Luo Yu still remembered the last time Liu Shuang had grabbed her hand and cried her heart out. She had almost been dragged off and sold that time.
So this time…
The crying in the corridor came and went, heavily suppressed, and it sounded heartbreakingly miserable.
Surely the monsters wouldn’t use the same trick on her twice.
Luo Yu let out a soft sigh and gently pushed open the dorm room door.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
The young girl who had been crying clearly did not expect anyone to be in the dormitory building and froze in place.
When she turned and saw Luo Yu leaning against the dorm door speaking to her, she hurriedly wiped the tears from her face.
“N-nothing,” she said timidly, lowering her head. “I thought there wouldn’t be anyone here. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
After speaking, the girl turned as if to leave.
Seeing how timid and withdrawn she looked, Luo Yu sighed again and called out to her. “If something’s bothering you, you can talk to me.”
She pointed behind her toward the dorm room. “I’m the only one here. My roommates… are all very strange. I don’t get along with them very well.”
As she spoke, Luo Yu paid close attention to the girl’s reaction. Sure enough, when she heard Luo Yu describe the others in the school as “strange,” the girl’s eyes visibly lit up.
“Y-you think so too…?”
The girl cautiously glanced left and right. At Luo Yu’s prompting, she finally stepped into the dorm room.
Then it was as if a secret she had suppressed for years had finally found an outlet. She grabbed Luo Yu’s hand and began talking nonstop.
What she said was largely the same as what Liu Shuang had described that night.
Teachers whose behavior had completely changed, classmates who had become taciturn, an atmosphere that was terrifying and oppressive…
“I really, really can’t take it anymore,” the girl sobbed. “At first, I still had some friends. We could complain quietly to each other. But later, they slowly all changed.”
“Either they became monsters who only know how to study, just like everyone else, or they told me to try my best to be the same as everyone, no matter what, and never stand out.”
All of this matched Luo Yu’s earlier deductions almost perfectly.
However, there was something she had overlooked.
“You said the teachers’ styles changed. Do you remember when that change started?” Luo Yu asked.
“It should have been not long after this semester began,” the girl replied, still lost in her thoughts.
“The teachers used to be really kind and tolerant, not like now, where they beat and scold at the slightest thing. Once, I was late to class and was punished for standing outside the classroom door for an entire day. Students came and went, all talking behind my back.”
“That time, I really wanted to leave the school, but all the gates were guarded, and I couldn’t get out at all. So I went to the small grove, planning to climb over to the back mountain from there and escape home.”
The small grove again. Luo Yu frowned. To be honest, she really did not want to get close to that forest. Even hearing others mention it made her uncomfortable.
This girl had actually planned to go from the small grove to the back mountain…
The back mountain was vast, and there were wild wolves there. Forget a high school student. Even a well-trained adult might not survive more than a few days there.
Luo Yu looked at the girl with a trace of admiration. No matter how you put it, she was bold.
“What happened after that?” Luo Yu asked.
The girl blinked. “After that, I got lost in the small grove and ran into wild wolves.”
Luo Yu: …Could she take that admiration back?
At the same time, a point of suspicion surfaced.
“Then how did you get back to the school?” Luo Yu stared seriously into the girl’s eyes.
The girl hesitated and bit her lip. “Well… it’s kind of magical. You probably won’t believe it if I say it…”
Luo Yu sensed the presence of an important clue.
She straightened her back, grasped the girl’s hand, and said firmly, “I believe you!”
“Ah… o-okay,” the girl stammered. “The wolves brought me back. They didn’t hurt me. They even helped guide the way.”
Luo Yu fell silent.
The girl panicked. “I’m not lying, really! Sometimes I feel like it was a dream too, but… look!”
She took a bone whistle off from around her neck. “The wolves gave this to me.”
Luo Yu took the bone whistle and examined it carefully.
Its workmanship was extremely rough. At best, it barely qualified as something you could blow into. Yet when held in the hand, it felt different, as if it were constantly radiating warmth.
Hidden school rules, teachers who changed overnight, monsters who replaced humans, mysterious and friendly wild wolves…
All the fragments came together, slowly forming a complete picture of what had happened at Qinggang High School.
Luo Yu silently clenched her fist. She might need to make a trip to the small grove after all.
At this very moment, inside the small grove, under the cover of thick fog, the monsters’ slaughter continued.
The number of players scattered throughout the grove seemed unchanged.
But among them, how many “people” were truly left?
“Why did such heavy fog suddenly roll in… Brother Sun, I’m so scared…”
In the damp forest, amid the chaotic fog, Yang Tian was practically glued to Sun Heng, following him step by step, unwilling to be separated even for a moment.
It wasn’t that she still had the mood to flirt with him. She was genuinely terrified.
If she got separated from Sun Heng in a place this dangerous, the consequences… Yang Tian shuddered. She didn’t even dare to imagine them.
Sun Heng squeezed her hand in return and comforted her. “It’s fine. Hold on to me. I’ll protect you. If there really is some major clue hidden here, environmental changes like this are normal.”
As he spoke, Sun Heng hacked away the branches ahead of them, shielding Yang Tian as they moved forward.
Sun Heng was a strange man.
He was lecherous, but lecherous with principles. Going by his belief that once he slept with a woman, she belonged to him, he had indeed protected Yang Tian fairly well during this game, even giving her quite a few life-saving items.
Unfortunately, compared to the difficulty of the game, those items were far too limited in what they could do.
So much so that Yang Tian was unknowingly marked by a monster. By now, the bluish mark on the back of her neck had spread across her entire back.
“Hiss, that’s a huge swamp,” Sun Heng frowned as he tested the ground ahead. “And there are wolf howls. We need to find those wild wolves.”
“Brother Sun, my back is so itchy.”
While Sun Heng was concentrating on forming a plan, Yang Tian suddenly rubbed against him restlessly.
“Stop messing around.”
Sun Heng felt speechless, thinking that Yang Tian really had no sense of time or place when it came to acting spoiled.
He perfunctorily patted her back, but instead of stopping, she became even more agitated.
“Brother Sun, my back is so itchy. My back is so itchy.”
“Settle down!” Sun Heng snapped, glaring at her. But the instant he clearly saw what Yang Tian was doing, he was shocked and violently flung her hand away.
Yang Tian was clawing frantically at the back of her neck, completely ignoring the fact that her slender fingernails had already torn bloody gashes into the skin of her neck.
Worse still, with each movement, the bluish mark spread faster, crawling over most of her face in no time.
Her once-pretty face was gone. Yang Tian tore at her own face and wailed, like a vicious ghost.
“Brother Sun, save me, save me, ahhh—”
Looking at the screaming woman, Sun Heng felt disgusted, but still spared a trace of lingering sentiment.
He stepped forward and, aiming at her fragile nape, struck swiftly, accurately, and mercilessly.
Yang Tian collapsed.
Sun Heng tossed her to the ground without another glance and turned away coldly.
At least…
Dying in unconsciousness was also a kind of mercy.