Chapter 287: Guangming Academy
When they were on the platform of the Guangming Academy station, they did not see any monsters waiting outside the train like they did at other stations before. There was no one on the platform, but the light was extremely dim, and there were dark shadows everywhere that could not be seen.
The passengers who got off the train with them did not scream. They once thought that it was because the puzzle was a bit simple this time, so the passengers who got off the train got it right.
But now think about it, maybe it’s not that no one got off the wrong door, but that the passengers who got off the wrong door got into trouble quietly.
After all, no one has ever said that the monsters on the platform of the arrival station are all physical attacks.
Lin Wu and three others also sent messages in the group at the same time as You Zhenzhen.
Tang Yatong: Library? Is it the building with the pointed roof? I'm in another building behind that building now, come over here.
You Zhenzhen: Yes, it's the building with the red pointed roof. Is there anyone in your building? I don't see anyone else here for the time being.
Lin Wu: ...Is it daytime or night there? You
Zhenzhen: Why are you asking this? Of course it's daytime!
Lin Wu: ...
Xi Yuan: No one? How could that be, I'm in the library building, and there are a lot of students around.
You Zhenzhen: Are they in different libraries? Or is it because the soundproofing is good, so I don't hear any human voices or movement for the time being.
You Xi raised his head and looked around again. This time, because his eyes had adapted to the darkness, he could see the outlines of the buildings in the dark. She was inside a building, not knowing what kind of building it was or which floor it was on.
She was probably standing in the middle of a long corridor. On her left was what seemed to be a classroom. She could vaguely see the tall window frames and the dark interior of the classroom. She had just walked out of the open door of this classroom.
Normally, there should be a row of windows on her right, but when she turned around, she only saw the shadow of a wall in the darkness.
There were no windows, which was a bit counterintuitive for a building, but it could also be in a basement or something like that.
Youxi: Lin Wu is probably in the same area as me. It's also pitch black here.
Lin Wu: Where are you? I should be in a room with a bed, a dormitory or something like that. There are tall semicircular windows on the wall, but there is a corridor outside the window, and the other side of the room is a closed wall.
Xiyuan: The aboriginal character I set this time is an art teacher. In the memory of the setting, this academy has a basement, but it is just an ordinary warehouse. There should be no large underground buildings or the like. The background here is biased towards the West, the academy is located in a remote area, and it is managed in a closed manner, so it does not have much contact with the outside world...
You Zhenzhen: Wait a minute, if the background is biased towards the West, is it an academy with a magical background? Then could my mother and Wu Ge be in a dark room or something like that?
Xiyuan: ...Not a magical background. But the dark room you mentioned is indeed possible to exist, but it may be that the character in my setting is not very clear about this matter. It is noon now, and the students have all finished class. I will go around to collect some information.
You Zhenzhen: Wait a minute! You just said... noon? Are you sure?
Xiyuan stood by the window of the library holding his cell phone. Through the clear glass in front of him, he could see the brilliant sunshine outside staying in the center of the sky. He reached out and opened the window. A gentle warm breeze blew in. The sky was blue and bright. It was indeed noon, that's right.
He replied: Yes, I'm standing by the window. It's noon. The weather is good.
You Zhenzhen held the phone and slowly raised her head. She looked at the sunset in the western sky in a daze. The warm orange color of the sunset did not bring her a trace of warmth. Looking at the sunset, she even felt a chill on her body, and the hair on her back stood up.
The phone kept vibrating. It was her companions in the group who couldn't see her message and asked her what happened.
What's wrong?
You Zhenzhen picked up the phone and typed word by word: So strange, why? It's not noon here, it's evening... and from just now until now, I haven't seen a single student...
You Xi frowned. If what Xiyuan and You Zhenzhen said was true, then there was a big problem with this "Guangming Academy", and it might be different from all the other stations they had experienced before.
**
Ten minutes later, the five people figured out the general situation through description.
It was evening time at the academy where You Zhenzhen was, and she hadn't seen a single student so far, but she was not alone. Tang Yatong had already joined her, and the two were in the same place. Now the two were planning to check the situation of other nearby buildings.
It was noon in the college where Xiyuan was. He was in the library. There were many people around him. Students gathered together. Some were reading and reviewing, some were taking a nap with books covering their faces, and some were leaning against everything and chatting in whispers... In short, no matter how you look at it, it was a very harmonious picture of a normal college.
As for Lin Wu and You Xi, it was not possible to determine the time for the time being. They were both inside the building. The structure of the building was very strange. All the places inside that should have windows connected to the outside world were only walls.
