The boy who cheated was sitting in the back near the door; his corner position provided excellent cover for his little trick.
Whenever Su Cheng turned around, he would secretly turn the cup on the corner of the table and quickly glance at the note underneath.
If Su Cheng hadn't been so observant, always glancing at the corners first when she turned around, she almost wouldn't have noticed him.
On the seating chart, the boy's name is Mu Zhe.
Su Cheng's first suspicion was: Was Mu Zhe a contestant?
While it's not impossible for students from our school to cheat, it seems more likely that it was done by competitors.
She walked closer to him and pointed suggestively at the rim of his glass.
Two "tap tap" sounds were heard. The boy didn't look up, but his whole body instantly stiffened.
Just when he thought he was about to be exposed, Su Cheng turned and left, as if it were just a casual act with no other meaning.
But Mu Zhe knew she must have noticed, otherwise why would it be such a coincidence that she bumped into a cup?
He looked up and stared intently at Su Cheng's retreating figure, then put away the cheat sheet he had been holding down, no longer daring to continue.
Although it's unclear why Su Cheng didn't expose it on the spot, there's no guarantee the other party won't change their mind.
Without the hints from the cheat sheet, his writing became sluggish, time ticked away, and the questions turned into distorted characters, mocking his incompetence.
Mu Zhe's hand tightened around the pen; he could no longer get used to not having cheat sheets, and his sluggish thinking filled him with anger and resentment.
After receiving the hint, Su Cheng kept an eye on Mu Zhe's reaction, but unfortunately, the result was not as she expected. He did not give any feedback; he was not a contestant.
If Mu Zhe were a contestant, he could infer that Su Cheng shared the same identity as him by not publicly revealing it.
A single glance is enough for them to understand each other.
Since Mu Zhe wasn't a contestant, Su Cheng stopped paying attention to his movements.
Although she was surprised that there were cheaters in the top class, she didn't want to arrest or make things difficult for them.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the exam.
Everyone stood up, and Su Cheng collected the papers one by one.
When I took Mu Zhe's exam paper, I noticed that most of the essay section was blank.
His gaze turned exceptionally somber, and the anger in his eyes was difficult to conceal...
After the Chinese language test, it was time for bed.
Su Cheng put the test paper on her desk and hurried to her dormitory. Lights out and room checks would be in fifteen minutes.
Gao Wen was already waiting at the entrance of the senior dormitory building, along with the homeroom teachers of the other five classes.
Although Su Cheng was the last to arrive, she wasn't late. Gao Wen frowned but didn't say anything.
When the bell rang at 10 PM, all the lights in the dormitory building, except for the light bulbs in the stairwell, suddenly went out.
The sounds of washing up and walking around also disappeared the moment the alarm stopped ringing.
In the stillness, the teachers each turned on their flashlights.
In the afterglow of the aperture, their bodies underwent subtle changes.
Four eyes appeared faintly on Gao Wen's cheeks, but they also seemed to be just a diamond-shaped patch.
Of the other five people, some had two extra hands or legs sticking out from their sides.
These anomalies are not clearly visible upon close inspection; they appear and disappear like an illusion, only becoming fully real in peripheral vision.
Su Cheng looked at herself and thankfully, she didn't seem to have any strange organs.
"Each teacher must check all dormitories under their jurisdiction, excluding those on the first floor, before 11 PM."
"If you find any awake students, please make a note of it. I will be patrolling the stairwells, so please call me if you notice anything unusual."
Gao Wen's voice was slightly hoarse. She stopped at the top of the stairs on the first floor and gestured with her chin to signal the teachers to go upstairs.
Su Cheng scratched her neck and followed the group of teachers up the stairs.
Considering the various unusual changes among the teachers, could this be related to their personalities and behaviors?
Gao Wen likes to patrol, so that's why she grew extra eyes?
Other teachers, however, fantasized about needing more hands and feet to work...
Each floor has six-person dorm rooms, with the first floor being the boys' dormitory, which is managed by Gao Wen.
Floors 2 to 6 are girls' dormitories, with 8 dormitories per class and 1 mixed-gender dormitory.
The shift that Su Cheng needs to patrol is on the second floor.
After Gao Wen disappeared from sight, she walked to the female teacher whose nameplate read "Class 6".
This female teacher was probably under too much pressure; she had the most phantom limbs, a total of eight on both sides, making her look like a standing centipede.
"Shall we switch? I'm the homeroom teacher of Class 1."
The female teacher's expression shifted slightly; she had always envied the homeroom teachers who could conduct dormitory checks on the top classes.
Now that Su Cheng had suddenly made the suggestion, she agreed without hesitation and even whispered a reminder:
"You have to go to every dormitory, otherwise Teacher Gao will be angry. Also, don't turn your back to the students."
After saying that, as if afraid that Su Cheng would change her mind, she turned and went into the corridor.
In the time it took to say those two sentences, the other teachers had already gone up to the third floor, leaving Su Cheng alone at the bottom of the stairs on the second floor.
You can't turn your back to the students... Will the students attack the teacher under the cover of darkness?
