Chapter 93: Was the Old School Really Just a Replacement Role? ...
Fang Tailai hesitated: "Stop making a fuss? Let's run!"
Xue Chao: "You said her nose isn't a nose, and her eyes aren't eyes."
Fang Tailai hesitated for a moment, then held up three fingers: "I'll never swear again?"
"..." Xue Chao readily agreed, "Well said, you also think she's strange?"
“I don’t know her. This is our first meeting. One of the parties involved is unconscious. I just said it casually…” Fang Tailai subconsciously looked at Sheng Hong again, but the words suddenly got stuck in his throat. He finally managed to spit them out. “The elements of Unit Four are flowers and dresses. Mirrors and stares are everywhere. The protagonist’s image is the theme. The whole school writes love letters to her. She must be the school beauty. Taking myself as an example, I am suitable for my role. Sheng Hong must also be a great beauty. But her appearance makes me feel uncomfortable.”
She phrased it this way: "The first impression of a top-tier beauty or handsome man is definitely 'stunning.' Have you ever heard the saying 'Even in simple clothes, one's natural beauty cannot be hidden'? Slightly less attractive beauties pay attention to makeup, styling, and atmosphere, but my first impression of her was 'strange,' so I went to check carefully and found that everything about her was perfect, hence the 'stunning' impression... It seems a bit abstract, do you understand?"
Xue Chao said lazily, "Was my first impression wrong?"
Fang Tailai sneered: "I've seen more beautiful women and handsome men than you've argued with."
She gave an example in an inclusive way: "For example, 'Seeing You Again at the Bar' is the former, but the feeling she gave me was more like the first time I saw you in the dormitory... but there are still some differences. You are weird but handsome, and she is beautiful but weird."
Xue Chao humbly accepted the advice: "I didn't analyze her face much, but I had a similar feeling that her body proportions seemed to have changed a bit."
"It could be because of the large skirt and high heels... or maybe it's photoshopped? Like the style elements that are common in this unit." Fang Tailai cautioned, "Otherwise, our analysis might be a bit 'unspeakable'."
These four words struck a chord with Xue Chao. In the mirror maze, Sheng Hong gave him a feeling that, for a moment, resembled that of Lamia when he saw her in the underwater temple.
Once we left the maze, that feeling faded, as if it were an illusion caused by the various elements of the maze.
The scent of perfume wafted through the air. Fang Tailai walked onto the stage, and the auditorium seemed to be sealed inside a perfume bottle. Taking a few more breaths would make you feel the fragrance. Various carefully trimmed fresh flowers slowly climbed onto the seats.
She fled backstage: "You still have the leisure to play with useless machines? If you don't run away, I will. Stay here and become fertilizer?"
Xue Chao picked up Sheng Hong and placed her at the door of the machine, so that Sheng Hong's head was positioned on the platform, and pressed the "Aging" button.
In the mirror, her once vibrant red head aged rapidly, her long, cool brown hair turning white. Collagen was lost, leaving behind many wrinkles. Her beauty withered like cracked earth. She couldn't be called ugly, but compared to her youth, she was completely unrecognizable. Without the support of her physical form, her brown eyes stared coldly out of the mirror at a living, wronged soul.
There is a reaction; this is how Sheng Hong looks as she ages.
That's what Sheng Hong looks like now.
...Her "divine weapon" was almost worn out long ago!
Her appearance in the instance is probably automatically adjusted by the instance according to the timeline.
Xue Chao's judgment was misled by Units One and Two.
Middle and high school students start to grow taller, and there are always a few who grow quickly or look older than their age. Players and characters are well-matched and not too old, so playing middle or high school students is not a problem.
Children in kindergarten and elementary school are the hardest to fool, so Jiang Ming was the age he changed by using the origami park, while Pu Fengchun had a resonator.
However, if the player's age is automatically adjusted, Jiang Ming needs to "manually" adjust it because he was not originally a player; he was the one who killed the original player and took his place.
Xue Chao's act of adjusting Jiang Ming's age to match the current timeline of the storyline actually solidified his identity as the protagonist of the first unit and helped him integrate into the storyline.
...Tsk.
Thinking about it this way, Deng Dayun in this unit seems a bit too big... His can-shaped head also affected his judgment of height.
With her age automatically adjusted and her height concealed by an unusual hairstyle, was Sheng Hong really just randomly assigned a task?
If it weren't for the fact that Sheng Hong was clearly awake but didn't use her powers in the mirror maze, Xue Chao probably wouldn't have paid more attention to her, and the more he paid attention, the stranger something seemed.
"A divine weapon!" Fang Tailai exclaimed, both respectful and fearful. "Their eyes are all the same color, what else do you doubt?"
The limit is five players. Jiang Ming and Pu Fengchun are already in the designated dungeon, and now Xia Caizhe and Sheng Hong have to be added as well. They were all rigged into the game.
Xue Chao looked at Fang Tailai with a strange sense of satisfaction, then pretended not to hear, helped Sheng Hong up, completely covered Sheng Hong's head with a mushroom headgear, pushed Sheng Hong's head back until it was almost horizontal and her face was completely obscured from the front, and then pressed the "young" button.
The image in the mirror remained unchanged.
Fang Tailai was speechless: "The machines have been broken."
The practice of testing her head first and then covering it is too strange. The divine weapon consumes all the cells in the body, it's not like it's being torn apart by five horses and each person going their own way... Fang Tailai's expression suddenly changed: "You doubt her head and body...!"
At this moment, the stuck mirror finally changed; the body did indeed shrink, but before that, it first transformed into another girl's body before gradually shrinking.
