(7/10)
Yuying University
Chapter 421: You liar, you deserve to die!”
Wen Jianyan pressed a hand against his ear, staring in confusion and uncertainty at the empty space beside him.
Was it a hallucination? Or…?
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[?]
[What’s up with the anchor? Why’s he suddenly looking at nothing next to him?]
[No clue. I don’t see anything on my end.]
Wen Jianyan paused, then slowly lowered his hand.
Although his sanity hadn’t dropped to the point of no natural recovery yet, it was nearly halved. Hallucinations and auditory delusions were unavoidable at this stage.
That cold touch still seemed to linger on his earlobe.
But after some hesitation, Wen Jianyan didn’t reach for the water.
After all, he had returned to the movie scene, where they were safe during the scripted events. More importantly, sanity-restoring mineral water was a rare item. And since they had seriously offended the mini-mart owner, acquiring water would be difficult.
Under such circumstances, it was best to conserve resources.
Familiar noises of a bustling crowd drifted in from outside the door.
Wen Jianyan was startled and instinctively looked toward the doorway.
The kitchen door was half open, and beyond it, he could vaguely make out streams of college students passing by, just like in the earlier movie scene.
Huh?
The door was open?
Before he could fully process it, the scene in front of him suddenly shifted without warning.
“?!”
Wen Jianyan was startled.
“Riiiiiing—!!”
The familiar sound of the school bell pierced through the fog and rang sharply in his ears.
The next second, everything flipped upside down.
By the time he came to his senses, the environment had completely changed.
The classroom lights were on bright. The projector behind him was still whirring, producing a constant buzzing noise. Outside, the heavy darkness was lifting.
On the dirty screen were the bold words: “THE END.”
“….”
Wen Jianyan sat in his chair, blinking in confusion, as if still reeling from the sudden shift.
Beside him came Orange Candy’s voice:
“Ah? It’s over already?”
“…Yeah.” Wen Jianyan paused, then replied, “Last time during Brave Richard, we returned to the classroom at the end of the second act’s crisis.”
Strictly speaking, the end points of both films had occurred at exactly the same narrative beat.
He lifted his eyes and scanned the classroom, frowning slightly.
After this movie ended, the number of students in the classroom had once again decreased. It hadn’t been full to begin with, but now it felt even emptier.
Clearly, for the other anchors, the difficulty of the second class in the elective Film Appreciation had also risen, and fewer people had survived.
However, their team remained intact.
Orange Candy slumped onto the desk, clearly dissatisfied with the short length of the movie.
She pouted and childishly complained:
“That was way too short. I didn’t even get to catch up to the guy!”
“……”
At the front of the class, Teacher Sun appeared to be watching them. His smile was the same as always, but his eyes were colder than before.
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[Teacher Sun: You came here to cause trouble, huh?]
[LMAO, he looks one second away from committing murder. Just barely holding it in.]
[Haha I bet he regrets letting them retake this course.]
“Second period ends here,” Teacher Sun said with a smile, withdrawing his gaze. “Once everyone finishes their homework, you can turn it in to the student council during Friday’s Ethics class. They’ll deliver it to me.”
With that, he turned to leave.
But before he could step out, a familiar troublemaker slowly raised his hand at the back of the classroom.
Teacher Sun: “……”
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[LOL!]
[HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA]
[NPC: I just want to go home. anchor: No you don’t.]
After a few seconds of strained silence, Teacher Sun finally said:
“This student, go ahead.”
His smile remained professionally polite, but his eyes were icy cold.
“Um, teacher, I just wanted to ask—” Wen Jianyan blinked innocently and asked sweetly, “So, the official deadline for the homework is this Friday, right?”
He stressed the word official.
“…………”
This time, Teacher Sun paused for a full ten seconds.
Wen Jianyan waited patiently.
“No.” At last, Teacher Sun replied. And though it might have been a hallucination, there seemed to be a faint grinding of teeth in his voice.
“The true official deadline is Sunday at midnight.”
Just as he suspected.
Wen Jianyan smiled faintly to himself.
According to his previous deductions, in the Yuying Comprehensive University instance, “a week” was a critical narrative cycle.
One week in the instance = one academic term in the real world, so Sunday at midnight marked the true grade calculation point. That meant the real homework deadline would logically also fall then.
These NPCs were really committed—scheming from the first to the very last minute of the instance.
