“Are we going to die…”
She had no idea.
Regardless, she felt a little dead inside already.
“I don’t want to die!”
Neither did she.
“Why would Wuhai University be invaded by Deceits?!”
She really wanted to know the answer to that question, too.
Inside the dimly lit utility room, over a dozen Wuhai University students huddled in the corner, shivering.
They tried their best to stay calm, but their trembling voices betrayed their absolute terror.
Bian Ying was not a student, but she was stuck in there with them.
“What department are you from?” a girl next to her attempted to strike up a conversation.
During their frantic escape earlier, they had seen Bian Ying standing completely still and assumed she was paralyzed by fear, so a few of them had grabbed her and dragged her along.
“The graduated department.”
“Huh?”
“I graduated over a year ago.” With that, Bian Ying pulled out the ID badge clipped to her chest.
The girl gasped.
“Ah!
You’re the guest lecturer for today’s seminar!”
“…Yes,” Bian Ying replied.
If she could turn back time to last night, Bian Ying would have rather cursed herself to get hit by a car than accept this fieldwork assignment to give a seminar at Wuhai University.
After all, getting hit by a car was much easier to deal with than a Deceit incident.
The year Bian Ying was born, Deceits descended and swept across the globe, forever altering the world order.
To combat these vicious creatures, nations united to establish the Deceit Investigation Bureau with the sole purpose of monitoring and eliminating Deceits.
Unfortunately for her, she was a newly hired temp worker at the Wuhai City Deceit Investigation Bureau.
Even more unfortunately, she had stumbled straight into a Deceit incident on her very first field assignment.
Fifteen minutes ago.
Thick, mottled dark-red blood suddenly began oozing from the presentation whiteboard in the grand auditorium.
The school rulebook in the principal’s hands sprouted eight hideous tentacles reeking of black mist.
The Deceit concentration detector immediately flashed red.
Massive, viscous clumps of blood swelled up and splattered onto the ground.
Gaining sentience, they instantly transformed into lethal weapons targeting the students.
Screaming in terror, the students frantically fled outside.
The beautiful university campus had morphed into a deadly battle royale.
“Rongrong, what are you talking about…”
“She’s the seminar lecturer…
doesn’t that make her an employee of the Deceit Investigation Bureau?!”
“Thank God!
We’re saved!”
In the blink of an eye, Bian Ying went from being a random passerby the students had conveniently “saved” to a leader burdened with their immense hopes.
“…I’m just a temp,” Bian Ying said, deliberately emphasizing the word “temp.”
But Xu Xinrong automatically ignored that detail.
Looking at her with bright, hopeful eyes, she said, “Miss, we promise we won’t drag you down!”
The students’ fears were significantly dispelled.
They began chiming in all at once, with some even asking Bian Ying what their next move should be.
“…” Bian Ying was at a loss.
Feeling a pang of guilt, she deflected the question.
“Do any of you have a copy of the school rules on you?
Let me see it.”
“I do!” Xu Xinrong eagerly handed over the rulebook.
Wuhai University School Rules:
[Students must strictly observe the 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM schedule.
Students are not permitted outside their dormitories during rest hours.]
[Students must be seated and clocked in on time for every class.
Absence or requesting leave is strictly prohibited.
Studying hard is a student’s absolute duty!]
[…]
Bian Ying felt her head spin as she stared at the dense walls of text.
Did they have this kind of nonsense back when she was in school?
Xu Xinrong leaned in close and whispered, “These are the new rules the principal established when he took office.
They’re completely psychotic, right?
The students have been secretly protesting them for a while now.”
Bian Ying didn’t say anything.
She closed the rulebook and looked up, immediately meeting the students’ expectant gazes.
They were waiting for her orders.
She was just about to speak when the faint scent of blood wafted to her nose.
It seemed the blood-clump Deceits had already found them.
“Grab a weapon.
Whatever looks deadly,” she said, abruptly swallowing the words she had originally planned to say.
“Miss, what’s wrong?” Xu Xinrong asked in confusion.
“The Deceits are right outside the door,” Bian Ying answered calmly.
The students were horrified.
In a flash, their survival instincts kicked in.
Clutching an assortment of bizarre “weapons,” they glared at the doorway with the grim resolve of soldiers ready to face death.
“What are you standing around for?!” Bian Ying asked, looking back at them in confusion from where she stood by the window.
“Weren’t you telling us to fight the Deceits to the death?”
“Don’t worry, Miss!
We won’t chicken out!”
“…I appreciate the sentiment, but let’s hold off on that.” Bian Ying shook her head in amusement.
Understanding her intention, Xu Xinrong immediately corralled the students toward the window to climb out.
Once they had all made it through, Bian Ying cast one last glance at the door and vaulted out the window just as the blood-clump Deceits burst into the room.
The campus was dead silent.
Not daring to let their guard down, the group hugged the walls and moved with extreme caution, terrified that the blood-clump Deceits would suddenly jump out from around a corner.
“W-where are we going?”
“The school gates, obviously!
We need to escape!”
“But…
can we even get out?”
The sky above Wuhai University was currently completely shrouded in a gloomy gray mist.
The dimming daylight gave off an aura of decay.
If Bian Ying’s guess was correct, this was a Deceit capable of generating a Deceit Domain.
Inside a Deceit Domain, rules reigned supreme.
Although these rules restricted the Deceit’s actions to some extent, they also amplified its power.
Furthermore, if ordinary people stayed inside a Deceit Domain for too long, they would be corrupted by the dense Deceit concentration permeating the area.
Once a person’s contamination level exceeded the threshold, they would suffer a Brain domain collapse at best, or mutate into a Deceit monster at worst.
“AHHH!”
Xu Xinrong, who was leading the way, rounded a corner and unexpectedly bumped straight into a blood-clump Deceit patrolling the area.
The Deceit had no facial features—it was nothing more than a viscous glob of blood slithering across the ground.
But the moment it sensed their presence, its body violently swelled and burst open.
Countless sticky, bloody threads shot out from its massive form.
They wove together into a dense, inescapable net of blood that covered the area.
Then, it opened its gaping maw—
Sheltered students who hadn’t even entered the real world yet had never seen such a terrifying scene.
Their nerves snapped; they stood frozen in place, their limbs turning to jelly.
“Didn’t you say you were going to fight the Deceits to the death?”
Bian Ying’s tone held a hint of teasing, yet it invisibly drove away the terror gripping the students’ hearts.
Snapping back to reality, they gritted their teeth, raised their makeshift “weapons,” and charged forward to surround the Deceit.
“That’s right, it’s just one Deceit!”
“We can stomp this thing to death!”
“Don’t be afraid!
The teacher will definitely protect us!”
Brooms, mops, hammers…
a chaotic barrage of weapons rained down on the blood clump.
Some students even decided their weapons weren’t cutting it and used their bare hands to rip apart the bloody net.
“EWW, so gross!”
“It stinks!
It stinks!
I feel like I’m marinating in it!”
They cursed non-stop, but their strikes only grew more vicious.
They thought, “Bad monster!
Bad monster!
Bad monster!”
The Deceit was bewildered, and Bian Ying was completely dumbfounded.
Was this the legendary fearlessness of a newborn calf facing a tiger?
Only, these students were acting more like the tigers!