Chapter 169: Red Maple Boarding School (VI) “Because of you, all of us died”

“There’s something wrong with the NPC named ’47’.” In the silence, Jiang Junjue suddenly spoke, startling Zhang Yiyu.

The fourth floor of the school lacked lighting. The long, narrow corridor stretched infinitely in both directions, its end nowhere in sight, reminiscent of a deep, dark tomb passage.

The gray cement walls were mottled with suspicious water stains, confining like sealed coffins, and every few steps, a tombstone-like iron door was embedded in the wall.

Led by Jiang Junjue, the seven-person team—composed of members from Tingfeng and Jiuzhou, plus three Free Players—walked slowly and cautiously through the hallway, testing the iron doors set into the walls.

After discovering the doors could be opened, Jiang Junjue decisively split the seven-person team into three groups to search the rooms separately.

At this moment, Jiang Junjue and Zhang Yiyu, forming one group, entered a room that looked like a classroom at the far left end of the corridor, searching it inch by inch starting from the edges.

Zhang Yiyu asked knowingly, “47 isn’t the NPC who provides clues? What could be wrong with him?”

Although she had discerned Qi Si’s unusual nature, she absolutely did not want to explain her abilities to Jiang Junjue.

She was afraid not only of exposing her trump card but also of causing suspicion if her explanation was unclear.

“Don’t you think he’s too intelligent?” Jiang Junjue pulled a sack out of his inventory and dumped out a pile of gadgets like flashlights, searchlights, and electric batons.

He took out two flashlights, keeping one for himself and tossing the other to Zhang Yiyu. He then reached into the bottom of the sack, grabbed a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit it with a lighter.

“He thought of saving himself when he was confined and about to starve, showed gratitude after being rescued, understood our instructions for him, and even grasped subtext… No matter how you look at it, he is too much like a person.”

Thinking of the threatening look Qi Si had given her, Zhang Yiyu agreed deeply: “Yes, he is too much like a person.”

Jiang Junjue spoke indistinctly around the cigarette in his mouth: “I’ve encountered friendly humanoid NPCs before, but none were this intelligent. The only time I met an NPC who was particularly human-like, they turned out to be a player who had died in a instance, lost their memory, and joined the team as an NPC. This NPC clearly isn’t that case.”

“Huh, really?” Zhang Yiyu turned on her flashlight and shone it on the desk closest to her.

The desk was made of wood and only reached her waist. The desktop was twice the size of standard desks, large enough for a person to lie down on. Calling it a desk, it looked more like a strangely designed bed.

Zhang Yiyu lowered the angle of her flashlight. The white circle of light moved down the wooden grain, settling on a patch of brownish-red color. The patch was thickly congealed on the wood, sticky and conspicuous.

Almost instantly upon seeing it, Zhang Yiyu knew—it was blood!

There were bloodstains in the classroom, meaning someone had died here… Zhang Yiyu habitually felt fear and wanted to scream, but her instinct made her unconsciously start salivating.

Then she heard Jiang Junjue ask, “Little Zhang, you stared at that NPC for a long time. Did you notice something?”

…Sure enough, a Veteran Player of this caliber couldn’t possibly miss the flaw.

Zhang Yiyu hesitated for a moment, swallowed, and recited her prepared excuse: “After clearing the third instance, I gained a Skill that allows me to see the danger level of anomalies and, to some extent, lock onto their location. I found a lot of black smoke on 47, even more than on Ms. Medina. This means he is actually more dangerous than Ms. Medina.”

“That confirms it.” Jiang Junjue held the cigarette between two fingers and exhaled a puff of smoke. “He should be the Core NPC of this instance. His status is likely close to that of a Demigod, which explains his high intelligence.”

“…Huh?”

“Our Guild has systematically studied the structure of instances. A instance’s basic components are a ‘Core NPC harboring resentment or desire,’ a ‘Background Worldview containing contradictions or injustice,’ and ‘Horror Events that have been abstracted and exaggerated.’ Generally, there is only one Core NPC, otherwise their objectives would conflict. Since there is more than one Ms. Medina, she is unlikely to be the core.”

Zhang Yiyu nodded, half understanding, and asked, “What should we do then? Should we still trick 47 into testing the death point?”

“How can you call that tricking him?” Jiang Junjue put the cigarette back in his mouth and shone the flashlight around aimlessly. “He hasn’t shown any danger yet, indicating that his Core NPC side hasn’t been activated. Letting him walk around the instance more will help accelerate the plot…”

The flashlight beam fell on a corner, and Jiang Junjue let out a sound of surprise.

