Su Ximu on the upper floor frowned. He felt these words sounded strange. If Third Brother hadn’t mentioned early on that Weirds had very strong vitality, he would have suspected the chair he threw down had smashed the opponent’s head.
But now the most important thing wasn’t this. With a thought, he provocatively uttered a harsh line: “If you’ve got the skills, stand there and don’t move!”
In truth, he feared that by the time he went downstairs, those students would snap out of it and Xu Wei would suffer more harm.
After he spoke, the teenager who had solemnly dropped the harsh words quickly spun around at the window toward the stairwell. Thud thud thud—he hurried down the stairs.
Seeing the transfer student, who seemed to have pierced their identities, flee at top speed left Tao Xi and the others, already undecided, to carefully squat down. They hid their tracks and very cautiously exchanged notes with paper and pen.
【What do we do? The one who got the Death Invitation seems to be Xu Wei!】
【Should we go up?】
【How? With our heads?】
【So what’s the situation now? Are we in a Weird Dungeon, or a horror campus novel?】
【Sigh. Hard to say.】
If they were in a dungeon, according to the rules of the games they’d played before, weren’t they forbidden from acting outside their personas right now?
But they had no personas at all! Even their so-called new student identities were something they’d tremblingly scraped together. Every time they walked through the school, they felt pairs of eyes that saw through everything watching them with mockery.
Once the notes made the rounds, everyone squatted dejectedly beneath the windowsill.
It wasn’t that they wanted to stand by and let someone die. It was just as the note had said—how were they supposed to save him?
In this school, to those monsters cloaked in human skin, all their struggles probably looked like a farce.
Amid the silence, Tao Xi suddenly stood up.
“What are you doing?” A companion tugged at him.
Tao Xi scratched the back of his head. At that moment, he seemed somewhat heartless. “That… I want to go down and check it out too.”
“Anyway, I don’t think we’ll last long here.”
Die sooner or later—it was all the same. Worst case, they just died.
“Maybe after I die, I can go home.”
The sunny, athletic-looking guy spoke hopefully. But anyone could tell the string in his heart had pulled too tight and was about to snap.
As Tao Xi’s words faded, a new sound finally came from downstairs.
Tanzhong University was huge, and so was the teaching building.
The footsteps of the teenager sprinting from upstairs to downstairs sounded a bit heavier than before. Yet they only made the man across from him watch with even more amusement.
“You managed to smash a chair onto my head, so why run down here?”
“I’m waiting right here for you. And then?” He spread his hands, his expression expectant.
But Su Ximu keenly sensed the thick malice lurking behind that expectation.
Any creature that treated its own kind like playthings was steeped in malice.
So he said nothing. He simply stepped toward Xu Wei.
In the way stood the follower who’d blocked Xu Wei from slamming into the wall earlier. His face soured as he reached out to intercept. “Hey, Young Master Wuchang is talking to you. You didn’t…”
Su Ximu glanced down at his own hand.
These past few days, aside from cram school, Big Brother, Second Brother, Third Brother, and Ox Grandpa had all taught him how to wield the strange power that had just awakened in his body.
After some practice, he’d learned to make calls from a distance, to infuse objects with power for harder hits, and…
The follower kept blabbering. The next second, a hand glowing faintly with light reached out. It was slender and pale, looking hardly strong.
Su Ximu shoved hard.
The tall, burly student who’d been yammering nonstop flew into the air, sent tumbling several meters away.
Outside the school.
Su Wuzi, who had been sitting quietly in the car perusing recipes, looked up. His gaze pierced through the car window, peering into the distance.
A moment later, he smiled. Pride flickered in his eyes—his kid was impressive.
Xu Wei had thought he was done for.
In a situation like this, he no longer feared death itself. But he dreaded a painful death.
Yesterday, classes hadn’t officially started at the school yet. Still, some boarding students had returned.
That evening, all twenty-one of them had crammed into the tiny game hall, too scared to venture out. But they couldn’t fend off someone deliberately harassing them.
No—not “someone.” It was a brutal monster through and through.
That was when they first confronted it head-on: as ordinary humans, their struggles and resistance were pathetically feeble against that thing.
One classmate, Ma Bin, even had a chunk of flesh torn from his calf amid the struggle.
And yet, the monster that had seemed invincible to them became other students’ prey in the next instant.
Xu Wei could vividly recall last night. He remembered how they’d panicked and blended into the student crowd.
In truth, no one paid them any mind.
Those students only cared about the monster.
