["Surprise Sanitation Inspection": A good school spirit and discipline begins with a clean dormitory. To cultivate students' cleanliness habits and a sense of collective honor, a teacher from the Academic Affairs Office accepted an invitation from an unknown school and sent several freshmen to experience life there...]

[Note: This paper is an assessment for the "Campus Hygiene Standards" practical course offered by the University Town Joint Academic Affairs Office. The assessment results will be included in the comprehensive assessment award selection process. The Academic Affairs Office reserves the right of interpretation.]

The exam introduction faded rapidly on the mobile phone screen. Tang Xinjue seized the opportunity and threw an [Appraisal] on it.

According to the mall prompts, after the identification skills are upgraded, they can go beyond the literal meaning of perfunctory identification and advance to intelligent identification, and even reveal certain unknown information.

After half a second, the identification takes effect:

[A short introduction to the exam, the text brimming with unreliability. What, produced by the Academic Affairs Office? That's fine.]

Tang Xinjue: "..."

Judging from the sarcastic tone, she believed that it was indeed intelligent identification, but the direction of development was a bit unrelated, with a subtle trend of developing from popular science to complaining.

But putting aside the yin and yang tone, the identification results seem to have a certain meaning -

The name "University Town Joint Academic Affairs Office" suggests that the three universities share a single Academic Affairs Office, which logically should be highly authoritative. However, according to [Appraisal]'s complaints, the Academic Affairs Office seems unreliable.

Tang Xinjue wrote down this information and put away her phone. She was on the upper bunk closest to the door, with a number next to it: Bed 1.

From her angle, she could see the whole room: at this moment, all the students in the room had woken up one after another, but no one dared to get out of bed. They all sat on the bed and looked around this super large dormitory.

The basic layout of this dormitory is upper and lower bunks, divided into two rows, with eight bunks in each row, numbered from 1 to 16. There are very narrow single-opening low cabinets on both sides of the bed, and the small storage space is evenly divided between the upper and lower bunks.

The entire dorm had a single long wooden table, placed in the middle of the aisle between the two rows of beds. Tang Xinjue glanced at it and estimated that it could only accommodate eight people at a time. Clothes, cosmetics, daily necessities, snack bags, leftover instant noodle boxes... miscellaneous items piled up like a small garbage dump, on and under the table, in the aisle, and between the beds.

Taking advantage of his position, Tang Xinjue quickly found three familiar faces in beds 4, 8 and 9 opposite him in the same row - Zheng Wanqing, Zhang You and Guo Guo.

Because their view was blocked, Zheng Wanqing and Zhang You, who were in the lower bunk, couldn't see anyone and kept looking anxiously. Only Guo Guo, who was in the second row across from them and also in the upper bunk, immediately noticed Tang Xin Jue and was delighted.

[God of Secret!]

Guo Guo almost shouted it out, but then he carefully swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue and just made silent lip movements.

From her perspective, Tang Xinjue nodded slightly, then closed his eyes in an instant, as if thinking about something.

Guo Guo was stunned for a second, and the next second, a message suddenly popped up in his mind:

[I'm in bed number 1]

This message has no specific sound or words. It seems to appear out of thin air in the mind, but it can make people subconsciously understand its meaning.

Guo Guo was frightened, and after calming down, he subconsciously looked at Tang Xinjue on bed No. 1. Guo Guo remembered the other party's newly upgraded spiritual skills.

Mind connection!

[Mind Connection (Basic): Using this skill, you can have a certain degree of "mind connection" with three to five people.]

In the personal status bar that only Tang Xinjue could see, a bold blue mental skill was flashing and slowly merging with the original [Mind Control].

After the complete fusion, the dormitory in front of him immediately appeared in his mind in a completely different appearance - all the people, sounds and scenes disappeared, only a dozen burning fireballs floated in the air, evenly distributed in the gray space.