Within the circle of light, on the wall illuminated in grayish-white, were several grayish-black carved marks, which were hard to see clearly from a distance.

Jiang Junjue held the flashlight and crept closer.

The carved marks became clearer, arranging themselves into lines of fine characters before his eyes. Withered little figures stood or sat, creeping like insects and beasts on the parched surface. The scratches, deep or shallow, light or heavy, dark or faint, seemed to breathe softly through the long stretches of time, transmitting temperatures both warm and cold.

This was a form of writing, or perhaps… a language. A language belonging to no known linguistic family within Jiang Junjue’s knowledge.

Jiang Junjue stared intently at the swathes of incomprehensible text, silently counting the seconds.

After two seconds, no translation popped up on the system interface.

He looked for a full five seconds, but still, no translation appeared.

“Is it not text? Or is this information unimportant?” Jiang Junjue blinked twice, then shone the flashlight elsewhere.

On the desk closest to him, a stark white skull had appeared at some unknown time, its hollow eye sockets staring directly at him, seemingly scrutinizing his every move.

Jiang Junjue’s hand trembled, and he nearly dropped the flashlight.

Fortunately, having weathered many storms, he stabilized his mind in a mere second, avoiding embarrassment in front of his junior.

Beside him, Zhang Yiyu suddenly let out a shrill scream, like a goose whose neck had been stepped on.

Jiang Junjue had just calmed his heart when the high-decibel shriek made him finally lose control. His shoulder twitched, sending the flashlight flying to the ground.

The flashlight stood upside down on the floor at an odd angle, illuminating the classroom ceiling in a pale light.

In the large patches of water stains, human faces, some sad and some terrified, were tightly squeezed together, looking as if they were about to drip down.

Jiang Junjue followed Zhang Yiyu’s gaze and saw a grayish-white severed head placed neatly on every desk, facing the two people standing in the middle of the classroom, staring intently.

In the silence, they opened and closed their jaws, singing in unison.

It was a song with a strange tune; the lyrics were incomprehensible, yet it was surprisingly pleasant to listen to… As evening arrived, the sky quickly darkened, coating the entire world in a damp, eerie watery hue.

Qi Si casually tossed the note in his hand, followed the human face, went around the cement building, and walked toward the low-lying kitchen in the distance.

The school grounds were quite large. If one were to look down from above, they would see that large areas of maple forest had been hollowed out for nearly half the area, paved with cement to create a flat surface, upon which buildings of various heights were haphazardly constructed.

Qi Si observed his surroundings as he walked.

To his left was the cement building, and to his right was a wide, open plain where several clusters of uneven small hills could be seen in the distance.

On the horizon, several gray, dusty protrusions were embedded beneath the increasingly gloomy sky, resembling festering herpes, and seeming to be graves.

“After you take me there, will you stay and cook with me?” Qi Si placed his hand over the Pocket Watch of Fate and asked the guiding human face.

The human face turned around and said fiercely, “No, don’t you dare try to get me punished by Ms. Medina again!”

Qi Si: “…”

It seems the “47” he was playing had a poor reputation—not only disliked by the teacher but also resented by his classmates… Two seconds later, Qi Si touched his face, forcing out an innocent expression: “Ms. Medina is highly discerning. She must have punished you because you did something wrong yourself. How could it possibly be my fault?”

The human face was stunned by Qi Si’s manipulative words, remaining silent for a long time before finally uttering a sentence: “Because you committed a great mistake, all of us died.”

“Was it a Guilt-by-Association System, or did my mistake trigger some kind of disaster?” Qi Si pressed.

“Because of you, it’s all because of you…”

The human face’s answer avoided the question.

It suddenly began to tremble violently and slowly turned toward the small hills on the right.

Expressions of sadness, fear, anger, and pain were shaken together on the same face. Its features were indistinguishable, like a large mass of water that continuously contracted and expanded.

“We all died, buried in the dirt…”

The human face muttered repeatedly, and Qi Si uncontrollably turned his head to look at the large expanse of hills on his right.

This time, the scenery there was visible down to the smallest detail; he could see it very clearly.

Small grave mounds lay scattered across the black earth, with broken and rotten wooden planks stuck crookedly into the soil, serving as crude tombstones.

Arabic numerals from 1 to 50 were deeply carved into the tombstones. The grave mound marked “47” had an opening, exposing a pitch-black coffin in the pit.

