Anyone who is betrayed twice by a trusted superior without any defense will be on high alert. Although Lao Jiang has explained a lot of the truth to Ming Qiao, Ming Qiao still feels uneasy about him. As for Lao Jiang's claim that he is an undercover agent, Ming Qiao can only be half-believing and half-doubting.
However, Lao Jiang didn't seem to care whether Mingqiao believed him or not. He took out his old phone to check the time, then turned to Mingqiao and asked, "Do you remember what you did after you violated the rules in the restaurant?"
"I was trapped in a red plastic barrel. After I escaped, I took a shower and changed my clothes because I was soaked in the soup of leftover rice." Mingqiao recalled: "Because I changed into employee clothes, I found and violated the employee handbook, so my identity changed again."
Thinking of this, Mingqiao reacted: "You mean, breaking the rules will inevitably lead to punishment, but the prompt said that if you encounter danger in the restaurant, you should pick up the first knife at hand and chop a red vegetable, and take a photo and project it on the screen. After I did it, I naturally avoided the punishment. So, now it's time to give the prompt."
"Yes." Lao Jiang pulled Mingqiao to the innermost part of the kitchen, where there was a whole row of offices. He pushed open one of them and went in.
There were only a few file cabinets and a table with a computer in the room. Lao Jiang went up to turn on the computer, and then took out a microphone from the file cabinet and plugged it in: "Hurry up."
Mingqiao immediately stepped forward and repeated in full the hint he had heard.
After Mingqiao finished speaking, Lao Jiang pulled up a surveillance video on the computer. There were three cameras, monitoring the first, second and third floors respectively. He said mysteriously: "In fact, everything you experienced in the past came from the future."
"But I still don't understand." Mingqiao moved a chair and sat in front of the computer to watch the surveillance with Lao Jiang: "My future self also came from the past, just like the discussion about which came first, the chicken or the egg, there must be a starting point, right? Who is the source of the clue?"
"Is it important to you?" Lao Jiang glanced at him and said, "Some truths don't need to be investigated thoroughly because they are insignificant."
Mingqiao was speechless for a moment. He was used to getting to the bottom of a question, and the subtle answer given by Lao Jiang made him feel upset.
"It is said that the egg came first." After a long silence, Lao Jiang suddenly said, "An animal that looked like a chicken but was not a chicken laid the first egg due to a genetic mutation. I read this in a popular science book."
Ming Qiao was stunned after hearing this, and then his heart moved slightly: "You again?"
Lao Jiang smiled and said nothing.
"Director Jiang, why don't you tell me what you are doing?" Ming Qiao was unsure of what he meant, so he said bluntly, "Since you said you are an undercover agent, then we are in the same group. As your partner, you clearly want to tell me the answer but you still want me to guess one by one. Aren't you tired?"
"You haven't become the chief invigilator yet, right?" Lao Jiang asked.
"……No."
"When you become the chief invigilator, you will understand why I didn't tell you all at once." Lao Jiang said solemnly: "Mingqiao, you must become the chief invigilator."
Mingqiao would automatically associate the chief invigilator with murder when he thought of him. His face was not very good, but he also agreed with Lao Jiang's point of view. As the chief invigilator, he could control everything in the examination room, and from Lao Jiang's tone, the chief invigilator's power was more than that.
"Let's sit here for a while." Lao Jiang slowly opened the thermos and drank water. "I'll ask someone to deliver the clues to the maze."
"It's you again." After so many times, Ming Qiao was no longer so surprised. He leaned back on the chair, crossed his arms and watched the surveillance screen carefully. Ming Qiao found the drawing with the short lines drawn on it, and with Shi Xin's cooperation, he pieced together the short lines into a complete maze route.
"Now it seems that without you, we would have been unable to move forward."
Lao Jiang smiled and shook his head. "For other people who have nothing to do with it, it's easy to escape from here. But for you, these are all designed by the two principals to embarrass you, so of course you find it difficult. However, they really didn't expect that you almost overturned half of the school in order to save a few students, starting from the office and making trouble until now, and nothing can stop you."
"In fact, Sun Guiping could have directly entered my name into his system and forced me to become an NPC, just like the first day I arrived at the teaching building. He didn't have to go through so much trouble." Ming Qiao said.
"Maybe this is his hobby," Lao Jiang said, "He needs a legitimate reason to make you an NPC. Perhaps because he loves and cherishes you, he doesn't want you to be forced to be his tool. Instead, he hopes to prove through a series of things that you are loyal to him and his education, that you are willing to sacrifice yourself, and that he himself is powerful and omnipotent."
"It's funny, isn't it? I've always respected him." Mingqiao recalled the years when he studied for a master's degree with Sun Guiping. That was the happiest and most fulfilling period of his academic career: "He has profound attainments in the field of history. In order to recommend him for graduate school, I wrote him many emails, used various connections, and thought of many ways."
"He is a good scholar, but not a good teacher." This is how Chiang Kai-shek defined him.
