Athlete Student

"What is it? What happened?" Lin Yi's reaction put Wei Liang on high alert. He hurriedly craned his neck over and asked, "What's going on?"

Lin Yi pointed at the symbols for the Teaching Building and the School Gate on the map, traced the route between them, then said, "Liangzi, look..."

"There were streetlamps on both sides of the road from the School Gate to here. Judging by the distance between the lamps, the whole route actually wasn't very long..."

"But do you remember how long it took us to reach the Teaching Building?"

Wei Liang froze for a moment, then looked deep in thought, counting on his fingers before stammering, "Uh, well... about an hour? Oh, no, nearly two hours?"

"One hour and forty-five minutes," Lin Yi corrected helplessly, holding his forehead. "But according to the distance on this map, the entire trip should only take ten or twenty minutes on foot at most."

Wei Liang said, "But Lao Lin, don't forget, the fog was thick when we came, and we followed the Security Guard for part of the way."

He offered his own opinion. "Could we have been going in circles?"

"That's unlikely," Lin Yi said, dismissing the idea. "The Security Guard had chains wrapped around him, and the Chef had pulled that chain perfectly straight. It couldn't have looked like that if we'd been going in circles."

"Huh? Oh, you're right." Wei Liang closed his mouth and started thinking.

Lin Yi said, "And have you noticed? The streetlamp numbers on the map are actually all jumbled up. I've looked over them several times, but I can't find any pattern at all."

Wei Liang grabbed the map and studied it closely too. A mass of Streetlamp Poles dotted the relatively short road between the School Gate and the Teaching Building.

There was absolutely no pattern to their distribution. It was as if whoever had planned them had scattered a handful of rice, then planted a Streetlamp Pole wherever a grain landed.

"With the Streetlamp Poles packed this closely together, how could we possibly have seen only one at a time?"

Wei Liang hesitated. "Could it be... ghosts leading us in circles?"

"..."

Wei Liang added, "If science can't explain it, doesn't that mean we can only solve it with the occult?"

At this, Lin Yi looked at Wei Liang with utter seriousness, his tone sincere and earnest. "Then might I ask whether Your Holiness, the Celestial Worthy Wei Liang of Fortune and Life, has any mighty divine powers?"

Wei Liang instantly looked embarrassed. "Lao Lin, you're making fun of me! Lao Lin... Lao Lin, what are you doing now?"

Joking aside, Lin Yi did not dwell on it. He was now using a pen to connect the numbers on the map from highest to lowest.

Soon, a picture resembling a tangled ball of yarn appeared on the map.

Lin Yi frowned at it, unable to make any sense of it.

Just then, a classmate walked over to Lin Yi and Wei Liang, unfolded a chair, and sat down.

He seemed to have come over deliberately. After glancing at Lin Yi's handiwork, he could not help saying, "I suggest you stop digging into this Campus's secrets. Just follow the rules, get through your seven days, and leave."

"If you're really bored, there are comics on the bookshelves at the back. Both decent ones and indecent ones. Just flip through a few to pass the time."

The voice interrupted Lin Yi's thoughts. He turned and saw a male classmate in blue-and-white-striped sportswear watching them with a faint, ambiguous smile.

The boy had a buzz cut and a lollipop in his mouth. The outline of well-developed muscles showed faintly beneath his sportswear, and he held a Hong Kong comic book.

"Of all the trial classes on the Class Schedule, everything except gym class only requires you to go through the motions in the classroom, so... just read some comics."

Lin Yi asked curiously, "May I ask who you are?"

"Gulp."

The lollipop stick slid from the left corner of his mouth to the right.

"My name's Xu Shunkang. Athlete Student." He held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, newcomers."

Lin Yi paused slightly.

So this was... an Athlete Student?

Wei Liang excitedly clasped Xu Shunkang's hand and shook it up and down. "An Athlete Student! An honor, boss, an honor! I'm Wei Liang, and he's Lin Yi. We're classmates... uh, I mean, we're classmates from another school. We came here together to experience university life."

Xu Shunkang waved a hand. "Where you came from doesn't matter. What matters is, did you hear what I just said?"

"Yes, yes, we'll definitely listen to you, boss!" Wei Liang nodded and bowed, answering with a broad smile.

Seeing Lin Yi still standing there with a slight frown, Wei Liang could not help nudging him with his elbow.

Lin Yi came to his senses, met Xu Shunkang's gaze, and nodded. "I heard you."

