Everyone inside the classroom froze for half a second.
Then the entire room exploded into chaos as students rushed toward the windows all at once and looked down below.
Pang Chengyu squeezed forward as well.
He had never expected that the person he wanted to get acquainted with yet hadn’t even properly met, would suddenly jump off a building right in front of him.
Cold wind poured through the open window.
From the fourth floor, a motionless body could be seen lying sprawled on the ground below.
Pang Chengyu felt an icy chill spread through him.
The old professor at the podium gripped his phone tightly, preparing to call emergency services.
But Pang Chengyu knew there was no point anymore.
This was not the first time this school had driven someone to death.
But it was the first time Pang Chengyu had personally witnessed the entire process from beginning to end.
Recently, he himself had also suffered under the same suffocating pressure.
So even though he had only met the raincoat wearing youth once, he still felt a deep sorrow and anger, as though grieving the death of someone similar to himself.
The crowd at the windows suddenly erupted into frantic shouting.
“Eh? Eh?! That…. Professor! that person!”
Pang Chengyu responded heavily:
“That person… is already dead.”
The student at the window cried out hysterically:
“N… No, that’s not it! That person, the transfer student got back up again!!!”
=
Bai Fuling leapt down from the fourth floor.
The moment he hit the ground, a spray of pixelated red dots burst across the screen. The entire edge of the display blurred into a dangerous crimson haze while his health bar dropped by a massive chunk and continued draining until only the tiniest sliver remained.
So there really was fall damage!
Bai Fuling was surprised for one second before becoming somewhat disappointed.
What a shame.
Originally, he had been thinking that in the future he could skip stairs and elevators entirely by simply jumping from building to building and descending directly from windows.
Looks like he wouldn’t be able to casually use “the straight line distance between two points is the shortest” as a movement method after all.
At the very least, if he wanted to move like that, he would need to prepare supplies in advance.
Before his health bar completely emptied out, Bai Fuling quickly opened his inventory and selected the only two food items he possessed:
[Three Day Expired Dried Bread ×1]
[Apple ×1]
Consume.
The food appeared in his hands for only a second before instantly disappearing. His health recovery speed finally surpassed the rate of damage loss and the health bar slowly climbed upward by a small amount.
The dangerous crimson blur surrounding the screen gradually faded away.
Bai Fuling controlled his little pixel character as it slowly climbed up from the ground.
At this point, the bright yellow raincoat was already drenched in bloodstains. Apparently, in this game, clothing did not automatically restore itself alongside status recovery.
Still, that was fine.
Bai Fuling glanced at the pixel character on screen and spun the character around several times, admiring the appearance with satisfaction.
Honestly, the red splashes decorating the yellow raincoat actually looked pretty good.
Next step: explore the campus.
Bai Fuling happily planned ahead.
Maybe he could find a hoe somewhere and unlock the farming route. Or perhaps discover a hidden treasure map buried within the school grounds. RPG games usually followed this sort of formula anyway.
“Over there, over there, hurry!”
Just as he stood up and took a few steps, voices suddenly drifted toward him from afar inside the game.
Because there were no subtitles or dialogue boxes, he couldn’t hear clearly. He could only vaguely make out words like “ambulance,” “emergency treatment,” and “find him.”
Something happened?
Why were they calling an ambulance?
A new random event quest?
Bai Fuling immediately turned around with the cheerful curiosity of someone about to witness drama unfold.
The moment his character came into view, several pixel people standing beside a boxy medical van all turned toward him simultaneously.
Then huge exclamation marks burst above the doctors’ heads.
Several of them immediately grabbed a stretcher and sprinted straight toward him at full speed.
…What?
Bai Fuling froze for several seconds before abruptly realizing,
Their target was him.
He instantly turned and ran.
“Hey, wait! Student!” the doctors shouted from behind.
Bai Fuling completely ignored them and fled without even looking back.
…What kind of joke was this?
There was no way he was willingly entering forced medical treatment mode!
Every single day in this game passed in real time. There were no save files, no pauses and no rewinds.
According to standard RPG logic, there would definitely be all sorts of scheduled events and limited time activities later on. Every day of exploration was important.
He absolutely could not waste Day One lying in a hospital.
Besides, medical treatment in games usually cost money.
And right now, as a brand new player with zero starting funds, there was a very real possibility that he would end up saddled with debt, forced to sign IOUs, or even trapped into working at the hospital to pay off treatment fees.
It was just some fall damage and HP loss from jumping off a building.
It didn’t affect his ability to move normally at all.
Did he need hospitalization?
No!
Then naturally, the correct response to forced medical treatment was running away.
Upstairs, the woolly haired professor stood at the classroom window, silently watching the student who had jumped off a building climb back up and immediately begin participating in a dramatic “you run, I chase” marathon with the emergency doctors.