"How do we judge whether a teacher is good or bad?" Ming Qiao muttered to himself, "Is he liked by students? Does he teach well? What about the other way around? Is he a bad teacher if he is not liked by students? Is he a bad teacher if he cannot teach well?"
"You are very young, Mingqiao." Lao Jiang said, "You have only been teaching for a year, and you think too naively about many things. But your teaching achievements are obvious to everyone. I can't say that you are a good teacher. I just think you are competent. I can feel your passion for the profession, and your students can feel it too. But if you apply your standards to Sun Guiping, do you think he is a good teacher?"
Mingqiao thought about it for a long time this time, and finally shook his head: "Not really. At least as a colleague, I don't think he loves this industry."
Mingqiao in the surveillance video no longer needed their prompts and help, and he worked well with Shi Xin. After one night, they had already formulated an escape plan.
The next day, when Shi Xin on the other end turned off all the power switches, the surveillance footage of Mingqiao and his team was cut off.
"We suspected that we were being monitored at the time, so this was the only option we could take," Mingqiao explained to Lao Jiang.
"Well, you are very perceptive." After a night, Lao Jiang's thermos cup was empty. He stood up from the chair and stretched: "You should go back too."
Mingqiao remembered the agreement he made with Zhang Tao and nodded.
"Come on, let's go out first."
Lao Jiang still took Mingqiao to climb the back stairs. While the other Mingqiao was still bravely fighting his way through the dungeon, the two of them had already returned to the entrance of the teaching building unimpeded.
Once here, the fog will be very heavy, and unless you are very close to the two of you, you will not be discovered at all.
"Will you come to the playground next time?" Lao Jiang asked Ming Qiao.
Mingqiao nodded: "Of course."
After getting the reply, Lao Jiang turned and went into the teaching building. Shortly after he left, Ming Qiao also returned to the corridor on the seventh floor on the evening of the 3rd.
Zhang Tao had a bitter look on his face, but he showed a relieved expression when he saw Ming Qiao.
"You don't know what I went through during the two days you were gone!" Zhang Tao's voice was so uncomfortable that it changed. "The principal and the others knew that I killed you, so they were furious with me and didn't let me be the invigilator. I was so scared to stay here alone to change the time to rescue you."
"I'm sorry." Mingqiao lowered his eyes with a hint of guilt, "This may happen many times in the next few days."
"Oh, forget it," Zhang Tao rubbed his temples, took a deep breath and waved his hands, "Anyway, the time has been adjusted back, and you're back, so I'll still be the main invigilator. But your return already explains a lot, right?"
"Yes." Mingqiao briefly recounted his experiences in the library with Lao Jiang over the past two days: "In short, I am not dead, so the students who died are not dead either. It's just that we have reached a certain point in time. Now it is confirmed that the time machine can be used normally, so we don't have to be restricted in doing things in the future."
In the next few days, Mingqiao and Zhang Tao did the same thing, and Zhang Tao picked a thorn and killed Mingqiao. Mingqiao took this opportunity to follow Lao Jiang to go through the playground copy again, giving hints where necessary, and many of their guesses at the time also got affirmative answers in the process.
But when we arrived at the library, Lao Jiang said there was no need to go in.
"Why?"
"I designed this for you by imitating the principal and the others." Lao Jiang touched his nose embarrassedly: "Aren't you curious why there are so many students and teachers here?"
"If they were not in the library from the beginning, then they were stuffed in later. But since you designed this copy for me, you probably didn't need to bring them in to test me. So, they were here from the beginning. But, when the accident happened, there were obviously not so many people trapped in the library." Ming Qiao frowned in thought, his eyelids twitched, and he had a bad premonition: "Could it be that the eliminated people were judged to have no use value after death and were abandoned here? It looks like a mass grave."
"Yes." Lao Jiang said, "So the ones you encounter in other copies are all monsters, only here are ghosts."
Mingqiao couldn't help but shudder.
He didn't want to continue imagining, so he changed the question: "Since you are the one behind this, then it was you who directed the suspicion to Sun Guiping?"
"Of course, I know you are his student."
"It was you who helped me restore my identity."
"Yes, you can do more as a teacher."
"You also gave Shi Xin an identity as a student."
"smoothly."
Mingqiao already knew all the inexplicable things along the way. He stared at Lao Jiang for a long time. Looking at this kind-looking middle-aged man, the stone in his heart was finally put down.
He has determined that Lao Jiang is still Lao Jiang. Maybe he may be controlled sometimes, but more often than not, his core will not change.
"You've done a lot," Mingqiao said.
Lao Jiang breathed a sigh of relief: "It's all for the students. I don't want to see students being harmed by this kind of rigid examination. It's feudal and backward."
When going back in time for the last time, Mingqiao found a note and wrote a few words, asking Lao Jiang to give it to Shi Xin after he left.
He wrote on it: Believe what you believe.
Next, he needed Shi Xin's help.
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