Blood Pool Middle School
In the following days, the newly formed Broken Mirror Squad did not make any progress in the simulations. Even when Carlos was about to start the event, he bought time-delay items from the shop to ensure that nothing would go wrong before the event began.
Carlos temporarily stayed in the empty house in Yu Xing's three-story building. During this time, everyone gathered at Zhao Yijiu every day because his house had all kinds of complete training equipment. Yu Xing acted as the instructor and gave Zhao Mou and Carlos a hard training session.
As for Qu Xuanqing and Zhao Yijiu, these two have never relaxed their training and continue to train at their own pace.
Occasionally, when things were about to get similar, Zhao Mou would call an emergency stop and switch from physical training to mental communication. He would watch some videos of past activities with Yu Xing and analyze them, using this as a rest time so that they could recover their strength before starting the next round of training.
These training sessions were all voluntary for Zhao Mou and Carlos. Although Carlos would groan a few times every day, wondering why he had come to suffer, he never asked to stop or lower his standards. It is conceivable that for the deducers, having experienced so many extreme fears and dangers, their self-discipline is definitely much stronger than that of ordinary people.
And so, at 7:50 a. m. on January 10th, they finally gathered neatly and comfortably on the familiar sofa, waiting for the event to begin at 8:00 a. m.
They all slept well the night before, ensuring they were full of energy. Yu Xing watched for a while, then smiled and encouraged them, "Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just treat it as a trivial, ordinary simulation where if you don't do well, I'll kill you when you get out."
Everyone: "..."
That's really insignificant.
After waiting for ten minutes, all the registered divination participants heard a bell ring eight times in succession. Immediately afterward, they felt a slight pain in their heads, signifying that the system had established a connection with them.
[Everyone's been waiting a long time! The "Death Game on One Side of the Balance" event has officially begun. What we're about to do is the preliminary exam. So, all you registered "candidates," please get ready, we're about to teleport you into the exam room!]
[You will not receive any system assistance or hints during this exam. Start the exam in a completely unfamiliar environment! Best of luck!]
Amidst the system's overly enthusiastic and cheerful voice, the world before Yu Xing's eyes began to blur, the colors darkening. His familiar living room transformed into a blurry shadow, which coalesced into shapes of varying heights. His teammates, who had just been sitting beside him, vanished without a trace.
Yu Xing was no stranger to this kind of experience; every time she transitioned from reality to the Absurd World, the system would come up with something new and exciting.
After a brief moment of stillness, he regained control of his body and calmly walked toward the shadows ahead.
Now, Yu Xing found herself in a pitch-black space that stretched to the horizon. On either side were many faintly blood-red outlines of light and shadow. Yu Xing reached out and touched them, confirming that these outlines were only visible and not tangible. Then she looked up and surveyed her surroundings.
These silhouettes are sometimes tables, sometimes cabinets, and sometimes chairs, windows, etc. They are all transparent and overlapping, making the space seem vast at first glance. The silhouettes have all left a winding path for Yu Xing to walk on, as if telling Yu Xing, "Go this way."
"It seems the assessment has already begun," Yu Xing murmured, lifting her foot and slowly moving forward along the path.
It must be said that the phantoms on both sides of the road had a very lifelike feel to them. Yu Xing even saw a large cabinet with a television set on it and a single sock next to it.
He walked in the darkness for five minutes, during which the only source of light was the countless silhouettes of light and shadow on either side. As he walked, the scene that had initially seemed particularly eerie began to appear ordinary.
Finally, the road came to an end.
At the end of the road was a stone door that did not emit light. The door was slightly ajar, and its existence could only be barely seen by the outlines of the blood-red light and shadow; otherwise, one might accidentally bump into it.
Based on past experience, pushing open this door would allow him to leave this area, which was essentially a "preparation space." Yu Xing touched the surface of the stone door; the rust spots and patterns on the door gave it a heavy feel, and the cold temperature spread from his fingertips to his entire body, making Yu Xing shiver.
He moved his hand down, took half a step back, and, finding a suitable position to exert force, pushed the door shut without hesitation.
