Xu Zhiyi grew angry at his nonsense, and with it, her fear of having her living space squeezed diminished considerably.
Only after Lin Yan swore two consecutive oaths that he would absolutely not be crushed did she let out a hum and stop her accusatory glare at him.
Lin Yan smiled warmly and patted her head before saying that this situation was most likely because the Instance was about to end.
All Instances were spiritual worlds constructed by one person, or a group of people.
They were often both terrifying and fragile—once the hidden truth was about to be exposed by outsiders, the Instance would begin to collapse uncontrollably, revealing its original ruins.
The current shrinking might simply be because it had always been small to begin with. Once it reached a certain limit, it would stop on its own.
Xu Zhiyi's face grew increasingly sullen as she listened.
It seemed she still knew too much!
If she had known from the very start, she should have just sat in the examination room with Lin Yan—then their space to move around would have been bigger.
"So unhappy?" Lin Yan poked her cheeks twice. "Don't you want to go home and eat little pudding anymore?"
The probability of going home together was too low—his words couldn't lift the dejected Xu Zhiyi's spirits.
"Actually, I have no idea what happened here." She turned her head with tearful eyes and earnestly promised the air, "I really have no intention of investigating the truth, respected Teacher Hua Mei. Please, if possible, let me and my brother out…"
Only after finishing her plea did she realize that these words had instead exposed the fact that she had guessed Teacher Hua Mei was the master of the Instance.
Xu Zhiyi pursed her lips in chagrin: "…"
Lin Yan heard it all clearly.
He smiled gently at her, and she thought he was going to comfort her, but instead her good brother cleared his throat and began telling a ghost story in his low, pleasant voice: "Once, there was an Instance that required playing hide-and-seek. One player knew bone-contraction kung fu, and after entering, he hid inside a narrow ventilation duct, planning to spend the whole session there."
"Th-then what?"
"Twenty minutes later, every single ghost in the entire Instance knew his location."
Xu Zhiyi let out a "Oh my god" and shrank back, grabbing Lin Yan's sleeve.
"The game wants players to keep moving, so even if you find the perfect hiding spot, you can't stay in one place for too long. When we sat here earlier, it thought we were playing passively, so as punishment, the game turned me back into a monster's form, forcing me to leave you…"
If you investigate the truth, the Instance master would go mad with rage.
If you don't investigate, the system thinks the player is being too passive and starts throwing obstacles your way.
Xu Zhiyi had never seen such unreasonable rules, and she cursed the system thousands upon thousands of times in her heart.
But now, upon hearing that the punishment was Lin Yan leaving, the Xu Zhiyi who had just been so fragile she needed to lean into her brother's arms suddenly "slap"—grabbed his fingers and pulled him back with great momentum: "Alright, stop standing here. Let's go investigate that so-called truth right now."
She had to admit, the system really knew how to grab someone by their weakness!
On the way back to the teaching building, despite her emotional resistance, Xu Zhiyi couldn't help but ask questions, trying to find a possible loophole.
"Brother, but when you were sewing my clothes, we were still too."
“You were looking at the note back then, so that counts as gathering information. Think about it—when we sat under the tree, weren't we caught almost immediately?” Lin Yan explained one by one. “After that, I sent you to a classroom that might hold clues, and you went looking for them. That's how we reunited.”
Xu Zhiyi was completely convinced.
She was genuinely terrified that Lin Yan would disappear again, so her eyes kept searching the entire way, not missing any change in the campus.
Her steps were swift, but her face looked like she was chewing on bitter melon.
Lin Yan found it utterly amusing and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “When you were little, didn't you want to be a detective? Isn't this the perfect time to gather clues and deduce the truth?”
Xu Zhiyi turned her head seriously to refute him.
A detective wasn't a viable profession given the national context. Right now, she just wanted to become a professional architectural designer.
And as a prospective architectural designer with professional sensitivity, Xu Zhiyi noticed many changes that made her nervous:
The dormitory building and the teaching building were both missing a section.
The playground had also shrunk.
Now running eight hundred meters meant circling six laps.
The incense burner on the platform had shrunk the most—the chamber now looked like it could only hold half a person.
The moon still hung above their heads, a dim, murky pale yellow, yet the campus before them grew brighter and brighter, with light from some unknown source illuminating the fine ashes drifting through the air.
Xu Zhiyi held her breath for a long moment before realizing these ashes were illusory—they wouldn't actually be inhaled into her body.
Still, there was a faint smell of something burning in the air.
Before appearing at this exam site, had she also seen some news about something catching fire?
Xu Zhiyi racked her brain anxiously, then turned her head to see Lin Yan still smiling at her with a relaxed expression.
Like a parent filming their cat doing a backflip.
