Generally speaking, Mingqiao is not unfamiliar with the word "mutation". He has encountered more than one NPC who was transformed from a human before, but strictly speaking, Fendi's mutation is different from those he has met before.
Mingqiao had suspected Fendi many times. Sometimes she looked like a human, and sometimes she looked like a monster. It was as if she had two souls in her shell, switching back and forth from time to time. Moreover, even if Fendi turned into a monster, her appearance was no different from that of an ordinary person. One could only judge by some other subtle things.
"Why is she the only one who has mutated?" Ming Qiao looked at Jiang Su's calm expression and guessed that he must have the answer.
As expected, Jiang Su said, "Because she is the only one who has never read the rules, but has never broken any rules. If we compare the strange things we encountered to a game, I suspect she is half a game designer. She gives me a feeling - she is the same kind of thing."
Mingqiao was shocked. He didn't expect Jiang Su to give such an answer.
Jiang Su continued, "At first I thought she was unique because she didn't break the rules, but when I discussed it with other students, I found that she was not the only one who had never broken the rules. The most important thing was that she had never read the rules."
"She hadn't read it, but she was able to avoid all possible violations of the rules," Ming Qiao recalled every abnormal behavior of Fendi after meeting her. "It's very strange, as if she already knew those rules."
"Yes." Jiang Su nodded: "That's why I feel that she is of the same kind. I don't think anyone knows how to play the game better than the people who participated in the game design. Or, someone should just tell her how to pass the game directly."
"If it's really like what you said, then it's not surprising that Fendi can eliminate all of you." Ming Qiao said, "Because under the same constraints, she can rely on her mastery of the rules and exploit various loopholes that normal people can't think of to win the game. I guess her goal is not to win the game to survive, but to win the game to kill you."
"Yes." Jiang Su looked solemn. He looked at Ming Qiao, "Teacher, you seem to know her very well."
Ming Qiao shook his head. "Not really. I have fought against her, but I defeated her in the game. She may know this game very well, but my identity means I can exploit more loopholes than her."
Jiang Su lowered his head and thought, then raised his head after a few seconds: "You mean, identity is the most important thing?"
"Probably. Otherwise the rule of 'remember your identity' wouldn't appear everywhere," Ming Qiao said.
Fendi had tested Mingqiao's gaming intentions countless times before. She should have known that Mingqiao's chance of winning was greater than hers, so she asked Mingqiao whether he would save her. The same went for those strange conversations that followed.
Mingqiao felt a chill in his feet after realizing it so late. If he had not been vigilant at the time and had believed Fendi and shown mercy, he would have been eliminated from the game for saving her, and then fallen into the side game, and there was no telling whether he would live or die.
Jiang Su pursed his lips and memorized the information he got from Ming Qiao one by one. He sorted out his thoughts before continuing to tell Ming Qiao about what happened later: "The game I played with Fang Duo was to eliminate people in batches. People eliminated in different batches would enter different branch games. For example, the game I drew was 'Hanged Ghost'."
Cao Haibo, who had been sitting nearby and taking care of the unconscious students, felt a chill on his neck when he heard this. He looked at the red marks on the necks of the fallen students, then looked at Jiang Su: "Hanged ghost?"
"Yeah." Jiang Su said, "We were knocked out and fainted for a short time. When we opened our eyes, we were transported from the library to a small boat. Everyone was suspended in the air by an invisible rope, with only the toes barely touching the ground." Jiang Su's eyes became ferocious and terrifying when he said this. He paused for a while before continuing, "I'm tall, and nothing serious happened after being suspended for a long time, so I untied myself first. But when I turned around, I saw a 'ghost' with loose hair and white clothes behind me. He lay on my back. He had no weight, but it seemed that he was stuck to me and I couldn't get rid of him."
Cao Haibo swallowed his saliva and quickly ran to Ming Qiao and squatted next to him.
Mingqiao patted the backs of their hands, comforting them silently.
Jiang Su also came back to his senses from his fear, avoiding some of the details he didn't want to recall, and said directly: "Then I found a way to rescue them from those ropes, and then in the blink of an eye, I was on that pirate ship, and you all know what happened next."
"You came back suddenly because we must have disconnected the power supply to the lights." Mingqiao remembered something: "You just said there were other people there."
"Yes." Jiang Su said, "There were many people eliminated in our batch, and we were divided into three boats. I can only save the people on my boat first."
"Teacher Ming, are we going to save people?" Cao Haibo asked from the side.
"No." Mingqiao and Jiang Su said at the same time.
Jiang Su said: "We only have a limited understanding of the side game right now, it's too risky to rush in to rescue people."
