Chapter 77 The Old Campus... They really were "of one mind."
Xue Chao interrupted the silent play where the costumes were arguing: "Thank you for your kind words, but forced relationships are never sweet. I've been too much for some of you. If I accidentally break any of your pretty 'bones,' that would be my fault."
He was careful to express himself tactfully; what he originally meant to say was, "I'll stuff you until you're torn to pieces."
Although high school is the time when boys grow taller, freshmen are still a bit short, not to mention Xue Chao's height and build, which would make him a model anywhere. Many costumes are already fixed in size and simply don't fit.
The only thing that fits the look is a somewhat old-fashioned European court dress. The craftsmanship and quality are excellent, as if it were just taken from a medieval banquet. The role should be that of a "prince".
The crimson gown was still somewhat hesitant, a little annoyed by the grotesque "flaw" on Xue Chao's body, but she had no better choice. She "put on" lace gloves, condescended to point at him from afar, meaning "he's the one"... These two costumes were part of a play.
The male and female leads both agreed, but Xue Chao was not satisfied. So, he became the male lead in Sheng Hong?
What kind of show is this? The princess kills the prince at the beginning and immediately ascends the throne as empress?
"Judging from everyone's measurements, it seems the actors have all been chosen, except for the prince, who hasn't been decided yet." In other words, the other costumes are just missing; they're only there for fun.
Before the prince's suit could react, the red dress disdainfully lifted its high heels—the decision hadn't been made, clearly because the leading lady was dissatisfied and felt that none of the candidates were worthy of being her "true love."
“And I happen to be missing a piece of clothing, so I have a suggestion.”
All the costumes, knowing full well what was going on, scattered in a panic. The old-fashioned formal attire slowly approached, and Xue Chao made a "wait a moment" gesture, quickly walked over, and opened the door.
Jiang Ming stood quietly outside the door, and it was unclear how long he had been standing there. He looked rather eerie, but as soon as he saw Xue Chao, the petals immediately began to swirl and dance with delight.
Before he could say anything frivolous, Xue Chao dragged him into the classroom and pushed him in front of his court dress: "There's no doubt that this face is more suitable for a prince."
Xue Chao hadn't used any more blood-restoring medicine to completely remove the scars yet, and Jiang Ming's stunningly handsome face was indeed more appealing to "Mei Yi's heart." Even from the perspective of the headless and heteromorphic beings, the sunflower looked more normal than his face with its twisted scars.
The female lead tapped her fan with satisfaction. Xue Chao, feeling like he had become the queen's lackey, grabbed the prince's suit with one hand and pushed Jiang Ming with the other, into the makeshift dressing room made of extra curtains, tables, and chairs.
The moment the dress fell into his hands, it was as if its soul had been ripped off, turning back into a lifeless object. Without saying a word, he started tearing off Jiang Ming's clothes.
"You really like my face. I knew you'd fall for this, but this isn't good. We're moving so fast. I understand your feelings, but I'm not that kind of person..." Jiang Ming made a pretentious crying sound, as if she were being forced into prostitution. She pretended to block the way, but secretly touched Xue Chao several times. Xue Chao grabbed both of her wrists and lifted them up, pulling off her shirt.
"You've already kissed me twice, stop pretending to be innocent." Xue Chao quickly stripped off his clothes, threw his tuxedo at the naked Jiang Ming, and left without a second thought, carrying Jiang Ming's school uniform with him.
Jiang Mingbai's cold, lacquered hand grabbed Xue Chao's waist, preventing him from leaving. As he obediently changed into his formal attire, he pressed his hand against Xue Chao's scarred back, occasionally asking as if it were an unintentional kiss, "How did you find out this time? Was it just me standing outside the door that you knew?"
Xue Chao didn't break free and actually acted as his armrest: "Why replace the first protagonist?"
This is what they mean by exchanging answers. Jiang Ming looked heartbroken: "I already said I couldn't wait to see you... and also to avoid a possible plot-driven death. The fifth protagonist will die, and our timeline is the latest among the players, so I was worried about too many restrictions."
"Deng Dayun" and "Sheng Hong" will also die in the future timeline. If the fifth protagonist is also involved in the same death crisis, the timeline of the fifth unit is likely to be closest to the "death" plot point.
...When the character is supposed to "die," should the player act or not?
Switching to the earliest unit on the timeline temporarily eliminates this problem.
