(2/2)
Yuying University
Chapter 428: “I promise…”
“Riiiiing—”
The bell signaling the start of class rang out.
The moment the sound reached his ears, Wen Jianyan instinctively held his breath. His fingers, hanging at his sides, trembled faintly from time to time, as if trying to suppress some impulsive urge.
In his heart, he began a silent countdown.
10, 9, 8…
The classroom was dead silent.
It was as if the air had stopped flowing. In the vast lecture hall, even the sound of breathing was absent. The window to the right opened into endless blackness, and the atmosphere was stifling.
Every single anchor sitting in the room was on edge, as if all of them were waiting for something.
…3, 2, 1.
The ten-second countdown ended. Still, nothing happened.
A cold sensation seeped from the seat and desk beneath him, but that familiar, irresistible wave of sleepiness—common in other mandatory courses—never came.
In other words, unlike previous compulsory classes, this Morality and Ethics class was one where they absolutely could not fall asleep.
The anchors in the lecture hall had mixed expressions, but on the whole… most of them seemed disappointed.
“Yuying Comprehensive University” Live Broadcast Lobby:
“Hahahaha, these anchors didn’t seriously think they could just sleep through this one like the previous mandatory classes, did they?”
“Tsk tsk tsk, so naive.”
“But to be fair, they’re already luckier than the ones who never found the lecture hall, aren’t they?”
As the Morality and Ethics class officially began, a small number of viewers familiar with the instance trickled back into the stream. The viewership numbers for “Yuying Comprehensive University”—which had been steadily declining—suddenly ticked back up slightly in the rankings.
While the viewers chatted excitedly, suddenly, from outside the tightly shut doors came a series of frantic footsteps echoing down the hallway—as if someone was sprinting toward the room.
A moment later—
“BANG BANG BANG!”
A series of violent knocks shook the door.
The lecture hall was instantly silent. The sharp, urgent slaps of a palm against the door echoed sharply through the space, startling everyone. Every anchor turned their head toward the source of the noise.
“Open the door! Please, open the door!!”
From the other side of the door came a voice filled with desperation, shrill and trembling—like someone being pushed to the brink of madness by fear and pain.
“W-we’re not late! We found the lecture hall—we found it, we found it! Please just open the door and let us in!”
By the end, the voice was bordering on hysteria, repeating itself in a loop. The person began kicking the door.
“BANG! BANG! BANG!!”
The locked door rattled violently, as if it might break off its hinges.
Inside the classroom, everyone held their breath, their eyes fixed on the vice principal on the podium.
The vice principal’s pale face was completely expressionless, as though he hadn’t heard a thing.
The four Student Council members in the room were the same.
In the entire lecture hall, only the sound of furious pounding echoed.
“Someone—anyone—please help me open the door, I’m begging you! You can have anything—points, items, whatever you want—take it all—!”
“No—no, no—please—don’t, I don’t want to—”
And then suddenly, everything went silent.
The shrill screams, the desperate pleas, the pounding, the breathless panic, the running footsteps—gone.
As if someone had drawn a rest symbol over the entire corridor, an unnatural, water-like stillness took over. Not a single sound could be heard.
“…”
Inside the lecture hall, all the anchors’ faces had gone pale.
Not a sliver of light came through the window. The darkness outside felt like a yawning abyss, chilling to the bone.
Sure, they had found the lecture hall—but not everyone had been so lucky. What would happen to those who failed?
They didn’t know. And they didn’t want to know.
Orange Candy narrowed her eyes and glanced down at her phone.
No messages from Hugo yet.
As team captain, she had the ability to remotely check her team’s status. Although Hugo still hadn’t contacted them, one thing was certain—he was still alive.
Which meant “failing to find and enter the lecture hall” wasn’t an automatic death sentence.
Orange Candy pocketed her phone again.
As the anchors sat with heavy hearts, the four Student Council members silently began moving through the room, placing a sheet of cold-feeling paper on each anchor’s desk.
Wen Jianyan lowered his gaze and looked at the paper in front of him.
Unlike in elective classes, this one wasn’t blank.
On the contrary—it was completely filled with text.
At the top, bold black characters read:
“Yuying Comprehensive University Morality and Ethics Charter.”
