(3/10)
Yuying University
Chapter 417: Neat
That laughter was soft—but chilling to the bone, sending shivers down one’s spine.
“!”
Wen Jianyan’s heart jolted violently. He flinched backward so hard he nearly lost his balance.
The whole exchange had lasted barely a second, and yet that brief moment of eye contact had caused his sanity value to suffer an invisible blow—it had been ripped away, dropping by five full points before finally stopping.
“Hee hee.”
“Hee hee.”
Strange laughter echoed from all directions. It was impossible to locate its source—
It simply bounced repeatedly down the corridor, growing more eerie with each pass.
And with each echo, it grew louder.
As the sound intensified, a creeping coldness spread through the air, like being plunged into an ice cave—
Wen Jianyan felt himself freezing from head to toe.
“Something’s wrong with the sound!”
As the team member with the lowest sanity value—and the highest sensitivity to paranormal threats—
Wen Jianyan was the first to sense the source of danger.
“Cover your ears!”
Everyone followed his warning immediately, hands flying up to block out the sound, but it was already too late.
The damage had already been done.
Even with their ears blocked, that sound seemed to seep in through every crack and pore, invading their minds.
Above their heads, everyone’s sanity meters began to drop—slowly but steadily.
“Damn it!”
Suo Suo spoke quickly, his voice tight with urgency:
“If our sanity drops too low, we’ll start hallucinating. We need to get out of here—now.”
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[Wait, hallucinating?]
[Damn, doesn’t that match exactly with what happened to the anchor earlier?!]
[So he lost control in the gym because his sanity was too low?!]
[Most likely!!]
Orange Candy glared at him, grinding her molars:
“…You didn’t think to say this earlier?!”
“Huh? You guys didn’t know?”
Suo Suo stumbled back a step, clearly feeling wronged.
“How was I supposed to know your version of the movie didn’t include this mechanic?!”
Wen Jianyan, still covering his ears, glanced up to the top-right corner.
His sanity value was dropping at a steady pace.
In truth, he hadn’t known whether Brave Richard had this mechanic either—
Last time, the film had ended before any of them reached such a low sanity threshold.
But…
If each movie had a unique mechanic, and A Day in the Life of Wang Ni was themed around hearing…
Then in Brave Richard…
Wen Jianyan’s mind spun rapidly.
Scenes from the previous run of the instance flashed through his memory, finally settling on a specific image:
Those bloody, floating eyeballs, bobbing up and down in the water.
And the large, chaotic words scratched into the wall:
[Don’t look anymore.]
A chill crawled down his spine. Wen Jianyan shuddered involuntarily.
“Sight”?
Orange Candy rolled her eyes.
“Back up, all of you!”
The group paused, exchanged glances—then quickly retreated.
Orange Candy stepped forward, lifted one leg, and kicked the bathroom door hard.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Despite being half the size of a grown adult, her small frame seemed to hold terrifying strength.
With each slam of her foot, the fragile door shuddered under the impact.
Finally, with a deafening crash, the warped door gave way and collapsed inward.
The scene inside was revealed.
The light was dim—it was hard to make out what was in there.
Yet even in the near-darkness, the ominous, dangerous aura radiated outward.
Something in the dark was stirring.
As the door fell, that strange laughter amplified suddenly, echoing around their ears— doubling in volume.
“Mmh!”
Wen Jianyan gave a low grunt. His head spun, his vision blurring at the edges.
In the haze, he caught a glimpse of a pair of upside-down eyes, staring straight at him.
The whispering grew louder in his ears.
“Hee hee, I see you.”
Then suddenly—everything stopped.
The sounds, the hallucinations, the crushing coldness—
all of it vanished in an instant, as though interrupted by some unseen force.
Wen Jianyan blinked, lowering his hands.
“It’s done.”
Orange Candy stepped out of the broken bathroom. Her face was a little pale, but otherwise, she looked completely unaffected.
“You… you… what did you do?”
Suo Suo looked completely dumbfounded.
“What else?” Orange Candy rolled her eyes.
“Saved your sorry ass. Be a good boy and kneel to thank me—I’ll call it even.”
Suo Suo: “……”
He had to admit—this petite girl, who looked so delicate and frail, was scary strong…
And her mouth was just as vicious.
Wen Jianyan glanced over her head into the bathroom.
Where once there had been total darkness, a bright fluorescent light now illuminated the space.
In the center of the floor sat a pile of charred ashes—like something had been burned.
A faint acrid, burnt smell lingered in the air.
Wen Jianyan’s eyes lit with understanding.
So Orange Candy must have used a high-grade item to forcefully cleanse the danger.
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[666]
[Brute force wins again!]
[See? That’s the best way to clear a instance!]
[Exactly. This instance isn’t even that hard. The anchor might not have many items, but Hugo and Orange Candy are both veteran players—they’ve got enough gear to brute-force it.]
Now that the bathroom’s threat had been neutralized, all the strange phenomena in the hallway faded away.
And at that moment, the distant sound of sobbing resumed once more.
