Bo'ai Academy 1

"Class, these are our new transfer students. Let's welcome them with a round of applause."

Scattered applause broke out. Lu Mi looked around. He was standing with a group of people on the platform at the front of a classroom, while the teacher beside them introduced them in a flat voice, his face as lifeless as a bot's.

"Class Four of Bo'ai Academy's Class of '26 is one big, united family..."

Lu Mi glanced over the students below, reserving judgment on that claim.

Only a handful wore school uniforms. Most of the others looked like slackers. Some had dyed yellow hair, some had cigarettes dangling from their mouths, some stared into space, some dozed, and some had their legs propped up... A heavy smell of cigarette smoke filled the classroom.

He quickly memorized their distinguishing features and soon spotted a problem.

Roman had noticed the same thing. "There are forty sets of desks and chairs in this classroom, but only twenty students."

The people standing in the same row as him were presumably the players. Sure enough, Shen Yiwen had followed him in too, and was surveying their surroundings with an expressionless face.

As usual, a few newcomers without Wristbands looked bewildered and had been talking in low voices from the start.

"Where are we? I was sleeping at home. How did I end up here?" A young man looked around uneasily.

"Same here, man. I just appeared here out of nowhere. Don't tell me we've ended up in some horror game where we have to stake our lives, like in those novels?" Lu Mi pricked up his ears at that.

The voice sounded familiar. Lu Mi glanced over-it was Cheng Cheng. Despite being an expert himself, he was posing as a newcomer and making it sound entirely convincing.

When the veteran players realized they were teamed up with Cheng Cheng, barely contained delight spread across their faces. They wanted to cozy up to him, but he was already chatting merrily with the newcomers.

The teacher paid little attention to the new students' interruptions. After a few stock remarks, he told them to go find seats.

Lu Mi sat in a corner near the door. The desk in front of him was covered in overlapping marks left by pens of various colors and knives, their contents impossible to make out at a glance.

His deskmate was a boy in school uniform who looked like a well-behaved student.

"Welcome, bro." The boy held out a hand. "I'm Zhao Xiaoxiang. What's your name?"

"Lu Mi." Just as Lu Mi reached out, a gloved hand beat him to it and clasped the boy's.

"Zhao Xiaoxiang, my name is Roman. Please switch seats with me."

"..." Zhao Xiaoxiang felt as though his hand was about to be twisted off. He stared fixedly at the person before him. "Got it."

After Zhao Xiaoxiang angrily moved his belongings away, Lu Mi gave Roman a smack on the head. "We don't even know whether these NPCs are good or bad yet, and you're already treating them like that?"

With Cheng Cheng half bluffing and half explaining, the newcomers more or less understood that their current situation was far from good.

Though they still looked somewhat skeptical, they followed the rest of the group and sat in the vacant seats.

But the oddity was simply too obvious. Before sitting down, Shen Yiwen casually asked, "Teacher, how many students were originally in this class?"

The teacher was wiping the blackboard in preparation for the lesson and answered without thinking. "Twenty."

"Isn't that a small class? Besides, there are forty sets of desks and chairs here. Even if they were prepared for us new students, isn't that a little too many?"

Shen Yiwen persisted. The teacher turned around and braced his hands on the lectern, his expression unchanged. "There were twenty."

This time, she did not press him any further.

Lu Mi's eyes flickered. She seemed to have some experience: she took the initiative to seize opportunities to gather information, but also knew when to stop. With so many reliable people in this round, things ought to be a little easier.

The lesson was on basic electronics theory, and the classroom atmosphere was more or less what Lu Mi had expected. Even the students in the front row openly slept on their desks or talked.

The teacher simply carried on with his lecture, which was dry and dull. Worried he might miss an important clue, Lu Mi could only force himself to stay alert and understand what the teacher was saying.

Roman, on the other hand, was already slumped over his desk, his head buried between his arms, sound asleep.

Lu Mi could not help yawning either. He felt as though he really was a student again. But a second later, a pungent smell flooded his nose, and Roman abruptly stood up beside him, grabbing someone by the collar. "Got a death wish?"

The lecture stopped. The pungent smell began to resemble burning raw meat.

Lu Mi hurriedly checked. The smell was actually coming from Roman's forearm.

Something had been splashed onto the thick layers of his clothing, burning a large hole straight through them. The exposed skin and flesh had split open, leaving a horrifying wound.

The person Roman had hauled up was a boy wearing glasses. He kicked his legs and shouted, "Teacher! Teacher, save me!"

The teacher snapped, "What are you doing? We're in the middle of a lesson!"

Waves of black mist rose from the teacher's body. Lu Mi hurriedly urged Roman to stop, and only then did Roman release his grip.

"Hmph. I didn't believe people when they said he got by on his looks." One veteran player watched the commotion, only too happy to stir things up. "Turns out he keeps a vicious dog. The kind that can haul an NPC right off his feet."

Lu Mi was busy buying medicine from the Panel Mall and ignored him. Cheng Cheng, however, grinned. "So you're pretty capable yourself, Wang Rongyu?"

Wang Rongyu instantly sat up straight. "No, no, I was just joking. Don't take it to heart, boss."

The teacher was still lecturing them. "There's only one week left until your final exams. You never pay attention in class, and you still won't listen now. You've even started fighting. Are you just here to waste your days?"

More and more sinister energy poured from his body, and his eyes even turned completely white. Things were about to spiral out of control.

In desperation, Lu Mi held up the notes he had just taken during the lecture. "Teacher, look!"

Wang Rongyu could not help laughing at his action, then quickly glanced at Cheng Cheng and swallowed the mocking words on the tip of his tongue.

This is a horror instance. Does he really think proving he's a good student will get him out of this? He wasn't careful at the start and provoked an NPC. Now he's in for it.

The teacher glanced at Lu Mi's notes, then adjusted his glasses and examined them again, as though unable to believe his eyes.

"You've been listening very attentively." His voice held a trace of excitement. "Your notes highlight the key points and difficult concepts, with just the right amount of detail... Our school hasn't had a student like this in a very long time!"

Wang Rongyu: "?"

It actually worked... Watching the sinister energy recede from the teacher's body, he silently took note of this tactic: sincerity.