An indescribably strange silence overtook him.
The students crowding around the windows were even more dumbfounded, completely unable to speak.
Their emotional states had transformed like a roller coaster ride:
The new student dresses so weirdly → The new student’s name is bizarre → Why does the new student keep greeting everyone repeatedly → Holy shit the new student jumped off the building! → Holy shit the new student stood back up covered in blood!! → Holy shit it’s a medical miracle, the new student is sprinting away!!!
Pang Chengyu swayed slightly and pressed one hand against his temple before lifting his gaze toward the sun overhead.
Inside, he thought blankly:
Hallucinations?
So this trash school finally succeeded in driving me insane.
Regardless of how emotionally shattered everyone upstairs or the medical staff might be, Bai Fuling only cared about doing whatever he wanted.
He controlled his pixel character as it darted all over campus, turning the entire place into a long distance chase competition against emergency doctors.
Although Bai Fuling had only just arrived and still wasn’t familiar with the map layout, he possessed one overwhelming advantage:
He dared to go anywhere.
After crawling through a dog hole, he genuinely hadn’t expected the game to allow players to crouch and crawl through one, Bai Fuling finally managed to shake off the relentlessly pursuing doctors.
He let out a sigh of relief, relaxed his fingers that had become stiff from gripping the controls too tightly and opened his character status screen.
[＊Severely Injured＊: Your HP is currently in critical condition.]
[＊Blood Loss＊: Your body is covered in red bloodstains, making you appear extremely frightening (Passive Skill: Chance to trigger alarms / forced medical intervention)]
[＊Fracture＊: Your movement ability has been impaired (Passive Skill: Movement Speed Debuff)]
When Bai Fuling saw the first status effect, he was completely unconcerned.
Low HP didn’t matter.
He wasn’t fighting monsters right now anyway. As long as his HP bar still existed, daily activities were perfectly manageable.
When he saw the second status effect, he also didn’t react much.
Whether he looked scary or not didn’t matter either. He was a player, after all. The ones getting scared were the NPCs. As long as he personally thought the appearance looked cool, that was enough.
Though admittedly, the passive effect was somewhat troublesome. Later, he would probably need to figure out some way to clean off the blood.
But when he saw the final status effect, his calmness instantly shattered.
What?!
There were actually debuffs that directly affected gameplay?!
No wonder his character had felt slower while escaping earlier.
So it was the [Fracture] debuff affecting movement speed!!
Absolutely unacceptable.
Movement speed reduction was one of the most intolerable debuffs imaginable.
Bai Fuling immediately straightened his posture and decided to restore his HP as quickly as possible.
Generally speaking, unless the injury involved cursed magic or poison effects, fully restoring the HP bar should instantly return the character to healthy status.
Which meant,
Food cured everything!
The food items he had just eaten earlier both came from trash cans.
Thus, the highest priority right now was obvious:
Loot every trash can in the school.
After making up his mind, Bai Fuling closed the status window and prepared to go forage through garbage for healing items.
However, while standing up, he accidentally misclicked the pickup button,
And surprisingly, he actually picked something up.
Obtained [Grass ×1]
[Grass: Fresh grass covered in dew (Consume / Discard)]
…Wait, this could be eaten too?
Wouldn’t eating grass poison him and reduce HP instead?
Bai Fuling looked surprised.
He glanced at his HP bar and figured that no matter what, ordinary school grass probably wouldn’t kill someone outright.
Curious, he selected [Consume].
A familiar “Ting!” sound effect rang out.
Floating green plus signs appeared above the pixel character’s head alongside a notification:
[Green +1 ]
The moment he saw the HP bar rise slightly, Bai Fuling’s eyes suddenly lit up with enlightenment.
So eating grass restored health!
Although it only restored one point at a time and looked somewhat useless, small amounts accumulated over time.
Considering that his current maximum HP was only 100 points, this was already more than sufficient.
Compared to endlessly wandering the map searching for trash cans and gambling on random loot, this recovery method was far simpler and more efficient.
All he had to do was mechanically continue eating grass.
He immediately declared this to be the most useful school landscaping design ever created.
Thus, Bai Fuling decisively crouched down and began slowly moving across the ground while tearing up grass.
Pluck grass.
Consume grass.
Pluck grass.
Consume grass.
Green +1 +1 +1 healing effects continuously floated above his head.
He kept going like that all the way until he accidentally bumped into someone.
Bai Fuling lifted his head.
A tall pixel figure stood in front of him.
Judging from the portrait illustration, the person possessed very obvious dark circles beneath the eyes. His eyelids drooped heavily, giving him a permanently exhausted and spiritless appearance.
Cradled in his left arm was a bird’s nest made of withered grass. Inside the nest, two or three pale white bird eggs could vaguely be seen.
Bai Fuling’s first thought was:
Oh no, another person. Please don’t trigger the alarm and hospital event again.
