Zhou Haizhi stared in disbelief at the shadow Deceits drifting out of the archive room, brandishing their claws.
He finally realized that the Deceits were going for the kill.
BANG!
A blue-glowing blast from an Energy Cannon shot out.
The projectile struck the shadows, causing the Deceits to let out piercing, horrifying shrieks.
“Let’s go!” Bian Ying sprinted over, grabbing the bewildered Zhou Haizhi and dragging him outside.
Behind them, shadows surged forward in endless waves.
Zhou Haizhi looked back at the writhing nest of darkness.
The originally faceless shadow Deceits now manifested pale, hollow eyes and sharp, jagged maws.
His face drained of color in terror.
“Why are so many Deceits popping up all of a sudden?!” he yelled.
“You didn’t hear it?” Bian Ying frowned and asked as she ran.
Zhou Haizhi looked even more confused.
“Hear what?”
His reaction didn’t seem faked.
Bian Ying was secretly surprised.
She wondered, “Am I the only one whose Perception can detect the rule changes?”
“The rules must have changed,” she explained.
“We were intruders to begin with.”
“What!!!”
Hearing this, Zhou Haizhi ran even faster.
Intruders were never protected by the rules in the first place.
Now that all the Deceits lurking on the campus were swarming toward them, breaking out would be no easy feat!
“We need to go find Captain Tan and the others right now!” he said.
Bian Ying nodded.
That was exactly what she had in mind.
However, just as they finally managed to escape the building, they were met outside by bloated blood clot Deceits, ready to tear them apart and swallow them whole.
They were completely surrounded.
Bian Ying gripped her Energy Gun tightly, weighing how to carve out a path to survival, but to her surprise, Zhou Haizhi pushed her away once again.
He shoved her into a narrow side path.
“I know you must have found something.
Go find Captain Tan.”
Bian Ying froze.
“…What about you?”
Zhou Haizhi waved his hand dismissively.
“I’m going to hold them off, of course.
Make sure you polish up the page detailing my heroic deeds.”
Even at a time like this, Zhou Haizhi was still in the mood to joke around.
For a moment, Bian Ying felt as if she was seeing her boss—whom she had always secretly called a slave driver—for the very first time.
She pursed her lips and tried to toss him the Energy Gun, but Zhou Haizhi refused.
Hurry up and go.”
“Boss, now is not the time to play the hero,” Bian Ying said.
Before she could finish, Zhou Haizhi suddenly grabbed a restless shadow Deceit lurking nearby.
Veins bulged on the back of his hands as he let out a loud shout.
RIP!
The shadow Deceit dissipated into countless wisps of black smoke.
“Hmph, do I look like I need to play the hero?” Zhou Haizhi shot Bian Ying a smug, unbothered glance.
Bian Ying was dumbfounded.
She thought, “Holy crap!”
Who would have thought that her boss—who always sat around the office doing nothing, looked bloated and out of shape, and nitpicked her every day—actually had this kind of skill?!
She realized she really needed to reevaluate him.
“Boss, wait for me to come back,” she said.
Since things had come to this, Bian Ying didn’t insist on staying.
With Zhou Haizhi holding these Deceits back, she could resolve the principal’s situation much faster.
After Bian Ying left, Zhou Haizhi, who had stayed rooted to the spot, suddenly jumped up and frantically blew on his hands.
“That was close, so close.”
If Bian Ying hadn’t left right then, he really wouldn’t have been able to keep up his act!
If it weren’t for this operation, Zhou Haizhi would have almost forgotten how it felt to serve in the Special Forces.
He was surrounded by shadows and blood clots.
Darkness and crimson swept toward him, yet there was no trace of fear on his face.
His expression was calm as he murmured to himself, “Before Superpower Users appeared…” it had always been them who resolved the Deceit incidents.
Meanwhile, at the academic building.
Tan Linyan and his teammates had just arrived when the Deceit concentration detectors on their wrists began blaring wildly.
“Is the principal here?”
“No…
it’s the students,” Yu Chi said, shaking his head with a frown.
Tan Linyan quickly caught on and voiced his shock, “So, ‘reformation’ actually means being mutated into Deceits.”
Xiao Zhibing felt a chill run down her spine.
There were hundreds of students who had been taken away.
Did that mean there were hundreds of Deceits in the academic building right now?!
And they were mutated from living humans…
“Captain, they haven’t been mutated for long.
They can still be saved!”
“Let’s go.
We’re going in to take a look.”
The group entered the academic building.
They approached the nearest classroom, intending to check on the condition of the surviving students, but faint sobs echoed in their ears.
It wasn’t long before the sobbing multiplied.
Tan Linyan’s heart skipped a beat.
“Not good.”
A second later, voices fraught with anger and terror erupted from the surviving students inside the classroom. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
“I don’t want to die…”
“I’m so scared.
Why haven’t those people dealt with the Deceits yet…”
“School rules!
School rules!
It’s all about school rules all day long!
Ever since this new principal took office, we’ve been tortured for two whole years.
Isn’t that enough?!”
The student who shouted was on the verge of a breakdown.
After screaming those words, he burst into uncontrollable sobbing.
The moment he snapped, all the other mutated students in the classroom turned to look at him in eerie unison.
Their eyes and expressions were bizarrely identical, as if copied and pasted, and they fixed their dead stares on the weeping student.
“Rule 18: Students must not disrupt classroom discipline!”
“Rule 18: Students must not disrupt classroom discipline!”
“Rule 18: Students must not disrupt classroom discipline!”
“…”
They repeated the phrase endlessly, driving the other surviving students in the classroom to the brink of mental collapse.
These youths, who had yet to step into real society, had fragile psychological defenses that were incredibly easy to shatter and manipulate.
“Shut up!!!”
“It’s all the principal’s fault!
The principal must have attracted the Deceits!”
“Burn the rulebook!”
Amidst the students’ frightened and furious screams, someone threw out a copy of the school rulebook.
As if finding an outlet for their despair, the survivors swarmed it, stomping on the book frantically to vent their anger.
“Burn it!
Burn it!
Burn it!”
“Calm down, students, please calm down…”
The attempts by the First Squad to intervene went completely ignored; if anything, their voices only fueled the students’ rage.
“Ah!”
“Stop it, don’t grab me!”
“Are you humans or Deceits?!”
The assimilated students stepped forward expressionlessly to stop the survivors, grabbing their arms and hoisting them into the air.
Soon after, fleshy blood clots slithered in through the windows.
A pungent stench of blood permeated the room.
The students were horrified and infuriated, and many of the more fragile ones began to dry heave.
GAG!
“Don’t come any closer!”
The blood clots gradually morphed into faceless humanoid shapes.
Tan Linyan watched as the blood masses approached the captured students.
His pupils trembled as the realization hit him instantly.
The purpose of these blood clots was to replace the “disobedient” students.
SWISH!
Xiao Zhibing activated her Superpower.
Moving as a blur, she swiftly rescued the survivors from the grip of the assimilated students.
Her Superpower was Enhancement.
Under its effect, both her speed and strength were boosted to their absolute peak.