Chapter 49 Part 1

Regardless of what Lin Juan said, the three who supported each other had already regarded him as a god descended to save them.

Especially since Lin Juan had such a perfect face, with long hair drifting elegantly, just like an immortal.

“But we’ve never seen you before,” the adolescent boy to Xiao Ping’s left mumbled.

Perhaps because they had run for too long, or maybe because Lin Juan was simply too good-looking, the boy’s cheeks flushed red, and he didn’t dare look at anyone.

“God, no…” Xiao Ping faltered. How was he supposed to address him?

“My surname is Lin. I just transferred in, so it’s normal that you haven’t seen me. I haven’t seen you guys either. What’s going on with you? And that monster just now—why are there monsters in the school?” Lin Juan seized the opportunity to keep the topic on track.

Xiao Ping was about to speak when Lin Juan thought of something and interrupted him. “Wait a moment first. Let me confirm if those monsters are no longer a threat. Besides these few, are there any other monsters?”

He didn’t want new monsters to burst out of the fog while they talked.

“There are no others. These were the ones chasing us the whole time.”

Lin Juan nodded and walked toward one of the monsters that had been smashed into the pit at the bottom.

Xiao Ping and the others felt both scared and curious. In the end, curiosity won out. They exchanged glances and, as if by prior agreement, shuffled their feet closer to Lin Juan.

They didn’t dare get too close and stopped at a short distance, craning their necks to peek.

The monster’s sheer weight had created a deep crater where it landed. It lay at the bottom, twitching faintly.

Lin Juan jumped into the pit. With a clang clang, he landed two more punches, and the monster stopped moving entirely.

He dealt with the other few in the same way, smashing them unconscious.

The three boys’ eyes grew brighter and brighter. If the situation had allowed it, and they weren’t afraid Lin Juan would dislike it, they would have rushed up to hug his thighs on the spot.

So strong. So handsome.

The three thought in unison.

After confirming the monsters were completely knocked out and wouldn’t suddenly attack, Lin Juan followed the three boys, along with the class monitor, to an unused equipment room.

“We were hiding here before. It’s relatively safe,” one of the boys said. He used his sleeve to wipe the dust off a chair and eagerly moved it in front of Lin Juan.

Lin Juan didn’t refuse the boy’s kindness. Under the boy’s anxious gaze, he sat down.

The boy’s tense expression visibly relaxed.

There weren’t many chairs, so the others simply sat on the ground around Lin Juan, looking up at him.

Being stared at by several pairs of clear eyes at once, Lin Juan coughed lightly and spoke. “I didn’t see you guys during class today. Where were you?”

He didn’t directly say he was a rescuer from outside the school. This was an A-rank anomaly domain, and he needed to figure out first whether these students knew they were trapped. If they didn’t, blurting out the truth might alert the enemy.

He wasn’t afraid of stirring up the weird phenomena—he just worried they might go berserk and hurt these students. After all, his mission was primarily to safely escort the thirty-five trapped students out.

Xiao Ping and his companions exchanged a glance, then looked at the class monitor.

The class monitor touched her face. “Why are you all staring at me like that?”

Xiao Ping didn’t answer directly. Instead, he vaguely asked, “Why is the class monitor out so late?”

The class monitor put her hands on her hips, showing her displeasure at the doubt. “What, you guys can wander around outside in the middle of the night, but I can’t come out looking for people?”

Speaking of looking for people reminded the class monitor of her original purpose. She had come out for Huimei.

“Has anyone gone missing?”

Xiao Ping’s expression suddenly turned serious, and the class monitor deflated. “It’s Huimei. During roll call, I saw she wasn’t there. I asked her roommates, and they said they hadn’t seen her, so I came out to look.”

“What about you guys? What’s your deal?” The class monitor’s mind went blank for a moment. “Lin said he hasn’t seen you before. You didn’t come to class during the day?”

How did I have no impression of that at all?

Not just her—the classmates and teachers in the class hadn’t shown any abnormality either!

Realizing this, the class monitor’s heart jolted in shock.

This was very abnormal!

Normally, even if just one student missed a class, it would spark a wave of discussion. It wouldn’t be like today during the day, with no ripples at all in the class.

If she hadn’t happened to run into them today, when would she have realized that several people were missing from the class?

Besides these three in front of her and Huimei, had other classmates disappeared too?

The class monitor’s face turned extremely ugly, her shock plain to see. She instinctively turned to Lin Juan for help. “Lin, during the day, I completely forgot… that three people were missing from our class…”

As she spoke, she clutched her head. “I’m the class monitor. How could I forget how many students are in the class? How could I not know some students didn’t come to class? This isn’t right…”

It was too wrong.

Having glimpsed a sliver of truth, the class monitor’s mind erupted in intense pain.

The more she thought, the worse the pain got.

It was like someone had taken an electric drill and was boring into her brain with force.

A massive roaring filled her ears, and her soul felt like it was being torn apart.

“Don’t think. Empty your mind.”

In her extreme agony, a voice like heavenly music rang by her ear. The class monitor followed its instruction and cleared her mind.

The pain slowly subsided.

“I feel like I forgot something,” she said, physiological tears streaming down her face. Her tone was certain. “I definitely forgot something very important.”