The original cracks in the stone gate were firmly sealed by Yu Xing, leaving no gaps. The space became even more silent, and the path ahead became a dead end. Turning around, there was the endless, illusory blood shadow that Yu Xing had seen once before, as if these things had imprisoned Yu Xing forever.
"The atmosphere is well-done; I'm really looking forward to it." Yu Xing's lips curled into a strange smile. He turned around and walked towards the blood-red silhouettes beside the stone gate.
There was a rectangular door, or rather, a rectangle composed of four rays of light, standing quietly behind the illusory tables and chairs. This was the only door Yu Xing had seen along the way, and he had noticed it at first glance.
The numerous phantoms along the way were definitely not just for show.
Yu Xing had great faith in her eyesight and memory. This was the only illusory door. It existed at the end, so it must have its significance. Presumably, the stone door was just an illusion.
Yu Xing walked towards the door, his body passing through several streaks of light and shadow along the way, until he stopped in front of the door. He reached out again... and touched the transparent door panel.
All the light and shadow are distractions; only the door truly exists.
As expected, Yu Xing curled his lip in boredom. He could even say directly that what the system wanted to see in this round was nothing more than testing memory, discrimination, and the ability to find the only clue amidst different levels of interference.
He had no further interest in lingering there, turned the circular handle formed by light and shadow, and opened the door.
Behind the door was a blood-red world. Before Yu Xing even stepped inside, he could smell the strong stench of blood in the air. He raised an eyebrow and stepped forward.
This selection process is extremely rigorous; those who manage to push open the stone gate probably don't even have the chance to take the formal exam.
"Splash..."
As the fishy smell hit her face, Yu Xing's eardrums suddenly cleared, and she heard the gentle, ethereal sound of flowing water.
He shielded himself from the nauseating stench and squinted at the scene.
The world inside the door seemed to be a pool of blood. After he entered, he stood on the edge of the square pool.
Yu Xing looked back, but the door had already disappeared.
This is a floating platform, built on a stone base, with a pool of flowing blood carved out in the middle. Within sight, the not-so-large space is enveloped in lava, but the scorching heat does not corrode the platform. Only by extending one's hand beyond the platform's boundaries can one feel fear in the heat that could burn a person to ashes.
The sound of water he heard came half from the flowing pool of blood and half from a lava waterfall that had been weakened countless times.
Yu Xing walked to the edge of the platform and strained to look down. Below was also a pool of lava. Occasionally, small stones from the platform would fall in, roll around in the lava, and then burn away, turning red.
This is indeed a dead end.
Yu Xing turned his attention away from the magma and focused on the blood pool. He didn't know where the blood pool originated, but the blood in it was flowing very fast.
He walked along the square pool, paying attention to the edge. Sure enough, at the other end of where he had entered this blood pool world, there was a wooden sign standing upright.
The words on the sign were crooked and uneven, and it read...
[Jump down]
Jump down?
Where to jump?
Yu Xing glanced at the blood pool, then thought about the magma beneath the platform.
"... Isn't this treating people like idiots?" he muttered, casually tossing the sign aside. The wooden sign bounced twice on the ground before landing on the edge of the platform, swaying precariously with the gusts of air.
Yu Xing yawned, walked to the edge of the blood pool, and frowned in disgust.
Then, he turned around, his back to the blood pool, and let his body fall backward. The moment he hit the blood pool, thick blood first enveloped his ears, then filled his vision, and flooded his nasal cavity.
In an instant, Yu Xing disappeared into the blood pool.
The wooden sign was finally blown out by the blast wave, flipped several times in the air, and finally disappeared into the scalding lava without even a bubble.
This round tests the rationality of the strategists.
It's so obvious that the flowing pool of life represents room for maneuver and the possibility of tracing back to the source to find a way out, while magma... no matter what level of deducer, can they expect to survive if they fall into magma?
Are you kidding me? That person is probably so insane that they've lost their sense of self and are no longer suited for activities like deduction that require intelligence.
Yu Xing's consciousness, within this pool of blood, returned to calm, preparing for the next scene.
"Ring ring..."
