Chapter 172: Red Maple Boarding School (Part 9) “He Saw That Person’s Portrait”

【instance Name: Red Maple Boarding School】

【instance Type: Team Survival】

【Prerequisite Hint: Disasters repeat themselves, survival is not easy; living is a blessing, death is destiny.】

In front of a massive concrete building, Chang Xu stood solemnly, glancing around, but saw no sign of his teammates.

He vaguely felt a bad premonition: this instance would likely be very complex, and the main mission would no longer be the simple, straightforward “survive for a few days” or “escape this place.”

Instead, it would be… puzzle-solving, which he was worst at.

In the silence, a narrative voice softly sounded in his ear:

【Over the long years, the extinction of a race is silent; the remnants of civilization are destroyed by war, leaving no proof of their past existence.】

【Some call it tragedy, others call it greatness; demise is eternal, disaster is perpetual.】

【The bones of the dead rot in the earth, the monuments of the victors rise up, does remembrance hold any meaning?】

【Tourists, welcome to the Memorial Hall for Indigenous Victims.】

Chang Xu frowned slightly.

Shouldn’t it be the Red Maple Boarding School? What the hell is a “Memorial Hall”?

He looked up and saw a line of English carved clearly on the plaque of the concrete building.

After he stared for two seconds, the line of English was translated into the nine large characters, “Memorial Hall for Indigenous Victims,” which appeared on the system interface.

The building itself was certainly not in the style of a school; the concrete exterior walls had been whitewashed, making it solemn and pale, like a decaying tomb.

Light gray glass doors were set into the wall, and three marble steps led up to the entrance, ending right at Chang Xu’s feet.

The only thing related to the term “Red Maple” was the large maple forest surrounding the building.

As Chang Xu’s gaze moved, he perceived the sights, sounds, and sensations of the scene inch by inch. The sense of realism layered upon him, and the separation from the unfamiliar environment quickly faded, as if he hadn’t appeared abruptly but had walked there with premeditation.

It was late autumn. Large patches of dead branches were bare, with only a few scattered withered leaves stubbornly clinging to the tips. Blood-red maple leaves covered the concrete ground nearby, emitting crisp, rustling sounds when stepped on, like burning flames.

Chang Xu lowered his eyes, watching the maple leaves on the ground sometimes being flattened and sometimes kicked aside, suggesting that many pedestrians were walking over them.

But strangely, he hadn’t seen a single person the entire time, as if… he had been isolated in a lonely, alternate dimension.

“Friend, are you Chang Xu?” A scholarly voice, sounding quite young, came from behind him.

Chang Xu turned around at the sound. He saw a young man in a white coat and flat-rimmed glasses walking toward him from the maple forest, wearing a warm smile. “I am Tingfeng Shuomeng, fully known as ‘Shuomeng of the Tingfeng Guild.’ You can call me Shuomeng. Oh, that’s my online name. I won’t mention my real name; it doesn’t sound good.”

The moniker “Tingfeng Shuomeng” wasn’t famous, but it wasn’t unfamiliar either. He was quite active in the strategy section of the game forum; at least Chang Xu had heard of him.

As for whether the person in front of him was the real one, there was no way to verify.

Seeing the man who called himself Shuomeng about to enter the five-meter radius, Chang Xu said plainly, “I’m streaming live. If you come any closer, you’ll be on camera.”

Having gone through the Hopeless Sea instance, he understood the drawbacks of streaming. Before entering this instance, he had applied to the Investigation Bureau to turn off the stream, but was reluctantly refused.

He lacked the emotions humans should possess and was a weapon of mass destruction that could spiral out of control at any time—the people at Headquarters never trusted him.

The so-called live stream was both surveillance and a restraint. He understood the fear of those people, and all he could do was fulfill his duty to inform, to prevent harm.

Shuomeng was stunned, taking a moment to react. He smiled dismissively: “Mhm, I know. I’ve even studied… watched you. It’s nothing. I’m streaming too, just for fun.”

Chang Xu nodded, ignoring Shuomeng, turning to step onto the stairs in front of the Memorial Hall entrance, ready to go inside.

Seeing this, Shuomeng was startled. He quickly grabbed the corner of Chang Xu’s clothes. “Hey, don’t be so impulsive! Instant-kill Traps and Fake Entrances are common tropes in the Eerie Game. Aren’t you going to guard against them? It’s just the two of us here. If something happens to you, I won’t be far from doom myself.”

