Water flowed directly down from his forehead, trickling over Yan Wei’s eyes, bringing a slight physiological sting.
Yan Wei raised his hand, covering his face with both hands, awkwardly wiping away the water. Before him was still the shower stall in the dormitory of Morning Dawn High School, a narrow space barely big enough for one person, completely different from the bathroom in his dreams where two men could crowd together without feeling cramped.
This scene from his dream had only flashed through his mind for a moment, as if it were merely an illusion.
He could accept dreaming about Yan Mingguang, but how could he later dream of such a scene? Although he liked men, Yan Mingguang indeed…
Yan Wei only felt that this hot shower was making him feel awkward and overheated.
He hastily washed himself clean, using the information panel to exchange for a function that instantly dried his clothes, and then he put on his school uniform again. He didn’t even bother to dry his hair, swaggering back to room 407 in the now very quiet dormitory.
As soon as Yan Wei sat down on the lower bunk where he had slept with Yan Mingguang last night, the clues of this instance intertwined with that inexplicable dream surged back. The cool breeze from outside the window blew in, dispersing the slight heat on Yan Wei’s cheeks. He turned to look out the window, his pupils reflecting the daylight, and his chaotic thoughts gradually became clearer as his rationality returned.
—He was not the kind of person who would imagine things out of thin air.
Moreover, after entering this instance, he was not the only one acting strangely—Yan Mingguang’s words and actions had also shown slight differences from before.
Yan Wei lowered his gaze and took out the walkie-talkie prop he used to contact Yan Mingguang and the others. But instead of connecting to everyone’s walkie-talkie, he specifically connected to Gao Ming’s.
“Gao Ming?”
“Yan Wei?” Gao Ming was taken aback, “What’s wrong? What’s happening over there? I’ll contact Yan Mingguang right away—”
“No, I’m already resting in the dormitory. I’ve been a bit tired these past two days, so I’m just waiting for you all to come back. I’m just a little worried about your situation. Yan Mingguang and the others might be in a fight, and I thought a sudden walkie-talkie request might disturb them, so I reached out to you. How are you all doing now?”
Gao Ming followed Yan Wei’s line of thought without hesitation, answering, “We plan to use He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan’s information to ask the NPC teacher for some details, and then find some surviving senior NPC students to inquire about these two transfer students. The school is too big, and people are scattered, so we’ve already split up. I’m with Zhou Tian and Yu Feizhou, while Yan Mingguang is with Lin Zhen.”
Yan Wei’s brows twitched.
He heard that Yan Mingguang was not with Gao Ming and had been pondering how to ask Gao Ming without letting Yan Mingguang find out. Now, he didn’t bother with excuses, deliberately coating his tone with a layer of concern, and directly asked, “I see. You all be careful. By the way, I don’t know if it’s been a while since I entered the building, but just now I suddenly forgot when I came in. When I entered, you came down from the third floor to the first floor, so in terms of levels, our entry times should be about the same. When did you come in?”
As he spoke, his tone was filled with helplessness, but his expression was inquisitive.
Unfortunately, Gao Ming couldn’t see Yan Wei’s expression and took his words at face value, blurting out a date, “…I remember it quite clearly, it was this date because I was watching the building get closer and closer to me every day, so I was very sensitive to the date.”
Yan Wei blinked.
His light brown eyes momentarily showed a hint of astonishment, and in silence, he curled the corners of his mouth, though his expression didn’t seem to be smiling.
“Yan Wei? Are you listening?” Gao Ming asked.
Yan Wei came back to his senses. His voice showed no fluctuations, and his tone was normal: “I understand. I’ll wait for you all to come back in the dormitory.”
He cut off the walkie-talkie connection with Gao Ming, and his previously straight back unknowingly leaned back against the head of the bed during the call. He simply didn’t get up and lay down directly.
In the corridor hotel instance, he had seen a player, Yan Mingguang, on the first floor of the hotel lobby, and Gao Ming, who had come down from the third floor. According to the instance’s requirements for spacing, Gao Ming would have only entered a few months before him.
But Gao Ming’s entry time was…
—Almost three years later than his.
Yet in his memory, he clearly entered the building and then started the first instance in the corridor hotel, where he encountered Yan Mingguang and Gao Ming.
It was impossible for the act of entering the building to take three years; the only possibility was… that there was a three-year gap between entering the building and entering the corridor hotel instance.
At sunset.
When Yan Mingguang and the others returned to the dormitory, the warm yellow sunlight from the horizon poured in through the window. Yan Wei was sleeping on the lower bunk by the window, his profile buried in the shadows.