“If you don’t want to hand it in on Friday with the others,” Teacher Sun continued, his smile growing stiff and cold, laced with unmistakable malice, “you’ll have to come deliver it personally to my office. But if you’re late—you’ll immediately lose all credits and fail. I hope everyone takes this seriously.”
Wen Jianyan blinked, as if he still had more questions: “Then—”
“Class dismissed!”
Before he could say anything more, Teacher Sun abruptly cut him off.
He grabbed the class list and, still smiling his fake smile, turned on his heel and stormed out of the classroom without a second’s pause.
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[NPC: Can you just NOT.]
[He’s done. DONE with this no-boundaries student.]
[I think this instance has an unspoken rule: NPCs can withhold info, but must answer if questioned directly.]
[HAHAHA this NPC is one question away from a nervous breakdown.]
[This is the first time I’ve seen a anchor scare an NPC. Wen Jianyan, you’re something else.]
Teacher Sun left so fast that Wen Jianyan didn’t even get a chance to ask his next question.
He stared after the NPC with regret, then closed his mouth.
“What are you thinking?” Orange Candy tilted her head and asked curiously.
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, gaze falling on the old paper in front of him with the movie’s title. He gently tapped the desk.
Turning in the homework…
“We don’t need to worry about that just yet,” he said.
After all, unlike the other anchors, Wen Jianyan had long figured out a trick for handing in homework directly to the teacher: just time the completion of the task with the bathroom breaks during each class. That way, you could bypass the rules of the instance and avoid risk altogether.
The look on Teacher Sun’s face back then probably had a lot to do with this.
“What interests me more—” Wen Jianyan looked once more at the empty doorway and said slowly,
“…is that the teacher’s office is accessible.”
Everyone froze for a second before their expressions lit up in realization.
“Huh?” Only Tian Ye still looked confused. “What about the teacher’s office?”
“…You’re hopeless,” Yun Bilan said flatly.
Tian Ye: “.”
Sniffle.
“Don’t forget,” Wen Jianyan explained patiently, “our goal in this instance is to reach the principal’s office and obtain the special item. Now tell me—where do you think the principal’s office is in such a small university?”
“!”
Hearing that, Tian Ye froze—then suddenly had a eureka moment:
“Oh! I get it now!”
In the real world, the principal’s office is never located in a student classroom building. It would be with the teachers’ offices, in a separate administration building. Which meant…
If they could find the teachers’ office building, they’d be one big step closer to the principal’s office.
Extending this further—since the Ethics class on Friday would involve student council members collecting homework and delivering it to the teacher…
If they could follow that trail—they might complete their main mission faster.
Everyone exchanged glances, the same spark of hope in their eyes.
After so long in this instance, they finally had some real progress.
“Alright,” Wen Jianyan said. “Before that, let’s review the intel we got from this film class.”
He turned to Orange Candy. “What about your side?”
“Nothing much,” she leaned back, her short legs dangling, bored. “We finally found Wang Ni, but didn’t even get to speak to her. Took a few steps, and boom—monster.”
Wen Jianyan asked, “What was she doing when you saw her?”
“Uhh…” Orange Candy tilted her head. “Eating.”
Well, it was the cafeteria, after all.
She thought for a moment, then added with emphasis, “She was eating a LOT.”
“Hm?” Wen Jianyan caught her emphasis and asked, “How much?”
Wei Cheng said, “Not sure if she ate all of it herself, but when we found her, there were about this many empty bowls in front of her—and most of them were the huge kind.”
He gestured with his hands.
Wen Jianyan estimated the distance mentally.
That many… At least fifteen to twenty bowls.
Far beyond a normal appetite.
“And…” Wei Cheng frowned, as if recalling something. “Something about her looked off.”
Even now, the memory sent chills down his spine.
A female college student hunched over the table, most of her face buried in a bowl, eyes fixed and staring at a spot on the ground.
Her hand kept shoveling food into her mouth with unnatural fervor, chewing violently with mechanical click sounds as her upper and lower teeth slammed together. Her whole body radiated a strange, chilling aura—like she was possessed.
She chewed like a beast, scary and brutal. The soup stained her lips in red and white streaks, creating the horrifying illusion that she was eating organs.
After Wei Cheng’s brief description, Wen Jianyan fell into deep thought.
He thought of Richard.
If Richard’s defining trait was hydrophobia, then could Wang Ni’s be… gluttony?