Xue Chao's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, was also dead.
The body belongs to Pu Fengchun.
Fang Tailai glanced at his expression: "Another player?"
"It seems Sheng Hong has succeeded in her goal..." Xue Chao paused. No, she killed him, but then she covered his corpse with her own head just to play him? If she hadn't been sober for a moment but hadn't used her powers, and if Fang Tailai hadn't brought it up again, stirring up his doubts, he probably wouldn't have tried and would have ended the unit directly.
What's the point of such a laborious prank if the person being pranked doesn't even realize they've been tricked?
Sheng Hong had ulterior motives.
The person who escaped from the bar's private room was Sheng Hong; the teaching building began to change at that moment; and the person who later delivered the evidence wearing a hood was Pu Fengchun.
Looking back now, was it really Sheng Hong who escaped, and was it really Pu Fengchun who delivered the evidence?
Following Xue Chao's instructions, Fang Tailai reached into the dress and was taken aback: "There really are seams!"
Xue Chao carried the person on his back and ran: "This is not Sheng Hong."
Looking for other suspicious points, she still hasn't said a word.
There are no restrictions on what the main character and the host can say, but when the heads speak, they need to make use of the characteristics of the heads. For example, the origami heads for the cardboard signs need to open and close to make human voices, the flower heads need to sway their petals, the whiteboard heads and book heads need to rub to write, and the metal of the knife and can heads also vibrates when they speak. Heads like photos, student IDs, and mirrors are heads where the mouth of the human figure moves.
In the mirror maze, she didn't speak. Was it because Sheng Hong was conserving her energy and didn't want to talk... or was it because Pu Fengchun's book head was covered by Sheng Hong's corpse head, preventing the head from moving and making a sound?
Pu Fengchun did not rise from the dead; she may never have died at all.
Sheng Hong wants to replace Pu Fengchun!
She pretended to target Xue Chao, but her real target was always Pu Fengchun. He was just a decoy for her.
It's unclear what kind of tampering was done to Sheng Hong's head; it resembled the black robe he wore in the company building, and it could automatically blur the outline of his body.
With Jiang Ming's "perfect example" as a precedent, if he really brought Pu Fengchun into the broadcasting station as Sheng Hong, it would only confirm that this was "Sheng Hong," and the real Sheng Hong could continue the game under the identity of "Pu Fengchun," all for that secret.
But recalling Sheng Hong's aged and resentful face, Xue Chao wondered, was it really just a role replacement?
Fang Tailai followed behind, dejectedly pulling off Pu Fengchun's mushroom headgear: "She had someone else impersonate her, so she must have been hiding. It's not a question of whether they can find her or not. If they do, they'll just shoot you. If you're not dead, and they keep pulling at you for a while, the building will be reduced to dust."
"I don't like being ignored," Xue Chao laughed. "Let's leave it to someone else."
Fang Tailai: "Canned food?"
She seemed to tacitly acknowledge that Deng Dayun was one of his people. Xue Chao didn't explain, saying, "You'll know when you get here. Go to the classroom and get some paper to make a simple missing person notice."
Fang Tailai stopped him, saying, "No need to make do, there's a printer in the office."
The books and test papers on the senior high school floor were countless, and the three printers in the office were already covered by Fang Tailai's front-facing photo. Xue Chao raised an eyebrow: "Public paper is free."
Fang Tailai, facing a room full of his own black and white photos, wore the same dejected expression: "Hauntings are an unavoidable force majeure event."
She led Xue Chao to the computer like a welcoming guest. The computer screen was blue, with white English letters arranged like a hideous ghost face.
“If we run now, it will flash and turn blue screen pixels into high-definition ghost images, and it will even move. But if you ask it to do something,” Fang Tailai pounded the computer a few times and said, “Keep printing,” the computer will then display a print screen. “See how much it loves its work.”
She skillfully turned on the camera and stepped back. Xue Chao reacted quickly, carrying Pu Fengchun on his back, and also stepped out of the frame, going around to the back of the computer to turn off the camera.
Fang Tailai didn't understand: "There's still enough ink."
"She had bright red hair."
"She's not the main character, so the photo is definitely a headless half-body shot... But her body has definitely changed. This head is the source of the pollution; the 'poison' has spread to her limbs. Let's just make do with it."
"No need to take pictures, it's on the computer." Xue Chao put down Sheng Hong, sat in front of the computer, found the document for the "Three Good Students", pulled up the photos, made a missing person notice, and printed the photos. He didn't even think about the quantity, just printed "1" directly. Sure enough, the three machines responded at the same time, spewing out one sheet of paper after another.
Xue Chao grabbed a bunch of them, opened the window, and scattered them downstairs. Fang Tai saw that he had scattered them outside, grabbed him, and ran out the door. In the blink of an eye, the corridor was covered with freshly printed missing person notices, which looked very eerie in the darkness.
Xue Chao gave a thumbs up, while Fang Tailai calmly remarked, "The rational use of resources."
After posting the missing person notices, the next step was to wait for help to arrive. Fang Tailai spun around in his teacher's office chair, still guessing who it was: "Not a soda can, a sunflower? The ghost you helped in the side quest? ...None of those, then it must be related to her. What was the theme of her unit?"
She thought of the model student representative in the system: "If it's a genius... studying? Exams? Competitions?"
Outside in the corridor, the clatter of high heels approached rapidly, sparking a thought in Fang Tailai: "Also from a dysfunctional family?"
The door was opened, and the first thing to do was to crawl into a display board covered with certificates of merit.
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