Yan Wei let out a breath.
Just as he thought.
At first, although the speculation that the monster had swapped out a player was quite obvious, there was no trap involved; their line of thinking was not wrong. It was precisely because there was no trap that they subconsciously assumed all their reasoning was free of traps, leading them to focus entirely on the wrong direction—who among the living was the monster.
In fact, by the end, the players from Morning Star wanted more people to die; as long as they survived, they could increase their chances of making the right choice.
The foundation of all this lay in the subconscious assumption that the monster was among the living.
And the monster knew this was a process of elimination. Even if someone died at the beginning, as time went on, the number of survivors would dwindle. Those who survived due to good luck or strong abilities could easily succeed because there were fewer people left.
But what if the monster had “died” from the very beginning?
Then it would have been excluded from everyone’s sight right from the start.
Yu Feizhou was right; the first attack could be perceived and avoided when it approached Yu Feizhou because the monster wanted Yu Feizhou to dodge, thus hitting itself and resulting in its own “death.”
In this way, the target of the attack was Yu Feizhou, but the one who died was the player impersonating the monster, creating a layer of confusion. Even if the players realized that the monster might attack them to clear its suspicion, the first one they would suspect would be the attacked Yu Feizhou, not the player who indirectly died because Yu Feizhou dodged.
But this was not the entire answer. This game of “dropping the handkerchief” set traps for the players.
The building never spoke nonsense. The hint for this side quest was “be mindful of what’s behind you.” Under the influence of the monster’s mischievous face, everyone initially thought this referred to the so-called “be mindful of what’s behind you.”
However, behind them was not just the players and that monster face.
Behind them was also the dropped handkerchief.
The reason that Morning Star’s player grabbed the corpse but was judged incorrectly, while Yan Wei holding the handkerchief and grabbing the corpse was correct, was precisely because of the handkerchief.
The corpse was not a complete monster—because the head of the corpse was the real player’s head, while only the body belonged to the monster.
He almost forgot that in this fragmented space, the body part was the head. If one started thinking from the head, they would realize that the first and second deceased players had very subtle differences—the first deceased player’s pupils were still constricted, which did not conform to the characteristics of the eyes after death; instead, it looked more like something had deliberately frozen this person’s expression in a moment of surprise.
When Yan Wei discovered this distinction, he suddenly understood.
Long before the darkness fell, this monster had killed a player from Morning Star—it must have chosen the weakest person to minimize noise. If it had targeted someone with strong perception like him or someone with high physical stats like Yan Mingguang, the game would have stirred from the very beginning. Thus, the selection and killing of that player from Morning Star was inevitable because that player was the weakest.
Before the game started, the monster killed that player from Morning Star and severed the player’s head, attaching it to its own neck. When the game began, everyone saw this player as the monster wearing the player’s head. As for its own head? There wouldn’t be any extraneous items in the space; the handkerchief appeared suddenly after the darkness fell—the handkerchief was the monster’s head!
In this way, combining the appearance of the first deceased corpse, a clear logical chain emerged regarding what the monster had done from the start of the game until now.
The first deceased player saw the monster in the darkness and was killed. The monster suddenly appeared in the dark and killed him, so when he died, his face was one of sudden fright, with pupils constricted and a shocked expression. It deliberately used the same method of shock to ensure this player died unexpectedly. Then it attached the player’s head, disguising itself as that player. Its own head transformed into the handkerchief, circulating in the players’ hands. So every time the handkerchief fell, when they turned around, they would see the pale monster face as a prank.
After the game started, it controlled Bone Fragment, deliberately attacking Yu Feizhou, giving Yu Feizhou a chance to react, and Bone Fragment naturally “killed” itself sitting opposite Yu Feizhou after Yu Feizhou dodged. Because it wore the real player’s head, it maintained the expression of that player at the moment before death, making it look convincingly real.
In this way, its first “death” completely eliminated the possibility of players accidentally capturing it during the game. Moreover, the expression of the first “deceased” was indeed one of surprise and unwillingness to die, appearing very realistic, leaving everyone with no doubts at first.
The monster was indeed clever—but it forgot that after death, pupils would dilate. Just like the second deceased player, who was also killed in a state of shock, his pupils were constricted before death, but after death, they began to dilate.
It was this very small detail that exposed the first deceased player as a disguise by the monster.
However, the earlier Morning Star player who grabbed the corpse was judged to have failed and died because capturing the monster required a complete monster; that player did not have the head of the monster transformed into the handkerchief, and the target was an incomplete monster, leading to a judgment of a wrong capture, resulting in immediate erasure.
In fact, this Morning Star player was not foolish; the reason he rushed to answer after hearing Yan Wei’s solution was that he saw through the textual trap set by the initial rules—the monster only said to capture it, but did not specify that it had to be captured according to the rules of dropping the handkerchief. This was a subconscious textual trap: the handkerchief and capturing the monster appeared together, leading players to subconsciously believe they had to use the rules of dropping the handkerchief to capture the monster, but the game did not explicitly state this.
