Feng Hao had listed “sculpting” as his interest and goal, and judging by his technique, he seemed to have professional experience in it.
As soon as he started on the finger bone sculpture, the long, drawn-out face of Teacher Rabbit suddenly blossomed, beaming with a radiant smile.
Seeing Teacher Rabbit’s expression, Feng Hao let go of his clenched fist in his pocket and secretly exhaled in relief.
However, before he could fully relax, he heard Teacher Rabbit add: “Where are your other two works?”
“Other two works? What do you mean?”
Feng Hao was stunned. He looked up at Teacher Rabbit in bewilderment, trying to argue: “You remembered wrong; I only listed sculpting as an interest at the time.”
Hearing this, the smile in Teacher Rabbit’s eyes deepened as if she realized something: “No, you had two other interests.”
“What?! When did I ever…”
“Yes, indeed. When was it?”
At this moment, a voice he dreaded suddenly spoke up beside Teacher Rabbit. Feng Hao looked up, startled, to see that smiling man looking at him with deep significance.
The man slowly pushed the paper and pen back toward Teacher Rabbit, his intrigued gaze fixed squarely on Feng Hao. His voice lowered, carrying a hint of sarcasm: “Is Student Feng Hao’s memory already this poor?”
Staring into those black eyes that seemed capable of seeing right through him, Feng Hao stumbled back a step.
He couldn’t forget the scene from last night. This person in the infirmary, these eyes—they had tormented his nerves repeatedly in his dreams. He felt he was being driven insane.
Yet, this NPC hadn’t technically done anything to him directly; he had simply stood there carrying out tasks based on the game’s mechanics. The source of this fear was a mystery even to Feng Hao himself.
Seeing Feng Hao frozen in place, looking as if he might pass out from fear at any moment, Li Xin smiled with amusement: “Still haven’t remembered? You said it yourself, you know.”
Feng Hao trembled, instinctively replying: “Myself? I didn’t…”
Halfway through, Feng Hao stopped abruptly, his face turning ashen.
He remembered himself lying on the operating table in the infirmary last night. He had been in such agony then, wanting the whole world to suffer with him. His ability should have allowed him to escape this pain, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw that finger bone grazing his face.
He was terrified.
Feng Hao’s physique wasn’t strong; he had always relied on his special ability and various items to survive in the dungeons. Now, his ability was sealed, and the items that could alleviate his pain were exhausted, leaving him in a semi-comatose state by the end.
Recalling it now, he couldn’t remember what the doctor had said at the time, but he remembered the Q&A sessions of the previous students.
Watching the man trembling before him as he realized the truth, Li Xin happily announced the answer: “Let’s see. Aside from the sculpting you listed at the start, there was also ‘bouncing a ball’ and ‘flower arranging’.”
Li Xin sighed and spread his hands: “The ball is easy enough; other students brought some, so you could have borrowed one. But there are no materials here for flower arranging.”
“And even if there were, it’s too late now…” Li Xin looked up at the clock hanging in the back of the classroom and sighed with regret: “Time is up.”
“How can this be… how…” Feng Hao backed away in disbelief, only to be tripped by something and fall clumsily to the ground.
The moment he looked back, the bell rang right on cue.
Accompanied by the cheerful sound of the bell, Teacher Rabbit smiled, picked up her pen, and wrote “Fail” on the report card.
She walked down from the podium, patted Feng Hao on the head, her voice sounding both pitying and pleased: “Don’t worry, one failure doesn’t mean anything. You will succeed, my dear.”
Having said that, she didn’t look at Feng Hao’s near-collapse, instead turning back with a smile: “Students, let’s go eat.”
“Teacher Li, would you like to join us?”
“I’ll pass.” Li Xin yawned and rose lazily: “In that case, I wish you all an early pleasant meal.”
…
In the school infirmary, the school doctor was pacing the room anxiously.
In fact, he had been anxious for hours. Stuck in this small office, he could only pace around the desk like a hamster looking for an exit.
“Damn it.”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it.” The doctor cursed continuously, his gaze darting around the office.
The doctor hadn’t dared to leave the office all day. Last night, that damned man had smashed the surveillance cameras in the office right in front of him, which had completely burned his bridges with the Dean.
He had been dragged onto a pirate ship by a young punk, and the Dean would never let him go.
This anxiety lasted until the creaking sound of the door opening echoed. Seeing the face that appeared at the entrance, the doctor’s pent-up resentment finally found an outlet. He grabbed a stack of papers from the desk and threw them at the handsome face: “You bastard!”
Li Xin, who had been attacked just after entering, remained expressionless: “…Why bother?”
“You have the nerve to speak!” the doctor fumed: “Do you know what the outcome is of going against the Dean? You’ve seen the Dean—he’s harder to deal with than a shadow. He is a monster among monsters!”
“I know,” Li Xin said, flipping through the stack of papers in his hand. He arched a brow at the title: “So, you’ve thought it through?”
“Thought it through my ass!” The doctor sat back down behind his desk angrily: “Ask whatever you want, but be quick—this is a one-time thing.”
“Fine.” Knowing this was the doctor’s limit, Li Xin finished flipping through the data and pointed to one item, getting straight to the point:
“So, the current primary procedure for ‘Life Correction’ is to gradually align the participants’ behavior with that of children through long-term suggestion, and then have them ‘grow up’ again from a state of infancy? During this process, one must gradually align the hobbies and goals the experimenters wrote upon admission. If the hobby and goal align, they are nurtured to move toward that goal. But if the hobby and goal do not align, they are suppressed and erased.”
The doctor did not refute this, implicitly confirming Li Xin’s analysis.
“There is a problem here—the core problem of this experiment,” Li Xin said. “Based on the clues gathered so far, the ‘shadow’ is directly tied to achieving the ‘infantilization’ of the test subjects. How is that specifically implemented?”
