Arc 7Chapters 153–177
No recap yet.
No recap yet.
Lin Yi carried the injured Li Huiyuan through the Convenience Store while darkness and night-walking creatures pursued them, and he reached the exit after an unexplained burst of speed and lost time. Outside, they entered a campus passage that transformed into a familiar foggy corridor, where Lin Yi recognized the Student Passage and saw the Blue Apron Chef waiting behind them.
After escaping the Cafeteria through the Student Passage, Lin Yi chose to hurry with Li Huiyuan toward the Teaching Building before darkness and abnormal fog made the Campus dangerous. The fog surged across the Pebble Road, Li Huiyuan regained sensation and strength in her foot, and Lin Yi ran toward the increasingly obscured building as the Sculpture Phalanxes emerged.
Lin Yi and Li Huiyuan tried to reach the Teaching Building as contamination thickened, but the campus layer dropped and the Sculpture Phalanx entered their road. They were trapped among the sculptures in the fog, with the streetlamps still ten minutes from turning on.
Lin Yi kept himself and Li Huiyuan on the distorted road until the campus lights came on, then led her toward Streetlamp-105 while the humanoid sculptures gathered behind him. He realized the sculptures were calling only to him and suspected they were targeting his Student ID.
Lin Yi and Li Huiyuan escaped the fog by following numbered streetlamps to the Teaching Building, where four hidden floors appeared after the Layer Drop. Lin Yi realized the fog concealed something like water, but the eerie figures gathered around the building and a sculpted foot emerged onto its steps.
Lin Yi and Li Huiyuan reported her encounter at the Convenience Store to Head Teacher 040, while humanoid sculptures began entering the illuminated Teaching Building and transforming into Nonhuman Classmates. Lin Yi suspected that the classmates might turn back into sculptures when the lights went out, and his increasingly dangerous thoughts began affecting him.
Lin Yi reconstructed Little Genius’s death on May 6, then became trapped in a contaminated Corridor while seeing through Mao Feiyang’s perspective. He escaped the hallucination by grounding himself in his identity and returned to Group B Class 2, where the familiar warmth felt subtly wrong.
Lin Yi and Li Huiyuan entered a classroom where the Experience Students argued over whether to stay or flee after finding a warning on the blackboard. Lin Yi suspected the message was written in contaminated blood and refused to trust it until he could identify its source, while two students—including Zhou Yuting—were missing.
Lin Yi returned to the classroom with Li Huiyuan and learned that the mysterious words on the blackboard had appeared between 15:30 and Wei Liang’s return at 17:08, making an Athlete Student a likely but unconfirmed writer. As they waited for Head Teacher 040 to discuss where everyone should spend the night, Lin Yi revised his notes about the Cafeteria, the green fog, and the strange students.
Lin Yi recorded new rules and watched Mountain Man test the Blackboard’s message before deciding to leave the classroom. Mountain Man said he was returning to the Dormitory, though the elevator would not open until 21:00, leaving Lin Yi wondering what made him confident he could go now.
Lin Yi weighed Mountain Man’s attempt to reach the Dormitory Building before the elevators opened, then learned Head Teacher 040’s emergency plan for getting students there safely at 20:00. The chapter ended with Lin Yi suspecting that the teacher had singled out twelve students because their high inspiration made staying in the classroom especially dangerous.
Lin Yi connected the university’s identity-related objects to a strange white material and deduced that night-walking creatures and humanoid sculptures coveted Student IDs. He imagined a night scene in which the sculptures used a student’s name and number to imitate him and attacked when his ID was exposed, leaving him with a chilling new theory about the campus’s dangers.
Lin Yi’s deduction of how Humanoid Sculptures could steal Student IDs nearly overwhelmed him, but Wei Liang pulled him back to reality. At 20:00, Lin Yi and Wei Liang prepared to leave the classroom and seek shelter in the fog as Head Teacher 040 had instructed.
Lin Yi and Wei Liang crossed the fog-shrouded Campus toward the Dormitory as Humanoid Sculptures called Lin Yi’s name from the darkness. Elsewhere, Nie Yun was deceived into pushing Ge Qing into the fog, and both men were transformed into Nonhuman Classmates as the Sculptures sought more people.
Lin Yi and Wei Liang encountered the Nie Yun and Ge Qing Nonhuman Classmates, who were luring Experience Students into the fog. Lin Yi recognized them and tried to exploit their uncertain identities, leaving the two creatures confused as the Humanoid Sculptures called out reminders.
Lin Yi and Wei Liang escaped the Teaching Building-067 streetlamp after using reverse cognitive contamination to confuse two nonhuman classmates, while Wei Shan brutally destroyed three more. Lin Yi and Wei Liang reached Teaching Building-001 and discovered that the routes to the Cafeteria, Gymnasium, and Dormitory Building converged there after the Layer Drop.
During the 73rd Gray Fog Invasion, the school staff arranged for Li Huiyuan to go with the Security Guard to the Gymnasium while discussing the campus’s weakening defenses. Lin Yi and Wei Liang waited for the Security Guard beneath a dimming dormitory streetlamp as the fog closed in.
Lin Yi and Wei Liang tried to return to the Dormitory Building after no security guard appeared by 21:00, but the fog distorted the road and threatened Lin Yi’s grip on reality. At the streetlamp marked Dormitory Building-092, Lin Yi sensed that the light was failing and discovered the road had become sand and the lamp’s glowing object was not a bulb.
Lin Yi carried Wei Liang through the failing streetlamps toward the Dormitory Building, discovering that the lamps’ supernatural light suppressed the Nonhuman creatures. After fighting off the Nonhuman Classmates beneath Dormitory Building-094, he continued toward Dormitory Building-095 as the road began cracking and distorting beneath him.
Lin Yi struggled to cross the twisting road to the dormitory while falling deeper into the layer occupied by the night-walking species. As he neared collapse, he discovered they feared his gaze, then saw an unknown person lying on Wei Liang’s back.
Lin Yi defeated the Xenomorphic Sculpture and was rescued with Wei Liang by the Security Guard, who explained that the layers had distorted Lin Yi’s perception of time. After reaching the dormitory, Lin Yi and Wei Liang rode the elevator to their room, where an unusually normal walk left Lin Yi shaken with disbelief.
Lin Yi confronted a corridor full of Nonhuman Classmates imitating Wei Liang and discovered that their identities depended on fragile self-anchoring. He exploited their confusion until their forms collapsed and they surged toward Dormitory 1401.
Lin Yi restored his sense of identity after tricking the nonhuman classmates, but the dormitory door vanished and he was thrown into the Art Building’s layer. Clinging to a sheer cliff above a vertical ocean, he faced rising gravity, hostile whispers, and climbing night-walking creatures.
Lin Yi escaped the abyssal layer by using his Sticky Note Notebook as an anchor and returned safely to Dormitory 1414. A scrap of paper from Song Rentou revealed how nonhuman classmates targeted dorm residents, leading Lin Yi to realize he may have disrupted the creatures tracking Wei Liang.
Lin Yi found Song Rentou’s note, discovered a strange figure lingering outside the dormitory, and realized that he could no longer remember anything from before boarding the Blue Bus. After the others returned, Lin Yi asked Wei Shan how he could attack the nonhuman entities so directly, leaving Wei Shan’s secret unresolved.