This was no time for that!
Xu Zhiyi shot him two resentful glares, but then, as if something occurred to her, her tone wasn't as fierce as her eyes suggested. “Then… if you have to keep moving every moment, and you often vanish for days at a time…”
That would mean going dozens of hours without rest.
Lin Yan hadn't expected her to suddenly worry about that.
“I can rest—I just have to be active during the Instance's designated activity periods,” he said with a smile. “The game hasn't reached the point of forbidding sleep.”
Oh my.
Xu Zhiyi's mind was filled with the miserable, pitiful image of Lin Yan leaning against a big rock, braving the elements.
She was about to tear up again when she heard Lin Yan say slowly and leisurely that his first Instance had been in a five-star hotel, where the bed was soft and comfortable.
Xu Zhiyi stopped crying.
She thought, that's more like it.
But that still didn't change the fact that Lin Yan must have been hurt plenty while hiding and dodging.
It was fine.
From now on, she would be there with him.
Xu Zhiyi led Lin Yan to the front of the teachers' office.
In fact, she didn't need to put in much effort to figure out which office was the right place to go. By the time they reached the teaching building, it had already shrunk to two floors, and on the first floor, only two or three classrooms and one teachers' office remained.
They had originally planned to check the second floor first, but the ceiling was visibly pressing downward.
If they went up, within two minutes, they would truly become a paper person and a paper ghost.
So the only place they could search was the first floor.
Xu Zhiyi, who had long since determined that the Instance's master was Teacher Hua Mei, naturally stood before the office with clear purpose.
Before entering, she felt inexplicably nervous.
But with every passing second, there was a risk that Lin Yan might disappear, so Xu Zhiyi gritted her teeth and pushed the door open.
The office had become very empty.
Like the stage, it now held only a table and a chair, with a filing cabinet against the wall—cold and desolate.
Inside the cabinet were over a dozen blue document folders.
Xu Zhiyi picked one up herself and handed one to Lin Yan as well.
Each folder contained only items belonging to a single student—textbooks, notebooks, stationery, and chopsticks and spoons stored in plastic containers.
There were also small booklets recording the students' academic progress.
They showed the changes in their English scores after arriving at Huamei Junior High.
Each one bore detailed comments written by the same teacher: Chen Miao is clever, but lacks the patience to memorize vocabulary—she should be quizzed more in this area and encouraged; He Xiaoman's handwriting has improved greatly this time—you can actually make out the letters now…
There were also notes about their emotional states.
Song Lianshan's parents divorced last week, so a dip in his monthly exam scores is inevitable. When he came over with his test paper that evening, I must remember not to demand too much of him…
Whoever wrote these records did so with the most genuine care.
Xu Zhiyi closed the booklet and looked at Lin Yan. "Brother, I know why this place has gotten smaller."
Huamei Junior High wasn't actually a real middle school.
It was probably a small educational institution tucked inside a residential building—like the after-school care center she used to attend. That's why the students' bowls and chopsticks were kept here.
So there was only one teacher here, and that teacher was responsible for just over a dozen students' English studies.
She didn't know why this place had become so vast, but its shrinking made sense. Since Teacher Hua Mei was "waking up," in the end, this place would probably compress down to the size of a single apartment.
The good news was that they wouldn't be flattened into paper. But they would still have to face this teacher head-on.
Aside from these items, there was nothing else useful in the office.
Just as the two wanted to take another look around, the sound of a cane striking the floor echoed from the corridor—very loud, like… some kind of urgent countdown.
They opened the window and quickly climbed out.
Not long after they left, the document folders in the cabinet suddenly burst into fierce flames, the firelight flickering within the cramped room.
Xu Zhiyi's eyes reflected the dancing red glow, and gradually, the news she had seen before entering the examination hall resurfaced clearly in her mind.
—A fire broke out in a residential building in the neighborhood, lasting five hours…
She quickly ran to the side of the first-floor classroom and, through the glass window, looked up at the clock hanging on the wall.
She had been here for four and a half hours.
"Brother!" Xu Zhiyi still held onto some hope. She turned to look at Lin Yan. "In half an hour, we can go home!"
Lin Yan's smile was faint.
Xu Zhiyi pressed her lips together tightly, her excitement doused like cold water had been thrown on it.
Lin Yan took the wall clock down from the classroom.
The grand stage had already shrunk to a single stone step, and the purple censer had become small enough to fit a single head. Xu Zhiyi estimated that it would continue to shrink until it became an incense burner that could be held in one's palm.
The dormitory buildings, Blocks A and B, had been divided into four single-story houses, pushed by the surrounding walls as they slowly converged toward the playground.