"How did he die?"
Jiang Ming smiled but did not answer, nor did he let go. Xue Chao then said, "You deliberately went to Sheng Hong to talk nonsense, wasn't it just to imply to her that you were trying to scare me, to use the camera angle to distract me, and to take advantage of this time difference?"
"Can't I take this opportunity to do other bad things?"
"Maybe." Xue Chao glanced at him teasingly, "But I think you'll be haunted by my kiss and come looking for me feeling restless... What, Casanova, are you actually falling for me?"
Jiang Ming loosened his grip, and Xue Chao strode away with an air of nonchalance.
"Leaving in triumph" refers to skillfully climbing through windows and water pipes. He didn't think that finding a "scapegoat" would really make the costume crew let him go. His wish was simple from beginning to end: just a school uniform, which he would grab and run away from.
After changing in the bathroom, a fragrance brushed past my nose and then disappeared. It wasn't from the fresh flowers in the sink, but rather like a special fragrance added to a small pack of tissues. It was so fragrant that I couldn't distinguish the different scents; I only knew that it smelled good.
Following the scent, I found that each class's display board in the corridor had something new posted. This time, it wasn't student photos or outstanding test papers, but rather love letters.
Love letters rarely look alike, each with its own unique design and fragrance. Just by being pasted there, they create a silent competition. Xue Chao randomly picked one, and sure enough, it was addressed to "Sheng Hong." The writing was so stilted that even back in college, when he found it, he wanted to slap himself and call it "non-mainstream."
There are also simpler ways to pass the money: stuffing designer lipsticks and jewelry directly into the envelope, probably from wealthy young men. Others offer meal cards, water cards, milk tea coupons, or DIY crafts as a way to "make up for poverty through hard work."
Miss Red Rose possesses irresistible charm; everywhere one looks, there are men at her feet.
Xue Chao got tired of reading a few letters, but no matter how much these hormone-fueled male classmates pretended or how clueless they were, they were still human beings. On the other hand, a plain and out-of-place kraft paper envelope was not so friendly. It was full of photos of "Sheng Hong" taken without her consent. They were either taken from a distance or from a tricky angle. Her head was blacked out, and only her clear brown eyes were visible.
One photo appears to have been discovered by "Sheng Hong." In the pitch black, a pair of eyes stare directly at the camera, filled with anger.
All the photos are of her in her own clothes; there are no photos of her in her school uniform, so it's impossible to tell when they were taken, but her figure is almost identical to that of her high school days.
...Jiang Ming is right, the later the episode, the closer it is to the character's death.
As Xue Chao passed through the hall, he saw Pu Fengchun's photo on the standing display board for outstanding student representatives. There were limited spots, and only the top students could squeeze in. Pu Fengchun was arranged in a pyramid-like manner, and he occupied the first row by himself.
Even among top students, she is at the very top.
The small print under the photo will include the name, grades, and awards, one of which is the first prize in the National Biology Competition. In the notes that "Xue Chao" gave to "Pu Fengchun", there are biology competition notes.
In the second unit, the "mother" ignored his several suspicious acts, and he thought she looked down on him and was simply ignoring him. It turned out that her daughter had taken his notes from him. Later, he unknowingly broke his character, and the NPC no longer had to tolerate him and turned against him.
It seems that "Xue Chao" is a top student, but at the same time, he is also a rebellious patient who seems to be climbing into morgues...
His identity might not be as insignificant as he thinks. The immediate priority is to find the fifth protagonist's storyline. If that goes smoothly, his identity will be irrelevant.
The auditorium where the performance was held was empty, but the backstage area had been prepared and arranged in advance according to the order of appearance.
The set props for Class One were a magnificent palace backdrop made of cardboard, over three meters tall, divided into two layers. When the scene took place on the second-floor balcony, the characters stood on a ladder behind the backdrop and interacted with the characters below the balcony.
Xue Chao flipped through the palace walls, his hands covered in glitter... wall dust?
There are also many fresh flowers among the props for Class 1.
He pushed the backdrop onto the stage alone, arranged it according to the markings, looked up at the palace again, and pieced together the general structure of the teaching building in his mind... and sure enough, it was the same.
He is actually in this palace now.
If he were still just a host, it wouldn't be a big problem. The space combining the palace and the campus in the play is definitely related to the main plot of the fourth unit. But now that the fourth and fifth units have merged, the main plot of the fifth unit is likely outside the palace. As the acting protagonist, he naturally has to go out.