“…”
Wen Jianyan froze.
As he examined the sheet, the vice principal’s voice, flat and emotionless, rang out above him:
“To become a part of Yuying Comprehensive University, you must undergo strict moral and ethical education. Only then can you study and live here properly, grow into a useful person, and secure a bright and promising future.”
At this moment, every desk had a sheet of that cold, densely written paper.
But the four Student Council members didn’t stop—they continued slowly pacing the room, as if patrolling and inspecting, making everyone’s nerves tighten instinctively.
The vice principal continued:
“Next, each student whose student ID number is called must stand and read aloud a portion of the charter.”
He picked up a thick list from the podium and began to read:
“180001.”
No one responded.
Wen Jianyan subtly turned his head and scanned the room.
Not a single person stood—it was unclear whether this student hadn’t found the lecture hall, or had died sometime in the past five days.
After a brief pause, the vice principal marked the list and read the next number:
“180002.”
Still no response.
“180003.”
At last, a student ID was called that belonged to someone present.
An anchor in the back row stood up. His face was pale, throat bobbing nervously as he clutched the thin sheet in trembling hands.
Every person in the classroom was staring at him, waiting.
Including the vice principal and the four roaming Student Council members.
Student 003 swallowed hard and began:
“A-as a student of Yuying Comprehensive University, I promise to o-obey school rules, respect teachers and the Student Council’s authority, actively participate in club activities…”
His voice stammered with every word.
Wen Jianyan glanced down at his own paper, reading along silently.
The anchor was extremely cautious—not a single word misread.
The charter was neither too short nor too long. Its contents were mostly basic school regulations. Rather than a “moral and ethics charter,” it read more like a pledge—or a declaration.
“I—I—I…”
Suddenly, the anchor faltered.
Wen Jianyan looked up toward him.
The anchor still stood in place, but his face had grown even paler—now whiter than the paper in his hands. Cold sweat poured down his forehead, trickling past his temples and dripping onto the desk.
“I promise…”
His voice trembled violently.
“As a member of this school, I—I shall—”
Wen Jianyan noticed that the anchor kept darting glances at a small patch of empty space in front of him, looking again and again in increasing panic.
What was he seeing?
Wen Jianyan followed his gaze, but saw nothing.
Was it something only the person himself could perceive? Like the “hallucination” still lingering beside Wen Jianyan?
He frowned slightly.
“I—I—”
The anchor’s reading grew more fractured, the pauses between words dragging longer and longer. His fingers shook so hard he could barely hold the paper. His eyes bulged slightly, and every muscle in his face twitched uncontrollably.
And then—
Everything stopped.
His face turned deathly pale.
With a loud thud, he collapsed forward, head slamming into the desk.
His face turned directly toward Wen Jianyan.
Pale. Stiff. Twisted. His eyeballs had turned grey and his pupils were fully dilated.
Clearly dead.
Everyone in the room jolted violently. The air became thick and suffocating.
By now, they all knew this Morality and Ethics class was not like the others—but none of them expected the first death to come so quickly.
Without sound. Without warning.
“…”
Wen Jianyan exhaled silently, flexing his fingers.
In just a few short minutes, his palms were drenched in cold sweat.
At the podium, the vice principal spoke in the same flat, emotionless tone:
“This student read quite well. Good. Next.”
“180004.”
The room stayed frozen for a few seconds. Seeing no one respond, the vice principal lowered his head, ready to cross off another name—but just then, an anchor stood up slowly.
The vice principal paused, then set down his pen.
“Very good. Start reading from the top.”
The previous death had obviously shaken everyone, but the rules were absolute. The student had no choice but to comply.
“As a student of Yuying Comprehensive University, I—I promise to obey—”
He stammered through the lines.
As the reading continued, Wen Jianyan turned to look at the corpse.
It still lay motionless on the desk—but at some point, its jaw had slackened unnaturally wide, like a snapped rubber band. Blood was oozing from its mouth.
Wen Jianyan saw that deep in the dead anchor’s mouth, only a stub of mutilated flesh remained.
The tongue was gone.
A wave of cold sweat drenched Wen Jianyan’s back.
The current reader had passed the section where the previous student had stumbled.