Seeing his reaction, Xu Shunkang knew that Lin Yi had certainly not taken his words to heart. He could only open his mouth, then shake his head and sigh. "Well, good luck to you."

After speaking, he looked around, sweeping his gaze over each of the classmates who had previously surrounded Lin Yi before finally lowering it to the comic in his hand.

He flipped through it, muttering, "Fucking idiot author. Nothing but NTR plots so disgusting they'd make a dog sick!"

Lin Yi glanced at the comic's cover. Its title was something like Mountain-Sea Green War...

"Want to read some too? I can go get a few from over there," Wei Liang leaned over and whispered.

Lin Yi rolled his eyes. "I'm still thinking about the Student Rules..."

"As long as you're not dwelling on the strange things happening on this Campus anymore." Wei Liang sighed in relief. "Listen, Lao Lin. While we're on Campus, what the Gym Teacher and Athlete Students say might sometimes sound harsh, but good advice has always been hard to swallow. We should still listen when we ought to."

Looking at Xu Shunkang, Lin Yi murmured, "From the way he talks, he seems to know a lot of the Campus's secrets?"

Wei Liang hurriedly said, "I heard Athlete Students and Art Students are actual students here, not visitors taking trial classes like us, so of course they'd know more secrets. But I'd still advise you not to ask..."

"If the school intends to hide some secret, everyone from top to bottom will definitely keep their mouths shut. Besides... how could a school that pays thirty thousand for seven days of trial classes possibly have no secrets?"

"My idea is, we behave ourselves in class, then take our money and leave."

"Doesn't your grandmother still need money for treatment? Stop thinking so much!"

A trace of confusion appeared in Lin Yi's eyes. "Grand... mother?"

Wei Liang's expression turned grave. "Fuck, you even forgot that?"

Lin Yi could not help frowning.

Wei Liang hurriedly stressed, "You came here to help pay your grandmother's medical bills, Lao Lin!"

At that, much of the confusion faded from Lin Yi's eyes, and he nodded. "Oh... I think so."

He fell silent for a while longer, then said, "Then at least... shouldn't we wait until we've confirmed Mao's safety?"

When Mao Feiyang entered the stairwell, Lin Yi had felt as though he had lost something. That sense of being cut off from the world had been so intense the instant Mao Feiyang closed the door that Lin Yi felt Mao Feiyang had left this world from that moment onward.

That subconscious sense of needing to make things whole was like some indescribable will, urging him to bring Mao Feiyang back.

"Before that, I still want to clear up as much as I can."

"Even if we don't think about that bog-like fog, or worry about the strange figures in it and those bizarre streetlamps, shouldn't we at least figure out what that endless staircase was?"

"I'm afraid Mao's trapped in there and can't get out."

Wei Liang wrestled with it for a moment. "Then... can we at least wait until we're back at the Dormitory?"

Before coming here, Lin Yi and the others had known they would be randomly assigned to different classrooms, but they could choose their dorm rooms. The six of them had therefore decided to share a room so they could look out for one another.

At those words, Wei Liang glanced out the window.

Outside the Teaching Building, everything was dark. Thick fog covered the entire Campus like a quilt. Drizzling rain pattered ceaselessly against the windowpanes before sliding down with the wind, as though someone were scraping the windows.

"It's raining." Wei Liang's expression grew serious. "It's not heavy. I wonder if it'll stop by nine..."

The Student Rules stipulated that they could only return to the Dormitory between 21:00 and 22:00. If they could not get back, they had to spend the night in the classroom.

Lin Yi instinctively glanced at his watch.

20:34.

He glanced outside again.

It was pitch-black. Nothing was visible, leaving only raindrops striking the windowpane one after another.

Something seemed to occur to him. He narrowed his eyes, then stood and walked over to the window.

He breathed onto the glass, wiped it with his sleeve, then pressed his face close and looked outside.

But just then, he saw his own reflection in the glass. It was very far away from him. By a conservative estimate, the windowpane was over six centimeters thick!

Glass of this specification?!

His pupils suddenly dilated, and he received a tremendous shock!

This is military-grade blast-resistant glass?!

He hurriedly inspected the other windows, but the more he looked, the more alarmed he became.

All the glass in this classroom is of the same specification, even on the side facing the Corridor!

He drew a deep breath and slowly suppressed his shock, then brought his face close to the glass again to examine the surroundings outside.

The fog outside the Teaching Building was dense and thick, as though a quilt had been draped over the Campus, so heavy that even moonlight could not penetrate it.