"Indeed," Ming Qiao said, "We haven't even figured out the amusement park, let alone the other branches. We still have to start with this amusement park. In less than two hours, the power here will be completely cut off, so we have to search for as much information as possible during this time, and then complete the branch mission in the library and save people."
Jiang Su's arrival gave Ming Qiao a lot of ideas. He began to observe the amusement equipment outside, and combined with what Jiang Su said before, he found a common point. All the equipment had closed seats, even the carousel, which had cup-shaped seats.
He hadn't thought about it in this way before, but now it seemed even more weird.
This kind of seat will give players a sense of being wrapped, but it also reveals a sense of restraint.
Is this game meant to trap students?
What can be done by trapping them?
Or in other words, when do students get stuck?
Mingqiao's eyes moved slightly.
One is class and the other is exam.
"Jiang Su, do you think this game is trying to teach you something, or is it trying to test you?"
Jiang Su had been following Cao Haibo to look after the unconscious classmates. Upon hearing this, he suddenly looked up at him.
Mingqiao looked at him quietly.
"It's an exam." Jiang Su said.
Mingqiao also vaguely had this feeling.
In the restaurant and playground copies, the things he encountered were basically intended to test his ability to escape rather than to stimulate some of his skills.
He is not sensitive to things like exams, but for Jiang Su, a student who is often tortured by exams, the feeling should be stronger.
And now Jiang Su’s idea coincides with his.
If the purpose of the whole game is to take an exam, then is the condition for escape to pass the exam or get full marks? What is the content of the exam? What is the grading standard? Who is the final examiner?
Let’s go back to a question that Mingqiao has been thinking about for a long time.
What are the rules for?
"Jiang Su, have you ever read the student handbook?"
"I have read it." Jiang Su's expression was serious. "I didn't want to read it at first, because on June 2, when the student handbooks were distributed, the student union was organizing a reading activity, and I was too busy as the chairman. But then an old man broke into the library and asked us all to stop what we were doing and read the student handbooks right where we were. Only after we finished reading could we work."
Ming Qiao frowned after hearing this: "I have two questions for you. First, what was your first reaction after reading the student handbook? Who is that old man?"
"My first reaction after reading it is... it's very troublesome, there are too many restrictions, and some of the regulations are very rigid and too strict." Jiang Su thought for a while and said, "As for the second question, I don't know who the old man is. I have never seen him in school before, but I heard from others that the old man is the new principal."
"He looks to be in his sixties or seventies, about 1.7 meters tall, thin, with slightly gray hair, and wearing glasses?" Mingqiao's voice trembled a little.
"Yes." Jiang Su gave an affirmative answer.
"It's Sun Guiping." Mingqiao murmured.
He will always remember what Sun Guiping looked like. He once plucked Sun Guiping's white hair and bought him a shirt.
Sun Guiping is the new principal, and all these strange things happened in the school after the new principal came.
The truth was about to come out, but Mingqiao suddenly found that he really couldn't bear it and he resisted accepting the facts.
He simply couldn't connect the kind and approachable old man Sun Guiping with "it".
Mingqiao’s headache was about to explode.
"Teacher Ming." Shi Xin's soft and gentle voice sounded in the small room.
Jiang Su was startled, thinking he had entered some strange game again. Fortunately, Cao Haibo explained it to him for a long time, and Jiang Su finally calmed down.
"Shi Xin, it's him." Ming Qiao collapsed and covered his face with his hands. The dead students and the blood all over the sky kept appearing in front of his eyes. Even though he couldn't even see the faces of those students clearly, the creepy feeling it brought was no less.
"Mr. Ming, if 'it' is really your teacher, then you are the one who knows him best in this school. You have to hold on, otherwise we will all die."
"It's him..." Ming Qiao took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, and said slowly: "Jiang Su gave me some details and conditions. I combined them with the previous information and made some guesses."
Jiang Su and Cao Haibo, who were awake in the room, and Shi Xin outside the screen, all looked at him.
"First we start with the rules." Mingqiao said, "The identity manual plus the management regulations of each place all point to one purpose, which is to constrain, so as to create an ideal school with strict management and standardized regulations, and very disciplined, obedient and sensible students. I remember that we found an employee notebook in the office of the restaurant, which said that the new principal was a national teaching expert, so his arrival must be for the ultimate purpose of rectifying the style of study and improving the enrollment rate."
"Second," Ming Qiao raised two fingers. "From a macro perspective, we are in a room escape game, and the conditions for passing the game are not just those so-called clues, but more importantly, passing the test. As for what the test is about, how it is scored, and what the standards are, it remains to be explored. But the ultimate goal, I think, is to select talents."
"Third." Ming Qiao was silent for two seconds, then said, "I, I might also be a part of its design."
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