Hearing this blunt question, the doctor smiled unexpectedly: “What’s this, Teacher Li? Aren’t you supposed to be clever? Didn’t you figure it out?”
“That’s right, I didn’t figure it out,” Li Xin admitted readily. “You can’t expect a half-baked detective to solve an experiment that has been running for over a decade in one night and one morning. I’m not a freak.”
The doctor couldn’t help but mock: “You’re already enough of a freak; no need to be humble.”
After the mockery, the doctor finally vented some of his frustration. He reached for the report, looked at the data he had compiled bit by bit himself, and let out a long sigh.
“What do you think a shadow is?” the doctor suddenly asked.
Li Xin: “That depends on whether you want the scientific explanation or the metaphysical one. If it’s scientific, a shadow is just a projection under light. It’s nothing.”
“Science, ha,” the doctor sneered. “If you’re a guy who believes in science, you might want to clear your head before listening to what I have to say next.”
Li Xin nodded indifferently, signaling him to continue.
“First, you must understand that the shadow is ‘another self’.” The doctor took a deep breath, and seeing Li Xin nod along, he continued: “The shadow actually doesn’t possess intelligence equivalent to the original body, but it has a specific characteristic required for the key point of the experiment.”
Li Xin: “What characteristic?”
The doctor grinned. He lowered his voice, speaking word for word: “Unlike the original body that can only grow upward in a single direction, the shadow can cycle back and forth between adult and child forms in a regulated manner under light.”
As he spoke, the doctor watched Li Xin’s thoughtful expression and smiled with satisfaction: “It’s not hard to understand; it’s just that your own thinking has limited you. You see? If you stand on an unobstructed piece of ground for a day, you will find that as the sun moves, the shadow shrinks from an adult figure to a small size, and then grows from a child’s figure back to a large one.”
Li Xin couldn’t help but interrupt: “But the projected shape doesn’t perfectly match the original body; it gets distorted.”
“That is not the problem.” The doctor shook his head: “You’ve been wrong all along. Shadows are not just an aid to shape the form; they are the works that the monster is most satisfied with.”
“If you have observed the light in this building, you would find that whether it’s the sunlight coming in or the artificial lighting, it keeps your shadow in a ‘childlike’ state. These shadows don’t distort at all, and they possess the intelligence of about a five-year-old. They are always waiting for an opportunity to consume the host. That is the ability the monster has bestowed upon them.”
“Are you saying that the one who eventually returns to childhood is the shadow?” Li Xin frowned: “And the original body is consumed during the assimilation?”
It sounded like a closed-loop logic, but Li Xin didn’t believe the practical execution could be that simple: “But fusion isn’t easy. Even if the original body’s will is defeated, it shouldn’t be easily consumed by a shadow with such low intelligence. Even patients with depression who are suicidal will mostly exhibit defensive behavior when faced with an external attack.”
“That is only if there is no guidance.” The doctor countered, then couldn’t help but feel a bit gleeful: “You haven’t talked to your ‘good students’, have you? That just shows they don’t trust you at all.”
“Distrust is to be expected, right?” Li Xin smiled nonchalantly: “How many students have you met who are willing to open up to their teachers?”
The attempt to sow discord failed. The doctor rolled his eyes, feeling he should end this conversation as soon as possible, otherwise he would be angered to death by Li Xin before the Dean could kill him.
“As you said, the key to fusion lies in suggestion.” The doctor threw the report on the table: “The surveillance cameras all over the floors are the Dean’s eyes. Under the Dean’s gaze, they are being suggested to constantly, but this kind of suggestion is better than nothing—you can think of it as a form of minor spiritual pollution.”
“The main event is the ‘meditation’ time every afternoon and before bed.”
“Meditation?” The mention of this term made Li Xin fully understand the chaotic expressions on the players’ faces this morning. “Fine, so this is a forced requirement for them to recall the first half of their failed lives and then willingly give up resistance to welcome this so-called ‘rebirth’?”
“Exactly.” The doctor wore an expression of “the student is teachable.”
Li Xin ignored him, tapping his fingers on the table. After a while, he spoke again, his tone devoid of any confusion: “The logic holds up, but have you thought about the reason why there has been only one ‘successful case’ in so many years?”
This question made the pride on the doctor’s face fade little by little. He remained silent for a long time before finally shaking his head.
“I don’t know. Perhaps even the Dean doesn’t know.”
The doctor lowered his voice: “As more and more failed cases appeared, they all turned into rampaging shadows. Those that could be utilized were turned into puppets by the Dean, while those that could not be tamed hid in every dark corner, waiting to prey on others.”
“In the end, we could only conclude that that child was special.” The doctor twisted his fingers, his tone agitated: “Only the special ones, the children chosen by fate, have the qualifications to start over.”
“But how many such people are there? One in tens of thousands? One in hundreds of thousands? I eventually concluded that this was a low-probability event, and there was no need to continue this experiment, so I gave up.”
Li Xin listened in silence. He lowered his eyes, staring at a specific data point in the “Successful Case” report, and then smiled gently: “No, this is not a low-probability data point.”
The doctor looked up in astonishment, his brow furrowed tightly: “What did you say?”
Li Xin stood up, his eyes filled with a smile: “You said the shadow is ‘another self’, so they naturally know how to fuse with the original body.”
The doctor nodded, puzzled: “Right, so what?”
“Then… what if foreign impurities are mixed into these shadows?” Li Xin held up the shattered surveillance camera from the floor, as if trying to look through the patterns in its glass to the other side.
“Like a jigsaw puzzle piece forced into a fixed frame, the only possible outcome is…”
“A failure to match perfectly.”