Recap
Xia Jing smiled, “The most important thing in the game is to think about how to play, not how to die.”
At the door of the classroom, rapid footsteps sounded “Deng, deng, deng”.
The female teacher who had driven them away from the dormitory in the morning walked quickly into the classroom, her stern gaze sweeping coldly over everyone in the classroom.
And his purpose in entering this instance game—
Xia Jing looked at the female teacher, twirling his pen gently, a faint smile always lingering on his lips.
—Besides playing, it was to catch monsters and bring them back.
Dismember them and make the most of everything.
Teacher Zhang was wearing a white shirt and a suit skirt, her long hair tied up in a bun, looking capable and strict.
Her face was pale, her lips tightly pursed, and when her strangely dark eyes slowly swept over them, Jin Nan, who was sitting in the last row, tensed up his muscles and quietly gripped the machete in his hand.
Liu Yi and Jia Qing unconsciously held their breaths.
Wang Yueran and Xu Jin, the pair of sisters, also leaned close to each other, warily staring at the teacher on the podium while nervously paying attention to Xia Jing and the old lady in the front row.
Song Yang’s gaze lingered on the female teacher for a moment, then landed on the back of Xia Jing’s head.
Intuition was a wonderful thing.
Song Yang inexplicably felt that this young man wearing a human skin mask shouldn’t be weak.
That was why he didn’t interrupt much just now.
Teacher Zhang slammed the lesson plan on the table with a “thump”, then spread her hands on the podium and said in a chilling tone, “This morning, a student died.”
With this opening remark, you could hear a pin drop in the classroom.
“Student Huang Mo, I believe you all know him! Many students have already seen what happened this morning!” Teacher Zhang’s voice was a bit sharp, and she said fiercely with anger, “I have said many times that as students, you only need to focus on your studies, put all your thoughts on studying!”
“As for other things, don’t listen, don’t look, and don’t even think about it!”
The eight people below immediately pricked up their ears.
Don’t think about it!
Xia Jing pondered.
The theme of the instance appeared here.
Teacher Zhang slapped the podium and shouted, “If you can’t do this, you will end up like Huang Mo! Do you want to become like him?!”
In the corner, Liu Yi clenched his teeth tightly to stop himself from making a sound at this time.
What did she mean by “if you can’t do this, you will end up like Huang Mo”?
How exactly did Huang Mo die?
Teacher Zhang said these words, so was she really the instance monster?
After Teacher Zhang finished speaking, her cold eyes swept over the eight people again. Liu Yi and Jin Nan’s hearts were almost jumping out of their throats.
And then Teacher Zhang suddenly leaned forward at a ninety-degree angle, like a lion smelling the scent of its prey, suddenly crouching on the ground, or like a huge insect, lying on the podium—
Xu Jin and Wang Yueran cried out in fright.
Sitting in the first row, being nervously protected in the old lady’s arms, Xia Jing looked at Teacher Zhang, who was close at hand, with an undisturbed expression.
Teacher Zhang’s face was so close that Xia Jing could almost clearly feel the cold breath of this person, who was either an NPC or a monster, and see the white teeth between her lips as she opened and closed her mouth.
Teacher Zhang stared at Xia Jing and said eerily, “Student Xia, what were you thinking just now?”
In the middle row, just in case, Song Yang still took out a dagger from his spatial bag and silently observed the situation ahead.
Beside Xia Jing, the old lady almost got up to block Xia Jing.
A slender hand casually pressed the old lady back down.
Xia Jing’s rough voice sounded in the classroom, unhurriedly, “Teacher, I was just thinking about how student Huang died.”
The classroom was silent for a few seconds.
Then came a few gasps.
Teacher Zhang’s eyes became even more chilling, her eyeballs almost popping out of their sockets. She said in a cold voice, “Didn’t I say… don’t think about it?”
The last few words were almost gritted through her teeth.
Jin Nan, in the last row, looked at Xia Jing as if he was looking at an idiot courting death.
The others were also so scared that they almost jumped up from their seats—was it really okay to provoke the monster so directly?
The monster needed to be killed, but it wouldn’t be good if it accidentally entered a berserk state, right?!
Unlike their nervousness, Xia Jing looked at Teacher Zhang’s appearance for a while, chuckled softly, and said in a light and even somewhat soft voice, “But teacher, you didn’t say we couldn’t ask.”
Teacher Zhang: “…”
The others: “…”
The logic of this “but” seemed a bit wrong, but they couldn’t refute it for a while!
Teacher Zhang was obviously choked up as well, stunned and speechless for a second.
Xia Jing reminded her kindly, “Teacher, five minutes of class time have already passed. Calm down and get to the main topic.”
The others: Are you the school leader? You’re actually in the mood to remind the monster to calm down and get down to business??
Teacher Zhang’s face was distorted from being choked by Xia Jing.
Her chest heaved, obviously her emotions were very agitated, but after looking at Xia Jing for a while, under Xia Jing’s always calm gaze, she… twitched her eyelids and looked away unwillingly.
