Chapter 22 Tide Proverbs (Part 4) Variation.
The fourth day of entering the dream.
A math class is in progress in a classroom on the first floor.
No textbooks were distributed for this lesson; each student only received a piece of paper and a pen.
The first half of the paper contains the value of pi, written up to 100 decimal places. The second half contains geometric figures.
The man stood on the podium, looking somewhat different from usual, his expression more excited.
"The task for this lesson is... to memorize pi... and to draw standard geometric figures... I will randomly select two students before the end of class... to check their learning outcomes..." He glanced around, a strange smile appearing on his lips.
"Of course... for students who can't complete the test... the teacher will give them appropriate punishment... take away... a white... sharp tooth... how about that?" After saying that, he laughed to himself, shaking his thin head on his neck, and his belly jiggled.
Feng Feng shuddered. To make matters worse, she was being punished in the subject she was least good at. To be honest, she seemed more afraid of being punished for failing to complete the teacher's assignment than of terrifying monsters or killers with chainsaws.
The ticking of the clock relentlessly pounded against her heart, a relentless, almost unbearable pressure. This precise countdown sent a shiver down her spine. She clutched the thin piece of paper in her hands, unaware that this fear was anything but normal.
Sea breeze, humidity, clocks, waves, a faint yet noisy hum, an unusual heartbeat, strange expressions, equilateral triangles, isosceles trapezoids, 3.1415926535 8979323846…
Time ticked by, and Feng Feng hadn't even memorized the ten digits. A thin layer of sweat broke out on her back, so she turned to drawing geometric shapes instead. But no matter how careful she was, they just didn't look right; the lines weren't smooth, they were crooked and uneven. She started to get frustrated, her pencil drawing deep marks on the paper, one, two, and the harder she tried, the more awkward the shapes looked. The snake-like lines seemed to come alive, uncontrollably traversing the entire paper, blacking out the numbers, filling in the shapes, making it impossible to see what they originally were.
She was on the verge of a breakdown; her back teeth clenched so tightly they became sore.
"Alright...time's up..."
A man's unsteady voice rang out.
Feng Feng felt as if he were facing a formidable enemy. He instantly snapped out of his panic and looked down at his papers.
There were no snake-like lines, and the numbers and graphics were all intact. Instead of copying the sample graphics as she had imagined, she drew countless Penrose triangles in the blank spaces, with a serif letter "U" in the center.
Her stomach churned, as if the fish she had eaten a couple of days ago had come back to life in her stomach, thrashing its tail and slapping against the delicate flesh.
When she woke up this morning, she found that the patterns under the sink covered the entire wall, densely packed like some kind of boil, just like the paper in her hand, which was riddled with holes.
"Who should I choose?" The man stepped down from the podium and walked along the gap between the tables, looking around as he went.
He slowly walked back and forth among the 15 people several times, building up the tension to the extreme, and finally stopped next to a boy.
"one…"
Feng Feng let out a breath, and the man moved again the next second.
This time he stopped in front of the summer candle table, his swollen fingers tapping on the tabletop.
“Two…” he said.
Xia Zhu and the boy who was chosen were invited to the podium. They drew five standard geometric figures on the blackboard in one go, and then successfully recited the hundred digits of pi after the decimal point in order.
This was no challenge at all for Xia Zhu; for a time, pi was her lullaby before bed.
Feng Mian noticed the boy next to her who had also been selected, but he just couldn't remember what he looked like. This was really strange, giving him the illusion that everyone in the entire school, except for them and the teachers, shared the same face.
A face forever hidden behind the mist, its features blurred.
Just then, the teacher announced the end of get out of class, and the person responsible for cleaning the sink today was...
Number 3, Fengmian.
The man's tone wasn't very good; in fact, it could be described as disappointed.
Fish soup, fish paste, braised fish head.
The air in the cafeteria was filled with a nauseating fishy smell. The three of them stirred the food in the bowl with spoons. Even if it tasted good, after eating it for several days, it was hard to swallow now.
"Xiao Feng? Are you alright?" Feng Mian and Xia Zhu both noticed her absent-mindedness.
"I'm fine..." she said, but her tone was lifeless and completely abnormal; these adjectives didn't belong to Feng Feng at all. "I'm just worried about the next math class. Math was the subject I feared most when I was in school..."
Feng Mian, as the older brother, understood this very well. He gently held his sister's wrist and said, "Don't worry too much. There are so many people, you might not be the one to be drawn."
"Besides, this class seems to be held every three days. Maybe we can find the monster and leave before the next math class."
His brother's words seemed to have an effect; Feng Feng raised his face again, his honey-colored eyes glistening with moisture.
“There is one thing, though. I tried to greet other students before, but they seemed not to see me, they didn’t really respond, and I could never remember what they looked like. The more this happened, the more I felt that Liang might not be a teacher,” Fengmian said.
