Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Today was the first day. As I walked through the campus with Sun Huawen, everything felt the same as usual.
The vast majority of students still seemed normal.
It was only 6:15 PM.
We couldn’t go back to the dorms yet.
Strangely, even though finals were still far off, the Library was already packed to capacity.
But this situation wouldn’t last long.
When the abnormal ones became the majority, the pressure on the Library would lessen.
The Library had a hidden function-it served as a scale to measure the ratio of the living to the dead.
Library packed: Congratulations, your environment is still relatively normal. As long as you follow the rules, you can survive.
Empty seats appearing in the Library: Those who merely followed the rules have been eliminated.
Library fifty percent empty: On average, one out of every two people you meet has a problem.
Library more than fifty percent empty: You are already surrounded…
If survival is cruel enough, most of those who manage to stay alive have something special about them.
Can I survive?
I asked myself.
“I think if we want to live, just following the rules isn’t enough. Machines are the best at following rules. If we want to make it to the end, we have to be flexible and adaptable without breaking the rules,” Sun Huawen suddenly said as we walked.
“How should we be flexible? How do we adapt?”
“I’m not quite sure yet, but survival is never easy. We have to fight with everything we’ve got just for a chance to live. I have a feeling that while we avoid breaking the rules, we also need to come up with something new of our own.”
I summarized Sun Huawen’s words in my head:
[Under the premise of not breaking the rules, establish new rules that allow you to survive.]
I must have accumulated some serious karma in my past life to have a friend like Sun Huawen.
Being around someone with such a high IQ made me feel like my own intelligence was being elevated.
“Sun Huawen, I’ve decided,” I said, looking at him with a serious expression. “Even when I die, I want to be buried with you. Thousands of years from now, when archaeologists find us, we can be displayed together in the same glass case.”
“No thanks. I have high standards for myself; I only allow women to be buried with me.”
What a guy-putting girls before bros.
I wasn’t even being picky about him, yet he was being picky about me.
Before we knew it, Sun Huawen and I had reached the cafeteria.
We should be able to head back to the dorms after dinner.
The cafeteria was as bright as day, but unlike usual, every food stall was serving meat buns.
[Do not eat the meat buns from the cafeteria.]
The text message told us not to eat them, yet here they were, being offered so blatantly.
Who exactly needed these meat buns?
And who were the ones buying them?
“Keep an eye on the people buying meat buns,” Sun Huawen said, thinking exactly what I was thinking.
“Boss Sun! Brother Gu!”
Tao Ran and Xiao Ze sat down across from us, carrying their trays.
“Xiao Ze and I saw something incredible in class today. It was the misfortune of a lifetime; it nearly scared the life out of my beautiful eyes,” Tao Ran blurted out the moment he sat down.
Just then, Zhou Yiqiang and Huang Pang appeared from somewhere. Zhou Yiqiang slammed a Coke onto the table, sat down, and rested his chin on his crossed hands. He looked at Tao Ran and said with perfect enunciation, “Please, begin your story.”
With that, our entire dorm was gathered.
“We saw someone from the Student Council in class,” Xiao Ze said, taking a bite of his stir-fried eggs and tomatoes. “I’ll let Brother Tao tell it; he seems pretty eager.”
“On that misty, rainy afternoon, Xiao Ze and I entered the classroom with trepidation. The teacher stood on the podium, motionless as a statue, wearing a smile more mysterious than the Mona Lisa’s. At that moment, I felt like Louis XVI being sent to the guillotine.”
Zhou Yiqiang lost his patience. He snapped at Tao Ran, “Stop rambling. You’re taking forever. Xiao Ze, you tell it.”
“Hey, wait! I’ll tell it properly now!” Tao Ran naturally wasn’t willing to hand the spotlight over to Xiao Ze. “During class, a student’s phone rang. He answered it, and the teacher said he had to be punished. So, he killed the teacher.”
Tao Ran skipped ahead so fast I couldn’t process it.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Can you give us some details? You’re talking so fast, are you in a hurry to be reincarnated?” Zhou Yiqiang voiced his dissatisfaction again.
“When I give details, you say I’m rambling. You’re such a fickle man.”
In the end, Tao Ran added a few more sentences.
According to Tao Ran’s description, the student’s behavior was incredibly arrogant and his attitude was peerlessly defiant.
Of course, nine times out of ten, Tao Ran was exaggerating.
After all, arrogant and defiant people don’t usually inspire bone-deep terror. Xiao Ze’s version was much more credible.
In Xiao Ze’s description, the student’s eyes were hollow and his expression was stiff. He stood up slowly like a rusted machine. The student then drifted toward the teacher like a cloud of gas, passing right through the desks and other students. Once there, he produced a square Box.
The Box wasn’t large; each side was only about the size of two smartphones.
The student actually picked the teacher up and forced him into the Box. He stuffed the entire man inside.
The students below could only watch as a human being was compressed, deformed, and twisted.
Red liquid spilled all over the floor.
The student finished it all with a blank expression, then walked out of the classroom with stiff, robotic movements.
Tao Ran and Xiao Ze had been so terrified they clung to each other, shivering.
Because class wasn’t over yet, everyone in the room had no choice but to sit there and endure the horror.
“How do you know he was from the Student Council?” I asked Xiao Ze.
“The words ‘Student Council’ were written on every side of the Box.”
Sun Huawen followed up, “But people from the Student Council are a bit different from both normal people and the dead, right? Can you tell just by seeing them on the street?”
“Yes.” Xiao Ze nodded.
Sun Huawen reached a conclusion:
[The Student Council might not be good at disguising themselves, but they are extremely dangerous.]
I remembered the information from the text message.
[There are no humans in the Student Council.]