Zhou Ping looked at himself, then at the students coming and going on the sports field. He couldn’t believe it. “We made it out?”
“Class is about to start. Zhou, what are you all doing out here?”
A stern voice rang out from nearby. Zhou Ping looked over—it was their homeroom teacher.
“Teacher, we’ll head back to class right away.”
Under the natural authority of a teacher over students, Zhou Ping answered instinctively.
“Move it. Senior year time is precious—don’t waste it hanging around outside.” The homeroom teacher gave them a deep look before turning toward the academic building.
“Lin, are we going to class?” Now that they knew the school was abnormal, they couldn’t just pretend nothing was wrong and go to class.
They’d just seen students walking around on the sports field, and they couldn’t help wondering if those students turned into monsters too.
“Go to class first.” Seeing their uneasy expressions, Lin Juan reassured them. “Don’t worry.”
With Lin Juan there, Zhou Ping and the others slowly calmed their minds and tried not to show any abnormalities in front of the teachers and classmates.
“The monthly exam is coming up soon. Classmates, prepare well. If you do well, the school has rewards. If you do poorly, you might get brushed out of the class. I hope that in this exam, no one from our class gets brushed out.” The homeroom teacher stood on the podium, her voice stern.
The classroom was silent.
As soon as class ended, the class monitor hurried to Lin Juan’s desk. “Lin, the monthly exam has been moved up.”
They had only been in class for less than half a month, so even if there was a monthly exam, it shouldn’t be at this time.
Only the class monitor, Zhou Ping, and a few others realized something was wrong. They didn’t dare show it too obviously and had secretly tested the waters several times. Apart from them, the other classmates hadn’t noticed anything off about the school.
The class monitor had also seen Huimei.
Huimei appeared unharmed on the daytime campus, not in her monstrous form, but as the real Huimei.
The class monitor was close with her, but after seeing Huimei’s monstrous side, she didn’t dare be alone with her in the same space.
She had tentatively asked Huimei about it, but Huimei acted as normal as the other classmates.
She had no memory of turning into a monster.
The four of them reported the information they had gathered one by one to Lin Juan.
When the exam began, Lin Juan stared blankly at the test paper.
How to put it? The questions felt familiar, but he couldn’t solve them.
After all, it had been many years since he had been in high school.
Lin Juan discreetly observed his surroundings. The students were all seriously working on the questions, but a few had obvious looks of unease on their faces.
Lin Juan noted down those few people and, after the exam ended, asked the class monitor for their information.
“These three classmates seem to be at the bottom of the class in terms of grades…” Midway through, the class monitor stopped. “No, I remember their grades weren’t the worst. Why did I subconsciously say they were at the bottom?”
A sharp pain stabbed deep in her mind, as if something was stopping her from thinking further.
“Empty your mind. Don’t think about anything.” Seeing her face suddenly turn pale, Lin Juan quickly reminded her.
The class monitor was no stranger to it by now. The pain subsided after she stopped thinking for a while.
“Lin…”
“I’ve got it. You don’t need to say more.”
According to the class monitor, these three classmates were the dregs of the class, but she also said she remembered their previous grades hadn’t been that bad. So, their grades had obviously dropped after the domain enveloped the school.
Was the change in their expressions because they knew what happened if you got brushed out of the class for poor performance? Or had they experienced it?
From what Shi Haochen and the others had said before, it wasn’t hard to infer that they had likely gone through multiple loops in this school shrouded by the domain.
To leave, they had to break the loop.
What was the starting point of the loop? What was the endpoint? And what was the purpose of these repeated loops?
Lin Juan had been here for a full two days at most. He only knew that the sun and moon in the sky were the weird phenomena’s eyes forming the domain. What was the weird’s true body? Where was it hiding?
The entire campus was permeated with a weird aura, as if the whole school was the weird itself.
It couldn’t really be that the weird was the school, could it?
It had only been two days. No rush. Lin Juan told himself inwardly.
The monthly exam lasted two days. On the second day, sitting in the exam room again, Lin Juan clutched his forehead and started pretending to be sick.
“My head hurts so much, teacher. I want to take a leave.”
Apart from the class monitor and the other three looking over with concern, the rest showed no reaction.
This was very abnormal.
Students were at their most curious during school years. Even during an exam, if something sudden happened, it was impossible for everyone to ignore it.
Lin Juan felt that these students’ NPC-like vibe had grown even stronger.
The teacher stood up, frowning tightly. “Lin, this is your first exam since joining the class. It’s very important. Can you hold on a bit longer?”
“But my head really hurts.” Lin Juan put on an extremely pained, sickly expression.
“Then you should think it over carefully.” The teacher stopped persuading him, her expression turning a bit strange, like she was expectant yet regretful. “If you don’t do well this time, you’ll get brushed out of our class.”
“I’ve thought it over.”
“Zhou Ping.” The teacher’s gaze scanned the exam room and landed on Zhou Ping, who was craning his neck. “You take Lin to the infirmary.”
Taking Lin Juan to the infirmary would definitely delay exam time and affect his final score. The teacher’s action undoubtedly cut off Zhou Ping’s path to staying in the class.
Mission accomplished. Lin Juan stopped pretending. When Zhou Ping came over with a worried face to support him, he stood up straight and strode out.
Where was there any sign of his earlier sickly weakness?
The teacher reacted too but didn’t stop him. Instead, she watched the two leave with a smile like she was enjoying a show.
Zhou Ping also realized Lin Juan had been faking it.