Most of the fireballs were pale yellow, though a few were other colors. For example, Tang Xinjue himself was a dark reddish-black fireball, significantly larger than the others, and quite out of place in the space.

In his "field of vision," wisps of aura, like tentacles of flame, cautiously emerged from each ball, drifting no more than a meter before vanishing. Tang Xinjue tried to control his aura's extension, but before he knew it, it stretched across half the room. His field of vision followed the tentacles, teleporting several meters away, moving seamlessly through the room.

She immediately understood: all the fireballs here are the embodiment of spiritual power.

Every time she approached a fireball, a wave of emotion passed through her, mostly confusion, tension, and anxiety. And when she tried to touch them, the surface of the fireballs immediately produced a repulsive force, isolating her from the outside.

[Do you want to establish a spiritual connection with them? The stronger the other party's rejection intention, the higher the chance of connection failure.]

The skill gave a prompt and warned her that if the connection failed, her own mental strength would also be damaged.

Tang Xinjue made a decision quickly. After one circle, he could clearly feel three particularly familiar fire balls and could easily tell who they were.

[Selection successful, connecting...]

The fireball disappeared and the dormitory returned to its original appearance, with every detail clearly visible.

At the same time, three different consciousnesses appeared in my mind.

When Tang Xinjue opened her eyes again, it seemed like less than half a second had passed. She simultaneously transmitted a message to the three consciousnesses she had just connected with, and as expected, she immediately received three responses.

Zhang You: [Heart Sutra? Is that you?]

Zheng Wanqing: [Holy crap! Am I schizophrenic?]

Guo Guo: [Ahhh, I'm so scared—Jie, Jueshen?]

Tang Xin Jue: [This is my skill. It can connect the three of us to the same channel. I just upgraded it, and now it can be used for simple communication.]

Three people: [……]

When they first bought this skill, they were even more excited than Tang Xin Jue. It was a pity that it was still in the installation stage and they hadn't been able to try it out. They didn't expect that a big thing would come up just after it was installed.

Guo Guo was extremely excited: [This is... our exclusive brain chat group?!]

It’s more convenient than group chat, and you don’t even need to type, you can communicate with each other with just a thought!

With this skill, they felt much more at ease and began to concentrate on observing the environment.

In less than half a minute, one of the girls got off the bed first, but she rolled off screaming.

In full view of everyone, a girl with a bun and a green shirt in bed number 16 fell to the ground in fear. She didn't even care about the pain and tried to grab the girl in bed number 14 next to her: "Help! There's a ghost in my bed!!"

The girl in bed number 14 also reacted quickly. She instantly grabbed the bedside lamp and said, as if she was going to attack if you got any closer: "Don't come over here!"

The girl with the bun-haired hair quickly stepped back: "What I said is true. If you don't believe me, come and see, there's a lot of blood on the pillow!"

A cold voice floated out from somewhere: "You threw yourself on someone else's bed, but how do we know if you are human?"

Basically everyone who has passed the test knows that the bed is a protective barrier and no one dares to go out or let others in easily.

Being questioned about her identity, the girl with the ball-shaped hair was so anxious that she burst into tears but could not explain herself. At this moment, a voice came from bed number 2, which was located below Tang Xinjue:

"Ah Nian, come here."

The man with the meatball head turned his head suddenly, overjoyed:

"Jiang Lan! So you're here, woooooooooooo!!"

She was about to run over, but halfway through, she was tripped by the skin care products scattered askew in the aisle. She fell heavily to the ground, and the loud sound of her falling to the ground echoed throughout the dormitory.

"Now you can believe she's not a ghost."

Jiang Lan, who was in bed number 2, got out of bed and helped her up. She said in a calm voice, "This is my roommate. No ghost would be so stupid. Only a human could do that."

The girl with a ball-shaped hair who was crying loudly in Jiang Lan's arms: "..."

At this moment, the sound of violent knocking on the door suddenly rang out again!

A fierce male voice came from outside the door: "Are you up? We are here to check the hygiene! Open the door quickly!"