Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Wei Sen picked a few dishes at random. They tasted mediocre, but at least they were enough to fill her stomach.

She had only taken a couple of bites when Lin Xiaoxue and Chen Lin arrived at the cafeteria together.

Both of them were a little surprised to see Xia Susu back to normal. In the end, they still chose food from the lady at Window 1, then sat down across from Wei Sen.

“Sister Sen, what’s going on?” Lin Xiaoxue lowered her voice, glancing out of the corner of her eye at Xia Susu.

“I’m not entirely sure, but one thing’s certain-she’s already allied herself with Bai Xue,” Wei Sen replied.

“That traitor!” Lin Xiaoxue angrily stabbed at the food in her bowl with her chopsticks.

“Let her be. I have some very important intel. We’ll share it once everyone is here.”

“Okay.”

Before long, Xu You also arrived at the cafeteria, got her food, and sat down.

“You have no idea. I am honestly so done,” Xu You said, shaking her head helplessly.

“What happened? What happened?” Lin Xiaoxue hurriedly asked.

Xu You looked at everyone and said, “This morning, a boy came to the Infirmary. I followed the rules and gave him the Red Special Medicine. But! He went in and out at least ten times! Every time he came in, I had to give him three pills according to the rules. In one morning, he wiped out an entire bottle of Red Special Medicine!”

Wei Sen frowned. “How much red medicine is left in the cabinet?”

“Three bottles.” Xu You’s expression turned grave. She had clearly realized the problem too.

Chen Lin pushed up her black-framed glasses and said, “At this rate, the medicine will be gone in less than three days.”

“My rules don’t tell me what to do if the medicine runs out,” Xu You said with a frown.

Lin Xiaoxue put down her chopsticks, looking confused. “Then what are we supposed to do? If the medicine is gone and that boy comes again, wouldn’t that mean breaking the rules?!”

Wei Sen said, “I’m afraid that’s exactly its goal.”

Lin Xiaoxue sucked in a sharp breath. “Sister Sen, you mean that boy kept going in and out of the Infirmary on purpose to trick Sister You into using up all her medicine?!”

“Yes.”

Xu You rubbed her chin. “I didn’t notice at first, but now that you mention it, that’s exactly what it was! The last time the boy came in, he even smiled at me. There was something indescribably creepy about that smile. So he was mocking me!”

Wei Sen slowly set down her chopsticks. “We want to survive until summer break, but the Eerie Entity here will never allow that to happen.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Huang Xinze sat down as well.

“Ladies, what are we talking about?”

Aside from Wei Sen, the others all looked at Huang Xinze warily.

“I invited him over. I went to the Principal’s Office today, and he helped me a lot.”

After Wei Sen gave a brief explanation, the others finally relaxed.

Huang Xinze chuckled. “Hey, we’re all teammates here. No need to be so distant! What should I call you ladies?”

The others briefly introduced themselves.

“So are we having a meeting? Aren’t we missing someone?” Huang Xinze asked while shoveling rice into his mouth.

Lin Xiaoxue folded her arms across her chest and raised an eyebrow at him. “You can only choose her or us!”

Huang Xinze froze. A grain of rice fell from the corner of his mouth as his brain began racing.

Did girls just like forming cliques?

Maybe they had their reasons for doing this, but he couldn’t bring himself to completely ignore any beauty!

Although Huang Xinze did not say it out loud, every thought was written all over his face, and the others understood him perfectly.

Wei Sen explained, “She doesn’t trust us, so we can’t share our intel with her for the time being. You understand how important mutual trust is in a place where we could die at any moment.”

Huang Xinze fell into thought, and his expression unconsciously became serious.

She was right. In a place like this, revealing your trump cards was the same as leaving your back to your teammates on a battlefield. Absolute trust was crucial.

“I get it.” Huang Xinze looked solemn one second, then broke into a grin the next. “But my life philosophy is to never give up on any beautiful woman! I’ll join you, but if circumstances allow, I’ll still try to help that beauty too!”

“Hah. Men!” Lin Xiaoxue snorted.

Huang Xinze reached out and patted Lin Xiaoxue on the head. “You’re still underage, aren’t you, little girl? You should call me big brother!”

