1 Menggui High School (1)
Welcome to the beginner dungeon!
"The college entrance exam is only five days away, and look at you all in this half-dead state. How are you going to beat everyone else?!"
In the quiet classroom, where you could hear a pin drop, the blackboard eraser slammed onto the podium with a "thud." The teacher, his face dark with anger, shrieked and his cloudy eyes stared menacingly at each student below.
This isn't a figure of speech; this teacher truly possesses countless eyes, densely packed all over his body, and even when he speaks, he makes sounds by constantly blinking one eye.
Qin Fu'an felt as if his brain had been hit hard. The dull pain made him frown. When he looked up, he happened to meet a group of murky and dark eyes.
They stared at him intently, their eyes filled with unsettling greed and longing, seemingly urging him to do something out of line with their gaze.
Qin Fu'an closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.
His eyes are still there; it's not a hallucination caused by his mental derangement.
After a brief second of looking up and meeting the eyes fixed on him, Qin Fu'an sat up straight, pen in hand, and began to listen attentively to the lesson.
It took a full three seconds before I reluctantly looked away from that sticky, disgusting gaze.
But not all the students sitting in this classroom were so calm and lucky.
When terrified screams, angry questions, and frantic pleas for help all erupted in a jumble of sounds within a few seconds, no one paid any attention to the student who stood up while questioning him. His anger and questioning were like the most abrupt presence in a silent film, and his vivid expression only made the surrounding silence seem even more desolate.
Coupled with the blood-stained countdown to the college entrance exam on the blackboard, and the "students" who remained quietly seated and motionless despite the commotion, the whole scene looked bizarre and eerie.
The boy in the blue and white school uniform gently raised his light green eyes and quietly witnessed the deaths of these people.
The teacher on the podium opened his eye wide, as if he were grinning in an exaggerated smile, and scolded in the most indignant tone, "Not only are you all bad at studying, but you also dare to break school rules! I will never allow you to become the worst class of students I have ever taught!"
As his words fell, the space around these "students" who had been shouting and yelling in class seemed to freeze. Then, unexpectedly, one eye after another popped out from their bodies and began to devour their flesh inch by inch with rapid blinking.
Blood flowed down their blue and white school uniforms onto the ground. This bloody "feeding" lasted for a full ten minutes. When all that remained of them was a pool of bloody skeletons, the familiar school bell finally rang cheerfully.
With a satisfied look on her face, the teacher closed the blank lesson plan on the podium and announced the end of get out of class in the gentlest voice.
Qin Fu'an remained seated without moving.
No one in the classroom moved.
Only after the teacher covered in glasses left the classroom and the sound of his footsteps faded into the distance did a student in school uniform quietly breathe a sigh of relief and mutter a curse: "Damn it, three people died at the very beginning of this dungeon. This is not the kind of difficulty a beginner dungeon should have!"
Qin Fu'an looked at the student who had spoken; to be precise, he should be called a "player."
In the instant he looked down, he discovered that the words on the otherwise ordinary pages of the book in his hand had all disappeared, and then, under his gaze, they were gradually stained with blood, as if someone had used a bone or stick dipped in blood to write something crookedly, stroke by stroke.
About ten seconds later, the words finally appeared clearly on the paper.
[Welcome to the beginner dungeon - Mysterious High School.]
[As the top academy in the Ghost Realm, our school boasts the longest history, the most outstanding faculty, the strictest academic management, and a 100% college entrance rate.]
A graduation certificate is every student's passport to leaving school.
[With the National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) approaching, we hope all candidates will give it their all.]
After Qin Fu'an silently read through those few lines of bloody handwriting, they seemed to have never appeared before, disappearing quietly under his gaze. The pages of the book, with their black and white characters, were still filled with high school knowledge that college students couldn't understand.
"Are there any survivors? Let's get to know each other. This dungeon doesn't look easy; we might need to cooperate to clear it." A girl in a school uniform stood up, her tone and eyes calm.
"...What do you mean? Where...where is this godforsaken place?" another student asked anxiously, her voice trembling. Her body had unconsciously curled up into a ball during class, and only when she raised her head could one see the mottled tear stains on her face.
"A newbie actually survived?" a boy asked in surprise, then raised his hand to the girl who had spoken first and introduced himself: "Just call me Ark, this is my last newbie dungeon."