“…I am a member of Yuying Comprehensive University. I love my alma mater, I—”
Sweat beaded on his forehead, and then he paused.
Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto him, as if watching the next one marked for death.
But, contrary to their expectations—he didn’t die.
Instead, gritting his teeth, he continued reading:
“I will never leave my alma mater.”
That line marked the end of the passage.
“Very good. This student read quite well,” the vice principal on the podium said with satisfaction. He raised his hand. “You may sit down.”
The anchor let out a huge sigh of relief and sat down quickly.
“……”
The other anchors in the lecture hall were momentarily stunned. They exchanged confused glances.
What was going on?
Why did the first person die, but the second survive?
What was the difference between them?
Unfortunately, during this class, the anchors weren’t allowed to communicate with each other. Apart from team members secretly exchanging messages via phone, no one could find out what exactly the others had gone through.
What followed proceeded relatively smoothly.
One student ID number after another was called, and anchors stood up in turn.
Those who weren’t present were marked on the attendance sheet, and those whose numbers were called would stand and read the content aloud.
Some anchors suddenly stopped mid-reading and died for unknown reasons—and their manners of death varied widely. One had purplish finger marks on their neck, another spewed black water from their mouth as though they’d drowned on dry land, and another had a gaping hole in their chest, blood gushing out.
Death occurred from time to time, but overall, the ratio wasn’t high.
Finally, a familiar student number came from the vice principal’s lips.
“180039.”
Wen Jianyan’s heart skipped a beat.
But on the surface, he stood up calmly, holding that thin, cold sheet of paper.
Every gaze in the room converged on him.
On the podium, the vice principal stared at him unblinking—his gaze like an icy drill, boring straight through him.
Su Cheng and the others looked visibly tense. Due to the rules, they didn’t know the cause of the other anchors’ deaths—and in a situation full of unknowns like this, Wen Jianyan, whose SAN value was the lowest, was naturally the most at risk.
Wen Jianyan began reading calmly:
“As a student of Yuying Comprehensive University, I promise—”
His voice was steady, not a single word wrong.
However, with every word spoken, the coldness emanating from the paper intensified, as if it was trying to drain all the warmth from his body.
Wen Jianyan suddenly became aware of something. Though he didn’t stop reading, his eyes shifted slightly to glance—
Sure enough, his already dangerously low san value began to waver without warning.
A chill surged in Wen Jianyan’s chest.
It seemed the last thing he wanted to happen had happened.
Although they didn’t need to sleep through this class, as a compulsory course, it still demanded a price—sanity.
That put him in a highly vulnerable position.
In “Integrity First” Live Room barrage:
[Oh no oh no oh no…]
[His SAN value is way too low, he’s definitely screwed!]
[Honestly, though, I still have some faith in the anchor…]
[? Don’t be delusional. Wake up—people with 70 or 80 SAN already died earlier. He’s got barely 30 left—there’s no way he’s making it through!]
The side effects of declining san value began to manifest. Wen Jianyan’s vision blurred, and the hallucinations in his ears grew louder.
Even so, Wen Jianyan’s reading remained slow, steady, and firm:
“…to obey school rules and regulations, and to respect the authority of teachers—”
Suddenly, just below the edge of the paper, something caught his eye.
Not far from the desk, a pitch-black head had appeared without notice. A pale face tilted at a grotesque angle, its lips curled unnaturally upward, and a pair of dead eyes stared fixedly at him.
“Hee hee.”
A chilling laugh echoed.
Cold sweat instantly burst out on Wen Jianyan’s back.
Gulugulu.
The head began to slowly roll toward him.
“Hee hee.”
The laughter grew clearer.
Everything around him shook. Everything was breaking down. Everything was losing control.
Suddenly, the ever-lurking “hallucination” leaned in close and whispered, “Need help?”
The icy breath crept near. Wen Jianyan felt himself abruptly snap out of the dreamlike trance.
Shut up, he said silently.
The pause had been so brief it was almost unnoticeable. He continued reading calmly:
“…respect the authority of teachers and the Student Council, actively participate in club activities—”
Out of the corner of his eye, the rolling head drew nearer, and the eerie laughter grew louder. That familiar fear, born from the proximity of death, surged up, causing Wen Jianyan’s fingers to tremble.
