises. Chen Haoyu nodded in agreement: “I thought all the teachers in this school were like this, but I didn’t expect Teacher Lin to be completely different.”

“Yeah.” Feng Junjie also leaned over, looking very moved. “Before the exam, he told me that if I wrote the wrong ancient poem, he would throw me downstairs… I really wrote it wrong, and he just scolded me, but didn’t actually throw me down…”

“Your point of being moved is a bit off…”

“And Teacher Lin is really handsome!” A gossiping girl chimed in, “He looks just like an angel…”

Amidst the students’ gossip, Lin Huai entered the classroom and set down his books. Facing the suddenly quiet students, he said, “Starting this week, we will follow this schedule for our three daily Chinese classes. First period is Chinese, second period is Chinese, third period is math—I’ll teach that. Then for evening self-study, I will also assign English homework. Hmm, I’ve calculated, it should take two and a half hours to finish, right?”

The entire class: …

Girls: I was wrong, he is a devil.

As the devil among angels assigned homework, in Class B, the previous substitute teacher, Cao Aimin, was lost in confusion.

After enduring a week of academic pressure and cold air, he gradually accepted the fact that he, a thirty-two-year-old man considered old in Jinjiang but without a prestigious background, had come to this school in the suburbs of Yangshui City to retake the college entrance examination.

He didn’t know why he had a whim to come to this devilish training school for retaking the college entrance exam after years of flaunting a fake degree. After all, for many years, he had been a man who spent his days in an office making tea, reading urban fantasy novels, and enjoying stories like “The Close Bodyguard of the School” and “The Best Soldier King.”

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was, he felt that something was off about this school.

Not to mention the indifferent classmates, the strange school rules and regulations, the Seven Wonders of the school, the female ghost in the pond he saw by chance, the male ghost hanging from the fan, and the white shadows drifting everywhere in the school…

There was nothing more to say! Everything felt wrong! Among the three classmates who transferred at the same time as him, one was a beautiful girl who was a bit airheaded, one was a handsome youth whose looks transcended gender and spoke in a particularly gentle tone, and one was a boy who looked like cannon fodder and seemed very irritable…

‘Could it be—’ a thought flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt, connecting all the dots.

In that instant, all his doubts had an explanation.

A thirty-two-year-old man with short-term amnesia, accidentally arriving at a ghostly school, sitting in the protagonist’s seat, with three strange transfer students discussing behind his back…

Could it be that I am the male protagonist of an infinite flow novel?

Author’s Note: Third update today! From the fast-fingered author of the point family.

*Explanation of the references that were censored in this chapter:

Star Ranking: A popularity character ranking list on the endpoint, requires voting.

Klein: A very poor person… no, an evil god.

Ning Zhiheng: A frail, gentle person who faints at the sight of blood (antonym).

Senior Bai: A person who will have good luck once they worship.