The urgent school bell rang. Yu Xing was still half asleep and hadn't opened her eyes yet. She could only hear what sounded like a lot of running around her, as if students in the corridor were rushing into the classroom before the teacher entered.
The reason he imagined such a scene without seeing anything was because the ringtone was too classic; he had heard it when he attended parent-teacher conferences for Zhu Yan during her junior and senior high school years.
The event had just begun, and no one knew what kind of experience it would be. Yu Xing straightened up from her prone position and squinted as she looked around.
Sure enough, as he expected, this really was a classroom. He sat by the window near the corridor. It was pitch black, so it looked like night. The corridor lights were on, barely illuminating the unlit classroom.
Yu Xing rubbed his shoulders and arms. He had just fallen asleep on the table with his arm under his head, and it felt like he had slept for a long time. His nerves and muscles were a little sore.
Only then did he notice that he had changed into a summer high school uniform, with a round school badge sewn on below the left collar of a white short-sleeved shirt, bearing the four Chinese characters "[Xuechi Middle School]".
The learning pool... the blood pool? Yu Xing wondered.
He pulled himself back to reality and continued to observe himself.
The pants were black knee-length shorts with white trim. The fabric felt a bit slippery and looked sporty. He wore white sneakers. Overall, this was an outfit that was completely unfamiliar to Yu Xing. Even though he thought he had never changed since he was twenty-three, he had never tried wearing a sixteen or seventeen-year-old's school uniform.
He casually turned his head, and his reflection appeared in the glass. The face looked even younger than he actually was, truly befitting the role of a high school student.
He was the only one in the entire classroom. The dark space was empty, filled only with individual wooden desks and chairs. The writing on the blackboard was a little hard to read, and above the blackboard hung a round clock.
The fact that he couldn't even see the words on the blackboard made Yu Xing, who had decent night vision, realize something. He first sensed it and found that the sacrifices were indeed unusable. Not to mention the sacrifices, he couldn't even open the Persona Mask template.
The good news is that the lurking curse power is still under partial suppression. After his physical attributes were balanced with this high school student's body, his abilities in all aspects have decreased significantly, making him closer to a well-trained underage boy.
It seems the system is determined to conduct a pure test of deductive reasoning ability, and has therefore eliminated all factors that could potentially affect the results.
Yu Xing was not in immediate danger. He stood up and walked through the narrow passageway to the front door. He reached out and pressed the light switch. Fortunately, it seemed that the school's power supply was not a problem, and the lights turned on, illuminating the entire classroom.
The clock struck 11:28 p. m., and the words on the blackboard came into Yu Xing's view.
[Subject of this exam: Chinese Language. Exam time: 11:30 AM to 4:00 AM the following morning. Grading will take place from 4:05 AM to 4:20 AM. After grading is complete, the ranking of student scores will be announced. The top 100 students will be eligible to participate in a secret activity.]
[Exam Format: There are three major questions on the exam paper. Please fill in the correct answers in the answer area.]
[Exam Instructions: ① Please use a black ballpoint pen or fountain pen to answer the questions.]
② Please fill in your name correctly, otherwise you will be expelled from the examination room for cheating.
③ The system will remain silent during this exam and will not participate in any process.
④ Bring your brain.
Yu Xing's interest piqued. It really was an exam; they even needed to use pens?
The white chalk writing was a little faded. With less than two minutes left before the exam, he pushed open the unlocked classroom door and peeked out.
A small white sign hung outside the classroom, indicating "[Class 4, Grade 2) ]". After seeing the information, Yu Xing returned to her seat, sat down, and rummaged in the crotch of her desk.
Sure enough, there was a pencil case.
He opened his pencil case, which contained a ballpoint pen, a pencil, an eraser, a set of rulers, a compass, and a small timetable card.
Nothing special, just standard equipment for high school students during their monthly exams, even considered quite luxurious. Many students might just bring two pens to the exam, and borrow erasers and other supplies from the students sitting in front of or behind them.