There seemed to be a connection beneath the surface, but with the current information, it was hard to fully link the two.
Wen Jianyan looked toward Su Cheng. “What about you guys? Any findings?”
Su Cheng replied, “Quite a few.”
He then concisely summarized their discoveries.
Wen Jianyan listened carefully, organizing the clues in his mind.
The library—that location had also come up in Suo Suo’s account. Clearly, it played a significant role in both films.
Wang Ni and Richard were probably searching for the same thing.
But Wang Ni had likely visited the library before Richard—meaning she found it, and he didn’t.
Wen Jianyan tapped the desk lightly with his fingers, making a soft tok tok sound.
Unfortunately, to know the details, they’d have to wait until the library map opened.
Su Cheng continued:
“Wait, Richard was the last to die?”
Wen Jianyan paused.
“That’s what the informant said,” Su Cheng replied cautiously, “but I think it’s fairly reliable.”
He added, “In the second act of the movie, I personally saw him strangle a girl in the swimming pool.”
Wen Jianyan leaned forward slightly. “Did you see how long her hair was?”
If it was short, it was likely Wang Ni.
If long, then Chu Chu.
Unfortunately, Su Cheng shook his head:
“No. She was wearing a swim cap, so I couldn’t tell.”
“But didn’t you say earlier that you saw a broken corpse in the black water of the pool?” Orange Candy chimed in. “If the one stuffed in the locker was Wang Ni, then the one strangled in the pool should be her too, right?”
Wen Jianyan replied, “Maybe.”
Though Orange Candy’s logic held up overall, there were still many small gaps in the narrative.
Even though he’d found Wang Ni’s student ID in the locker, that alone didn’t prove the body was hers.
More importantly—how could someone strangled in the pool end up with all their bones broken and stuffed into a locker?
A human couldn’t possibly manage that.
Sure, you could chalk it up to “instance distortion,” but that felt like a lazy handwave.
Even if Orange Candy’s conclusion was correct, there must be more to the story—hidden details no one had uncovered yet.
After listening to Su Cheng, Wen Jianyan thought for a moment and said:
“At least now we know one thing.”
“The timeline of the movie is completely jumbled.”
In the first class, during Brave Richard’s first act, Wang Ni and Chu Chu were still alive and well. But in the second act, Richard was already dead.
If Su Cheng’s info was accurate and Richard died last…
Then the first and second acts of that movie likely represent the start and end of the entire event. The rest of the movie content fills in the middle—the body of the story.
While each movie flows linearly in its own right, each act comes from a different time and perspective, like scattered puzzle pieces jammed together for this class.
“Ughhh…” Orange Candy slumped onto the desk, clearly checked out of the deduction phase. “This kind of reasoning game is not my thing. I’d rather go fight monsters… So, can you just give me the conclusion?”
Wen Jianyan sighed silently. “Sadly, no. Until we get a key piece of information, these story fragments are just pretty beads with no string—nothing ties them together yet.”
“Ughhh—!”
Orange Candy slammed her forehead on the table. “It’s too hard! I’d rather fight!”
“Calm down,” Wen Jianyan soothed her with practiced ease. “We just haven’t unlocked enough of the map yet. Once we do, all this will naturally make sense.”
“Oh, right,” Su Cheng suddenly spoke. “Can I handle the communication with that scar-faced anchor?”
Wen Jianyan looked at him. “Hmm?”
Su Cheng said, “Let the three of us take that lead. After all, we haven’t finished our assignment yet, and you’ve already unlocked side quests in the other films.”
Wen Jianyan paused and nodded. “Alright.”
He’d been in this instance for a while now, and he was starting to truly realize just how massive this scenario was.
They’d already raced through multiple maps, but their grasp of the instance was still superficial. Places like the cafeteria and library remained largely unexplored, and hidden scenes—like the office building and lecture hall—were still inaccessible.
Under such conditions, trying to micromanage everything himself clearly wasn’t practical.
He couldn’t handle it alone.
So, although Wen Jianyan was still worried about his teammates, he had to admit—they’d grown strong enough to handle major responsibilities on their own.
Wen Jianyan pulled out the course schedule and scanned the contents.
It was Wednesday—two days until Friday.
But their free time between now and then was surprisingly generous.
There was one major course Thursday morning and another Friday afternoon, but based on past experience, those classes could be passed just by sleeping through them. They weren’t dangerous.