They had checked with flashlights separately. The places they were in were indeed different. One was a classroom-like area, and the other was a dormitory area.
The buildings in the classroom-like area were particularly old and mottled, as if they had been sealed for a long time, while the dormitory area was okay. It just looked a little cold and no one lived there.
There is no light or power supply in these two places. It is dead silent all around. They are not together yet. The environment is a bit creepy.
Lin Wu: It is also possible that they are in different areas of the same building. I will check the surrounding situation first to see if there is a chance to meet up with you.
You Xi: Our locations can be explained in this way, but what about Zhen Zhen and Xi Yuan? Even the time is different...
Xi Yuan: Could it be like the fairy tale park, in different areas? If the geographical span of the academy is large enough, this is possible.
Tang Yatong: You mean the time difference caused by the geographical span, right?
Xi Yuan: Yes. It is also possible that it is not the academy as a whole that is large, but different branches, such as the branch in Country M and the branch in Country Y.
The difference in regional time zones can indeed explain why everyone is in different environments, but it takes time to verify.
Under the current circumstances, Youxi and Lin Wu can only explore on their own. She put away her mobile phone and raised the flashlight again to look around.
The corridor was long and empty. When the footsteps fell, a faint echo could be heard. The flashlight shone through the broken glass of the classroom window. The tables and chairs inside were messy and the walls were old. There were several rows of shelves on both sides, as if they had been abandoned for a long time. There
was a moldy smell in the air. There was no sound around her. She could clearly hear her own breathing.
This really resembled a scene from a nightmare. She was trapped in a strange, dark, deserted building. Every step she took had to be alert in all directions, lest something appear in the darkness that she could not see.
She had experienced so many apocalypses and stations, and had seen the most horrible and disgusting infections, but this was the first time she had experienced such a situation.
Even if the five people in their team were separated, what about the passengers who had just got off the train with them? There could not be only one team at a station. Where were the other passengers?
She walked forward a little distance and saw the shadow of a window frame on the wall opposite another classroom. She moved the flashlight and found the door of the classroom.
The classroom door was half open. She stepped inside. Her eyes had completely adapted to the darkness and she could see everything clearly. She nimbly avoided the tilted tables and chairs and came to the window frame on the opposite wall of the classroom.
Most of the glass on the window frame was broken, but behind these windows was still a wall. It was not a cement wall, but a stone brick wall built up piece by piece. It was as if someone had deliberately built these stone bricks outside the windows of this building to block all the windows.
You Xi took out a hammer from the space and knocked on the stone brick wall behind the window.
If these stone bricks were built up later by someone, then this place should be able to lead to the outside world. She hit it twice,
but the brick wall in front of her didn't move at all. She gripped the handle of the hammer tightly, adjusted the angle, and smashed it down again. This time she put all her strength into it. Even if there was steel bar and iron plate in front of her, there should be a hole. The stone brick did crack, but it didn't break and fall off, and no light came in. Through the broken gaps, she saw that the darkness outside the brick wall seemed to be thicker than that inside the building.
There was a strange sound coming from the gap, squeaking, as if something rusty was moving again.
She heard a dripping sound coming from the brick walls outside all the windows, as if liquid was flowing down from the gaps in the brick walls.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of blood, and she raised her flashlight to scan it.
A red sticky liquid was dripping down the gray brick wall. It was blood.
Her phone suddenly vibrated, and the prompt that had just appeared was on it.
Prompt: Layer damage +1, SAN value change has been triggered.
SAN value: 19 (initial value 20). Note: If SAN returns to zero, you will lose your eligibility to board the train.
You Xi was stunned for a moment. She had also played games, so she naturally knew what SAN value meant.
Places where data such as SAN value appear mean that supernatural events will occur around.
Simply put, if you want to leave here or explore here, you can't use the previous method of overcoming ten difficulties with force.
Therefore, her attempt to break the wall just now was considered an illegal action at this site, causing damage to something, triggering an invisible attack, and reducing her SAN value.
You Xi put away the hammer and took two steps back. The blood flowing on the brick wall in front of her had gradually stopped, and the original crack had returned to its original state.
The way out was not here. Maybe she should walk through the entire building first, and then find a way to reunite with her companions.
You Xi left the classroom and walked forward along the long and dark corridor again. At the end of the corridor, there was also a tall window, with a semicircular top and a rectangular lattice window at the bottom. The outside of the glass was also filled with gray brick walls.