Chang Xu stopped subtly, raising an eyebrow at him. “It’s just the two of us here?”

“Yes.” Shuomeng nodded. “To be honest, I entered with three friends as a team, but now they’ve all vanished. I’ve tried every communication method, but I can’t reach them. I suspect you and I were isolated in this space for some reason.”

Seeing Chang Xu lower his eyes in contemplation, he continued: “This place gives me a very strange feeling. I can’t describe exactly how, but it’s definitely not good. I suggest you don’t act rashly. We can be cautious and first review the known information together…”

“Hello, two tourist friends, welcome to the Memorial Hall for Indigenous Victims. I am your guide for this tour.” A rich female voice sounded in the distance, interrupting their conversation.

The two men simultaneously looked in the direction of the voice.

A middle-aged woman dressed like a nun in black gauze, holding a small red flag, walked gracefully toward them, stepping on the red maple leaves covering the ground.

She also had a loudspeaker clipped to her waist, a model from recent years.

The woman stopped at the entrance of the Memorial Hall and gave a polite smile to Chang Xu, who was closest to her. “‘Medina’ is a name shared by our family. They all call me ‘Ms. Medina,’ and you may call me that too.”

The words triggered his intuition. Chang Xu asked coolly, “What is the relationship between your family and this land? Someone at the Red Maple Boarding School…”

Shuomeng quickly covered his mouth and offered the woman a friendly smile: “Having such a beautiful lady as our guide is truly a pleasant experience. Before we enter the Memorial Hall, I wonder if you could briefly introduce us to the general situation and history of this place?”

“I was originally going to introduce these things to you as we toured inside,” the woman said, glancing at Chang Xu, who was silently questioning her with his eyes, and smiled kindly. “However, I can give you a general overview. I believe you’ve already done some research on this area and know some things before coming here.”

Shuomeng’s expression turned serious, adopting an attitude of listening attentively.

The woman narrated slowly: “This was once a boarding school, first established in the nineteenth century, which took in many Indigenous children and taught them advanced knowledge and culture. Both my grandmother and great-grandmother taught here. My great-grandmother was one of the earliest teachers.”

“They hoped to help the Indigenous children survive better, but unfortunately, due to certain misunderstandings and various regrettable reasons, most of the children who came to the school died of illness. The old school site was also destroyed once and was only rebuilt in the last century.”

“After entering this century, in memory of those poor children and to promote understanding and unity between different races, The Federation converted the school into a Memorial Hall to preserve some of the historical materials left at the time for future generations to view.”

The plain narration lacked drama, yet anyone with a clear mind could hear the bloody horror behind it.

The tragedy had already occurred. After lives vanished, what good was any amount of remembrance to those involved?

Of course, neither of them were bleeding-heart saints who indulged in melancholy; they didn’t have enough pity for themselves, let alone the spare capacity to pity the NPCs serving as the instance backdrop.

Chang Xu observed the woman’s light brown complexion and asked, “What is your race?”

The woman paused, then said with a hint of bitterness two seconds later, “I have forgotten the name of our tribe. Many things on this land originally had no names, did they? But I know that I belong to the same race as the Indigenous people here.”

Waving the guide flag in her hand, she stepped into the Memorial Hall, giving the players no more time for questions. “Please be sure to follow me closely. The Memorial Hall is very large and has many exhibits. Please do not get lost.”

Chang Xu and Shuomeng exchanged glances and, without hesitation, closely followed the woman leading the way.

The first floor of the Memorial Hall was a huge open space, and at a glance, no other tourists could be seen.

In the empty space, dozens of glass cabinets were arranged in a circle, displaying various artifacts. From a distance, some yellowed papers could also be seen, presumably the “historical materials” the woman mentioned.

Mist occasionally clouded the glass cabinets, as if curious children were leaning on them and breathing onto the surface. Several greasy fingerprints could vaguely be seen tracing paths across the glass.

The Memorial Hall seemed full of people, only they were invisible and untouchable.

The woman walked up to a wall, pointed with her hand, and her voice was amplified through the loudspeaker, distorted and ethereal: “Please take a look, both of you. These are the children who died at the Red Maple Boarding School back then. They were lucky enough to leave behind images, while many more unfortunate children left nothing at all.”

“A lot of people really died back then…”

Chang Xu looked up.

Hundreds of photos were densely embedded in the grey-black stone wall. Faces, gray and faded like tombstones, coldly faced him, their vacant eyes staring straight at him.