Yu Xing's gaze swept across the timetable. The high school curriculum was packed full of normal subjects like Chinese, math, English, physics, chemistry, and biology. Art, music, health education, and self-study classes were all marked with horizontal lines, and new subjects like "Chinese, math, physics, and English" were added next to them. Only physical education survived.
That's so true.
Just then, the bell rang a second time.
A small loudspeaker was installed in the upper right corner of the classroom, from which the cheerful bell rang. In the desolate school, only the dim lights in the corridors were on, and there was no human voice, only the increasingly eerie ringing of the bell.
The clock struck 11:30 p. m., Yu Xing momentarily dazed to find a pale exam paper on her desk. At first glance, the paper had very little ink on it, with large areas completely blank.
But he didn't immediately pay attention to the test questions because the words on the blackboard had changed.
The various precautions from before slowly faded away, replaced by gushing blood. Holes appeared on the blackboard, from which blood flowed out.
A new line of blood-red characters appeared, but it was covered by blood before it could fully form. However, Yu Xing reacted quickly and read the contents of the blood-red characters.
[142 candidates were disqualified because they were not seated when the exam started!]
Yu Xing wanted to click his tongue and express his regret for the low IQ of these 142 people, but he didn't make a sound because whispering was prohibited during the exam.
Even though there's no one here, the proctor could be anywhere.
Every vulnerability became a reason for the system to exclude them.
Yu Xing stopped paying attention to the blackboard. Before the exam, the blackboard was the most important thing; after the exam started, he didn't need to care about anything except the exam paper.
He glanced at the eleven lines of paper, two of which were ordinary question requirements.
I. Read the following passage and fill in the answers on the lines at the end of the passage. This section has three questions, with a total score of 100 points. The first question is worth 10 points, the second question is worth 30 points, and the third question is worth 60 points.
Below is the reading comprehension section. From the beginning, it seems to be a short story, and only the beginning is printed.
Article title: His Family
The sweltering heat was irritating; he returned home to the sound of cicadas chirping, just as the evening breeze began to soften.
His family was well-off; their two-and-a-half-story detached house held all his memories, though it was a bit old and looked somewhat faded. He often wondered why his father never renovated it.
The article ends abruptly here, and the only connection to the title "family" is the father, who was mentioned once.
Below that was a large blank space; only at the very bottom did three questions and three horizontal lines appear.
[1. If you were to rename this piece, what title would you give it? (10 points)]
[2. Please find the objects in the text that have special symbolic meanings, write down their names and corresponding meanings, and find at least six. (5 points each, 30 points in total)]
[3. What should be the order of death for this family? Please briefly describe your thoughts. (60 points)]
Clearly, the question corresponds to the complete article, not just the opening paragraph which only has a few lines. After Yu Xing finished grading the papers and confirmed that nothing had been missed, he began to fill in the personal information on the side of the exam paper.
First, your name and class.
The correct answers are easy to find. Your name is in the upper left corner of the timetable, and you just need to remember to glance at your class before the exam.
In other words, those who are still debating whether to use their real name or their Persona Mask name, and those who haven't remembered to come to the class, have already been eliminated.
The former is too stupid, and the latter has already lost the opportunity. Without a proctor, it means that even if you raise your hand to ask to go to the toilet, you will have two answers, "Go" or "hold it in." Getting up without permission will basically get you labeled as "violating exam rules."
Yu Xing filled in her current character name, "Ye Qin," in the name column. Her class was Class 3, Grade 2. This was just a small test, and there were no answer sheets provided, so there was no admission ticket number to fill in.
The moment he finished writing the information, new ink began to flow below the beginning of the article on the paper, but the words were chaotic and could not form any feedback in Yu Xing's brain; in short, he couldn't understand them.
I can't understand a single word.
Yu Xing wasn't in a hurry. The exam was just a formality. To actually encounter a life-threatening danger, he would naturally have to experience it firsthand.
Sure enough, as the ink filled the blank space, his mind began to feel drowsy, and a wave of sleepiness washed over him. He thought for a moment that sleeping in the exam room was not against the rules, and at most he would be given a dirty look by the proctor. So he relaxed and let the sleepiness engulf him.