In the darkness at the corner, a wide, dark wooden staircase with handrails lay quietly. Some stairs led up, while others led down, indicating that she was not on the first floor.
She chose the stairs that led down, and just after she took a few steps, her phone vibrated again.
This time, the message came from the team group.
Xiyuan: Something happened in the library just now. One of the walls suddenly cracked. The aborigines thought it was an earthquake, so they evacuated in a hurry. Some people were accidentally injured in the panic, but fortunately, there was no earthquake... It was initially suspected that the site this time might have been hit by a disaster such as an earthquake or a ground fissure.
Youxi read the message several times, and then sent a message: Is it only the wall that cracked?
Xiyuan: Just now
This time, the message only had three words, as if it was suddenly stopped because of something. Youxi guessed that something must have happened to Xiyuan again. But now she suddenly had a guess in her mind that needed to be verified immediately.
She walked down the wooden stairs, went down two floors, and reached the bottom.
In front of her was a very empty space with a very high ceiling. The light of the flashlight could not illuminate the whole picture. She looked around and found the center of this floor based on the vague outline of the building.
There was a large bar there. She walked around the bar and found a thick old book on the dusty table.
The book was tattered, she reached out and brushed off the dust on the book, the flashlight clearly illuminated the words on it: Library loan book.
**
In a corner of the old building, the yellowish light of a camping lamp was on.
Next to the camping lamp, there was a small camping table and camping chair. On the camping table, there was another small rechargeable lamp and a cup of hot cocoa.
The light of the rechargeable lamp was not adjusted very brightly. You Xi was wrapped in a thick down jacket, and with this little light, she drew the 3D stereogram of the whole building and the floor plan of each floor on her notebook.
Before that, she spent two or three hours walking up and down the whole building.
There was no exit, no other travelers, no supply points, no living creatures, and no Easter egg fragments were activated.
All windows or doors leading to the outside were blocked by bricks, and violently breaking brick walls was a violation of regulations and would cause a decrease in SAN value, so this also meant that she was trapped in this building.
In the past few hours, the friends have also sent messages one after another.
When Xiyuan was halfway through sending the previous message, the building shook again. This time, the ground at another corner of the wall cracked. Like the previous wall crack, the range was small and the time was short, causing the students to panic for a while, but it soon calmed down.
You Zhenzhen and Tang Yatong first controlled the drone to patrol the entire college, but the drone repeatedly flew over a certain distance when it flew over the woods outside the wall. This situation is familiar to everyone, that is the boundary of the site.
Afterwards, they personally went to the place where the drone flew repeatedly, and finally confirmed that the size of the entire site is only within the scope of the college. No matter which direction you leave the college, as long as you exceed about four or five meters, you will enter the space duplication area.
Now the question is, if the entire "Guangming College" site is only the size of the college, then where is Xiyuan now?
Tang Yatong: What we can confirm now is that there were other people in the school besides the two of us. Drones captured images of young boys and girls looking out of the windows of many buildings. They must have been attracted by the sound of the drones. However, no one opened the windows. Many people pulled the curtains and looked out through the gaps. The expressions of the students captured by the drones were very alert, as if they were afraid of something. In addition, there were many other tourists in the school. Because the students were hiding, these newly arrived tourists, like the two of us, stood out in the empty campus... But now it was dark, and Zhenzhen and I had found a room with a good view to temporarily settle down. From this, we can imagine that those who hid behind the windows and curtains, in addition to the aboriginal students, were other tourists who arrived at the station earlier.
Based on the above situation, Youxi also expressed his own guess: Have you heard of the real world, the surface world, and the inner world settings?
Although not many of the five of them had been exposed to this kind of game, these few words alone have clearly pointed out the key points.
The station is only as big as the academy, so the differences caused by the region and time difference that they had previously proposed have been overturned.
Now this guess is closer to their situation, the same station, the same academy, but in different levels of the world.
Xiyuan may be in the real world, and others may be in the inner world - such as Youxi. She felt that the first crack in the wall in Xiyuan was probably caused by her.
Of course, this is just a very preliminary guess, and the follow-up will have to rely on exploration information to verify.
In addition, Tang Yatong and You Zhenzhen both triggered SAN values after the sun set. The reason for the drop in SAN values was different from hers, because they were still outdoors when it got dark, which was also the reason why they quickly entered the building and found a room to hide.
Rooms with damage or incomplete doors and windows were not acceptable, and even if You Zhenzhen turned on the shield, it would not work. The SAN value stopped decreasing only after they found an intact room and closed the doors and windows.
Currently, the SAN value of the two people is 17 each, and the starting value is also 20.
