Recap
As soon as these words came out, the dining table instantly fell silent.
Jia Qing, Wang Yueran, Xu Jin, and Liu Yi were all stunned.
The old lady gasped.
Song Yang and Xia Jing remained calm.
Jin Nan laughed maliciously, “In the middle of the night, without the lights on, how did he know that Huang Mo was staring at him?”
“According to him, Huang Mo’s eyes were already black and white, and at night, I don’t know if it was the light from outside the window, but his two eyes were like two big light bulbs.”
“It scared him so much that he pulled up the quilt and covered his head, but he felt that Huang Mo had been staring at him for a long time.”
For a while, the dining table was silent. The others stared at Jin Nan, and the atmosphere inexplicably turned chilly.
“Crack… crack!” The radio speaker in the cafeteria suddenly sounded, startling several people.
“—Students, students! Focus on your studies, don’t listen, don’t look, don’t think!!”
The hoarse and exhausted male voice was exactly the same as the one from the speaker during the break.
But to be honest, with so many repetitions, this broadcast couldn’t serve as a reminder or warning at all.
The demonic loud voice poured into their heads, and it was like poison. After a moment of blankness, it made them think even more.
Xia Jing raised his head and looked around, finding that there was a loudspeaker in each of the four corners of the cafeteria.
No wonder this sound was so much louder than in the classroom.
Jia Qing came back to his senses and hugged his head, “Holy crap, what the hell, the plot suddenly turned supernatural, it’s not a detective novel at all! What does it mean to stare at him in the middle of the night? Was Huang Mo possessed by a ghost?”
Wang Yueran’s face turned pale, “I’d rather fight Godzilla than a supernatural instance!!”
Liu Yi and Xu Jin’s faces didn’t look good either, especially Xu Jin. She didn’t know what she thought of, and her expression was particularly uneasy.
Jin Nan smiled maliciously, seeming to find this very amusing.
The old lady hurriedly comforted the two girls, “The theme of ‘don’t think about it’ doesn’t seem to have anything to do with being possessed by a ghost. Don’t be afraid, children, it shouldn’t be like that.”
Jin Nan immediately turned cold and said disdainfully, “Old lady, how many instances have you been through? What do you know?”
At this time, Xia Jing repeated Jin Nan’s words in his slightly amused voice.
“Huang Mo’s eyes were black and white, and at night, his two eyes were like light bulbs?”
Jin Nan looked at Xia Jing and narrowed his eyes, “What, fatty, do you have something to say too?”
Song Yang leaned back in his chair and said slowly, “Even if a person is possessed by a ghost, they won’t suddenly mutate and their eyes turn into light bulbs, right? This sounds like an exaggeration, purely to increase the horror effect. Is there any point in retelling it?”
After Song Yang said this, the others were stunned for a moment before they reacted.
Jin Nan curled his lips and snorted coldly.
—So this guy was deliberately scaring them!!
Immediately, several angry gazes focused on Jin Nan.
Having been completely exposed, he simply drank his cola nonchalantly, looking unconcerned.
Jia Qing gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to hit someone, and said in a muffled voice, “But Yang-ge, what’s the deal with waking up in the middle of the night and staring at people?”
Song Yang opened his mouth, wanting to answer, but stopped again. For some reason, he glanced at Xia Jing.
Xia Jing received his gaze, silently savoring the look, and raised his eyebrows.
Jia Qing looked at the two of them in confusion, what were they doing, exchanging glances like that!
Xia Jing gently rubbed his index finger and thumb together.
He chuckled, adjusted his sitting posture, and said, “First of all, we still need to determine the real starting point of the instance.”
Everyone looked at him.
The young man… although his face was unbearable to look at—of course, most of the people present who knew about the existence of the “Safe House” had already noticed the small human face icon on the back of the young man’s neck, and knew that this face was most likely a mask. To deliberately make the mask look like this was somewhat mischievous.
—But the young man had a slender figure, a straight back, a clean temperament, and always spoke in a gentle tone, inexplicably making people calm down and listen to him.
Xia Jing said calmly, “The way this instance starts is very subtle. We woke up directly from our sleep, making it difficult to determine the real starting time of the instance. But the death of a player can only be experienced by themselves, this is an unchanging principle of the instance, which can help us sort out the clues.”
“Huang Mo’s time of death—at that point in time, the instance must have already started running.”
“So assuming Huang Mo died this morning, then we can only be sure that at that time in the morning, the instance had already started running, but we have no evidence to prove that the instance started in the middle of the night. The situation that Mr. Jin just relayed about the middle of the night is very likely, like the phone ringing twice, just ‘previous events’. It may or may not be related to the instance, just a distraction.”
“But assuming that Huang Mo’s time of death was in the middle of the night yesterday, after he sat up—then, the act of sitting up can never be a distraction. It is very likely that the instance had already started at that time, and the Huang Mo who sat up was the player himself. That is to say, at that point in time, he must have encountered something.”
So in the middle of the night, what strange situation did Huang Mo encounter that made him suddenly wake up in bed in the dormitory, sit up and stare at his roommate, and then die?
Was it the phone ringing twice that woke him up?
Did someone call him in the middle of the night? Who could it be? The monster?
