WTNL Chapter 468

Thank you @Fluffydistopia and @Renea for the Kofi.

Yuying University
Chapter 468: Real and Fake Principal’s Office

Staring at the pitch-black corridor behind the iron door, Brother Hu and A-Bao were filled with regret. Wen Jianyan seemed to have noticed their hesitation, so he said at just the right moment:

“Actually, it’s still not too late to go back to the first floor.”

After all, this wasn’t Wen Jianyan’s first time in the administrative building.

Compared to the last day of the previous school year, the situation this time was far less critical.

Because he had registered upon entering this time, not only was there no security guard following him like a shadow, but he had also learned of the vice-principal’s whereabouts in advance. The student council and teachers on the second floor had not been alerted either. Under these conditions, the margin for error was significantly increased.

“They also need help in the first-floor lobby,” Wen Jianyan said considerately. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine on my own.”

Brother Hu and A-Bao: “…”

Not far away, the young man’s skin was pale, as if he were about to dissolve into the darkness behind him. His eyelids were slightly lowered, his expression gentle and unaggressive, looking very frail.

“………”

Damn it, how could they have the nerve to leave now?!

“No, it’s fine!”

Brother Hu gritted his teeth and said, steeling himself, “Since we’re already here, there’s no reason to back down!”

Not to mention, what Wen Jianyan had just said was indeed correct.

The security guard had already said that the vice-principal wouldn’t be back until twelve o’clock tonight. In that case, the third floor should be safe during this time, perhaps even safer than the first floor.

Wen Jianyan: “Are you sure?”

A-Bao: “Of course!”

Seeing that the two had made up their minds, Wen Jianyan nodded: “Alright then.”

He pulled open the heavy iron door of the stairwell and walked up first, with Brother Hu and A-Bao following closely behind.

The higher they went, the colder the air became.

The blood-red light of the second floor was left behind them, while ahead was a darkness so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. They could only vaguely make out the shape of the staircase railing and the back of Wen Jianyan walking ahead of them.

The monotonous sound of footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell.

Soon, Wen Jianyan stopped.

They had reached the third floor.

Brother Hu lifted his eyes and looked over, his heart pounding with fear.

Compared to the second floor, the third floor was far calmer than they had imagined.

As far as the eye could see, there were only two offices in the dark corridor. In the darkness, the nameplates on the office doors were faintly visible.

[Principal’s Office]

[Vice-Principal’s Office]

The moment they read the words, the two couldn’t help but jolt again.

The hot-headed rush from just now instantly cooled. The hair on their arms stood up in the chilly air, and a strong sense of unease made them almost afraid to step forward.

But Wen Jianyan was different.

He didn’t seem surprised by the layout here at all, even appearing a bit too calm. After just a brief scan, he immediately took a step and walked straight ahead.

However, contrary to what Brother Hu and A-Bao thought, Wen Jianyan did not walk towards the theoretically safer vice-principal’s office. Quite the opposite…

He stopped in front of the principal’s office, which was opposite the vice-principal’s.

“W-wait a minute!” Brother Hu’s heart leaped into his throat. He spoke hurriedly, his deliberately lowered voice filled with unconcealed panic, “Little brother, what are you planning to do?”

It was understandable to check out the vice-principal’s office while he was away, but…

The principal’s office?

Just thinking about those words made Brother Hu break out in a cold sweat.

“Principal.”

For all the anchors who had entered this instance, this was an unfamiliar name.

In all the time that had passed, he had never appeared, making people almost doubt if he truly existed…

And because he was mysterious, he seemed terrifying.

Wen Jianyan turned his head to look at him and replied in an equally low voice, “Don’t worry, I’m not going in.”

He hadn’t forgotten the advice Bai Xue had given him before the instance began.

For a top-tier spirit medium to offer advice before the start of an instance meant that the hidden danger was both fatal and crucial. Under this premise, Wen Jianyan would be extremely cautious with every decision he made. He hadn’t gone to the principal’s office when he was being chased by the security guard before, so naturally, he wouldn’t enter it lightly now.