Xia Zhu nodded; she thought so too. Otherwise, it would be too obvious. Of the 16 people, if the only one whose behavior was strange was Liang, then the Dream of Red Stone level would be far too simple.
"I've always wanted to ask, since the key to escaping the dream is to find and kill Liang, and all the other creatures in the dream are fabricated by Liang, why can't we kill some of the fake things in the dream, and Liang will naturally be among them?"
"The purpose of the 'Wraith Dream' is to trap the dreamer's original soul and give the 'Wraith' enough time to transform and break through the dream to enter reality. The enemy is in the dark while we are in the light. In the dream, the 'Wraith' is the master, and everything is beyond our control. It can control not only the dreamer but everyone who enters the dream. If we directly engage in indiscriminate killing, it may play right into our hands. The released killing intent will give it the opportunity to control our emotions and thus gain greater power. Unknown officials who enter the dream must abide by the rules and play their proper role."
"I see."
None of the three had much of an appetite, and they put their food bowls back in their original places without leaving a trace. After observing for a few days, they guessed that as long as they were in the cafeteria during mealtimes, they wouldn't be breaking the rules, and there were no strict requirements as to whether they ate or not.
Given the accident that happened to Feng Feng while cleaning yesterday, they specifically told Feng Mian not to take any risks, and then parted ways again at the stairwell.
Feng Feng was still somewhat listless, so Xia Zhu simply took her hand.
"Shall we have a contest to see who can hop up to the third floor on one leg?"
Feng Feng forced a smile, and the two of them, hand in hand, jumped up to the third floor step by step.
"Good job, Feng Feng, not even out of breath or with a racing heart." Xia Zhu gave him a thumbs up, and the latter put his hands on his hips and resumed his original expression, proudly raising his head.
"I am Lord Feng Feng!"
Xia Zhu leaned against the stairs, slightly out of breath. Ever since class ended, that string of numbers had been replaying in her mind, making her feel a bit agitated. And just as she was climbing the stairs, she discovered something that confirmed her previous thoughts.
"really."
She pointed to the steps at her feet and asked Feng Feng, "Did you count how many steps we went up from the first floor to the third floor?"
Feng Feng shook his head.
"68th step."
Is there a problem with this number?
“What I mean is, today it’s 68 steps,” Xia Zhu walked into Feng Feng and took her hand. “But yesterday, including the day before yesterday, it only took 64 steps to get from the first floor to the third floor.”
As she spoke, she pulled Feng Feng into the corridor, pointing to the vines hanging from the roof and the lush red algae on the wall.
“These things, all of them, have grown beyond reason in just three days, as if this building, this island, were alive.”
The rise and fall of the waves, the rain falling from the sky, the direction of the wind.
Fengmian was right. The enemy was in the dark while we were in the light. In the dream, Liang was like a creator.
“Xiao Feng, everything here can be controlled by it at will, only we, only we can control ourselves.” She squeezed Feng Feng’s hand a little harder, “You are Lord Feng Feng.”
"Alright, let's go see how Fengmian is doing his job."
This time, he brought up a metal bucket.
Feng Mian knocked on the door. He stood outside, lifted the bucket, and revealed a stinking dead fish inside.
In a daze, it overlapped with a scene from not long ago, except that the world was only a decadent gray-blue, and even the faces of the three people became hazy and unfathomable under this light.
"What is it this time?"
"A fish... um... one..."
The three people surrounded the tin bucket, with limp, sticky water plants hanging from its rim, maintaining the same state of being as dead fish—slippery, listless, and smoky gray.
It seemed that no one was willing to be the first to handle it, staring at its empty and eerie eyes.
In the end, Feng Mian gave in. Since he had already seen it, he pinched the dead fish's slippery head, gently pried open the fish's lips that would rot if he used too much force, and revealed a row of neat, even white, teeth inside the fish's mouth.
Human teeth.
The dead fish had a set of teeth that belonged to humans.
The scene was so jarringly incongruous that the three of them gasped, goosebumps rising on their exposed skin. Honestly, such perfect teeth would be ideal for a toothpaste commercial.
So the fish, with its lips parted and teeth bared, gave everyone a contemptuous and strange smile.
"I feel a little nauseous, is that normal?"
Me too.
Me too.
Feng Mian put down the dead fish. A layer of mucus and a few fish skin fragments had accumulated between his fingertips. He held up his fingers and pulled out a string of threads with a pinch and release.
"Get away from Feng Mian!" Feng Feng shouted.
All the unusual things that have happened these past two days indicate that the pool downstairs is not simple, including the fact that it needs to be cleaned every day; there must be some other secret behind it.
"Is this place deliberately trying to disgust us?"
Perhaps Feng Feng is right; that's roughly what he meant.
Currently, aside from some clues that are unclear and have no direct effect on finding the ghost, they have now grasped a new word.
"Biological variation".
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