“So annoying!” Lin Xiaoxue swatted his hand away in disgust.

Seeing them like this, Chen Lin couldn’t help lowering her head and laughing softly.
Wei Sen looked at Huang Xinze, a hint of scrutiny coloring her eyes. She quickly hid it and spoke calmly.

“In any case, don’t tell her anything we discuss,” Xu You added. “She’s already thrown in with Group A. If you pass the information to her, we’ll be in trouble.”

Huang Xinze finally understood why Xia Susu hadn’t been invited to today’s meeting. So she had betrayed the team first.

Technically, Group A and Group B weren’t competitors or enemies, but once little factions formed, it was no easy thing to merge them back together.

“Okay, got it!” Huang Xinze glanced at the time. “We need to hurry. I only have twenty minutes to wolf down my meal, or it’ll count as leaving my post without permission!”

“All right.”

Wei Sen told everyone, without leaving out a single detail, the method she and Xu You had discovered in the Infirmary today for escaping the Instance.

Then she shared everything she had seen and heard in the Principal’s Office.

“Wuwuwu, this is wonderful! As long as we’ve found a way to leave this place, we still have hope!” Lin Xiaoxue was so excited she was nearly in tears.

“This really is important information,” Huang Xinze said. “No wonder you risked going to the Principal’s Office.”

“I just didn’t expect each group to have a different way to clear the Instance. Doesn’t that mean Xia Susu’s defection to Group A was pointless?” Chen Lin said.

Lin Xiaoxue picked up the thread. “That was her choice. What’s it got to do with us?! Besides, the moment she arrived, she got that man named Ah Qiang killed. Even if she can’t get out in the end, she deserves it!”

Everyone fell silent.

Lin Xiaoxue had been blunt, but it was the truth.

Xia Susu had never trusted them. Even if they told her the truth, she might not believe it unless she discovered it herself.

“Set her matter aside for now,” Wei Sen said. “The two groups have different methods for clearing the Instance, and we don’t know whether Group A’s method conflicts with ours. So no matter what, we need to hurry and satisfy the Clearance Condition first, then leave this place.”

Everyone agreed, and they continued discussing how to clear the Instance.

Xu You thought for a moment. “The principal’s secret… could it be that he killed the Vice Principal?”

The others looked at one another. It wasn’t impossible.

Chen Lin said, “Then we’d need to know why he killed the Vice Principal. Only then would it count as uncovering the principal’s secret.”

Wei Sen closed her eyes and carefully recalled what had happened.

When she first entered the Principal’s Office, she had assumed the skeleton was a human anatomical model and hadn’t paid much attention. But thinking about it now, elementary schools didn’t even have biology classes. She should have realized something was wrong back then.

She thought back carefully. If the Vice Principal truly had been murdered, there should have been some clues left on the remains.

But there had been no marks on that skeleton caused by any external force.

“If that hypothesis is correct, investigating the truth will be very difficult,” Wei Sen said.

“Then why don’t we try to learn the principal’s wish? Fulfilling that would work too!” Lin Xiaoxue suggested, then lowered her voice. “Anyway, we don’t know what those Merit Points are for. Whether we gain more or fewer shouldn’t matter.”

Wei Sen said nothing. The Merit Points on the watch could be hidden.

When her Merit Points became different from everyone else’s, she had hidden her own number.

But it was obvious that everyone else’s Merit Points were still at 0.

Indeed, for those without the System, the purpose of Merit Points was still unknown.

But since the thing existed, it had to serve an important purpose.

It was just that, at the moment, earning Merit Points was not the most important thing. The most important thing was to leave this Instance first, no matter how they did it.

Huang Xinze thought for a moment as well, then suggested, “We can take turns communicating with the principal more and see if we can get anything out of him!”

“I think that could work,” Xu You said. “But right now, both you and I have special duties and relatively little time. I’m afraid we won’t be able to complete that task.”

Lin Xiaoxue pursed her lips. She couldn’t quite hide the fear on her face, but she still raised her hand. “I can give it a try.”

Chen Lin swallowed. “I-I can too.”

Wei Sen thought for a long time, then looked at everyone and said gravely, “That method is flawed. Be careful of the principal. Avoid confronting him directly as much as possible.”