But his mind was racing.
Would he die?
Would he?
In that moment, all the clues and evidence he had previously overlooked suddenly clicked into place.
By now, Wen Jianyan had already read more than some of the anchors who’d died.
Yet he was still alive.
Even if we take the worst-case scenario, Wen Jianyan didn’t believe anyone in the room had a lower san value than him.
That meant: if death were determined solely by low san value, he should’ve died the moment he opened his mouth.
But he hadn’t.
So SAN value couldn’t be the deciding factor.
Then what was?
Wen Jianyan’s mind flashed with the image of that corpse’s gaping mouth… and the severed tongue.
In his peripheral vision, the head rolled ever closer.
—Each anchor died in a different way.
Why?
His SAN value continued to drop.
Wen Jianyan clenched his teeth.
Different deaths meant different “threats” were appearing for each person.
They had taken different classes—so they encountered different dangers.
But the homework had already been submitted, so the course should have ended. Why were the threats reappearing?
Cold, sticky sweat dripped from Wen Jianyan’s palm.
Because of the paper.
He’d felt the same chill when he first touched it. The paper exuded that familiar sense of menace—the same as those handed out during elective classes.
Writing on those eerie blank homework sheets had drawn the students back into their respective courses. So perhaps this paper—meant for recitation—was summoning those course-based entities into reality.
The medium?
SAN value.
During homework submission, SAN value declined.
During reading, it declined again.
So why did some people live while others died reading the exact same passage?
Unlike writing, which followed a set amount of content, reading caused uncontrollable drops in san value. That meant the only variable… was speed.
No one knew better than these anchors how terrifying those “threats” from the courses were.
The paper consumed san value. The lower one’s san, the greater the fear.
The greater the fear, the faster the san value dropped. The faster the value dropped, the faster “threats” invaded reality.
Wen Jianyan forced himself to tear his eyes away from the rolling head.
He focused on the paper in front of him, calming his mind. He could hear his own voice, distant and unwavering, reciting:
“—As a student of Yuying Comprehensive University, my mission is to study, to earn more credits, and to complete my education properly—”
In the “Integrity First” live room barrage”
[……”
[Holy crap… his SAN is dropping slower now.”
[Even with that hallucination attacking him at such low san, he’s still thinking clearly… I’m seriously impressed. Someone else went from 70 to 0 in seconds!]
The commenter who had earlier expressed faith in Wen Jianyan chimed in again:
[See? I told you. If this were any other situation, maybe he’d be in danger, but this kind of trial? Piece of cake for him.]
[Ah? Why’s that?]
“Don’t forget—in the stadium earlier, he raised his san value by a few points purely through willpower, with no items at all. I really don’t think most anchors have that kind of mental strength. So for trials like this—ones you can survive with enough willpower—I have zero doubt he’ll pass.]
Now that he had figured things out, Wen Jianyan calmed down. He continued reading while glancing at the san value counter.
SAN: 29.
He had reached the critical threshold.
His heart sank.
He knew what that meant.
From now on, unless he used bottled water or other items, his san value would no longer recover naturally. He would become a constant beacon—attracting monsters within the entire instance.
The stares from the podium, from the corners of the classroom, from the four Student Council members, all grew increasingly intense. Cold, greedy, and filled with malice.
A chill crept down Wen Jianyan’s spine.
Still, it wasn’t all bad news.
At least he had nearly finished the passage, and his san hadn’t dropped to a fatal level yet.
One way or another, he had survived.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and returned his focus to the paper, preparing to finish the last lines.
But the moment his eyes dropped, the world suddenly swayed.
A moment later, the neatly printed black text on the page turned into a blinding, deep crimson.
Line by line, the layout remained the same—but the content had changed.
Wen Jianyan’s scalp tingled. Every hair stood on end.
The original, normal “Morality and Ethics Charter” had vanished—replaced by just three sentences, repeated over and over again in glaring, blood-red ink:
【I promise. I willingly offer my flesh.】
【I promise. I willingly offer my spirit.】
【I promise. I willingly offer my life.】
No way I wouldn’t know whether to recite the original text or the new one🥲