Outside the window, the moonlight blazed brightly—but it had turned an unusual green.

Shining in through the window, it was eerie and deathly still.

Xiao Ping and the other two stayed silent for a long time. Finally, as if reaching some resolution, Xiao Ping spoke. “Class monitor, it’s normal that you don’t remember us. From the moment we broke the rules, the school erased all traces of us. If you could remember us, if you could notice we hadn’t come to class for days, that would be abnormal.”

“Why?” The class monitor felt even more dazed, as if she had stepped into a world she had never known. Her entire perception had shifted dramatically.

“This school is very wrong,” Xiao Ping steadied himself. When he spoke of it, fear showed on his face. “It’s looping forever—the same exams over and over, the same classes repeating endlessly. We’re trapped in a time loop, unable to break out.”

The first to realize something was wrong with this world was Xiao Ping’s friend, the class’s bottom-ranked student, Shi Haochen.

Shi Haochen scratched his chin, looking embarrassed. “I’m the class’s dead last. My dad pulled strings to stuff me in here. My scores across all of Upward Middle School barely count as average. I know full well how many points I usually get. But this time, on the mock exam, I scored way beyond what I imagined.”

Six hundred and thirty-seven points—for Shi Haochen, whose highest before had been only five hundred and twenty, it was a score he never dreamed of.

Sitting in the exam room, his pen moved as if guided by a god. He solved problems he usually skipped outright, but Shi Haochen had no memory of learning those solution methods.

It was as if someone had crammed knowledge into his brain through some unknown means.

At first, Shi Haochen didn’t suspect anything, thinking it was just luck. But then in class, when the teacher lectured, it all felt like he’d experienced it many times before. Shi Haochen no longer dismissed it as his imagination.

He told his dorm roommate and good friend, Zhou Ping.

The two put their heads together and realized there were many things off. For example, they could accurately predict the cafeteria menu change the next day or precisely guess when the teacher for the next class would be suddenly called away for a meeting—things not on any schedule.

One thing could be coincidence. Three, five, ten?

When something wasn’t occasional but frequent, it meant there was more to it.

They tried to find what was wrong.

After who knew how many loops, Shi Haochen’s exam scores stabilized around six hundred and fifty. Still, they hadn’t pinpointed exactly what was off.

Until one late night, their dorm roommate Zhu Zhihui suddenly had a stomachache. The two who weren’t asleep went with their scared roommate to use the bathroom outside.

Outside the dorm, they saw a strange green light.

“What’s that?” Shi Haochen, waiting outside, nudged Zhou Ping.

Zhou Ping looked out the window. The green light was just a point, not too far or too near from them. “Is it my imagination? Why do I feel like the green light is moving toward us?”

At two in the morning, a weird green light—after reading countless ghost stories, the two boys broke out in cold sweat.

“It’s not your imagination. I see it too.” Shi Haochen’s voice shook. “Hurry and call him to finish up. We’re heading back to the dorm.”

They called a few times, but there was no response from the bathroom.

“Are you in there? Speak up or we’re coming in!”

Still no response.

The two exchanged a glance and steeled themselves to open the bathroom door.

The bathroom was empty.

Where was their big roommate?

He couldn’t have fallen into the toilet, right?

It was a squat toilet. No way a grown man could fall in.

“Should we head back first?” It was too creepy. Zhou Ping’s voice trembled as he spoke.

Shi Haochen glanced at the green light outside the window again and suddenly grabbed Zhou Ping. “Look at that!”

Down below, a figure was walking toward the green light.

“Is that Zhu Zhihui? When did he go down?” Shi Haochen pressed against the window to look out.

They were on the second floor—not high, but climbing out the window directly wasn’t easy.

When had Zhu Zhihui gone out? Why hadn’t they heard a sound?

“Too disloyal, huh? He goes out without telling us and leaves us waiting this long.”

“Shall we go check?”

“Once we find him, we come right back.”

Decision made, the two headed downstairs.

It was pitch black below.

“Really going?” Zhou Ping hesitated at the dorm building’s entrance.

Shi Haochen adjusted his glasses. “Remember what we talked about before, how the school feels off? We checked everywhere during the day and found nothing unusual. But is everything really normal?”

Zhou Ping psyched himself up inwardly. “The school was fine during the day doesn’t mean it’s fine at night. No matter what, I don’t want to stay in this creepy school forever. You?”

“Me too.”

No more needed saying. The two stepped out of the dorm building together.

They didn’t see it—the dorm wall behind them glowed faintly with pale green text:

Rule Twenty-Eight: After midnight, students are prohibited from leaving the dorm.

As soon as they stepped out, fog rose. Visibility dropped to five meters; they couldn’t make out their surroundings clearly. Only the green light shone like a beacon in the mist.

Since they were out, there was no turning back halfway.

“The fog was too thick. We lost our bearings and could only head toward the green light. We figured Zhu Zhihui must have gotten lost in the fog too and followed it.”

They did find Zhu Zhihui, of course—otherwise, there wouldn’t be three of them now.

After finding him, the three discovered they couldn’t go back.

The fog lifted, and the campus looked normal. But their sun never rose again. They were lost in an endless night.

“We tried going back to the dorm, but it was empty inside.”