This strange and ever-changing dormitory had somehow given him a sense of tranquil time. Yu Feizhou was the first to enter, instinctively lightening his footsteps. Lin Zhen, however, was unceremonious, walking straight to Yan Wei’s bedside and giving him a hearty slap: “You’re sleeping so soundly!”
Yan Wei opened his eyes.
He had been half-asleep and half-awake while pondering, and it was impossible to fully relax and fall asleep in such a place. He woke up as soon as Yu Feizhou pushed the door open.
Yan Wei slowly sat up and saw Yan Mingguang entering afterward.
The dim light behind Yan Mingguang cast a long, narrow shadow. Following the light, the man had one hand in his pocket, his gaze deep, also looking at him.
When Yan Mingguang approached, Yan Wei noticed that compared to the slight bloodstains on Yu Feizhou and the others, Yan Mingguang was almost drenched in blood. The man’s originally white school uniform had been dyed a deep red, more severe than when they had parted in the archives, and even some blood splatters were visible in his silver hair.
Yan Mingguang seemed to have just walked out of a killing intent.
Yan Wei suddenly sat up from the bedside, his brows slightly furrowed: “Yan Mingguang, what happened…?”
Yan Mingguang remained silent.
He didn’t rush to Yan Wei’s side as before but first took off his school uniform jacket and went directly to the bathroom with his clean clothes.
Yan Wei’s brows twitched.
Yan Mingguang didn’t have a cleanliness obsession; only he did.
“We split up to act just now,” Yu Feizhou, seeing that Yan Mingguang didn’t say anything and went to take a shower, had to explain the situation on his behalf, “After you left, we went to the teacher’s office and found the teachers who taught He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan, but at that time, Yan Mingguang said he discovered the fluctuations of Severed Space and went with Lin Zhen. The two of them broke a Severed Space alone, and Yan Mingguang contributed the most—”
“Hey, hey, hey, as if I can’t fight? I sliced that space’s Ghost/Monster into pieces, you know…”
Yu Feizhou smiled helplessly: “Right, Lin Zhen also contributed. And I took Gao Ming and Zhou Tian, using the student files to inquire about He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan from three years ago.”
The few of them sat around the lower bunk.
The sun had completely set, and the starry sky was rushing to meet the bright moon, casting darkness over the suddenly quiet campus. But they were not afraid at all—these basic rules no longer applied to them.
Yan Wei yawned and said, “Come on, tell me.”
Yu Feizhou continued, “We got some wrong problem sets and assignments submitted by these two students from the teacher. Their assignments had some disgusting traces of wiped saliva, chewing gum, and other things, along with some malicious doodles. The teacher said that besides these, they were often teased and beaten by other students, and they had experienced almost every method that students could use. You were right; it was indeed school bullying, but it wasn’t just simple school bullying. He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan were bullied because they weren’t good students. These…”
Yu Feizhou took out a stack of papers.
It was still dark, and Yan Wei exchanged for an ordinary flashlight from the mall, shining the glaring light on the documents.
“…Disciplinary records? Gluing water on classmates’ seats, locking the dormitory door causing students to be unable to return on time, cutting off the dormitory’s main power during evening wash-up, stealing final exam answers…”
“These were all done by He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan.”
Lin Zhen seemed to think their conversation wasn’t loud enough, whistling and saying, “In short, they’re not good birds.”
Yan Wei ignored him and continued to look at Yu Feizhou, asking, “Is that all?”
“Lin Zhen is right. Morning Dawn High School is an elite school; those who come here to study are either rich or exceptionally good students specially recruited to raise the school’s scores. He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan, who are poor-performing transfer students, were allowed in because they were adopted children of another student in their class, Tang Yizhuo. Tang Yizhuo is the top student in their class and also the student council president of that year, coming from a very wealthy family. He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan were adopted to accompany Tang Yizhuo. However, because they had a history of bad behavior, after the school issued too many disciplinary actions, they were eventually expelled. According to the teacher, after being expelled, these two committed suicide by jumping off a building. That period was when the school began to have deaths.”
Yan Wei weighed the disciplinary records in his hand.
“Creak—”
The dormitory door opened, and Yan Mingguang walked in wearing clean and tidy clothes. This time, he didn’t hesitate and directly sat down next to Yan Wei, bringing with him a refreshing scent of shower gel that diluted some of the foul smell from the Ghost/Monsters outside the window.
The man’s demeanor was as pure as snow and pine, with water droplets hanging from his hair, and there was still a hint of warmth from just having showered, making him very approachable in this cool temperature, a clean feeling that Yan Wei found absolutely agreeable.
As soon as he sat down, he took out something and handed it to Yan Wei.
Yan Wei looked at the Moon Wheel Fragment emitting a faint white glow, blinked, and swallowed lightly.
