Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The school cafeteria was already packed with students waiting in line. Unable to contain their hunger, the players grabbed trays and rushed toward the serving windows.

The instant they saw the food, however, their faces turned sickly.

Meat. Nothing but meat.

All of it raw: bloody pulp accompanied by a few leaves of lettuce.

Some pieces had not even been cleaned properly, with organs still attached.

One player vomited right there in the cafeteria.

After seeing the female students leap to their deaths the previous night, it was hard not to connect those corpses with the meat before them.

Every body had disappeared, after all.

Was it possible they had already been moved to the cafeteria?

The students around them showed no reaction. Their faces were blank, and each looked as lifeless as a corpse.

They displayed none of the emotion shown by an NPC like He Lecheng.

Holding his tray, Xiao Huai quietly approached the window in the farthest corner.

That window served only soup. At least the broth appeared free of meat, nothing more than ordinary bone stock.

Several players noticed and immediately followed him.

The cafeteria worker was simmering the broth with one enormous bone. When the players saw it, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

No human bone could be that large, so at least the soup was not made from human flesh.

Everyone assumed Xiao Huai would stop after taking the soup. Instead, he immediately went to another window and ordered a heaping portion of raw meat.

“?”

The sight of the blood-soaked meat on his tray nearly made them vomit again.

Noticing their stares, Xiao Huai glanced back. “What?”

Hu Jiang was among them. As Xiao Huai’s roommate, he was at least a little more familiar with him than the others.

He summoned his courage and approached. “X-Xiao… Xiao, don’t you think there’s something wrong with the meat? I thought you were only going to drink the soup.”

Xiao Huai picked up a slice of raw meat with his chopsticks, brought it to his mouth, and calmly swallowed. “How would soup alone fill me up? Besides, this meat is delicious.” He cocked his head. A smear of fresh blood clung to his lower lip as he gave Hu Jiang a meaningful smile.

The sight was unspeakably eerie.

The novices turned away in terror, no longer daring to watch him.

Hu Jiang was frightened too, but Xiao Huai had eaten the meat himself.

And just as he said, soup alone could not fill their stomachs. If every meal in the cafeteria consisted of raw meat, were they supposed to starve themselves? Dying of hunger would be truly pointless.

Following Xiao Huai’s example, he took a tray of the same raw meat and sat beside him. “Xiao, can I sit here?”

Xiao Huai took a sip of soup and shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

“Xiao, can I ask you something?” Hu Jiang asked nervously.

Xiao Huai only gave him a look, signaling him to continue.

“How were you so sure there was nothing wrong with the soup?”

He meant Xiao Huai’s decision to head straight for the soup window.

Xiao Huai smiled. “I simply have a habit of taking soup first, and that corner is the only place in the cafeteria that serves it. As for whether there’s something wrong with it, I don’t care. Humans devouring humans isn’t confined to fantasy. Even if you return to reality, can you be certain that isn’t a man-eating world too?”

He bit into another piece of meat as he spoke.

Hu Jiang stared. Xiao Huai existed on a completely different level from the rest of them.

Xiao Huai looked at Hu Jiang’s bewildered face. “By the way, you took pork. All the meat here is pork. It just looks unappetizing.”
Hu Jiang snapped out of his daze, and some color returned to his face.

Their nerves were so frayed that the sight of any meat made their minds leap to the worst possible conclusion.

If they could no longer distinguish human flesh from pork, they really were on the verge of losing their minds.

The moment Hu Jiang swallowed a piece, Xiao Huai casually added, “Human flesh tastes the same as pork when roasted, though. Want to try some?”

“Pfft!” Hu Jiang nearly choked to death. A piece of meat lodged in his throat, sending him into a violent coughing fit. He pounded his chest as his face turned crimson.

The amusement in Xiao Huai’s eyes deepened. He poured a mouthful of soup down Hu Jiang’s throat, then rose and left before the man had even caught his breath.

He had already finished every morsel on his tray.

Xiao Huai had only walked a few yards when Hu Jiang called after him. “Xiao! Did you really… have you really killed…?”

Someone?

He had finally asked the question weighing on him. The sentence remained unfinished, but with Xiao Huai’s sharp mind, how could he fail to understand?

Xiao Huai slowly turned around. This time there was no teasing smile on his face. His expression was cold and utterly blank.

“I forgot.”

Even if Xiao Huai truly had killed someone, what of it? How many of the chosen were free of sin?

There was never any shortage of murderers in horror games.

The gods could sentence them to death without the slightest pressure or burden on their consciences.

Because these people were cancers upon society to begin with.

* * *

No one dared relax during afternoon self-study. They had an exam that night, and without some desperate last-minute cramming, there was no telling how badly it would go.

He Lecheng had written their homework on the blackboard: Complete pages one through ten of the workbook.

He had warned Xiao Huai that his homework would be doubled, meaning twenty pages.

“What kind of homework is this…? Something’s wrong with these exercises. Why is every question an essay?”

It was not only the novices who noticed. Even the veteran players concealing their identities found it strange.

Ning Gaoqiang snorted. “Isn’t that better? At least you can make shit up in an essay. Beats doing math.”

“Heh.” Xiao Huai suddenly sneered.

The sound irritated Ning Gaoqiang. “What are you laughing at?”

Without looking up, Xiao Huai said, “You think writing is easy? A writer who never stops writing goes bald just as often as a mathematician. Creation itself consumes the mind.”

He picked up his pen and underlined the essay’s length requirement.

Each essay must contain no fewer than two hundred characters.

Something about that requirement was wrong. Even elementary school essays were supposed to be four hundred characters. Middle school required six hundred, while most high school essays demanded eight hundred. Here, each essay required only two hundred.

For Xiao Huai, completing twenty essays in a single afternoon was not impossible.

The intention behind the length was what mattered.

Unlike during the test, he did not give up. He put pen to paper and began writing immediately.

Everyone raced against the clock. Ning Gaoqiang could not be bothered with Xiao Huai’s strange remarks. The homework was easy enough to bluff his way through; the evening exam was the real problem.

Afternoon self-study soon ended. Many players could not stomach the cafeteria food and decided to skip dinner, silently praying the menu would change the next day.

They had one hour for dinner. Afternoon classes ended at five thirty, and evening study began at six thirty.

Hu Jiang found Xiao Huai in the cafeteria. He was about to sit with him when he realized someone had already taken the seat beside him.