His second thought was:
Whoa, fresh bird eggs!
Can those be eaten?
Do they restore HP?
Bai Fuling stopped stuffing grass into his mouth.
He stared at the eggs with intense concentration, tempted to reach out and grab one to test whether it restored health.
While Bai Fuling’s attention was fully fixed upon the eggs, the other person was also quietly observing him.
That person was Liao Zhiqiu.
Liao Zhiqiu lowered his gaze and looked at the black haired youth crouching on the ground in a raincoat.
Bai Fuling was currently tilting his face upward, his eyes wide and blank, making his expression appear especially dazed and foolish looking.
Several fresh grass clippings were still stuck to the thin fishtail braid hanging beside his right ear.
The bright yellow raincoat draped over him was stained with blood.
Real blood.
Liao Zhiqiu handled knives often enough to distinguish the smell instantly.
Judging from the amount of blood loss, the other party had clearly suffered serious injuries.
What exactly had happened?
Liao Zhiqiu had always known that this school was far uglier beneath its polished exterior than outsiders imagined.
Countless hidden stories lurked beneath the surface.
A bizarre raincoat wearing person covered in blood stood before him, with a crooked halo hanging above his head.
And judging from the grass fragments all over him and the traces of green juice lingering at the corners of his lips…
He looked like he had crawled here while eating grass the entire way.
Was he an idiot?
…Did even idiots attend school nowadays?
Or was there some hidden reason behind all this?
Liao Zhiqiu was cold and indifferent toward people like himself.
But toward small animals, he possessed an unusual gentleness.
That was why he was carrying the bird’s nest in his arm. The nest had been blown down by the wind and he intended to find a safe sheltered location to place it back up again.
At this moment, in his eyes, Bai Fuling crouching on the ground and stupidly chewing grass was no different from a small injured animal.
And so he unconsciously extended the same patience toward him.
Liao Zhiqiu stretched out one hand, intending to help Bai Fuling stand before bringing him to the animal clinic he frequently visited.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bai Fuling noticed the dark circled pixel NPC making an interaction gesture.
Only then did he finally tear his gaze away from the tempting bird eggs.
Extending a hand,
Oh.
So this meant item trading was available, right?
He understood.
Trading with NPCs usually involved either spending money or giving gifts to increase affection before requesting resources.
Unfortunately, he currently had no money.
That meant item exchange was his only option.
At the moment, the only items in his inventory were:
[Student Card]
[Wooden Stick]
And the [Rose ×2] he had plucked earlier from the flowerbeds.
Under normal logic, roses were obviously the best gift item available.
Without hesitation, Bai Fuling opened the inventory and selected one rose to present forward,
Only for his finger to accidentally slip onto the adjacent inventory slot.
“Presenting… my student card!”
Liao Zhiqiu: “……”
Bai Fuling immediately withdrew it.
“Sorry, wrong item.”
He quickly reselected the rose and presented it again.
Liao Zhiqiu lowered his eyes toward the flower.
Although small, it bloomed brilliantly and vividly. It was clearly a fresh and beautiful little rose.
…Where had this person even gotten a rose from?
He didn’t understand.
Nor did he intend to accept it.
Thus, he merely stood there silently.
Why wasn’t the NPC reacting?
Was it bugged?
Seeing Liao Zhiqiu remain motionless, Bai Fuling assumed the interaction had failed to trigger properly.
So he clicked the gift option again and stubbornly tried handing over the rose once more.
“……”
Liao Zhiqiu frowned faintly and subtly shifted his body aside.
He disliked outsiders getting too close.
Yet the black haired raincoat wearing youth before him insistently kept sticking closer, trying to force the flower into his hands.
Those eyes resembling a small animal stared unblinkingly at him, filled with an oddly earnest obsession.
The blood covered hand held a tiny rose.
The blood was red.
The flower petals were red too.
It looked almost as though the flower itself had bloomed directly from the center of his palm.
Liao Zhiqiu lowered his gaze.
Within the air thick with the scent of blood, there was now also the faint fragrance of flowers.
He remained silent for a long while.
In the end, he finally accepted the rose from Bai Fuling’s hand.
Liao Zhiqiu casually tucked the little rose he had received into the edge of the dried grass bird’s nest cradled in his arms, thinking that now the person in front of him would finally follow him along.
Yet Bai Fuling suddenly raised a brow.
…What was going on? This guy had clearly accepted the gift but unlike the driver NPC and the woolly haired professor NPC earlier, there was no rising red bar above his head, nor did any sort of text prompt appear.
Giving gifts didn’t increase favorability and he didn’t even give anything in return?! What kind of roadside NPC freeloading behavior was this?!
Bai Fuling widened his eyes in disbelief and pulled another rose out of his inventory.
