Chapter 89
Chapter 89
The students at this school had undoubtedly all become ghosts.
Only their lingering resentment remained, condensed into curses that haunted the deathly silent campus.
The conversation they had just heard was probably a replay of something that had happened at the school in the past.
“No.”
Qin Lan’s thoughts remained clear, and he quickly arrived at another possibility. “We must have fulfilled a very demanding condition that deliberately triggered this hidden scene.”
“We had to enter the corridor during the break, be pursued by the Dean of Students, successfully escape, and then hide in the restroom before this information would appear.”
Xue Chuan’s expression became serious for once, and he followed Qin Lan’s reasoning.
“In other words, what those two girls discussed must be directly relevant to us.”
“And the Chinese Teacher they mentioned must be the same old witch who executes students the moment she dislikes their essays…”
Qin Lan nodded. “Exactly… By the way, are you finally willing to stop playing dumb?”
“You’re much more reassuring when you’re calm and clever like this.”
The instant he finished speaking, a piercing bell rang overhead.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
[Warning Bell: Prepare for class!]
Qin Lan’s expression changed. “This is bad. We wasted too much time!”
Without hesitation, he grabbed Xue Chuan and shot out of the stall.
The Dean of Students was still carefully searching the men’s restroom.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Qin Lan dragged the deadweight behind him and raced back to the classroom.
As expected, the barrier that had blocked the doorway was gone.
“Good. We made it.”
Qin Lan released a breath of relief.
His Speed was high enough that he could theoretically have returned to the classroom in under a second, but Xue Chuan could not withstand that.
His physique could not endure acceleration of that intensity.
If Qin Lan unleashed his full speed, the wind pressure would instantly crush the man he was dragging into a lump of meat. With better luck, Xue Chuan would merely have an arm torn off.
Once they returned to the classroom, the two could no longer communicate.
Whispering and secretly passing notes were both violations of school discipline and would inevitably trigger an attack.
Qin Lan used the silence to think.
“From what those two students said, the Chinese Teacher used to be a very gentle person…”
“She comforted her students and praised their creativity. Even when an essay wandered off topic, she merely gave them a few reminders…”
“But…”
Qin Lan recalled that shrill voice and the deathly pale hand.
“What changed her?”
“What turned her into a judge who cares only about grades and studying, crushing every other spark of inspiration and every independent thought?”
Qin Lan felt as if he had brushed against the school’s secret.
Without any more information, however, he could only set the thought aside for now.
[Class Bell: Class has begun.]
The second bell rang, but no teacher appeared at the lectern.
At first, Qin Lan assumed some invisible anomaly was present. After looking around, however, he could not find even a single thread of death traces.
In other words, there genuinely was no one at the front of the room.
“What does this mean? Is the teacher late too?”
Qin Lan could not make sense of it.
Xue Chuan also looked confused. He tried to communicate with Qin Lan by silently mouthing words, but Qin Lan could not read lips.
Then a hazy figure rose from the seat beside Qin Lan and walked toward the lectern.
It was the ghost of a student. It picked up a piece of chalk and wrote several large words on the blackboard.
“Quiet Self-Study. Observe Discipline.”
What?
They even had self-study periods?
Qin Lan blinked. Only then did he notice that many ghosts had appeared around them again. Even those erased by the Chinese Teacher seemed to have resurrected.
Their fate was miserable indeed. Death brought them no peace; they were still dragged back into class to suffer all over again.
“What forbidden rules does a self-study period have?”
Qin Lan pondered the question, staring absently at the chalk writing on the blackboard.
Then…
Then he died.
Without the slightest warning, a piece of chalk shot out from nowhere and pierced straight through his head.
A cool sensation passed through him, and his vision plunged into darkness.
Before he died, Qin Lan heard an icy reprimand.
“Focus while you study! Stop looking around!”
“Two points deducted!”
[Your mind was literally blown open halfway through studying. Killer: Student Council Monitor.]
[Speed permanently increased by 6.]
[Current Speed: 33 > 39]
“Fuck! The look-up rate!”
Qin Lan cursed inwardly.
Of course it was that.
The look-up rate was an inhuman metric once adopted by countless schools to measure how focused students were on their studies.
No matter what happened, students had to keep their attention fixed on their books. The moment they raised their heads, they were reprimanded.
Some particularly vile administrators even installed dedicated surveillance software to calculate each class’s look-up rate in real time, then used the data to pressure the teachers.
“You’ve even brought in the look-up rate. Is there anything you people won’t do? Add exam scores to everyone’s credit history? Treat failing a test like a criminal record?”
Qin Lan seethed.
“That idiotic school definitely toured some place called Hengshui. You’ve copied way too much of their deranged nonsense!”
With a sigh, Qin Lan silently lowered his head.
As he did, he coughed hard twice in an attempt to warn Xue Chuan.
He lowered his head so far that it almost touched the desk.
Seeing him, Xue Chuan quickly caught on and copied the posture.
He did not understand it, but he respected it.
Before long, one of the student ghosts apparently developed a sore neck and tilted its head back to stretch. A piece of chalk shot over at terrifying speed and blasted it apart.
Xue Chuan caught the scene from the corner of his eye and whispered, “Fuck.”
At last, he understood Qin Lan’s actions.
“Besides the look-up rate, what else is there…? Haaah…”
Qin Lan kept his head lowered. Midway through the thought, he yawned involuntarily.
Then he sensed that something was wrong.
With his current physique, he should not have experienced an uncontrollable urge to yawn.
He opened his attribute panel, and his face turned ashen.
A temporary abnormal status had appeared.
[Extreme Drowsiness: You are exhausted and feel deeply fatigued, as though you could fall asleep at any moment.]
So they were playing dirty.
Qin Lan’s scalp prickled in alarm.
This suddenly imposed negative status acted directly on the mind. Curse resistance could not negate it, leaving willpower as the only defense.
Worse still, Qin Lan had a deeply unpleasant memory of this kind of situation.
The last time something similar happened was the unbearable itching in Terror Subway.
If this followed the same pattern, then the strongest boss in the instance was probably intervening.
And if the pattern held…
The drowsiness would grow progressively stronger.
“Raising my head means death, but falling asleep with my head down will also kill me…”
“There’s no teacher speaking during self-study, and the illusion around us has gone completely quiet. Everything is designed to make us nod off!”
Qin Lan’s expression turned grave.
What should he do?
What else could he do? Sleep first and deal with the rest later.
Death did not frighten him anyway.
Qin Lan promptly folded his arms on the desk, lowered his head, and slipped into a sweet sleep.
Whoosh!
The chalk arrived right on schedule.
[Why sleep so long in life? Once dead, you will sleep forever… Killer: Student Council Monitor.]
[Constitution permanently increased by 3.5.]
[Current Constitution: 37 > 40.5]
[Speed permanently increased by 3.5.]
[Current Speed: 39 > 42.5]