Simply passing through the main gate of the palace won't work, but there's a lift lock on the second-floor balcony. The plot is that the people on the second floor escape the palace from the balcony.
Xue Chao stood behind the ladder and looked out through the "window" on the second floor. The scattered light in the auditorium converged, and many dark figures suddenly appeared in the empty seats.
He activated the lifting lock, stepped over the "balcony," and the lock was fastened to his back, slowly lowering him. However, halfway down, his waist suddenly tightened, and the school uniform wrapped around his abdomen like a suffocating hug. The sleeves slipped out, and the back collar got stuck in the lock, causing the descent to stop abruptly. At the same time, Xue Chao fell out of the jacket, his sleeves tied behind his back, which strangled his neck, suspending him in the air like he was hanging—this school uniform was also alive!
It feels like the scales of a cold-blooded animal, cold and smooth.
The converging light sometimes scattered, sometimes gathered, as if hesitating at the boundary between two spaces, so chaotic that Xue Chao's oxygen-deprived mind momentarily thought he was seeing heaven...
No way, angels are fucking ugly.
Xue Chao was practically suppressing his survival instincts, using inhuman ruthlessness to stifle the futile struggles of his limbs. Then, like a ferocious beast, he bit down on the tightly twisted sleeve, thrusting the blade in his mouth hard, slicing his tongue and simultaneously piercing a large gash in the sleeve that was twisted into a rope.
He gripped the blade tightly and pulled it down, blood quickly staining his cuffs. He used all his remaining strength in his hands to tear open his sleeves and unlock the clasp on his back.
He rolled to the ground, blood staining the lower half of his狰狞 (zhengning - ferocious/hideous) face. He spat out a blade, along with a mouthful of blood.
Before changing his clothes, he hid the razor blade he always kept in his cuff into his mouth. At the time, he thought it was a bit unnecessary, but now it seems... they really were "on the same wavelength".
The lights in the auditorium were still, and the shadows seemed to be an illusion, with no significant changes... Was I wrong?
The pain in his tongue seemed to spread throughout his head, causing his nerves to twitch. His face turned bitter; he was in deep trouble.
Undeterred, he returned to the corridor, but everything was still the same. When he got back to Class 7 of Senior Three, he was almost out of temper and just wanted to beat up Jiang Ming, but then he noticed a light in the distance.
The classroom curtains were all drawn, and every classroom was clearly visible at night. However, looking out from inside the classroom, all you could see was darkness. But then a sliver of light appeared in the southwest, and the moon's shadow passed by—and there was another building!
Soon, the only light in the building disappeared, as if someone had extinguished the last lamp. The old building was immersed in darkness and silence, completely different from the dramatic interplay of light and shadow in the teaching building, like a ruin forgotten for many years.
Xue Chao was certain that this building didn't exist before—he was right; this building was the result of his escape from the "palace."
The teaching building was quite a distance from the dormitory building, and the path between them was completely hidden in darkness. Xue Chao felt as if he were wading through black water with zero visibility until he saw the dilapidated door of the dormitory building, at which point he breathed a slight sigh of relief.
The fifth main character is a boarding student. The reason why there are no more clues on the third floor is because this is the main battlefield.
It was late at night, and the haunting in the teaching building was "exquisitely" spectacular, while the dormitory building on the same campus was filled with a chilling aura of death and was already locked.
With no water coming out of the faucet, Xue Chao could only wipe the blood off his face, making things even more messy. Blood kept seeping from the corner of his mouth, and he inevitably got stained again when he changed his clothes. With his disheveled appearance, squatting at the door, he looked like a mentally ill person who had committed murder and escaped, requiring the entire area to broadcast the news to remind citizens to "go home early and be careful."
He didn't intend to alarm the dormitory supervisor. The player plays the role of a student, and the teachers and directors who have a dominant position in the teaching building are probably the ghosts that are being suppressed. The dormitory supervisor is naturally the one in the dormitory building.
He's become familiar with the teaching building after seeing it several times, but the dormitory is still uncharted territory, so he can't just blindly rush in.
The dormitory building was surrounded by waist-high weeds. Xue Chao bent down and hid in the weeds, circling the dormitory building until he found a spot to scout out under a window.
Carved from stone, two ovals side by side, like a pair of empty eyeballs without pupils.
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