One photo was particularly vivid in color, showing the face of an adult man whose eyes were filled with terror.

Chang Xu used that photo as a reference point and looked around the vicinity.

He noticed that among the hundreds of children’s photos, there were twenty-nine portraits belonging to adults, male and female, of various races, coming from all corners of the world.

Chang Xu scrutinized the photos one by one, when an extremely familiar face suddenly leaped into his sight.

The delicate features, gentle eyebrows and eyes, and thin, narrow lips—it was clearly Qi Si!

He walked over and saw the number in the lower right corner of the photo—

“47”… “47, in your memory, has Ms. Medina ever been injured or sick?”

After seeing the main mission 【Kill Ms. Medina】, Jiang Junjue asked Qi Si, who was beside him, in a seemingly casual manner.

Qi Si stared fixedly at the residual dirt in the standing water, looking frightened.

After a long pause, he recalled, “Maybe she was. I remember one time she fell down the stairs and bled a lot. She was in a very bad mood during that period and punished several students.”

The players silently recorded the information:

First, Ms. Medina can be injured, and her physical condition is similar to that of a human, so killing her is not an impossible mission.

Second, Ms. Medina will enter a second phase after being injured, punishing students more frequently. Therefore, they must act cautiously and aim for a single, fatal blow.

The group exited the bathroom and met up with the players waiting outside, seeing solemn expressions on each other’s faces.

NPCs in Official Pool Dungeons are usually beings that cannot be killed by players. Missions to kill a specific NPC are extremely rare, and there is little experience on the forums, offering no transferable examples.

Moreover, the death scene of the player locked in the Isolation Room was still fresh in their minds. Who knew if, while attempting to harm Ms. Medina, she would subject them to the same punishment, locking them up to die miserably?

The players vaguely remembered the opening scene of the instance, where Ms. Medina only said one sentence before controlling a player to walk into the Isolation Room on their own.

Although the two Ms. Medinas looked different, who knew if the current Ms. Medina possessed similar abilities?

Outside the bathroom, Jiang Junjue succinctly recounted what had happened inside, making the players who hadn’t showered yet even more uneasy.

There was indeed a ghost in the bathroom, and someone had just died—it was repulsive no matter how they thought about it.

But under the rules, they had no room to retreat.

The remaining twenty people eventually split into one group of men and one group of women, and grudgingly finished their showers.

All the danger of the day seemed to have been exhausted during the first trip; the next two groups of players encountered no further anomalies.

Jiang Junjue lit a cigarette and held it in his mouth, saying vaguely, “I have a guess regarding that person’s cause of death. He might not have died from being confined; otherwise, he wouldn’t have waited until now to die in front of us. What killed him was probably the dirt on his back. Everyone be careful not to get any of that unclean stuff on you.”

“Not necessarily. His death in front of us might also have been intended to trigger the main mission,” Chen Lidong objected.

He knew that Jiang Junjue proposed the conclusion that “confinement won’t kill you” to dispel the players’ fear and encourage them to act against Ms. Medina.

As a “Philanthropist” unaffected by the school rules, Chen Lidong preferred the players to maintain their previous fear.

This way, only he would dare to take action, and his instance Performance Score would surely be much higher.

He analyzed with feigned seriousness: “It only makes sense that because someone died from confinement, we became afraid, felt that inaction meant certain death, and thus wanted to kill Ms. Medina. Otherwise, why would we students risk everything to kill someone?”

Zhou Datong, standing nearby, asked blankly, “But 47 came out of the Isolation Room, and he didn’t die, did he?”

“Are you stupid?” Chen Lidong’s eye twitched slightly. “Can an NPC be the same as a player?”

Jiang Junjue chuckled dismissively: “They’re all just guesses, who knows what’s right or wrong. Enough talk, everyone should head back to the dorms and sleep early.”

He exhaled a puff of smoke, yawning constantly, and swayed toward the stairwell next to the bathroom.

The players exchanged glances and followed him in a large group.

The old iron staircase was badly rusted, making creaking and grating noises when stepped on, sounding like it could fall apart at any moment.

Qi Si, as usual, walked at the end of the line, casually dusting the wrinkles off his school uniform.

Catching sight of something, he looked down and saw a Red Maple Leaf-shaped Emblem on the chest of his school uniform, with the number “47” written below it in black pen.

Qi Si remembered that when he first saw this school uniform in the Isolation Room, it had no patterns on it.

When did this outfit change?