Moreover, Wen Jianyan remembered very clearly what he had glimpsed when his SAN value had dropped to near zero and he had looked in the direction of the principal’s office.

—Where the door should have been, there was instead a solid, seamless wall.

“…”

Wen Jianyan’s gaze fell on the door of the principal’s office.

The door to the principal’s office was tightly closed, and it was pitch-black underneath. Even if he got close to listen, it was still dead silent inside. From the outside, there was basically nothing to see.

A few steps behind him, Brother Hu and A-Bao watched Wen Jianyan, who was standing by the door fiddling with something, with complicated expressions.

…Why didn’t they feel reassured at all?

After a long while.

Wen Jianyan slowly took two steps back, putting some distance between himself and the principal’s office, his brow slightly furrowed.

Even though he had plenty of time this time, and he had used almost every method at his disposal, he still had made absolutely no progress.

Wen Jianyan even activated the highest-level “Hand of Guidance”, but for some reason, the familiar red arrow didn’t even appear. He wasn’t sure if this was because the principal’s office didn’t exist at all, or if the item that should have been inside the principal’s office was somehow blocked from being sensed.

Wen Jianyan even tried the item Orange Candy had given him before they separated, but he still came up empty.

All the detection items were like stones sinking into the sea, giving him no reaction at all.

As time went by, Brother Hu and A-Bao, standing behind him, became more and more restless.

Brother Hu cleared his throat and asked cautiously:

“Ahem, little brother, how much… longer will you be?”

His voice broke the silence, and Wen Jianyan snapped out of his trance as if waking from a dream.

He lowered his head and looked at the time.

Unknowingly, they had already been on the third floor for nearly an hour. But compared to an hour ago, Wen Jianyan still had not made any effective progress.

Could it be that as long as I’m outside the door, I can’t grasp the situation inside?

Then…

Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, his hand hovering over the doorknob of the principal’s office. His fingertips trembled slightly from the tension, and the veins on the back of his pale hand bulged, as if he were being pulled by two completely opposite thoughts.

From behind, A-Bao’s confused voice came: “Little brother?”

“…”

Wen Jianyan squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed his own wrist with one hand, and forcibly pulled himself back from the dangerous thought.

No.

I can’t be impulsive.

He took a deep breath and slowly turned around.

“It’s nothing.”

By the time he was fully facing Brother Hu and A-Bao, Wen Jianyan’s emotions had returned to normal, showing no trace of what had just happened.

He smiled. “Let’s go. We should head back.”

As Wen Jianyan’s words fell, Brother Hu and A-Bao finally let out a long sigh of relief. The hearts that had been hanging in their throats finally settled. They nodded, not forgetting to ask about Wen Jianyan’s progress:

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.” Wen Jianyan shrugged helplessly.

“But staying any longer would just be a waste of time.”

He had already used every method he could, but he still couldn’t get past the barrier of the rules. This meant that this direction was wrong. He had to go back to the beginning and rethink.

After speaking, Wen Jianyan started walking downstairs.

Brother Hu and A-Bao looked at each other in confusion. Although they didn’t know what Wen Jianyan was looking for, as long as they were leaving this dangerous place, it didn’t matter.

They shrugged and followed him.

The feeling of going up and down the stairwell was completely different. Especially this time, since they didn’t have to re-enter the second floor, the expressions on Brother Hu’s and A-Bao’s faces relaxed considerably. They were even in the mood to chat with each other.

But Wen Jianyan didn’t say another word the entire time.

He followed behind the two with his eyes lowered, lost in thought.

“Hey, it’s okay,” seeming to sense Wen Jianyan’s distraction, Brother Hu leaned over to comfort him. “At least we didn’t run into any danger the whole time, right?”

To have entered deep into an unknown, dangerous place with only three people and to have come back in one piece was already a great fortune amidst misfortune.