Thus, this person thought that directly capturing the monster would count as a win, completely ignoring the handkerchief, leading to a wrong capture and death.
But this textual trap did not refer to the handkerchief; it actually referred to the game rules. The handkerchief must be dropped by the person who was dropped on to get up and capture someone, but just now, Yan Wei was not the last person dropped on by the handkerchief; he could also capture the monster because the game did not stipulate that only those who were dropped on could capture the monster.
This seemingly simple rule actually had two layers of complexity.
If one only discovered that capturing the monster did not require following the rules of the textual trap, or only realized that the first deceased player was actually a disguise by the monster, and then rushed to grab the corpse like the earlier Morning Star player, it would seem like they had broken the case, but in reality, they would have fallen into the monster’s trap.
Only by completely guessing the answer, appearing clever yet bypassing a layer of cleverness, and seeing through the lack of necessary connection between dropping the handkerchief and capturing the monster, while holding both the handkerchief and the corpse of the first deceased player, could one truly capture the complete monster in this game of dropping the handkerchief.
This intricate web of connections meant that even if one found clues suggesting the handkerchief was the monster or guessed that the first deceased player was the monster, they would still fall into the trap.
Fortunately, Yan Wei did not miss any detail.
He held the handkerchief transformed from the monster’s head in one hand and the monster’s body in the other, thus completely solving the game and successfully breaking the case.
The hazy playground before him began to sway, and the Bone Fragment in Yan Mingguang’s hand suddenly vanished. A pure white object slowly floated down in front of Yan Wei.
—The second fragment of the Moon Wheel!
Everyone’s attention was drawn to this fragment, but they had gained experience; Lin Zhen and the others understood that this time, Yan Wei had contributed the most in this split space, so they said no more.
Yan Wei could no longer suppress the familiar feeling surging within him, furrowing his brows, and immediately took the fragment back.
Then, just like the last time in the Ghost Hand Space, the body data and score rewards after the side quest appeared on their information panel.
[…… Congratulations to the player for receiving rewards: Body Index +10, Perception +10, Points +30. Additional reward: One fragment of the Legendary Item Moon Wheel.]
Perhaps due to the higher difficulty this time, and mainly relying on Yan Mingguang’s three minutes of doubled strength and Yan Wei’s final breakthrough, the points they earned were slightly more than the others.
In the next moment, Yan Wei and the others appeared in the archive room.
The door to the archive room was now closed, and at the entrance sat the Student playing with a Rubik’s Cube, still sitting next to the card reader, quietly focused on the cube. However, now, everyone looked at this NPC’s expression very differently—they already knew that this NPC Student was actually a monster disguised as a Student.
After the group steadied themselves, the NPC Student lowered his head and said in a cold, flat voice, “You have won the game’s rewards; you can now access any information in the archive room.”
Yan Wei raised an eyebrow: “I want two sets of archive data—the seating charts for all classes in the last three years and the Student files.”
Three years would suffice.
Because the background information of the quest had already stated that the incidents occurred before graduation, meaning the strange events at Morning Star High School most likely happened three years ago.
The NPC Student raised his eyelids, his voice still devoid of any inflection: “The first bookshelf, row 3 of section A, and the entire fourth bookshelf.”
Yan Wei understood.
The first bookshelf, row 3 of section A, contained the less detailed seating charts, while the entire fourth bookshelf held the files of all Students from the last three years, including those players who continuously entered, thus containing a lot of content, occupying the entire shelf.
Lin Zhen glanced at the fourth bookshelf, his mouth twitching: “So many!? How am I supposed to find the problematic Student in all this? Am I going to have to sift through files until I bleed? Hey, little pet, how about we just go in and kill the monsters? If we die, we die.”
Yan Wei: “…”
Zhou Tian quickly calculated the time needed for the five of them to read, his expression serious: “To find anything related to the school’s death incidents among so many Student files, we would need about twenty-three continuous hours of reading. Either we endure great death risks and spend the night in this archive room, or we come back over three days, likely needing to go through this Student’s game two more times, which might be different… this…”
Yan Wei had already walked up to the first bookshelf, row 3 of section A, chuckling lightly as he pointed to the seating charts inside: “Then how about we finish these?”
Zhou Tian was taken aback: “If we all do it together, at most ten minutes.”
Yan Wei pulled out all the folders—there weren’t many, only a few dozen, as the number of classes over three years was only a few dozen. He casually distributed these folders into five portions for everyone, keeping the most content for himself.
He continued to ask: “What if we specifically extract the names of two fixed Students from each class in these seating charts, and then use these dozens of names to search the Student files?”
Zhou Tian suddenly realized: “At most thirty minutes!”
Twenty minutes later.
