He Piaojian was at the very end of the line for another group. The soldier checking tickets recognized him; they had worked together before.
"Hm? What are you doing here, kid?" the soldier asked, puzzled.
He Piaojian shrugged and joked, "I'm at the right age to take the college entrance exam. What else would I be doing? I haven't even asked you yet—why did they send you Azure Dragon Guards to stand guard for a college entrance exam this time?"
"It was Lord Horn Wood Flood Dragon's arrangement. We don't know why either."
News of the deaths in Guixu had not spread. Only a handful of people at the top knew about it, and they had all chosen to keep it quiet. He Piaojian understood why Xia Baoguo had made these arrangements: he was worried something else might happen in Guixu this time.
If something happened in the college entrance exam's Guixu, it would be hard to keep under wraps.
He gave the soldier a serious warning. "If anything out of the ordinary happens during this exam, no matter what it is, tell that old geezer immediately."
"Yes, sir."
Having warned him, He Piaojian went back to his usual flippant, irritating manner and stepped into Guixu.
Once everyone had entered Guixu, the entrance was sealed, and no one else was allowed through.
The flying insects that had followed the examinees inside continued buzzing around them, monitoring their every move.
Suddenly, the insects in every exam site began flying about erratically, slamming into the air walls.
The exam proctors at the education commission tried desperately to adjust the insects, but they remained out of control. They crashed into the walls again and again until their eyeballs fell out and every monitoring screen went black.
"What's going on?" the mayor of Azure Cloud City asked anxiously as he watched the screens.
A technician ran checks, his heart pounding as he replied, "The cause is unknown. It may be interference from the magnetic field on Guixu's side."
The mayor told his secretary to make contact. "Check with the other regions. Has the same thing happened there?"
Word came back quickly.
"The same thing has happened at exam sites in every region. Those examinees have been completely cut off from us!"
This was not good news.
Xia Baoguo also received the report and came in person. "Have all the Azure Dragon Guards try to enter Guixu using items, and bring me the lists of examinees assigned to each exam site. We need to prepare for the worst: no survivors."
!
At those words, everyone present felt their hearts tremble.
The mayor stepped forward and asked cautiously, "But... the contents of this Guixu haven't changed in a long time. As long as they follow the guide, they should be fine..."
None of them wanted to accept that worst-case scenario. If every college entrance examinee died, it would undoubtedly be a disaster, a blow to China's future.
Xia Baoguo took a deep breath and told them what had happened in the beginner Guixu.
"The Green-level beginner Guixu, that freebie instance people often used for speedruns—only one person survived in the end." He did his best to calm his troubled heart. "And among the players who entered that Guixu was Edwin Parker from Eagle Country."
"That doesn't prove anything. Without monitoring, they could have killed each other," the mayor said heatedly.
Xia Baoguo cared just as much about the students' lives, but he still gave a pessimistic answer. "You said it yourself: there was no monitoring. Without it, none of us can know what really happened."
He looked gravely at the completely black screens. "The game has changed."
An urgent report was delivered to Xia Baoguo. It came from [Four Symbols] and contained only a brief instruction: speedrun Guixu, wish for a rescue.
He understood its meaning at once. They were to be sent into a higher-level special Guixu, clear it, and make a wish to see whether they could enter the game that had already been sealed.
Time waited for no one. He took the lists of examinee assignments, picked several Azure Dragon Guards to accompany him, and headed for a location with a Guixu entrance.
"Let's hope the changes in Guixu are confined to Green-level ones for now..."
At the same time, every member of [Four Symbols], [Eight Trigrams], [Twelve Hours], and [Twenty-Eight Mansions] dropped everything they were doing and rushed toward Guixu entrances, with speedrunning Guixu and wishing for a rescue as their primary objective.
Outside, everyone was at their wits' end. Inside, all was peaceful.
The Guixu exam was divided into so many groups because its contents had all been copied and pasted. The instance had only one self-aware boss, which wandered among all the pasted instances and never stayed in one place for long. It was relatively safe, which was why it had been chosen as the college entrance exam site.
Fan Daoyi took advantage of this very fact, timing his changes to the internal rules of this Guixu for the moment its entry passage closed. Because of the copying and pasting, the changes took effect in every college entrance exam Guixu.
Guixu must not be watched.
The examinees inside Guixu were momentarily puzzled by the insects flying about in disarray, but soon came up with an explanation of their own.
They assumed the authorities had added the difficulty themselves; it wasn't as though they had never done it before. It was specifically meant to unsettle them and help select outstanding candidates based on how they handled the situation.
Having convinced themselves, they calmed down and recalled the contents of the guide.
The game was set in a school. As long as they followed the school rules and completed the exam, they could clear it. The guide contained all the exam answers, each one discovered bit by bit by those who had come before them.
Those who had come before them had not feared death, because as long as someone cleared that special Red-level Guixu, they could wish to bring the dead back to life.
"Should we all get to know one another?" one of the examinees asked.
"I don't see the need," Wang Long replied, as arrogant as ever. "At the end of the day, we're taking the college entrance exam. We're competing against each other."
Fan Daoyi stood beside the thief, who kept his head lowered and dared not speak.
The fear from countless dreams still circled in the thief's mind, and he had grown accustomed to being a silent mute.
Fan Daoyi looked them over. Wang Long was in excellent health; it seemed his family had a powerful healing item. Apart from the three of them, everyone else was a student from another school.
Four men and three women. Including the three of them, there were ten people in total.
If he killed the other two, someone else would inevitably see. Should he have them all die here too?
He quickly dismissed the idea. It was easy enough to explain being the sole survivor of the first instance, but if it happened again, it would be too much of a coincidence and hard not to find suspicious.
Those who walked different paths could not work together. Since Wang Long had rejected the suggestion, the examinee turned his attention to the others.
He spotted Fan Daoyi and the thief beside him and looked their way. "You two seem to know each other. Are you from the same school?"
Fan Daoyi rested one hand on the thief's shoulder and smiled at them. "Yes. What a coincidence—we're classmates and were assigned to the same exam site."
"But it's not very convenient for him to communicate with us."
The people present found that a little strange.
Fan Daoyi looked at the thief with sympathy. "He's mute."
When the thief heard this, his fingertips twitched, and his reason seemed about to return.
Fan Daoyi continued, "Naturally, we should look after a classmate with a congenital disability."
The flowers raised in a greenhouse were innocent enough to believe Fan Daoyi, and they too expressed deep sympathy for the thief.
"There's a question-and-answer portion in this college entrance exam. If he can't speak, won't he... die?"
Die!
That crucial word boomed in the thief's mind, and his returning reason was suppressed once more.
He took this to be a new derived rule, a new dream.