Are students in classes with lower grades more aggressive?
Su Cheng scratched her neck thoughtfully; the right side of her neck was slightly itchy, perhaps from a mosquito bite.
She took two steps at a time, leaping up and down the stairs until she reached the sixth floor before slowing down.
The corridor was shrouded in darkness, with a clear dividing line between it and the faint light at the stairwell.
The dim orange light cast the person's shadow on the wall, making their elongated figure appear particularly tall, and the two forked heads on their necks looked like plump balloons.
Su Cheng's hands, which were gripping her neck, stiffened, and the itching intensified. She turned to face the wall, spreading her fingers to reach towards the side of her head, and her shadow did the same.
The shadow's hand overlapped with the second head, but Su Cheng missed.
I tilted my head slightly, and could only see my own palm.
The strange change that appeared on her was that she had an extra head...
The head represents thought, and she has been resisting the identity and mindset of "Teacher Su".
Because she cared about this, her mutation resulted in an extra head.
Su Cheng stared at the extra head on the shadow and inexplicably felt that the other person was grinning.
But she then realized that it couldn't hurt her and was just a superfluous decoration when the light shone on the wall.
Su Cheng lowered her arm, calmly looked away, and slowly calmed her sudden, rapid breathing.
Stepping into the dark corridor, a guess already formed in my mind—
At a certain point in time or under certain special circumstances, a strange force can make a person's obsession manifest in them.
The target audience is all teachers and students.
Su Cheng pushed open the door to the first dormitory room along the corridor. The door creaked open, signaling that the teacher was coming.
The room was so quiet you couldn't hear anyone breathing. The blankets on each bed were slightly raised, with half the back of the head peeking out from under the covers.
There were no lights in the dormitory, but she could see dark tentacles reaching out from each bed.
The tentacles bared their claws, their tips pointing at her, trembling as if eager to leap, yet dreading something that kept them swaying in the air.
Su Cheng became wary, her gaze falling on the label pasted on the bed rail, which had the student's name written on it.
She scanned them one by one, but didn't find the words she was looking for.
When it was time to leave the dormitory, the shadowy tentacles, like seaweed on the seabed, swayed even more violently. As soon as the teacher turned her back, they could pull her into the abyss!
Su Cheng naturally remembered the reminder given by the homeroom teacher of Class 6, so she simply walked backwards, facing the dormitory.
She took a step back, and her six tentacles stretched out like a snake's head to follow.
Su Cheng's eyes were sharp; meeting her gaze, no tentacle dared to be the first to strike.
After all, the only way to avoid being discovered if you attack someone behind their back.
Su Cheng stepped back to the threshold, and the black tentacles inside the room vanished in the blink of an eye, as if what she had just seen was an illusion.
The situation was similar in the six dorm rooms after that; as long as Su Cheng didn't turn her back to them, they wouldn't dare to attack first.
When Su Cheng found Hai Lu in the fourth dormitory, what emerged from her bed was not a tentacle, but a thick arm.
Su Cheng slipped the note she had already written to Hai Lu's pillow, but Hai Lu remained unmoved, as if she were truly fast asleep.
Yan Xing was in the last dormitory room, and she was the only one who did not exhibit any unusual phenomena such as tentacles.
But when Su Cheng slipped the note to her pillow, she turned her face away.
Her entire face was covered with countless black pupils, and her striking red and blue eyes brightened after a moment of stunned silence.
As Su Cheng had predicted, the Yan Xing had retained its consciousness.
Yan Xing didn't speak, but quietly got up. She wasn't wearing her school uniform underneath; instead, she was wearing a black bodysuit.
She quietly got up and pointed outside.
Su Cheng immediately understood that Yan Xing wanted to leave the dormitory building with her.
This was exactly what Su Cheng wanted; it would be easier to communicate if they left the crowded and noisy dormitory building.
Su Cheng nodded slightly, conveying "I understand".
After Yan Xing got off the bed, the two left the dormitory one after the other.
Yan Xing took out a pen and wrote on the note Su Cheng had just given her:
We met up behind the teaching building.
After handing the note back to Su Cheng, she took out a grappling hook and climbed down the wall on the side of the building.
Su Cheng took back the note; the room check was over, so she could leave the dormitory building.
Recalling the black bodysuit that Yan Xing was wearing—was it her pajamas, or had the other party anticipated her arrival tonight?
Su Cheng hurried back to the first floor, where Gao Wen was standing at the door, holding the key to the dormitory door's iron lock.
She said in a stern voice, as if issuing a warning or a reminder, "You have fifteen minutes left. Leave the school as soon as possible. Do not linger on campus!"
Su Cheng responded and left her side. After walking a few steps, she turned back and saw Gao Wen staring intently at her back.
The other person clearly didn't expect her to suddenly turn around; all six eyes blinked simultaneously, and it took them a while to slowly turn back.
When Su Cheng found the back of the teaching building, she found Yan Xing crouching in the green belt, waiting. The dense black pupils on her face had disappeared, leaving only a pair of red and blue eyes that shimmered slightly like a feline's.