Lin Wu's SAN value also triggered a change, but he did not damage the wall. When he was investigating a dormitory, he found a worn-out notebook under the mattress.
While he was flipping through the notebook, the dormitory changed. The walls around began to bleed, and several miserable pale faces appeared on the glass windows on the corridor walls. Those faces had empty eyes and seemed to be struggling to get in from the outside.
Afterwards, his mobile phone sent two reminders, one was to remind him of the SAN value change, and the other was to congratulate him for triggering the event.
Lin Wu must have found some clues and was investigating something. After explaining the SAN value, he quickly sent a message and then disappeared.
That message was sent an hour ago: I may have found a way to get to the creek... This site is not just as simple as the surface world and the inner world, there are other problems.
**
After Youxi finished drawing the 3D map of the entire building and the floor plan of each floor, he took a photo and sent it to the team group.
This is the only function of the team group besides sending text, sending pictures, but the speed of sending and receiving pictures is extremely slow, and they have never used it before.
This time they were forced to do it, because this site can't even get a mobile phone, so they can only use the functions of the team group as much as possible.
After a long time, the picture showed that it was sent successfully.
Soon, Xiyuan sent a message: You guessed right, you are not in the teaching building, you are in the library building, and the internal structure of the building is exactly the same. Xiyuan
's answer also verified the conjecture of multiple worlds, that is, she and Xiyuan are in the same place, and the first crack in the library wall was most likely caused by her.
The other time after that, it was probably other travelers who were trapped in the inner world.
But at that time, she did not hear the sound of other travelers breaking the wall around her, so this also verified Lin Wu's statement: This world is not as simple as the surface world and the inner world, there are other problems.
Lin Wu said that after she found clues while exploring the dormitory area, she also learned from him to look for objects that might provide clues in various places.
As a result, no matter how she looked, she failed to trigger the event. Her SAN value dropped by three more levels, and now it was only 16.
After her SAN value dropped by 4 levels, she felt some changes in her body, not physically, but mentally. She felt sleepy and cold, as if she was in a cold ice cellar and was frozen to the point of losing consciousness.
But she also knew that this was just a feeling transmitted to her by her brain. After all, after taking five [Strong Anti-Sugar Pills], she hadn't felt "cold" for a long, long time.
You Zhenzhen said that even the shield could not prevent the SAN value from dropping, so the "self-cleaning protective suit" was useless. In the end, she still found a thick long down coat, wrapped herself from head to toe, and took out a cup of hot cocoa to keep warm and refresh herself. Only then did she feel better.
Now that she had finished communicating with her friends and roughly analyzed the clues at hand, fatigue came over her again. It was impossible to distinguish between day and night here, but it was already night in You Zhenzhen and Xiyuan's place, so she was ready to rest for a few hours and continue when "dawn" came.
She was now in the lobby on the first floor of the library. The floor was open and the top was high, far exceeding the height of the tree house. She had planned to activate the tree house here and rest with the tree house's super strong defense.
But after You Zhenzhen said that the shield was useless, You Xi guessed that the tree house's defense would also be useless against those invisible attacks. Plus, the tree house was too big and stood out here, like a target, so she gave up now.
Youxi finished her last sip of hot cocoa, put away the camping table, chairs and table lamp, took out a crystal bubble, activated it and stuck it behind a row of cabinets, then put on an oxygen mask and crawled in, sealing the crystal bubble from the inside.
The crystal bubble's defense ability is not weaker than the tree house, but it is very small. She lies in it just right, and she feels safe wrapped up.
Even if other tourists suddenly come nearby, they will not be able to break through the defense for a while.
She put away the camping light, and the surroundings fell into darkness again. She checked the sealing part of the bubble again, then wrapped herself tightly in her down jacket, put on her down hat, took a pillow and a blanket from the space, and lay down to rest.
**
Youxi was awakened by the sound of the vibrating mobile phone. It was still dark around her, and she couldn't tell the difference between day and night. After checking the countdown, she estimated that she had slept for about six hours.
A new reminder appeared on the mobile phone.
Reminder: Congratulations on spending the first night safely. Reward: Refreshing Tea (increases SAN value at a rate of 0.1 grid per second, for a total of 15 seconds).
Youxi was surprised, so the SAN value can be added back after it is reduced. 0.1 seems small, but if it is maintained for 15 seconds, the SAN value can be restored by 1.5 grids in total, which is still very good.
She was about to take out the refreshing tea and suddenly found a blood-red handprint on the outer layer of the crystal bubble.
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