An Accident

"I heard that all the world's top [gamers] disappeared at the same time; maybe they beat the final game and saved the world..."

The news of the world's salvation spread from the mouths of some informed speculators, and through word of mouth and the remaining traces of the internet, it quickly reached the entire globe.

The whole world was plunged into a mixture of joy and sorrow at surviving a Surviving the Calamity.

In a dilapidated basement.

A man sat on the ground next to a smoking, large-caliber shotgun, with the bodies of his family members behind him and large splattered blood on the wall.

He held a pistol to his chin, his face expressionless.

Sizzle--

Just then, the old radio that had been repaired suddenly started emitting a noisy, static-filled sound; it was the nearest Regional Channel.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have some good news!"

"The Doomsday! It's over! Our savior has cleared [Ghost Domain Game], ending everything! Ending the era of the supernatural!"

"We survived! Everyone survived!"

Let's celebrate!

The man was stunned for a moment upon hearing this, listening to the radio broadcast the same message repeatedly, even starting to vent his emotions in a tangential way:

"... The Doomsday is over... Haha... Damn it, [ghosts] can actually disappear? Hahaha... I should have known better than to touch that bio-mother a few days ago. Is it too late to go to the hospital for PEP now...?"

"But none of this matters! It's good that he's coming after me..."

The man listened in silence, confirmed the news, then shoved the pistol directly into his mouth and resolutely fired.

"Bang."

The surging kinetic energy adhered to the brass bullet, which was about to pierce through flesh and bone and drink its fill of blood.

In that split second between Life and Death, time on the entire planet froze completely.

All movement, breeze, flowing water, and black smoke froze.

Two figures appeared in this world, standing on a frozen planet.

"Joyce I sensed the aura of [Adjudication], but I didn't sense its presence, Adjudication."

A Demigod, clad in white robes with silver hair, holding a whisk, and exuding an air of otherworldly grace, lowered his gaze to survey the frozen mortal world below, his tone solemn.

Joyce adjusted his silver-rimmed glasses and sighed deeply.

"A total of seventeen students from the academy went out for this trial, and fifteen of them perished in a very short period of time. The entire group was wiped out instantly, with no survivors. Among them were many of my classmates."

"Huachenzi, I'd like to trouble you to make this trip and help me investigate."

If a student has an incident while away from home, the college will automatically dispatch available senior lecturers to conduct cross-disciplinary investigations, trace the cause and effect, and file the case for accountability.

Huachenzi was naturally assigned by the academy's automated system to conduct the investigation.

Three lingering traces of life remained at the scene.

"A chilling sword aura, imbued with the essence of Immortal Dao, similar to mine, leaning towards the lingering power of protective spiritual treasures."

"A chaotic and mixed Chaos, its Black Flames chilling, neither good nor evil."

"The last one... nameless and without a recipe."

Huachenzi calculated with his fingers, freezing time on the planet beneath his feet, and at the same time extracting several strands of energy from it.

"A fierce battle broke out between them, even shattering this small plane... Wait, I've detected the cause and effect of [Adjudication]... A [Adjudication] of lecturer-level financial resources once existed in this small plane."

Joyce watched his movements and slowly said, "Can you find out which lecturer issued the [Adjudication]? If a lecturer was present, how could these students have perished?"

Generally speaking, lecturers are unlikely to lay a hand on students, since there is no real benefit in it, and most of the time they will even protect them.

Furthermore, outside the academy, [the Adjudication] cannot take action against other students.

"I also want to ask you, if you were there, how could these students have perished? And why would you need to travel to an area nearly 10,000 rings high to capture a test subject?"

Huachenzi glanced coldly at Joyce and began requesting permission to investigate the academy's records of near-term Super-Transmission related to this world and its surrounding world.

"The investigation will proceed according to regulations, with the principle of 'presumption of guilt' applied. We'll first eliminate all those connected to the case. We'll start with you, Joyce."

Aside from complex personal grudges and conflicts, there is no benefit for a lecturer to kill a student; they might even be stripped of their position.

Students may indeed have a low social status, but the right to life is not directly linked to social status.

Moreover, everyone's mental state is not very good, and killing students might bring some lecturers pleasure.

For example, watching NTR films is essentially about upholding propriety and righteousness, because a purely perverted person wouldn't feel excited watching such films. The psychological pleasure comes from a sense of taboo, and this sense of taboo often stems from the desecration of nobility and the violation of rules.

It's possible to kill students for a quick thrill or for no reason; there are all sorts of birds in a big forest.

A dozen seconds later, Huachenzi confirmed that Joyce had not made any Super-Transmissions in the vicinity in the past ten years, and even after becoming a [Demigod], he had been consolidating his own strength, and his outings were all for collecting resources.

He then began investigating all the recent records.

"East Thirty-Second Courtyard, Guest Lecturer in Research Group -- [Scholar]."

"His [Adjudication] was only Super-Transmission and departed an hour ago."

Joyce looked thoughtful. "[The Scholar]... what is He doing in this world out of nowhere?"

He pulled out the college system and flipped through it. "The two surviving students this time are actually affiliated with His research group, and what are His East Thirty-Second Courtyard doing in my West Thirty-Fourth Courtyard?"

Huachenzi is also investigating, and he has more information Joyce:

"What I see here is that she is the mother of one of the students. According to the teleportation records, it's clear that this student was in danger and the Super-Transmission failed before she came to this world."

"And it was the vice president who [Adjudication] to guarantee my admission... Based on my experience, it wasn't him."

"But this unfamiliar aura... I find it quite strange."

Huachenzi extracted a wisp of energy from the collapsed minor dimension and began searching the database, but found nothing.

Joyce seemed relieved. "I see. It seems I was overthinking it. But I think I've discovered the cause of their deaths..."

Before Joyce could finish speaking, Huachenzi said with certainty, "They were killed by the [Ghost Domain]. Their deaths happened almost instantly, and were remarkably clean."

"Of the seventeen, fifteen perished. The Weird Side is indeed quite bizarre; cases of students getting into accidents while hunting are already rare, and many of them are from the Weird Side."

Huachenzi shook his head slightly, calculating cause and effect in his hands, but found that he couldn't calculate anything extra.

The divination revealed that the student's death was directly related to the [Ghost Domain], and its connection to the [Scholar] was not so much a connection as to being completely unrelated.

"It's pretty much confirmed that it was an accident."