Straightening up and picking up the lesson plan, Teacher Zhang cleared her throat unhappily and said coldly, “…Alright, let’s start the class. But I must seriously remind you again, whether it’s about student Huang today, or anything else, don’t listen, don’t look, don’t think!”
“Teacher Zhang is not the monster,” Song Yang said softly from the middle row.
Jia Qing was stunned when he heard this, “What? Why do you say that?”
In the first row, Xia Jing tapped the table with his pen.
Instance monsters were ever-changing and would also be layered with various disguises, but most instance monsters had two very obvious characteristics.
First, they would mutate.
Second, they would kill.
The so-called killing meant that when prey was delivered to them and they were stimulated to a certain extent, the instance monsters would definitely kill.
But Xia Jing had gone this far, and Teacher Zhang still didn’t show any reaction. This was enough to prove that Teacher Zhang wasn’t the monster of this instance.
Xia Jing rested his chin on his hand and slowly opened the textbook on the table.
An instance might have only one monster, or it might have a main monster and countless sub-monsters.
Xia Jing hoped that the more monsters there were, the better, so that the harvest would be greater.
But Teacher Zhang wasn’t even a sub-monster.
…What a pity.
The female teacher NPC, who had her back to him and was lecturing loudly, inexplicably shivered.
A group of players actually seriously listened to a classical Chinese lesson. By the end of the class, their heads were dizzy.
“Damn, I finally graduated from high school and went to university, and I actually have to relive ‘Chu Shi Biao’* in a horror game,” Jia Qing complained, holding his head, “Yang-ge, do we really have to do the assigned homework? Will we be locked in the little black room if we don’t do homework in a school instance?!”
*(Memorials written by Zhuge Liang, the Imperial Chancellor of the state of Shu during the Three Kingdoms period of China. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Shi_Biao)
Song Yang ignored him and frowned, observing the surroundings.
It was also at this time that Jia Qing realized that as soon as class was over, the entire classroom instantly became noisy. More than fifty students almost simultaneously started chattering.
In just a short while, the students in front of them and on both sides had all turned to face them, their youthful faces curious and gossipy as they said to them:
“Hey, did you see Huang Mo this morning?”
“Is he really dead?”
“So scary, how did he die, was it painful?”
“What does a dead person look like? Is there rigor mortis? Are there livor mortis?”
……
In the first row, several students behind Xia Jing and the old lady got up, leaned close to their ears, and started chattering.
Wang Yueran and Xu Jin were surrounded by two female students on either side, gossiping with their arms linked.
And Liu Yi, Jin Nan…
The whole classroom was like a boiling pot of soup.
“I can’t believe Huang Mo suddenly died!”
“How did he die? Does anyone know?”
“Someone said he was crying when he died, is that true?”
“Did he die in the middle of the night, or at dawn?”
—Suddenly, a piercing sound came from the broadcast in the upper left corner of the classroom, and a hoarse male voice roared: “Focus on your studies, don’t listen, don’t look, don’t think!!”
The classroom fell silent for a moment.
More than fifty students froze in place, like robots that had been pressed with a pause button.
This eerie collective silence gave Jin Nan and the others goosebumps.
But in the next second, as if they hadn’t received any further instructions, all the students started discussing again animatedly.
In the middle row, the big-eyed girl Xu Jin felt a little panicked. She weakly said to a male student, “…Didn’t the teacher say not to think about Huang Mo…?”
The male student paused when he heard this.
Then, he smiled strangely, “But the teacher didn’t say we couldn’t talk about it!”
Xu Jin and Wang Yueran both shivered and looked at each other.
When the next class started, the players felt like they were about to get a mental concussion from the fifteen minutes of continuous noise bombardment.
And these fifteen minutes were also full of information.
When people received information—especially information closely related to themselves—they would inevitably start thinking.
This was almost instinctive.
Jia Qing was silent for a long time, then lowered his voice and said to Song Yang, “Yang-ge… do you think we should listen to that Teacher Zhang?”
Don’t listen, don’t look, don’t think.
These words, spoken by the female teacher and the school broadcast, seemed like an instance rule.
Song Yang, hearing his question, answered softly, “Don’t listen to what, don’t look at what, don’t think about what? Unless we plug our ears, cover our eyes, we can’t stop receiving information. So, how can we stop our brain activity? The sign of being alive is that we can still think. Wanting us not to think—”
Song Yang’s voice was cold, “Unless the person is already dead.”
Jia Qing shuddered.
So, “don’t listen, don’t look, don’t think” was almost an impossible sentence to follow.
Jia Qing swallowed, unconsciously, his back drenched in a cold sweat.
Song Yang suddenly smiled lazily and said, “Therefore, in this instance, we should consider what we can see, what we can’t see, what we can hear, what we can’t hear—what we can think, what we can’t think.”
In the front row, Xia Jing lowered his eyes, writing and drawing in his notebook.
