Chapter 61
Chapter 61
Hu Qi was beaten within an inch of his life before the middle-aged man finally stopped.
Apparently still unsatisfied, he kicked Hu Qi again and even spat in his face.
“Drag this Hu Qi to the detention room. The rest of you, come with me. It’s time for class!” the middle-aged man barked.
A burly security guard dragged Hu Qi away like a dead dog, while Yun Jianyue and the others obediently followed the middle-aged man into the teaching building.
As they entered, the middle-aged man pulled a name tag from his trouser pocket and pinned it to the left side of his chest.
It read: [Disciplinary Director: Guo Rende].
Guo Rende led the six of them to Grade 11, Class 3. Class was already in session.
The teacher in charge was a woman in her thirties or forties. She had high cheekbones, her hair tied in a low ponytail, and a pair of red plastic-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Her face was gloomy, and only when she saw Guo Rende did the furrow in her brow ease slightly.
She also wore a name tag on the left side of her chest: [Homeroom Teacher: Yu Taoli].
“Director Guo.” Yu Taoli walked to the door. When she saw the six people behind him, she frowned. “Weren’t there supposed to be seven new students?”
Guo Rende gave a cold snort. “One of them refused to obey as soon as he arrived, so he was sent to the detention room.”
Yu Taoli’s disgust was completely undisguised. “Students these days are all scum. Anyone who refuses to listen to their teacher deserves punishment.”
Lu Changxue could barely contain her anger. Were all these people insane? How was this supposed to be a proper school? What teacher would insult students like that?
Seeing that Lu Changxue was about to speak, Yun Jianyue quietly pinched her arm and signaled for her to keep silent.
Yu Taoli noticed the movement anyway. Her sharp gaze landed on Yun Jianyue. “What were you doing just now?”
“Reporting to the teacher: I lost my balance and leaned against this classmate. I’m sorry.”
Yun Jianyue’s attitude was so exemplary that Lu Changxue and Zhou Benxin looked as though they had seen a ghost.
The teachers here were insane enough already. Had Yun Jianyue lost her mind too?
Yu Taoli still looked disgusted. Yun Jianyue’s good attitude did nothing to change her expression. “If you can’t stand steadily, then stand for the entire day. Keep standing until you can!”
“Yes, Teacher.” Yun Jianyue carried her obedient act through to the end.
Yu Taoli ordered the group inside and assigned the remaining students seats. She made Yun Jianyue stand at the back of the classroom.
There had originally been only a little over twenty students in the classroom. Even with Yun Jianyue and the other five, there were only thirty-one people.
From the moment she entered, Yun Jianyue noticed that the students in the classroom lacked even the slightest trace of youthful energy.
More accurately, they lacked the vitality of normal human beings.
They were like puppets, sitting upright and expressionless in their seats. There was not a glimmer of light in their eyes, and a gloomy air clung to every one of them.
Normally, whenever a new student joined a class, everyone would take a few extra looks.
But these students kept their eyes fixed straight ahead, staring blankly at the writing on the blackboard.
Once the new students had been settled, Yu Taoli began teaching.
They had arrived partway through the lesson, and after a little over twenty minutes, the bell rang.
Yu Taoli acted as though she hadn’t heard it and continued lecturing for another seven or eight minutes.
The next class was about to begin when Yu Taoli finally stopped, her face full of displeasure. “Class dismissed. Anyone going to the restroom is not allowed to be late for the next class.”
With that, Yu Taoli gathered up her teaching materials and left the classroom.
After finally making it through the lesson, Lu Changxue hurried over to Yun Jianyue the moment Yu Taoli was gone. “Darling, what is going on?”
“Yeah, Senior, this is way too creepy. Where’s your husband? Why hasn’t he shown up either?” Zhou Benxin, Qiao Yiyi, and the others gathered around as well.
Yun Jianyue glanced at the other students. Not a single one of them went to the restroom. They simply sat silently in their seats, reading in silence. Not one person spoke.
“I don’t know. Something’s strange about this place. I don’t even know where my chainsaw went.” Yun Jianyue spread her hands.
It wasn’t just the chainsaw. The few knives she had kept hidden on her were gone too.
Qiao Yiyi had forced herself to endure half a lesson, and her nerves were now on the verge of collapse. “Yueyue, what should we do? This place is so creepy. I want to go home.”
One second, they had clearly been at the Hongdou Hotel. The next, they had arrived at this haunted place!
And they had obviously been in winter, with everyone wearing thick down jackets. How had it suddenly become a sweltering summer?
On top of that, everything they had been carrying was gone!
Then there was Yun Jianyue’s friend, Lu Changxue. Hadn’t everyone at school said she was dead? Why had she appeared here with them? And where had Yun Jianyue’s husband gone?
Everything weighed on Qiao Yiyi’s heart like Mount Tai. She was so terrified that she couldn’t even cry. All that remained was endless fear.
Yun Jianyue asked Lu Changxue, “Are you human or a ghost right now?”
“I’m neither fully human nor fully ghost. I can’t use ghost power, but there’s a lot of resentment here, and I actually feel pretty comfortable in it.” Lu Changxue wasn’t entirely sure herself. Her current state felt very much like the time when she had still been alive.
“All right, I understand. You guys attend class for now. I’ll observe for a while longer.”
If only she and Zhou Benxin had arrived in this strange place, she could have simply forced her way out with him.