Red and green colors flashed rapidly before his eyes, like accelerated surveillance footage. Hundreds of pedestrians in brightly colored clothes hurried back and forth, blurring into indistinct patches of color beyond the limit of what the naked eye could capture.

A suffocating feeling followed immediately. The space around him instantly became viscous, as if the entire world had been repeatedly folded and pressed together by a pair of giant hands.

Scenes of spring, summer, autumn, and winter were placed within the same frame. Layers of semi-transparent secondary colors overlapped on a single sheet of paper, like a palette suddenly being knocked over.

Qi Si held his breath, ready to activate the effect of the Pocket Watch of Fate at any moment, but the pressure around him eased after reaching its peak.

The color patches rapidly flying past the sides of his vision slowed down, and the outlines of human figures gradually became discernible.

Crowds wearing clothing from various eras walked around him. Qi Si felt like a giant stone thrown into a river, with the water gurgling past him on both sides, flowing eternally.

Time passed moment by moment. All the mixed colors became increasingly transparent and faint, finally disappearing.

Qi Si still maintained the posture of gripping the Pocket Watch of Fate, standing on the cold cement ground beneath the lead-gray sky.

The damp human face turned its head and said word by word, “Number 47, Ms. Medina sent me to take you to the kitchen.”

It seemed to have completely forgotten what had just happened, unconsciously repeating the lines it had spoken when first meeting Qi Si.

The death point passed confusingly, without the need to use the item’s effect.

Qi Si glanced at the distant grave mounds again, but ultimately suppressed his restless desire to court death and quietly followed the human face leading the way.

The low-lying kitchen building drew closer, casting a deep black, monstrous shadow before him.

It was also built of cement, its surface covered with dirty cracks, the fissures filled with insect-egg-like dust.

The door was open, and from the outside, one could see the dilapidated stove and filthy kitchen utensils inside. A single glance was enough to imagine the greasy feeling of touching them.

Qi Si lowered his head and saw a few pale-blue mushrooms growing precariously in the cracked cement fissure beside the door, resembling the struggling hand bones of an undead spirit from underground, lifeless just like the rest of the school.

After leading Qi Si to the kitchen, the human face dissolved into a puddle of water on the cement ground, seeping into the cracks, leaving behind only a small patch of slightly darker moisture.

Qi Si waited for a while but didn’t encounter any anomalies. He looked at the kitchen, which was too dirty to step in, hesitated for a moment, but ultimately crossed the threshold.

The stove leaned against the crooked wall, holding a rusty iron pot. The rust seemed to swirl into crying human faces, but they vanished in a moment of distraction.

Next to the pot were three small bottles containing viscous liquid. The dark solution inside bubbled, looking exactly like the poison brewed by a witch in a fairy tale.

A huge wooden bucket, covered with a lid, was placed to the left of the stove. In the corner on the right, a pile of items was covered with a black cloth; their specific nature couldn’t be determined just by the outline.

Qi Si lifted the black cloth in the corner.

Piles of mushrooms were growing in the corner. The large ones were the size of a human head, and the small ones were the size of a fist, some white, some black, with scar-like moss growing on their caps.

Qi Si blinked. The scene before him rippled outward in circles, and when it settled, the clearly poisonous mushrooms had all disappeared.

In the spot where the mushrooms had been, various vegetables were piled up. He could barely make out Chinese cabbage, potatoes, and tomatoes—all common ingredients.

Qi Si turned back to the left and lifted the lid off the wooden bucket.

What met his eyes were densely packed small fingers, visibly belonging to children. The muscle at the bloody base of the fingers was still twitching. As if sensing Qi Si’s gaze, they began to squirm, looking ready to crawl out of the bucket and poke out his eyes the next second.

Qi Si blinked again.

The bucket, which had been full of fingers, was now empty of them, replaced by glistening white rice, filling the bucket only halfway.

“Which of the things I just saw was real, and which was fake?”

“Were those normal ingredients subjected to horrifying illusions created by ghosts to scare players, or were those Anomalous Ingredients disguised to look normal?”

With too few clues, Qi Si couldn’t make an accurate judgment.

But no matter what, the meal had to be cooked. Regardless of whether it would kill people, it was unlikely that the system would allow all players to be wiped out.

Qi Si decided to forget the anomalies he had seen and treat the raw materials in the kitchen as normal ingredients.

Then, he stared at the iron pot on the stove, lost in thought.

“Should I put in the water first or the rice?”

“How should I cut the vegetables? Can potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbage be stewed together?”

“Which bottle is soy sauce, and which is vinegar? Do I need to add both?”