Rumor had it that not long before, F4 had sent him something called a Death Invitation.
So they swarmed him. They excitedly ripped off the monster’s hands—left first, then right. Then the legs.
Finally, the creature that had toyed with its “prey,” blood from its bite still staining the corner of its mouth, became a pathetic thing wailing and writhing on the ground.
It didn’t end there. One student tossed aside the severed arm in his grip, strode laughing to the monster’s back, pried open its jaw, and wrenched with all his might. Snap—the neck broke.
The head, still attached by the neck, lolled limply, like a broken doll in a mall display.
An ordinary person would have died from wounds like that long ago.
But for a monster, only when its human skin was fully peeled away did its true form emerge.
Beneath the skin bloomed a dark purple mushroom, its umbrella fully unfurled.
It rooted into its own human skin, sprouting from the mangled flesh and bone.
Some students hesitated at the sight of the mushroom.
But soon another spoke up. Tourist Garden had changed owners and fired employees with bad habits they couldn’t shake.
This purple mushroom must be one of them—come to school and couldn’t resist a snack.
That night, the mushroom’s screams echoed for a long time.
Xu Wei and his companions blended into the crowd, listening to those wails. Their minds reeled. In a haze, they concluded: better a quick death than endure that fate.
And today, because of one name, he’d received the same Death Invitation the monster had.
He’d failed.
He hadn’t killed himself fast enough.
In his daze, the shadow looming over his head lifted.
He kept his head bowed, unmoving. He’d slipped into denial of reality.
Until hands touched his body, trying to help him up.
He heard a voice: “Xu Wei? Xu Wei?”
Su Ximu now knew better than to let a player stew too long in a dungeon’s vibe—they’d go dumb.
He called out several times, but it didn’t snap Xu Wei out of it. Still, he didn’t want to slap him.
After a moment’s thought, Su Ximu freed one hand and placed it atop Xu Wei’s head.
“Ah!” Pain jolted Xu Wei. He yelped and clutched his scalp. Light returned to his eyes.
Su Ximu blinked at the sight. He quietly slipped his right hand behind his back and flicked away the hairs he’d yanked free.
When Xu Wei focused on the person before him, he almost believed he’d returned to the real world.
But the horrific backdrop behind snapped him back to reality—this was still the terror campus.
He stared at the guy opposite, hand outstretched, stammering. “You… you…”
He “you”ed for ages without getting anywhere.
Su Ximu’s tone soothed. “We’ll talk later. For now, we leave.”
Leave?
Xu Wei’s thoughts tangled into chaos. He couldn’t fathom how Su Ximu had ended up here.
He let the other pull him to his feet, though his legs stayed shaky.
Leave? Could he really?
If so, yesterday’s monster would’ve bolted long ago.
“I say, can you two leave?”
Nearby, Wuchang 04—unused to being ignored—spoke up again. The playful interest had vanished from his tone. Low pressure rolled off him, pinning the nearby students in place.
Su Ximu glanced outside. Even now, with this spectacle, no teacher or administrator had shown.
Either they didn’t dare… or they were already dead.
A bold notion flickered in his mind.
He withdrew his gaze and finally addressed the F4 member across from him—the Young Master Wuchang on everyone’s lips. “What is a Death Invitation?”
“I overheard you from upstairs. Does it mean a Death Invitation is a command? Any student who gets one has to be killed by the others?”
“Who sends them? You guys?”
Wuchang 04 eyed the fearless teen. For some reason, his rising anger ebbed. A tolerant smile crept onto his face. In a coaxing tone, he said, “You want to know? How about I send the next one to you?”
With that, a black invitation with gold edges—lavishly ornate—shot out from thin air.
Su Ximu caught it. He examined it closely, then thoughtfully laid his other hand atop it too, aiming to solidify his latest lesson.
Milky white light bloomed between his palms.
Where the glow touched, the inky black retreated bit by bit until it was gone.
The platinum invitation was reclamped between Su Ximu’s two fingers. In a breath, it shifted from somber to pristine.
Under everyone’s gaze, he pressed the platinum invitation atop the black one on Xu Wei’s back.
Perhaps because they were in the Weird World, it stuck fast without any glue.
Next, with Xu Wei staring like he was a god, his classmate—who’d somehow ended up here—said, “My invitation is now on top of yours.”
“You don’t seem that impressive.”
“Are all you F4 like you?”
Upstairs, Tao Xi jerked his head up.
This deja vu… didn’t feel like a heroine anymore.
Could it be… F5?!