The only real challenge might be Friday night’s Ethics class.
According to the student handbook, that class was supposed to be in the lecture hall, but they hadn’t found its location—no clues, nothing.
Wait.
Wen Jianyan blinked.
“Hold on. Wasn’t the first act of Brave Richard set in the lecture hall?”
Everyone nodded. “Yeah.”
Yun Bilan suddenly added, “I remember there was a lawn outside the lecture hall, with a sign that said ‘Keep Off the Grass.’”
“Right!” Wen Jianyan’s eyes lit up.
Clearly, the lecture hall was a hidden map within the instance.
But as a mandatory course location, it couldn’t be too well hidden—there were bound to be hints.
And now, they’d just uncovered the first few clues.
“In short, we have two main objectives in the next two days,” Wen Jianyan raised two fingers seriously. “First, find the lecture hall.”
Orange Candy looked at Wei Cheng and raised her chin. “It’s on you.”
Wei Cheng’s spiritual medium ability focused on death prediction, but his intuition was still sharper than theirs.
Wei Cheng nodded. “Got it.”
And if that failed, they could always use Su Cheng’s precognition ability.
For their team, it wasn’t a major hurdle.
“Second, we need to complete the homework.” Wen Jianyan looked at Su Cheng and Yun Bilan. “So I’ll leave the Brave Richard task to you two.”
Yun Bilan smiled faintly. Against her pale face, the blood-red flower on her cheek looked even more vivid.
“Got it.”
Those were the two most crucial tasks on the surface.
Only once they were done could further exploration take place.
“What about me?” Orange Candy protested. “You’re not just gonna leave me sitting around, right?”
“Of course not.” Wen Jianyan shook his head, tone utterly sincere. “I’ve reserved the most important task for you!”
Orange Candy tilted her head skeptically. “Really?”
Wen Jianyan nodded firmly. “Really!”
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[…]
[I suddenly have a bad feeling about this.]
[Yeah, same…]
As the pen tip scratched across cold paper, the scene abruptly shifted.
Under a black sky, a flat, round building loomed ahead. Its main doors were shut tight, and the inside was pitch dark.
The cafeteria.
Wen Jianyan and Orange Candy stood at a distance.
That’s right.
Just like with his previous “roommates,” Wen Jianyan had successfully entered the movie world alongside Orange Candy.
Orange Candy: “So this is just the homework again. You could’ve just said so!”
“No,” Wen Jianyan unexpectedly shook his head. “Strictly speaking, we must not finish the assignment this time.”
Orange Candy: “?”
Wen Jianyan handed her the pen. “Just write a few hundred words. Anything.”
Orange Candy shrugged and took the pen.
After she scribbled a few hundred words, the quiet, dark cafeteria began to stir with faint noises.
“What about you?” Orange Candy tilted her head, looking at the motionless Wen Jianyan.
Wen Jianyan: “I’m not writing.”
Orange Candy: “?”
“Didn’t you say you prefer fighting monsters to solving mysteries?” Wen Jianyan said.
Orange Candy: “Uh… yeah…”
That did sound like something she’d say… But something felt off.
“That’s why I’m giving you the most important and dangerous task.” Wen Jianyan crouched in front of her, his amber eyes glowing with serious intent in the dark.
He said solemnly, “Only someone as strong as you can hold off all the monsters. No one else in the instance could do it.”
Orange Candy beamed with pride.
She lifted her chin. “True!”
Wen Jianyan: “So, can I count on you?”
He added, “If not, I could always call Hugo—”
“What?” Orange Candy flared instantly. “Call him? That useless flake? He always disappears at the worst moment! Tch!”
She scoffed. “Just pulling monsters? Please, I can do that in my sleep.”
Then Wen Jianyan proceeded to flatter her in an exaggerated but clever way.
The more Orange Candy listened, the more smug and hyped she got.
A knife appeared in her hand—the same rusty machete she’d wielded in the Changsheng Tower instance.
She patted her chest and promised:
“Relax! I swear not a single monster will slip past me!”
Wen Jianyan looked moved. “Really? That’s great! I knew I could count on you!”
Orange Candy: “Of course!”
With that, she charged off, sword in hand, confident and fierce.
Meanwhile, Wen Jianyan… quietly slipped into the empty kitchen.
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage:
[…]
[…………]
[Shameless. Absolutely shameless!!!!]
[What a lying dog! Deserves to die!]