He saw a string of ellipses pop up above the dark circled pixel character’s head. Unlike before, he didn’t accept it, only saying, “No need.”
Bai Fuling thought: Haha, so NPCs know how to politely decline first now? This game’s AI is pretty advanced.
He repeatedly clicked and stubbornly shoved the gift forward, trying to skip past the “courtesy refusal” phase but prompt after prompt popped onto the screen:
[[Liao Zhiqiu] rejected your gift.]
[[Liao Zhiqiu] rejected your gift.]
[[Liao Zhiqiu] rejected your gift.]
After several repeated attempts, a tangle of black scribble lines appeared above the dark circled pixel man’s head and he took half a step backward.
Oh no, so it wasn’t politeness after all… he genuinely didn’t want it! Also, so this guy’s name was Liao Zhiqiu.
Fine then. It looked like roses couldn’t raise this person’s favorability, nor could they be exchanged for bird eggs. They would only waste items for nothing.
Deeply disappointed, Bai Fuling finally gave up and put away the last remaining rose.
But his gaze still could not leave the bird eggs.
If even grass could restore +1 HP, then bird eggs should at least heal ten or twenty times that amount, right? Even if he didn’t use them now, keeping them in his inventory for emergencies would still be great.
Although roses, the universally useful gift item, seemed ineffective, he had already come this far. There was still one item he hadn’t tried yet, so he might as well use the exhaustive testing method!
Thus, instead of turning around and leaving, Bai Fuling pulled out the wooden stick he had previously scavenged from the trash and this time, at last, a sliver of red progress appeared above the dark circled pixel character’s head.
Bai Fuling froze.
Huh? The NPC was finally reacting? Who would’ve thought the trigger wasn’t the rose but the stick?!
Author’s Note:
Bai Fuling: So you don’t want roses, you want a big stick, huh?
Liao Zhiqiu: (rage meter steadily charging)
✦ ✧ ✦
Vynellia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
One coffee for the translator. One less excuse for them to disappear. 😌
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Escape game freezesChapter 2 · Players aren’t allowed to use the main entranceChapter 3 · Players have created a medical miracle!Chapter 4 · If I hit the NPC more, will the NPC drop gold coins?Chapter 5 · Players earn the title of “bus weirdo”Chapter 6 · Players get a prison experienceChapter 7 · So the red bar isn’t for favorability, it’s for anger!Chapter 8 · The player is a nimble catChapter 9 · The player is a “law-abiding” good studentChapter 10 · Players have no morals and are fearlessChapter 11 · Player: What’s wrong? It’s called “Cai Cai Shui Ling LingChapter 12 · The player is the famous Farmer Detective!Chapter 13 · The player raised a new petChapter 14 · The player is a genius dog-riding boyChapter 15 · The player is a sticky, helpful, and kind comradeChapter 16 · It turns out that players aren’t considered human by NPCsChapter 17 · Players are like angels descending upon my side!Chapter 18 · Player: There’s only one truth!Chapter 19 · Why are players farming at the school?!Chapter 20 · Players came to the cafeteria to buy suppliesChapter 21 · Are NPCs model workers?Chapter 22 · If you’re a gay manChapter 23 · Player: Wheelchairs are a useful mode of transportation!Chapter 24 · So the player is actually part of Cat Returns (?)Chapter 25 · Liao Zhi Qiu, a large pet belonging to the playerChapter 26 · Player: Hello, I picked up this corpse.Chapter 27 · Bai Fuling: Players will never dieChapter 28 · Has the murderer been caught?Chapter 29 · Player: Visiting the mental hospital felt as familiar as coming homeChapter 30 · Players’ Adventure in the Mental Hospital: Round 1Chapter 31 · Player: Kid, fly!Chapter 32 · The player who does good deeds every day is truly a good personChapter 33 · The kitten brought back some local specialtiesChapter 34 · Let this adorable kitten stay forever?Chapter 35 · Players, don’t give up on being human!Chapter 36 · A kitten is just a kitten, isn’t it?Chapter 37 · Players want it, players get itChapter 38 · Angel Player and Unlucky Bear NPCChapter 39 · In short, players choose to throw at NPCsChapter 40 · The player just flew away!Chapter 41 · Player: You need to thoroughly understand the bookChapter 42 · Players love to tease honest NPCs.Chapter 43 · He said he was a little hungry.Chapter 44 · Even if cotton essence mutatesChapter 45 · Pure Love TentaclesChapter 46 · Choose to be a kitten?Chapter 47 · Players’ tears are weaponsChapter 48 · Players do not need to breatheChapter 49 · It’s on fire!Chapter 50 · The player is a top-tier rescue masterChapter 51 · How did the player manage to resurrect after killing themselves?!Chapter 52 · Call the player “Little Cat King”!Chapter 53 · What are the consequences of raising the cat-like alienation