Unfortunately, everything happened too fast in the morning. After they were driven out of the dormitory, that phone must have been taken away by the NPC.
Moreover, at that time, the NPC made a clear request that they were not allowed to take anything away. If they disobeyed, they would most likely be locked in the little black room after the conflict.
Xia Jing said slowly, “Only by clarifying this point can we pick out the truly effective clues and think further.”
In order to figure out which clues were effective, they must first figure out when the instance actually started running.
And in order to figure out the starting point of the instance, they had to figure out Huang Mo’s time of death.
This was the whole line of thinking.
Everyone swallowed, thinking to themselves, feeling both eerie and confused.
Xia Jing’s eyes turned, and he asked with a light smile, “What do you think of my explanation, Yang-ge?”
Song Yang: “…”
Hearing the two words “Yang-ge” slowly chewed out by the young man’s rough voice, Song Yang inexplicably felt goosebumps all over his body.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, cleared his throat, and asked seemingly casually, “Have you always been playing between one-star and two-star instances?”
“Why do you ask?” Xia Jing glanced at him.
Song Yang was silent for a moment, seeming to be considering how to organize his words, and finally said bluntly, “You’re quite on the same wavelength as me.”
He hadn’t interacted much with this young man, but whether it was the young man’s attempt to test the female teacher in the morning, or the conversation just now, the train of thought of this young man named Xia Jing seemed to be perfectly aligned with his.
This feeling was quite smooth and wonderful.
This young man’s calm and experienced appearance didn’t seem like someone who only frequented one-star and two-star instances, and his deliberate act of wearing a human skin mask to the instance—perhaps Song Yang was being too sensitive, but he couldn’t help but wonder if Xia Jing was one of the top-ranked players, and “Xia Jing” was just a fake name.
He wasn’t familiar with those top players, but they had all seen each other.
If it was really one of them…
Then the feeling that the other party knew his identity, but he didn’t know who the other party was, made Song Yang a little unhappy.
But thinking about it carefully, he felt that even those top players didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength as him to this extent.
Song Yang stared at Xia Jing with an inquiring look.
Hearing Song Yang’s words, Xia Jing only showed a very surprised expression, and then said sincerely, “Thank you for the compliment.”
Song Yang: “…………”
That’s it?
Xia Jing turned his head away, looking as if he was seriously listening to other players’ speeches, but the curve of his lips on his side profile grew wider and wider.
—Was he teasing him?
Song Yang was speechless.
Then, he straightened his expression and said to the others, “Everyone has a mobile phone in their belongings, right?”
Hearing his words, the group stopped their chattering discussion and nodded quickly.
The rules of each instance world were different.
In some instances, players could even bring in Smiley City’s holographic mini-screen.
Of course, this instance didn’t have this permissive rule, but when every player present woke up, they found a mobile phone in their pocket.
Song Yang: “I opened my phone this morning and saw that there were no contacts in my phone book.”
The others nodded quickly, obviously their situation was the same.
Song Yang said clearly and logically, “But since they gave us mobile phones, it means they provided us with a way to communicate. So who can we contact?”
The others thought for a while, and Xu Jin’s eyes lit up, she said, “…The parent-school contact book!”
Song Yang nodded.
They couldn’t possibly call 110 in this instance world directly. In a school instance, the most likely external contact method that would appear in the school was the parent-school contact book registered by the school.
“We must figure out the player’s time of death and the way he died. We can’t count on the teachers and students in the school, but our ‘parents’ may be one of the channels for us to obtain clues. It’s lunch break now, we can take this opportunity to go to the office and try to get the parent-school contact book.”
However, although Teacher Zhang was ruled out as a suspect, no one could guarantee that the monster wasn’t another teacher.
Thinking about going to the office meant facing danger, the group hesitated again—after all, they couldn’t possibly let Song Yang go to the office alone. No matter what, two people had to act together, right?
As Song Yang’s friend, although Jia Qing was also afraid, he was still the first to raise his hand, “Yang-ge, I’ll go with you!”
Liu Yi gritted his teeth and said, “I’ll go too, it’s safer with more people.”
Jin Nan’s eyes rolled, and he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but before he could speak, he was interrupted by Song Yang.
Song Yang nodded and said to the others simply, “Then you guys take this time to walk around the school, familiarize yourselves with the terrain, and see if there are any other clues, okay?”
Wang Yueran, Xu Jin, and the others nodded quickly.
Jin Nan secretly clenched his fists.
The plan to split up was thus decided, but at this moment, Xia Jing suddenly grabbed the wrist of a passing student NPC, his bold move startling everyone.
The student NPC was also so scared that he almost dropped the plate in his hand.
Xia Jing himself, however, had a friendly smile on his face and asked, “Excuse me, how do I get to the school broadcasting room?”
As soon as he said this, everyone was stunned.
It was also Xia Jing’s question that reminded Song Yang of the place that had also left a question in his mind.
—The source of that demonic, seemingly warning, but actually making people more concerned and more likely to “think” hoarse male voice.
The school broadcasting room.
Thinking of this, everyone’s expressions changed, and they became nervous.
—That’s right, that voice was very strange!
The owner of that voice was also very likely a monster!
___
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Update: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
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