Every building was burning, thick smoke rising, turning the playground into an endless sea of fire—only the outer edges remained relatively clear.
Cries and shouts drifted continuously from within the smoke and dust, faint and fragmented, while the tapping of a cane against the ground never ceased.
The only benefit of the shrinking space was perhaps that the whiteboard—once half a person's height—had now shrunk to the size of a palm, making it very convenient for her to tuck into her pocket and change the answers at any time.
Xu Zhiyi didn't want to carry it, but Lin Yan insisted she bring it along.
After the whiteboard shrank, only six characters remained on it: "First Team" and "Second Team"—impossible to tell which side was the fake-smile students.
But choosing either team made no difference.
A fire had occurred here, and all the students had perished. They were all fake.
At this point, Xu Zhiyi could no longer deceive Lin Yan into thinking she couldn't see it. She was forced to draw an X beneath both team names.
After doing so, she pouted in silence, but Lin Yan's attitude softened considerably. He took her hand and made sure she tucked the whiteboard securely into her pocket.
The half-hour wait felt interminable.
The teaching building had now shrunk to a single classroom.
To avoid the system judging them as passive, Xu Zhiyi and Lin Yan kept strolling through the campus. The closer the time drew to the final deadline, the more restless she became.
In the areas where smoke hadn't spread, seven or eight students were piled up—some from the Smile Squad, and others whose skin was largely burned away, barely recognizable as sharing the same faces as the squad members.
And the sound of the cane tapping never stopped.
Teacher Hua Mei… seemed to be rescuing them, one by one.
The minute hand ticked round and round.
With ten minutes remaining, the light shining down from above the school finally reached its zenith. Heat surged into the air, and even breathing felt scorching.
Xu Zhiyi, wrapped in her cotton-padded jacket, pulled the zipper halfway down and was about to take it off when Lin Yan zipped it back up, sealing it tightly shut.
"…"
The gentle, dense cold wrapped around her once more. Xu Zhiyi curled up in Lin Yan's arms, waiting for the school's walls to fully push the rooms together into one connected space.
Thick smoke turned ashen black and spread, obscuring most of her field of vision. She could only see her brother, who was right beside her.
All around them, only the crackling sound of fire remained.
All the students on the playground had vanished.
Heat surged and rolled. Lin Yan held Xu Zhiyi with one arm, providing her body with cold, shielding her from the thick smoke.
At the same time, he groped his way forward step by step, searching for the direction of the gate.
It was easy to find, because Huamei School had already become a very, very small two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment.
Within two minutes of walking, Lin Yan touched the scalding door handle. Pushing it open, he felt the fresh, gentle night breeze.
"Go on out," he said with a smile.
Xu Zhiyi jumped down from his arms and, with the utmost respect for her elders, spread her hands out. "Brother goes first."
What a perfectly obedient and considerate little sister.
Unfortunately, Lin Yan was a brother who didn't appreciate the gesture at all.
He firmly pushed Xu Zhiyi toward the door, silently making clear the fact that he couldn't accompany her outside.
So what if that was the case? He was far stronger than she was. Even if she resisted violently, he could still safely send her out.
But the Xu Zhiyi beneath his hands showed no struggle at all.
Her eyes sparkled with nervousness and pride, but once she realized Lin Yan couldn't break through the invisible barrier at the gate, her nervousness vanished completely.
Lin Yan stopped, his face darkening as he looked at her.
"Xu Zhiyi." His voice was cold.
Xu Zhiyi's scalp tingled under his gaze, but she stubbornly tried to hold her ground for a few more seconds. Yet within moments, Lin Yan reached into her pocket.
Her resistance was pathetically feeble against him, and soon, the whiteboard inside was forcibly pulled out by him.
One of the team's cross marks had been erased.
That was when she'd slipped the board back into her pocket, her fingertip precisely targeting that mark to wipe it away.
Erasing one was the same as erasing both—better yet, erase both. The result was the same either way.
Her movements had been so quick that Lin Yan hadn't even registered any suspicion.
"Xu Zhiyi." Lin Yan's face was grim. "Take out the marker and fill in the answer."
When had he ever spoken to her in such a harsh tone?
Xu Zhiyi's eyes reddened instantly, but she still stiffened her neck and shot back, "Can't fill it in—I already threw the marker away."
Her words were rebellious, but she didn't dare look at Lin Yan anymore. After speaking, she quickly averted her gaze from his dark, icy stare and pretended to be casual: "I know you can't get out."
"Where did you throw it?"
"Since you can't get out, why should I leave? I think it's fine for us to stay here—we could be students for the rest of our lives."
Fighting meant talking past each other. Xu Zhiyi tuned out Lin Yan's interrogation, her gaze drifting past him.