Yan Mingguang said, “I got this from the Severed Space with Lin Zhen. It’s agreed that you keep it for now.”
With this piece, they already had three Moon Wheel Fragments. According to the division of limbs and heads, there should only be two left in this instance.
Yan Wei took it, stored it in the Black Ring, and asked him, “Why didn’t you come back to tell me before going together? From the looks of you just now, it must have been dangerous, right?”
Yan Mingguang lowered his gaze, remaining silent.
Lin Zhen immediately interjected, “How could we wait for you? Once you’re here, we can’t clear the instance violently. We just happened to encounter players discussing the anomalies of space fluctuations, so we did as you said, using the student file exchange to help them change their records, and they immediately agreed, telling us all the information. What if they just told us, and we went back to find you, and they knew there was good stuff that went in first? That would be a loss, right? So I went in with Yan Mingguang. You weren’t here, and it was so enjoyable to fight with Yan Mingguang; it’s been a long time since I had this feeling of playing with blood. All the other players from different organizations who followed us in ended up dead; it was really tragic.”
“Not to mention,” Lin Zhen said with a look of regret, “where are all the seed players from the major organizations? They’re all so weak.”
Yan Wei glanced at Lin Zhen, then at Yan Mingguang, and lowered his voice slightly, “Maybe there are some formatted high-level players hiding in the dark that you don’t know about?”
Although he was speaking to Lin Zhen, his gaze lingered on Yan Mingguang.
Lin Zhen completely missed the implication in his words and didn’t notice Yan Mingguang’s fingers twitch slightly. He just casually said, “Do you think formatted high-level players are as common as cabbages? Formatting only exists in legendary situations, and there are hardly any examples. Moreover, it’s said that props and skills can’t achieve it; only the building itself can wash away the memories from the moment of entry and start anew. And formatted high-level players aren’t scary; they lose their memories, experience, props, and data, which is no different from starting over. The only guarantee is that they have the potential to reach high levels, pfft.”
Yan Wei looked at Yan Mingguang, his meaning unclear: “Oh, I see.”
He shifted his focus back to the progress of the instance.
After pondering for a moment, he said, “So, we now know about He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan, and today we were the only ones who successfully entered the archives and came out alive. Our progress has already left behind a bunch of players still looking for various small Ghosts/Monsters. We can’t expect to exchange useful information with other players. Being at the forefront is good, but it’s also bad because there’s no one to lead the way for us, and there are no foolish players like Moonlight to scout for us—we need to push ourselves and try things out. These two are definitely related to the events at Morning Dawn High School, and the clues should be here. Do you remember what I said before? There are likely two factions of Ghosts/Monsters, one secretly reminding players and the other wishing for as many dead students as possible. So our next step is to find the good faction and seek a way to end all this or deal with the bad faction.”
Zhou Tian sighed, “Then how do we find them? The good faction seems to not be able to communicate with students casually, and they might not be completely good; otherwise, they would have come out and told us everything from the start. There are so many ghosts in this school…”
Before Zhou Tian could finish, a long-haired female ghost in a school uniform suddenly appeared upside down in front of everyone.
Her long hair swayed, casting fragmented shadows under the moonlight. She hung upside down, her face pale, her hollow eyes staring at them, blocking out most of the night.
Gao Ming jumped in fright, hurriedly taking a step back and “thud” sat down on the ground.
Lin Zhen kicked him, “Get a grip; we won’t trigger attacks from ordinary Ghosts/Monsters now.”
He “hmphed” a few times, turned around, and boldly opened the window, coming face to face with the upside-down Ghost/Monster.
“Good evening, beautiful; your hair looks so fun,” Lin Zhen said with a grin, revealing a standard toothy smile, reaching out to tug at the hair of the ghost, causing her to sway as if she were a pendulum hanging from a bed.
Everyone: “…”
Zhou Tian rubbed his forehead and continued, “There are so many Ghosts/Monsters here; we must determine where these two are hiding, who is good and who is bad… but it seems there are no clues at all.”
Yan Wei raised an eyebrow and chuckled lightly, “How can there be none?”
As he spoke, he instinctively turned to glance at Yan Mingguang beside him, only to meet the man’s gaze. Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang were so close that they could vaguely see each other’s expressions in the flashlight’s light.
In the night, the ghost outside the window swayed like a pendulum under Lin Zhen’s tugging, while the man, who had seemed indifferent, now subtly curled the corners of his mouth toward Yan Wei.
Yan Mingguang actually smiled.
Yan Wei knew that at this moment, he and this man must have the same thought.
Gao Ming asked in confusion, “Do we have a clue? No way, I remember that since we entered the instance, we haven’t seen anything related to He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan.”
Yan Wei smiled and casually said, “We do.”
