Upon seeing the sudden change in the scenery, someone next to them felt their legs go weak and started to shuffle away, exclaiming, "No way?"
However, none of the twenty people ended up sitting directly on the ground, because as the conveyor belt rolled, if they didn't continue moving forward, they would soon be sent directly under the machine that would crush everyone and become a pile of minced meat.
"No wonder the rules require us to keep running forward..." someone muttered to themselves.
3. We must not stop moving forward.
As Cheng Zhu ran, he looked around at his surroundings. The conveyor belt had just started operating and was moving very slowly, so he was indeed able to move forward.
But what if the conveyor belt gets faster and faster...?
Cheng Zhu seemed to already see the near future, the horrific scene where she would take a step forward only to be pushed back a meter. Besides that, another problem was how to get under the machine.
If there's no solution, we can't just rely on luck to get through four times, can we?
Since there were four laps to run, Chengzhu didn't sprint particularly hard. So, there were several classmates running ahead of her as the first group, she was in the second group with four or five people around her, and there were the third and fourth groups behind her. The last fifth group only had two people, who were still at the starting point and hadn't moved much, just barely making sure they wouldn't be crushed by the machines behind them.
Are they devastated?
Although Cheng Zhu had doubts, he adhered to the principle that good words are useless against a damned ghost and continued to move forward at his own pace.
However, when Cheng Zhu turned the last corner on the first lap, he found that the machine was gone, and all the bits of meat stuck to the track had disappeared without a trace. Even the sky was faintly showing the shadow of blue sky and white clouds.
After the first group of students passed through smoothly, Cheng Zhu could still hear their cheers: "Great, they're all alright!"
"Don't look back at that thing!"
Immediately afterwards, Cheng Zhu's second team also crossed the starting point unharmed, causing those around her to begin muttering, "Could that machine be just an illusion?" Clearly, he was feeling a bit of wishful thinking and even began to slow down.
Cheng Zhu had a guess in her mind, though she didn't say it aloud, but some of the indigenous people also thought of it: "Could it be that one aspect exists while the other doesn't?"
"Isn't that a two-way mirror?" The two people chatting walked onto the track hand in hand, so Cheng Zhu still remembered them. Although they appeared to be biologically male, considering the degree of gender variation in this world, Cheng Zhu, for the sake of caution, didn't want to draw a conclusion directly.
However, whether the indigenous people were male or female was not of much concern to her; their speculations, however, gave Chengzhu some food for thought.
She recalled Alice describing the anomaly at the stadium as being "connected to a meat processing plant by a virus," meaning two timelines were spliced together, resulting in the current anomaly. Therefore, in order to allow students to successfully complete sports events, the school may have intervened in the rules, leading to this two-way mirror situation at the starting line of the track.
As they passed the fifth group, who were still focused on the key points, Cheng Zhu heard the couple, who he couldn't tell were friends or lovers, ask them, "Aren't you running?"
One of the indigenous people calmly replied, "Once the conveyor belt is fast enough, I'll just run in the opposite direction from you. I won't have to exert much effort to complete four laps."
This is indeed a clever way to be lazy.
Cheng Zhu had already run past this person quickly, his heart already mourning for them.
Clearly, they forgot a very important rule:
4. The first place winner in each group will receive a reward, and the last place winner will be penalized.
Since the goal is to select first and last place, the rules cannot allow anyone to run in the opposite direction, as this would severely interfere with the ranking and make it difficult to distinguish between first and last place. Therefore, the rules must require everyone to move in the same direction.
As he completed most of the second lap, Cheng Zhu saw the starting point again, only this time the machines were becoming increasingly visible, and the sky was a few shades redder.
If schools are truly fighting the virus for control of the stadium, then the virus clearly has a slight edge.
Upon seeing this, someone next to Cheng Zhu visibly stopped, as the conveyor belt began to pull them back. Meanwhile, the students in front sped up, rushing forward the instant the machine was lifted.
One of them was a fraction slower as he rushed toward the starting line, but the machine's phantom merely overlapped with him and did not cause him any real harm.
The student froze, then burst into laughter: "What machine! It's nothing but—"
Thump!
In the eyes of Cheng Zhu and the others behind him, he exploded on the spot, turning into countless pieces of flesh and debris that flew out.
"Dead...dead people?" This time, some people in Cheng Zhu's second team started to get scared again. Some people stopped and were sent back by the conveyor belt to slow down the time it took them to run to the bottom of the machine.
Cheng Zhu did not stop, and crossed the starting line again to complete the second lap.
Nowadays, there are no ranks to speak of. Everyone on the entire playground basically keeps some distance from each other and is scattered everywhere intermittently. After all, with the second rule [you can touch other students while running], who knows what might happen if you touch someone?
Near Chengzhu, there was only one child who looked rather young, probably around middle school age. It was hard to tell if he was a boy or a girl, but he had a pair of animal ears on his head and a large, fluffy tail growing from his tailbone, which basically confirmed that he was a noble child. After all, if he were a suburban immigrant or someone from an ordinary city, he probably wouldn't be so wealthy as to have such extravagant accessories for himself.
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