Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A small, tightly folded slip of paper fell out of the crack.

I leaned over to pick it up. After unfolding it and taking a single glance, my heart steadied significantly.

There was only one supplementary rule:

“Any question that cannot be fully defined shall be deemed an invalid question.”

I had written this line years ago as a golden finger for my female lead; now, it was my turn to use it.

The Rule Hunter looked at the slip of paper, and for the first time, its eyes flickered with visible emotion. It wasn’t anger, or even resentment; it simply studied me more closely, as if re-evaluating the danger level of a new variable.

Then, it changed its question.

“Should the deaths you have written be borne by the characters?”

I continued writing on my paper:

“Please define ‘character’ first.”

It paused again.

The entire class was pin-drop silent. Only the ceiling fan spun slowly, emitting a rhythmic, metallic click-clack. My back was actually soaked with sweat. Conversing with a Rule Hunter was like sticking your finger into a meat grinder to test the blade-if you were half a beat too slow, you were dead.

Finally, it turned and walked toward the podium.

If invalid questions accumulated three times, proctoring authority would be forcibly transferred to a Local Teacher. This was another one of the hidden plot threads I had buried.

Two minutes later, a figure suddenly appeared in the mirror behind the podium. It was a female teacher wearing an old-fashioned qipao. Her face was pale, but her lips were as red as if she had just finished drinking blood. She took the roll call book from the Hunter’s hand, completing the transfer of proctoring authority.

Many people in the classroom breathed a sigh of relief.

Only I knew that something even more dangerous had arrived.

A Local Teacher wouldn’t judge an author; she would only judge cheaters. And the greatest form of “cheating” in Silent Middle School was proving, by any means, that you knew something outside of the rules.

The female teacher began distributing the exam papers.

There was only one question on the first page:

“Please write down the secret you are least supposed to know.”

Xu Zhibai’s hands were shaking, clearly at a loss for what to write. I gave her a gentle kick under the table and pointed to the second page. She flipped it over and, as expected, saw an extremely faint indentation at the bottom of the back side.

Leave the blank space to the mind reader.

This was the answer I had left as a true path to survival. An exam paper couldn’t be taken out of the testing room empty, but it could remain blank while inside, because “blankness” itself was a form of submission. The key was that whoever first admitted to knowing something they weren’t supposed to know would be judged by the school as a “source of contamination.”

I left my entire paper blank and pushed it to the corner of my desk.

The female teacher walked over and stared at me for a long time. Suddenly, she leaned down and whispered in my ear at a volume only I could hear:

“Lin Zhaowan, do you really not remember me?”

My pupils constricted.

In the mirror, that face didn’t match any character I had ever written in my books.

But the tone she used to call my name was hauntingly similar to an old friend who had been my desk mate for many years.

Before I could wrap my head around it, the bell for the end of class suddenly rang.

The Rule Hunter reappeared at the door, holding a book with a black cover.

Printed on the cover was my pen name.

Yan Huideng.