His gaze kept moving until he finally found scattered lights amid the rain and fog...

They were streetlights. Seen through the Teaching Building's windows, the scattered points of light resembled strewn pearls.

They really are rather tangled, and just like on the map... very scattered. Then why couldn't we see streetlamps like this when we arrived? Why did we only see them one at a time?

He narrowed his eyes again, unable to help recalling the scene from earlier.

Had he overlooked something, or... had reality truly been like that?

He felt that his perception had become somewhat distorted... but facts were either one thing or the other. Surely they could not keep jumping back and forth in between?

At that very moment, that strange sensation of his thoughts being guided appeared again. It silently seeped into Lin Yi's thinking, leading him to form this question-

What's going on here?

And so he began thinking without being aware of it himself.

But the moment he started thinking, that exhaustion welled up from deep within him again.

He felt strained and tired, as though he wanted nothing more than to stop thinking and fall asleep...

A powerful sense of alarm arose within him. He forced himself to break free of his thoughts and pull his consciousness back to reality.

Gradually, as he came to his senses, Wei Liang's voice reached his ears.

"Lao Lin! What are you people trying to do! Lao Lin, Lao Lin!!!"

Just then, a hand landed on his shoulder and shook him frantically.

He was shaken awake.

"Liangzi? Did I just...?!" Lin Yi stared at Wei Liang in shock.

Wei Liang's face was filled with anxiety and fear. Through the look in his eyes, Lin Yi suddenly realized-

He was surrounded again!

Exactly the same thing as before had happened. Classmates had crowded all around him.

They clustered there as densely as sunflower seeds, hemming him in against the window.

And their faces still wore those bizarre, standardized smiles, as though they had been copied and pasted!

Those smiles, paired with their waxen, seemingly malnourished faces, gave Lin Yi the powerful illusion that he was in a wax museum.

And this time, Wei Liang was not the only one who had come. The Athlete Student named Xu Shunkang had also appeared beside him at some point.

Xu Shunkang shielded him and Wei Liang behind his back, adopting a stance as though ready to strike at any moment as he confronted the dense crowd with a wary gaze.

But when Lin Yi woke up, these people once again began slowly dispersing with exceptionally slow steps.

"Hey." Xu Shunkang spoke, single-handedly calling the whole group to a halt.

All the classmates slowly turned around in perfect unison, their movements as stiff as puppets.

A belligerent smile appeared on Xu Shunkang's lips. He rolled up Mountain-Sea Green War in his hand and pointed it across the group like a blade, saying:

"I've marked you all down. Not one of you is getting away."

The classmates looked coldly at Xu Shunkang, seemingly intent on branding his appearance into their eyes as well.

"Athlete Student, mind your own business," one classmate said icily. "Go back to the Gymnasium and stink up the place!"

"Stay out of our business! Worry about yourself!"

"Heh heh heh..." Xu Shunkang laughed, his face dark. "Just you wait."

The group did not respond to Xu Shunkang again. They merely turned and slowly walked back to their seats.

Watching the dispersing classmates and their stiff backs, Lin Yi felt puzzled. How had they approached so silently when they looked as though they already had one foot in the grave?

Or... was the problem with him?

Looking at Lin Yi, Xu Shunkang naturally knew that thinking about things had once again sent him into a sleep-like state.

So he warned him sternly, "Looks like you really didn't take a single word I said to heart... Listen, Lin Yi. I'm warning you very seriously. Please stop thinking about all this nonsense!"

"The things in this school aren't something you can understand!"

"If you insist on trying to understand them with that little head of yours..." Xu Shunkang pointed at the classmates who had retreated to their seats and were staring fixedly at them. "You'll end up just like them!"

"I..." Lin Yi felt rather embarrassed too and apologized first. "Sorry, I didn't mean to. I don't know what happened just now either... It felt like something was guiding me to think..."

"But am I really not even allowed to think about questions?" he asked.

He also remembered Tian Bufan's almost prophetic warning when they parted-keep thinking, and don't trust others too readily.

Compared with Xu Shunkang, he certainly trusted Tian Bufan unconditionally.

Xu Shunkang narrowed his eyes and drew a deep breath, then cautioned him, "This Campus doesn't need people who think. Don't overthink things, and above all, don't try to understand things beyond your understanding..."

"Every place has its secrets. But once you learn a secret, you become part of it."

"Once you become part of a secret, you can never escape again."