But Qiao Yiyi and Lu Changxue were both completely helpless, while Zhou Yang and Song Lu were two utterly useless men. It would be difficult to solve the problem through brute force. They would only end up being solved instead.
Because, judging from what she had observed, every single person here was genuinely human. There wasn’t a single ghost among them.
And that was precisely what made it even more disturbing.
“What people? What ghosts? What are you talking about? I just want to go home!” Qiao Yiyi was on the verge of a breakdown.
Lu Changxue tugged at Qiao Yiyi’s hand. “It’s all right. My Darling will protect us. We’ll definitely get out of here safely.”
Song Lu and Zhou Qi were also close to breaking down, but after witnessing the state Hu Qi had been beaten into, they couldn’t bring themselves to even consider running away.
The bell for the next class rang, and everyone hurried back to their seats. This time, the math teacher came in. He looked just as lifeless, and the way he looked at each student was as if he were looking at a piece of trash.
Somewhere Yun Jianyue and the others couldn’t see, the livestream was still ongoing.
By then, the chat had completely exploded.
[God of Wealth Bless Me: Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!]
[Pride and Prejudice: What is going on?! Did the streamer and the others suddenly travel through time or something? Who’s livestreaming right now?!]
[Charming Married Woman Loves High School Boys: It definitely isn’t the streamer livestreaming. Didn’t you see? The streamer was beaten half to death!]
[Suddenly Seven Years Like Dust: Didn’t you notice that there’s an extra beautiful girl with them? The beautiful girl’s boyfriend from before is gone!]
[My Former Bias Has Gone Mad: Isn’t the scariest part that it’s winter right now, but they’re in summer?!]
[Pure Land: The scariest part is clearly these students who are like wooden mannequins, and the teachers who insult and beat students whenever they feel like it, okay?!]
[Young Blood 2 Is About to Air – Waaah!: Is no one really calling the police? This doesn’t look like a script or an act at all. It looks like they really encountered ghosts!]
Amid the flood of comments, the messages from Mount Longhu’s Pampered Youngest were drowned out once again.
[Mount Longhu’s Pampered Youngest: They seem to have entered the Inner World.]
[Mount Longhu’s Pampered Youngest: Why is no one seeing my comments? Look at me!]
After a full afternoon of classes, it was already 5:40 p.m.
Yu Taoli entered the classroom, a pointer like Guo Rende’s clutched in her hand. With a grim expression, she shouted at the students, “Get in line. Follow me to the cafeteria.”
The original twenty-some students quickly formed a line. Lu Changxue pulled Qiao Yiyi over to join it as well. Yun Jianyue took the very last spot, with Zhou Benxin standing in front of her.
Watching Yu Taoli lead the line from the front, Zhou Benxin quietly asked Yun Jianyue, “Senior, have you figured anything out?”
“I’ve figured out that all the teachers here are psychopaths,” Yun Jianyue replied.
Zhou Benxin was speechless. “That’s not what I meant. Have you noticed what exactly is strange about this place?”
Yun Jianyue lowered her voice. “This seems to be another world. I read about it in Fang Lin’an’s book. Xuanmen calls this kind of world an Inner World.”
An Inner World was, in essence, a small world independent of the original one.
There were two types of Inner Worlds. One was an Inner World that reflected the past. Everything that happened within it had once happened in the real world.
The other was a completely fabricated Inner World. Everything inside it, including time, space, people, objects, and events, was entirely fictional.
If Yun Jianyue’s guess was correct, the Inner World they were in now was the first type.
“Then how do we get out?” Zhou Benxin asked.
“Find the core of the Inner World. Destroying the core will let us out,” Yun Jianyue said.
“What’s the core of an Inner World?”
“It could be anything. The core is different in every Inner World, but it’s usually a specific, fixed object. It could even be a person.” Yun Jianyue explained, “And you can’t determine what the core is through common sense. It could be a chair in a classroom, a bowl in the cafeteria, or a blade of grass on the sports field. It could be Guo Rende, or Yu Taoli’s glasses.”
Zhou Benxin looked ready to cry. “Then how are we supposed to find it?”
“Don’t panic. The teachers have been watching us the whole time, so it isn’t convenient for me to act alone. I’ll sneak out tonight and take a look.”
The two of them kept their conversation extremely quiet, barely even moving their lips.
Yu Taoli led them into the cafeteria. There were eight serving windows in total. Students were lined up in front of seven of them, while a few teachers stood scattered around the window farthest to the right.
And throughout the entire cafeteria, there were guards carrying electric batons stationed along the walls, in the aisles, and beside the dining tables.
From a quick glance, Yun Jianyue estimated that there were at least forty guards in there!
The students from Grade 11, Class 3 continued lining up behind the second window. Yu Taoli left them in the guards’ care and went straight to the teachers’ window to get her food.
A student who had already received his meal walked past Yun Jianyue with an expressionless face. Yun Jianyue couldn’t stop the corner of her mouth from twitching.
Was this stuff even fit for human consumption?
She could smell that the food had gone sour from half a meter away!
And could it even be called food? Stalks of napa cabbage still covered in dirt had been mixed with potatoes, along with a yellowish-black steamed bun that had gone bad.
Yun Jianyue secretly glanced at the students who were eating. Every tray contained the exact same stuff!
They seemed to have long since grown accustomed to this kind of food. Without changing expression, they stuffed it into their mouths one bite after another.
Then Yu Taoli’s cold voice rang out after she had received her meal. “Who gave you permission to look around?”