"Brother, look." Xu Zhiyi pointed behind him. "The school is turning back into what it was."
The black mist was thinning, and the sealed walls were slowly dispersing.
Lin Yan didn't need to turn around to see it.
In front of him, the gate symbolizing his sister's path to survival was also slowly receding, the scorch marks from the flames gradually fading until they nearly disappeared.
Within a dozen or so minutes, this place would become Meihua Middle School again.
And this gate of survival would never have another chance to open.
Lin Yan looked at the sister who had caused such irreparable consequences. Her hand was clutching the hem of his clothes, trembling uncontrollably, yet her expression still feigned normalcy, as if nothing had happened.
"Fine." His voice was calm and even. "Then stay here."
Xu Zhiyi looked up at him, her eyes full of surprise.
But the moment she met those beautiful, angry peach-blossom eyes, she immediately lowered her head again, her submissive demeanor unmistakable: "Brother, don't be like this…"
Fine, indeed.
He was clearly so furious he'd laughed instead.
"It's dinner time now. Come on, I'll take you to find something to eat—what do you like? Sewer rats, or charred corpses?"
Xu Zhiyi mumbled, saying nothing.
"If you stay here, what will you eat? What will you use? Have you even thought about that?" Lin Yan pressed relentlessly. "Xu Zhiyi, you've gotten quite capable now—you can spin your brother around your finger."
"Spin you?" Xu Zhiyi bristled like a startled cat, instantly triggered by the keyword she didn't want to hear. "Didn't you spin me first? You told me you could come home together too, said you'd stay with me doing this and that, as if you really could…"
In twenty years, she'd almost never fought with Lin Yan this seriously. Her voice rose for only a few sentences before turning choked, tears of grievance blurring her eyes. By the end, even she couldn't make out what she was saying, teardrops rolling down her cheeks one after another.
No brother could remain unmoved by his sister's tears.
Lin Yan might have remained unmoved for a fraction of a second—but his body had already moved faster than his mind, pulling her into an embrace, his palm pressing against the back of her head, patting gently as he soothed, "I'm sorry, baby, I shouldn't have been so harsh with you…"
Xu Zhiyi buried her face in his chest.
She just wanted to stay here, because wherever her brother was, that was home.
"I can become like you too," she said softly. "Brother, turn me into someone like you, like a vampire. You just have to bite me gently…"
"I can't do that, Zhizhi."
His tone had grown much gentler, but the negative answer was still something Xu Zhiyi couldn't accept.
He was still going to send her away.
At least the pen had truly been thrown away by her when she found the chance. With the speed at which the school was re-expanding, Xu Zhiyi was confident she could stall Lin Yan for a while, making it impossible for him to find a new one in time.
Clatter.
It was the sound of Lin Yan removing the muzzle from his face and throwing it to the ground.
Xu Zhiyi was still processing what he was about to do when suddenly her waist felt lighter—Lin Yan had pulled the fire axe from her belt.
Drip, drip.
The sound of liquid hitting the ground.
Lin Yan released her, grabbed the whiteboard, and hurled it forcefully toward the direction of the playground.
It flew several meters away, and the cross mark written in fresh crimson blood on the whiteboard remained strikingly conspicuous. Xu Zhiyi froze for a second, then lunged to retrieve the whiteboard, but her body was firmly held back.
Lin Yan carried her as he walked outward.
No matter how many words were spoken, nothing could change the fact that he was sending her away.
The school's re-expansion had stopped.
"At least—at least let us say goodbye properly, okay?" Xu Zhiyi couldn't resist Lin Yan's strength at all. The die was cast, so all she could do was plead, "Let's talk a little longer. I'll go, I really will go. Brother, brother! You can't be so cruel to me…"
Right next to the gate, Lin Yan stopped and set Xu Zhiyi down.
There was no gap between her heels and the exit. With just a gentle push from him, she would leave this place.
"In my bedside drawer, I've left behind my compiled experience from clearing Instances." Lin Yan lowered his eyes, raising a hand to straighten her padded jacket. "Remember to read it often once you're out. When you go through Instances on your own in the future, don't trust anyone easily."
It was Xu Zhiyi who had wanted to say goodbye, yet now she fell silent, her eyes fixed only on his left palm, which he had just cut with the axe.
She slowly took his hand in hers, her head sinking lower and lower.
Wet and warm tears fell, mingling with his blood.
"Go home," he said softly.
Xu Zhiyi buried her face in his hand, breathing in that faint scent of blood, using her brother's palm to hide from her brother's words.
Don't abandon me in that world without you.
Okay?
Lin Yan cupped Xu Zhiyi's tear-soaked face in his hands, lowered his head, and gently kissed her forehead.