Walking through the excessively quiet campus, Zhou Ping couldn’t help but ask, “Lin, did you fake being sick and skip the exam on purpose to get a low score?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that I finally graduated, and I really don’t want to go through exams again.” Yesterday, spending a whole day in the exam room had already been Lin Juan’s limit.
Making someone who had graduated years ago retake high school material was pure torment.
Zhou Ping hadn’t expected this reason and was stunned for a moment.
Seeing his dazed expression, Lin Juan continued, “There’s another reason too. I wanted to check out the daytime campus. Classes are always so packed, and today is a good opportunity.”
Though that was what he said, Zhou Ping inexplicably felt that not wanting to take the exam was the real reason Lin Juan had faked illness to leave the exam room.
Lin Juan actually had another thought: he wanted to see if deliberately faking illness and skipping the monthly exam would provoke the weird lurking in this school.
To deal with the weird, he first had to find it. Two days in, he’d only found a pair of weird eyes. What if, like the lab illusion last time, he ended up stuck for months? Lin Juan couldn’t imagine it.
He really, really didn’t want to attend high school for months more!
The two headed to the infirmary first.
“Are you here to check your brains?” The infirmary door opened, and a middle-aged male doctor in a white coat walked out.
His movements were stiff and sluggish, as if countless invisible strings were attached to him, controlling his every action.
Zhou Ping instinctively moved closer to Lin Juan.
This was the first abnormality he’d seen on the daytime campus.
It also made him clearly realize for the first time how wrong this school was.
“Your teacher told me. Your brain hurts, right?” The school doctor picked up a scalpel from the table, his voice eager. “Let me cut it open and see where it hurts.”
“Holy shit, it’s just a headache—why cut open the brain?!” Zhou Ping exclaimed in shock.
The school doctor turned to him, his gaze icy cold like a snake hiding in the shadows, ready to strike at any moment. His sclera were larger than a normal person’s, with only a tiny pupil left, indescribably eerie.
“L-Lin, is he a monster too?” Zhou Ping’s voice trembled.
“Obviously, yes.”
The daytime monsters maintained a human appearance, only giving a sense of dissonance in their actions. Lin Juan didn’t know if this monster had always been here or if it had spawned because he’d come.
After beating the monster unconscious in a couple of moves, Lin Juan had Zhou Ping help him rummage through the infirmary and found some medical records.
“These names don’t seem to be from our class.” After going through all the records, Zhou Ping noted that the names didn’t match any classmates he knew.
“Headaches, stomachaches, fevers… why does everything require surgery? Is the doctor here a psycho?!”
“Let’s check the operating room.” Lin Juan collected all the medical records. “As far as I know, Upward Middle School’s infirmary isn’t equipped with a dedicated operating room.”
“It isn’t. I’ve been at this school for two years. The infirmary can only dispense medicine and give IVs. For anything serious, you have to go to a big hospital outside.”
Pushing open the operating room door, Lin Juan caught a strong whiff of blood. In an instant, the smell faded, and the room was empty.
“There’s nothing here.” Zhou Ping searched around, puzzled. “Do we have to enter from the nighttime campus?”
What they saw during the day was only the surface.
But the problem was, the weird hiding in the shadows seemed afraid of Lin Juan. Last night, when he’d wandered around late, he hadn’t even seen the green moon, let alone entered the nighttime campus.
Leaving the infirmary, Lin Juan figured that since he’d taken leave, he couldn’t waste it. He and Zhou Ping walked through every area of the campus.
They didn’t miss the abandoned gym or the swimming pool.
Finally, they arrived at the Archives Room.
The whole school was quiet, empty except for the sprint class taking the exam. No students, no teachers, no staff. Under the blazing sun, Zhou Ping felt no warmth at all.
It was abnormal everywhere, so why hadn’t they noticed before?
What had blinded their senses?
How long had they been trapped here?
Zhou Ping didn’t dare think too deeply.
In the Archives Room, all the files were locked in cabinets. Zhou Ping had helped out here before and knew where the key was, saving Lin Juan the trouble of smashing the cabinets.
Inside the cabinets were files for all the students. Zhou Ping saw his own and his friends’. Flipping through them one by one, some were familiar, some not.
Until he came to one with an obviously wrong birthdate.
“Lin, look at this.” He brought the file to Lin Juan. “This person’s birthday is a whole decade earlier than ours!”
The file was somewhat yellowed. In the photo, a shy boy looked down. Ignoring the birth year, everything seemed normal.
But the birth year was the file’s biggest flaw.
Normally, when students graduated, their files were taken away and not left at the school. This file’s owner had attended and graduated at least ten years ago—why was it still here?
Gong Siyuan.
Lin Juan memorized the name. It was a shame he couldn’t contact the outside world; otherwise, having Director Liu check it out would probably reveal the person’s identity.
The sun set in the west. Unknowingly, they had stayed in the Archives Room for several hours. Lin Juan moved his legs, stiff from holding the same position for so long. “Let’s go, back to the classroom.”
The last exam round had just ended. The teacher saw the two walk in casually and scowled. “Lin, you returned at a very convenient time.”
“Not convenient.” Lin Juan smiled faintly. “I picked the time on purpose, teacher. I found something and thought I should turn it over to the school.”
The teacher took a deep breath. “What is it?”
Lin Juan pulled out an unsealed blank file folder and slowly extracted its contents leisurely. “See for yourself, teacher.”
As the contents emerged bit by bit, the moment the photo came into view, the teacher’s pupils shrank dramatically.
The sky suddenly turned dark.