After saying that, he turned to another girl and comforted her, "Don't panic. As long as you can survive this dungeon, you'll know everything. In short, the moment we appeared here, we had all taken a step into the gates of hell."
"Whether you die completely or escape death depends on whether you can survive in this instance." He shrugged, trying to sound relaxed, but his words did not reassure anyone.
"My name is Bai Song, and this is my second beginner dungeon."
"Chen Qi, the third beginner dungeon."
"..."
Six people answered one after another.
Including those who died, plus Qin Fu'an who remained silent, the total number of players in this instance is exactly 10.
The girl waited a while, and when no one in the classroom stood up and spoke again, she looked at the girl, softened her tone slightly, and asked her what her name was.
“…I…my name is Zhao Jiayue.” After the girl finished speaking, she thought of the introductions from the previous people. Although she still didn’t know what kind of place this was, since someone was willing to communicate with her, the fear and panic in her heart turned into dependence on these people. She couldn’t help but ramble on, “I just resigned from my company today. I hadn’t even stepped out of the elevator yet, and suddenly I found myself here. Those people from earlier…will they still be able to get back alive?”
"My name is Nan Zhu. There are only a few minutes left before get out of class ends. Let's all look around the classroom to see if we can find any clues for the dungeon." The girl didn't answer Zhao Jiayue's question. Instead, she decisively gave directions and walked straight towards the podium.
Qin Fu'an watched silently as the group dispersed. Only Yak spoke to the uneasy Zhao Jiayue: "Friendly reminder: If you die here, you're dead forever. So hurry up and get moving. The more clues you find, the greater your chances of survival."
So Zhao Jiayue got up and left, filled with fear.
Qin Fu'an sat in his seat, cosplaying as the background character with the other students in the classroom, not in a hurry to look for any clues.
The classroom was so quiet that you could clearly hear the students' hurried footsteps and breathing.
He turned his head and saw his deskmate buried in his work, scribbling away furiously. The black ink flowed smoothly, producing countless characters. Qin Fu'an clearly saw two neatly written titles on his exam paper—
—《Five Years of Authentic College Entrance Examination Questions and Mock Tests for "The Fierce and Bizarre" [Part 1]》
——Special Edition for Senior Three [4] Class of Menggui High School
Qin Fu'an glanced at his deskmate's answering speed, then lowered his head and replaced his book with the same test paper, filled in his name and class, and started writing as well.
It's called a special edition, and it truly is, because the questions on it happen to be the key points that the teacher wrote on the blackboard in the previous class. Thanks to the fact that the teacher spent the last ten minutes of this class "punishing the students," there weren't many difficult questions on the test.
Although Qin Fu'an had a good memory, he was even more proactive. So, before the writing on the blackboard disappeared silently after class, he watched the teacher eat while copying all the words on the blackboard onto a piece of paper, even copying the format exactly the same.
When Qin Fu'an had written more than half of his test paper, he noticed that his deskmate seemed to have encountered a problem. His pen stopped, and he was fidgeting restlessly in his seat, his breathing becoming increasingly agitated.
Qin Fu'an could even hear terrified, heavy breathing beside him, more like that of a hungry beast than a panicked human.
As his unknown deskmate's hand, which was holding a pen, gradually evolved into a claw, Qin Fu'an glanced at the group of students who were still searching for the rules. Seeing that none of them had noticed him, he raised his hand and gently tapped the desk next to him.
The next second, unsurprisingly, he was met with a pair of bloodshot, crazed eyes.
"Here, hurry up and copy this, there are only two minutes left before class starts." Qin Fu'an handed over his notes.
The other person was taken aback. The madness and bloodshot redness in his eyes gradually faded. After his eyes regained their clarity, he gratefully smiled at Qin Fu'an and quietly said thank you.
"You're too kind." Qin Fu'an raised an eyebrow, having noticed the other person's change in expression.
It seems that it's not just the players who are constrained by teachers and rules, but all the "students" in the school.
So there are two rules that we know now.
First: No talking or making noise during class.
Second: Homework must be completed on time.
Whether the two rules belong to the same level, whether the consequences of violating the rules are the same... Qin Fu'an doesn't know these things yet, but it doesn't matter, he will know soon.
"Ring ring—!!"
The sharp, piercing ringtone suddenly sounded.
Class has started.
[Author's Note]
I'm secretly trying to write some new genres. I've been writing about kids for a long time, and I hope I can write something for adults too.
.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