The source of the crying…
Everyone followed the direction of the sound. Their eyes landed on the last closed stall door in the bathroom.
Clearly, the sobbing was coming from there.
“Based on what we’ve seen so far,” Wen Jianyan chose his words carefully, speaking with great caution, “the movie’s ‘plot’ and its ‘crisis points’ seem to be two separate parts.”
In fact, this distinction could already be observed during their previous experience with Brave Richard.
Before the dorm hallway lights had gone out, everything had still been running according to the movie’s plot.
But the moment the lights were extinguished, hallucinations began to appear, and Richard’s body had turned into a grotesque creature made of hair and maggots.
Clearly, A Day in the Life of Wang Ni—which Suo Suo and the others experienced last class—followed the same principle.
The only difference was that in this second viewing, new scenes had been added, and with that, the number of crisis triggers had increased—
No longer limited to the final moments of the movie.
“So you’re saying…” Wei Cheng paused, quickly catching Wen Jianyan’s meaning, “we just exited a crisis event, and we’ve now re-entered the movie’s regular plot?”
“More or less.”
“If we’re back in the regular plot,” Suo Suo said, looking cautiously toward the source of the sobbing, “then… the one crying inside must be Wang Ni?”
Wen Jianyan: “Most likely.”
“In that case, I’ll go,” Jiang Yu volunteered.
Among all the anchors present, only the female anchors had acquired a valid NPC identity within this movie.
Although Wen Jianyan technically had one too, he was still male.
Even with his makeup and disguise, his voice would give him away in a close conversation.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Jiang Yu took a deep breath and stepped forward.
She curled her fingers and gently knocked on the door—tap tap.
Instantly, the sobbing inside stopped.
The entire bathroom fell into a dead, chilling silence.
Jiang Yu composed herself and lowered her voice:
“Hey… are you alright?”
Everyone held their breath in anticipation.
Finally—after an unknown amount of time—a nasal, muffled voice replied:
“…I’m fine.”
Hearing the response, everyone finally breathed a little easier.
This confirmed Wen Jianyan’s theory.
Now that they had passed the film’s fixed danger point, they had re-entered a safe narrative portion.
Jiang Yu glanced back at the others standing at the bathroom entrance.
Wen Jianyan nodded at her, signaling her to keep going.
So Jiang Yu turned back toward the closed stall and continued in a warm, big-sister tone:
“Did something happen? If you’re comfortable sharing, maybe I can—”
But before she could finish, she was cut off by a sudden, harsh voice from inside the stall:
“I said I’m fine!”
The voice was shrill and volatile, echoing through the empty bathroom and making everyone flinch.
“Get lost!”
Jiang Yu instinctively took a step back.
The next second, the stall door burst open with a bang.
A short-haired girl stood before them. Her eyes were red and bloodshot, her face extremely pale.
It was a beautiful face, but now twisted with a deranged, unhinged expression—clearly unstable.
Her face was drenched with moisture—not just tears, but something else as well.
Her entire demeanor mirrored that of Richard before he ran to vomit in the bathroom and died.
“You’re just here to kick me when I’m down, aren’t you?”
She stepped forward, glaring at Jiang Yu.
“W-what? No, I—” Jiang Yu stammered.
“Don’t lie to me! I heard everything!”
Wang Ni’s voice rose into hysteria.
“I heard it all!!”
Buzz… buzz-buzz.
The fluorescent lights overhead suddenly began to flicker again.
The temperature in the bathroom started to drop.
And slowly, shadows crept in from the far end of the hallway.
“…!”
Everyone tensed instantly.
Damn it!
They had seen this before.
This was what happened during the transition between a movie plot and a crisis scene.
“No, you misunderstood.”
Suddenly, a voice cut through the air.
Someone stepped forward from the back and entered the bathroom calmly.
Everyone froze, instinctively turning to look.
It was Wen Jianyan.
The flashing lights cast soft shadows across his features.
He lowered his voice slightly, making it husky and androgynous.
“We’re looking for Chu Chu.”
…Chu Chu?
The name was so unfamiliar that everyone was briefly stunned.
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[???]
[Chu Chu? That name sounds familiar. Didn’t it appear earlier?]
[Wasn’t that the name of the girl who sat next to Richard in the lecture hall?]
[Yeah! But what’s her connection to all this?]
[!!!]
[Wait! Look what I just found!!]
A viewer dropped a replay clip into the live chat.
In it, outside the lecture hall under bright sunshine,
Chu Chu smiled and waved at Wen Jianyan:
“Okay, see you later! Oh—when you see Richard, tell him to give me back my water bottle!”
Then she turned and ran toward a short-haired girl in the distance—and the two girls laughed together.
[?????]
[Wait, rewind two seconds—]
[The girl she was with… wasn’t that Wang Ni?!]
After hearing the name, Wang Ni visibly froze.
Wen Jianyan seized the moment and stepped forward.
He opened his backpack and pulled out a water bottle, holding it out gently.
His expression was open, sincere, and filled with concern:
“I think this is hers.”
“She asked me to return it to her.”
