Classmates

The morning sun had already climbed high.

The light bathing the earth had slowly shifted from orange-red to a bright white.

The boy left Dr. House's temporary clinic and headed back to his apartment.

He walked slowly along the asphalt roads of Rust City.

The tiny stones beneath his feet made faint crunching sounds.

Reality was comfortable.

The boy glanced at the high-tech watch on his wrist. 8:53.

"Thanks to Dr. House's hypnosis, I'm already twenty-three minutes late."

The boy pushed open the apartment door.

He entered the first-floor living room, picked up the pitch-black Neural Helmet, and settled gently onto the sofa in the most comfortable position he could find.

He slowly put it on.

The helmet lit up with a pale blue glow.

[Metaverse time countdown started]

[4:59:59]

[4:59:58]

The next moment.

The boy appeared inside an enormous room.

Code kept flickering around him, gathering into blue human silhouettes before transforming into living, breathing people. They looked hurried and quickly made their way out.

The boy headed outside as well.

A bustling city came into view.

Gemini Metaverse-Mirage City.

High-rises gleaming with technological brilliance stood everywhere.

Every one of them soared into the clouds.

The boy scanned his surroundings.

The entire city was laid out with incredible precision, its intersecting streets divided into three levels.

The lowest level consisted of vacuum tubes reserved for transport capsules, followed by roads for ground vehicles. At the very top were pedestrian walkways covered in greenery, making a stroll feel like a walk through a park.

Pale blue lines filled the sky, and countless aircraft flew along them with speed and precision.

Electronic billboards glowed in midair, with no visible supports or connections.

"Latest-model maglev car! Easily exceeds 850 kilometers per hour! Powered entirely by data traffic, with fuel consumption of zero liters per hundred kilometers!"

"Latest coded outfits! White shirts and jeans that never get dirty or tear! Dressing like your idol is no longer a dream!"

"Luxury home with city views! 180 square meters, fully smart-equipped, ready for immediate move-in! Your home may be on the 150th floor when you buy it, but construction is still underway. Three days later, your room could be on the 230th floor! Buy now and profit!"

"Land investment, coordinates 748/589! It may be wilderness now, but after the next update, who knows? It could face the sea, with spring flowers blooming all around! Get rich overnight! Limited availability, first come, first served!"

Perhaps this was what people had imagined the year 2122 would look like.

Except none of it was built on the physical world.

The boy ignored it all.

Because he was poor.

Standing on a pedestrian-only walkway, he glanced down. The red no-crossing symbol on the ground turned into green arrows streaming forward.

He stepped out and crossed the road.

Ahead stood an enormous building resembling a grand estate-B6 Sector, 053 High School.

Qin Yiguan had only just entered the campus.

Directly ahead, he saw three burly classmates standing there, staring intently at the school gate with hostile eyes.

"Bear, that's the guy! He's the one your dream girl, Shangguan Xiaotao, has a crush on!"

"Let's drag him into the garden and beat him up! See if he dares steal your girl again!"

Qin Yiguan looked up.

There they are, my adorable classmates.

I love the morning mist. I love the wildflowers by the roadside. I fucking...

"0.18 grams of flunitrazepam will knock you out for about twenty minutes."

"When you wake up."

"You'll find that I've buried you in a granary, with only your heads sticking out and tightly packed rice all around you."

"Then I'll sprinkle water over the rice."

"The rice will swell with tremendous force, as unstoppable as a plant breaking through the soil."

"Then the pressure around your bodies will begin to rise. All the capillaries beneath your skin will burst. You won't see any blood, but you'll look as though you've been dyed red with it."

"After that, the pressure inside your bodies will skyrocket too. Your organs will barely be able to bear it."

"Pop!"

"Your eyeballs will spring out of their sockets, trailing nerves, blood vessels, and eye muscles, dangling against your faces."

"Of course, by then, the blood in your bodies will have found outlets too."

"Bleeding from the seven orifices isn't accurate. What really happens is... bleeding from nine orifices."

"As for which nine, you can count them yourselves."

Qin Yiguan sat on the edge of a flower bed, speaking quietly.

The three school bullies, led by the troublemaker Bear, were all on their knees.

Their faces were pale, their legs were trembling, and their crotches were wet.

"Bro..."

"Qin..."

"We were only joking when we said we'd beat you up."

"Look, we're classmates. You're telling us about this terrifying way to kill people like it's real. I can almost believe you'd actually do it... Haha, come on, stop messing around. Our poor little hearts can't take it."

The three students looked at Qin Yiguan.

The boy was calm, rational, and cold-blooded, like some twisted psychopath.

And when he described the murder method, it had felt eerily as though he were recalling a memory.

The boy smiled. "Don't rush. I can tell you about ninety-eight more methods like that."

"Qin."

"We're all brothers here. It's Xiaotao's honor to have a crush on you. You've got our full support!"

"Qin."

"It's getting late. Let's hurry to class. We're the flowers of our nation, and our studies are our manure. We can't neglect them!"

The boy headed toward the main building.

The three bullies scrambled ahead of him in terror.

He reached the end of the third floor and pushed open the plain wooden door of Senior Year, Class 11.

Inside, more than three thousand classmates filled the classroom with a chaotic hubbub.

That was right.

This ordinary high school class contained more than three thousand students.

Because this was the Metaverse.

Back when the Gemini Group still operated in reality, it had granted governments around the world a special privilege called "Four-Dimensional Expansion."

In other words-holding unlimited objects within a limited space.

Of course, this violation of fundamental laws was restricted to education and military use.

And this classroom was a product of Four-Dimensional Expansion.

Three thousand students in one class was a small number. Lectures by renowned teachers routinely had tens of thousands of students.

They could all attend class together here, their seats stacked in tier upon tier like the great immortals of the heavenly court.

The actual audiovisual experience transcended spatial limitations entirely. No matter where students sat, they felt as though they were face-to-face with the teacher, whose orchid-scented breath blew straight onto their faces. Everyone had a VIP seat.

It was somewhat like the "online classes" of the old days.

Only the technology involved was beyond comparison.

"Hello, Yiguan!"

Hearing the call, the boy turned and saw a chubby boy with a rosy face.

It was him.

It was him.

It was none other than him.

His surname thundered, sounding mighty and imposing.

His given name was manure, like that of a complete idiot.

His best bro.

Taotie Gala!