The thing this instance didn’t want them to think about the most might be the most dangerous thing, and at the same time, it might also be the key to passing this instance.
*
At noon, the eight players gathered in the cafeteria.
They hadn’t eaten breakfast and were already starving. No matter how little appetite they had, they had to eat something to replenish their energy.
While stuffing his face with food, Jin Nan emphasized, “Don’t believe the nonsense that NPC said. It’s best for all players to stay in each instance, and no one should clear it. This instance must be the same! If we really don’t think about anything, then how can we find the monster and leave the instance?!”
Although Wang Yueran hated rude guys like Jin Nan the most, she had to admit that he was right.
Liu Yi hesitated, “But, the instance can’t make ‘don’t think about it’ the key to hindering players from clearing it.”
If the instance thought that just a sentence of “don’t think about it” could scare players into stopping thinking, then all instances could have a sentence of “don’t think about it”.
But the reality was that they only encountered this situation in this instance.
Therefore, “thinking” must have some special meaning in this instance.
Jin Nan sneered disdainfully and said, “Did you hear what those students were discussing after class just now? What I heard was that accidents often happen in this school, and more than one student has died. The teacher told all the students not to listen, not to look, not to think. It must be to suppress the matter, otherwise, if the matter gets out of hand, wouldn’t the school be finished?”
“Don’t listen, don’t look, don’t think, this is not a rule of the instance at all, but a manifestation of this school’s guilty conscience,” Jin Nan narrowed his eyes, “There is something wrong with this school, so many students have died, the monster must be among the teachers. Huang Mo must have accidentally learned some secret as soon as he entered the instance, so he was killed by the monster to silence him!”
After he finished speaking, the others were all thinking silently.
Glasses Liu Yi hesitated for a moment, then gathered his courage and said, “Although I think the sentence ‘don’t think about it’ is not that simple… but it’s true that we won’t get answers if we don’t think. And I’m still very concerned about Huang Mo’s death… So, can everyone exchange the information they got?”
Everyone looked at each other.
“That’s right!” Jin Nan leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs triumphantly, “What do you think, Song Yang?”
Xia Jing looked at the handsome man who had been silent all this time, and found it even more interesting.
The person who did nothing but attracted the most attention was often the most watched person.
Xia Jing picked up a coriander and put it in his mouth to taste it.
It seemed that he should be a highly ranked person.
Song Yang glanced at Jin Nan and said lazily, “I have no objections.”
They reached a consensus.
Everyone pushed their finished plates to the side.
Wang Yueran and Xu Jin were the first to provide the information they heard, “We heard that ‘Huang Mo’ didn’t have a good relationship with the teachers… especially the head teacher, the female teacher NPC in the first class. She called his parents to school several times.”
Jia Qing: “Yang-ge and I heard that ‘Huang Mo’ didn’t seem to have any particularly good friends, he wasn’t close to anyone.”
Speaking of this, Jia Qing scratched his head, “Why does it feel like this instance is like a detective novel?”
Xia Jing suddenly turned to ask Liu Yi, “Have you known Huang Mo since childhood?”
Liu Yi came back to his senses, nodded, and said in a low voice, “We are childhood friends.”
Xia Jing asked him seriously, “Are the things they just said also experiences that Huang Mo had in reality?”
Liu Yi was stunned, then nodded hesitantly again, “…Being called to the parents often and not having a good relationship with classmates, it seems to be similar in these two aspects, the rest is completely different.”
Song Yang pondered.
Of course, what the instance constructed was a false world, a terrifying world full of malice.
But were these two common points between Huang Mo’s reality and his identity in the instance a coincidence, or was it intentional by the instance?
After Xia Jing asked Liu Yi these two questions, he didn’t say anything, just thought for a moment, and said, “The information that Grandma and I received is similar to yours. In addition, the boy in Huang Mo’s dormitory said that Huang Mo’s phone rang twice last night.”
“Last night?” Song Yang keenly captured these two words.
If Huang Mo’s “past” in this instance was all information given by the instance, then was what happened “last night” also just information?
This point in time was too close, somewhat subtle.
“Yes, last night,” Xia Jing analyzed unhurriedly, “Maybe the game officially started last night, and Huang Mo was the first one among us to wake up. It’s also possible that the game officially started this morning, and everything related to ‘last night’ is still just ‘previous events’. As for the phone, I clicked it this morning before the teachers came in. It was turned off, and the battery should have been drained.”
Hearing this, everyone was still confused.
It was the first time they had encountered a horror game that was like a detective game.
Was this really normal? Or were they going in the wrong direction?
Speaking of this, Jin Nan sat up straight and grinned.
Obviously, the information he got was different from everyone else’s.
He tapped the dining table with his finger pretentiously and said slowly, “Besides the secrets of this school, what I also heard about Huang Mo is—”
“His roommate across the bed woke up in the middle of the night yesterday. When he woke up, he found Huang Mo sitting upright and silently on the bed, turning his head to stare at him.”
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.”
___
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Update: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
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