Yan Wei and the others sat in a circle on the floor of the archive room, with several extracted Student information files laid out in front of them.
Yan Wei’s eyes grew brighter.
“Did you discover something wrong?” His voice was laced with a smile.
Yu Feizhou smiled gently, pointing to two of the Student files: “The information of the other students is quite ordinary or normal, but these two are extremely extreme. They enrolled three years ago, with enrollment information indicating they were in Class 1 and Class 2 of the first year. The boy sitting in the first column of the fifth row is named He Luo, and he ranked last in the entrance exam scores; he is a transfer student. The girl sitting in the fourth column of the fourth row is named Qian Xuanxuan, and she ranked second to last in the entrance exam scores; she is also… a transfer student.”
Yan Wei chuckled softly.
Yan Mingguang had already stood up and started searching the fourth bookshelf.
Before long, Yan Mingguang found six Student files and was about to walk over with them when Yan Wei suddenly said: “No rush, Teacher Yan, just taking ours isn’t enough.”
He turned and walked up to the NPC Student, seemingly forgetting how this Student had transformed into a monster to mock the players, and directly patted the other’s shoulder, saying: “Hey, buddy.”
The NPC Student paused his Rubik’s Cube, looking up at him.
“Can we take things from the archive room?”
The NPC Student looked at him for a few seconds, said nothing, and lowered his head again.
No denial.
Yan Wei whistled: “Oh, then I won’t be polite. Everyone, take out the files of all the students from our batch.”
Lin Zhen: “Little pet, what are you planning to do?”
Zhou Tian chuckled lightly: “What else? Yan Wei must have a plan in mind.”
Lin Zhen exclaimed: “It’s really exciting to go through the quest with you; we get to play every day.”
Yan Wei raised an eyebrow slightly, ignoring him.
Having already dirtied his school uniform during the handkerchief game, Yan Wei’s cleanliness obsession was of no use; he stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall of the archive room. He looked at Yan Mingguang, instinctively revealing a proud and confident gaze, his light brown eyes reflecting the voice of the man before him, his gaze like stars and light.
Yan Mingguang also looked at him, his dark eyes deep.
In that moment, Yan Wei suddenly felt that Yan Mingguang’s gaze held no ulterior motives or impurities; it was simply looking at him, just to look at him.
But this feeling had just emerged when Yan Mingguang withdrew his gaze, walked forward, handed the files of the six of them to Yan Wei, and turned back to search for other players’ files.
Yan Wei then took out a pen.
At the top was his own file, and in the column for enrollment information, it read “Morning Star High School.”
—”In recent years, there have been continuous incidents of Student deaths at Morning Star High School, and the conditions of the deaths are bizarre…”
—”The dangers buried within Morning Star High School will gradually overshadow every Student, leading them one by one… to die, step by step.”
—”Our high school is a key high school; there shouldn’t be any Students with poor grades.”
—”How many times have we said it? As long as they are Students of Morning Star High School, they could die at any time; everyone should pay attention to safety. Alright, let’s start class.”
Students could face death at any time.
Morning Star High School would not have Students with poor grades, but that does not mean that Students with poor grades would not come to school.
Transfer students do not have their enrollment records at the school they are attending but can attend classes there; in some cases, they do not need to meet the school’s entrance score requirements. Aside from differences related to enrollment records, transfer students are not much different from other Students at the school; they still study, attend classes, and take exams.
Regardless of what happened to these two, their two extreme commonalities—being transfer students and ranking at the bottom—sufficiently indicated what the method to avoid the most basic death trigger conditions was.
The NPC teacher would overlook transfer students because they essentially do not count as Students of Morning Star High School.
Thus, in the eyes of the monsters that only repeatedly use the same killing methods, transfer students are also overlooked.
He looked at his file, and without hesitation, he crossed out the four characters “Morning Star High School,” replacing them with the three characters “transfer student,” just like He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan.
At the moment he finished writing, Yan Wei felt that the discomfort and chill that had been clinging to him since entering the quest had significantly diminished.
—It was indeed correct!
He did not hesitate to make the same modification to Yan Mingguang and the others’ files.
After the modifications, Yan Mingguang and Lin Zhen also took out the files of all the surviving players.
Yan Wei successively received the Student files of the players they found and stacked them together.
“Yan Wei, I suddenly felt a lightness all over; did you do something to our files?” Yu Feizhou asked him, “Also, what do you want all the players’ files for?”
Yan Wei weighed the stack of files in his hand and said: “The way to avoid the most basic death trigger is to change the enrollment information to transfer student; I just modified the enrollment information in our files. As for these—”
He blinked, his eyelashes fluttering, his amber-like pupils clear and bright.
Yan Wei raised the stack of player files, his expression smiling.
“Because only the Student files can modify the enrollment information, this thing… is a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“—Now, their get-out-of-jail-free cards are all in our hands.”