He reached out and patted Wen Jianyan’s shoulder: “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

“Besides, at worst, we can just look at it from a new angle when we get back. Who knows, maybe you’ll find—”

Wen Jianyan suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

His movement was so abrupt that it gave the two people beside him a huge scare. The rest of Brother Hu’s words were stuck in his throat.

The young man in front of them lifted his head, his light-colored eyes sparkling:

“You’re right.”

Brother Hu: “?”

…What?

What was I right about?

Seeing Wen Jianyan turn and head back, Brother Hu suddenly snapped back to reality and hurriedly called out: “Hey, hey, wait, that’s not what I meant—”

Wen Jianyan turned his head to look at him and smiled: “I know.”

“Then you…”

“You two go back and regroup with the others first. I’m just going back to the third floor for a bit. I’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”

With that, Wen Jianyan took two or three steps at a time and ran up the stairs like a meteor. Brother Hu and A-Bao didn’t even have time to stop him before his back disappeared from view, leaving the two of them standing there, looking at each other in a daze.

A few seconds later.

“Bro, what’s going on?” A-Bao rubbed the back of his head and stammered, “So what exactly did you say just now?”

Brother Hu: “…I don’t know either?”

He was also puzzled.

Weren’t the things he had just said just a few cliché words of comfort? There was no real substance to them!

“So now we…?” A-Bao asked.

Brother Hu looked in the direction where Wen Jianyan had disappeared and shook his head: “Let’s go. Back to the first floor.”

Although their previous exploration in the administrative building hadn’t yielded any results, they knew their own limits. From this one trip alone, they had faintly realized that the difficulty here was probably beyond the upper limit of their abilities.

Even if they felt uneasy, they didn’t have the guts to follow him again.

A-Bao sighed and nodded.

The two continued to walk downstairs.

Three floors wasn’t that high. Soon, the two were back on the first floor of the administrative building. After leaving the pitch-black, suffocatingly narrow stairwell, they finally let out a long sigh of relief.

The two walked forward, talking, the atmosphere unusually relaxed.

“I can’t believe it, this school actually has so many clubs. It’s really,” Brother Hu said as he walked, looking at the closed doors on both sides, clicking his tongue in amazement, “Better than—”

But before he could finish, the two had already left the corridor and entered the lobby, and the rest of his words were caught in his throat.

The lobby in front of them was no different from their memory.

The dusty, dirty glass doors were tightly closed. The security office was pitch-black and eerily quiet.

But…

Unlike the unchanging inanimate objects, everyone else who was supposed to be here had completely vanished.

The cold, vast lobby was now, for some reason, completely empty.

The two stared fixedly at the empty lobby, their faces deathly pale.

“Where is everyone else?”

Brother Hu swallowed hard and asked in a hoarse voice.

“How… did they all disappear?”

His voice fell like a stone into the deep sea, without the slightest response.

---

On the other side.

After parting with Brother Hu and A-Bao, Wen Jianyan took two or three steps at a time and raced back up the stairs.

Soon, he was once again back on the third floor of the administrative building.

Staring at the familiar scene in front of him, Wen Jianyan stopped, panting. His gaze fell on the tightly closed principal’s office, a gleam of light flickering in his eyes.

Just now, Brother Hu’s words had indeed reminded him.

It wasn’t that the other had actually said anything constructive, but a certain keyword in his words was like a switch, making Wen Jianyan have a sudden realization.

—”At worst, we can just look at it from a new angle when we get back.”

—[Look]

Look at what?

Most importantly, how to look?

The simplest method, of course, was to let his SAN value drop to the critical point again. That way, he could see the unseeable reality.

But the problem was, the side effects of a low SAN value were too great. Even before, when he had reliable teammates with him, it was a life-and-death struggle where he nearly died. And now, not only was he deep in the lion’s den, but he also had no other support. In just over three hours, he had to meet with the “vice-principal.” Eating the “food” at this time would be tantamount to suicide.

The problem he now faced had changed from “how to see” to “what to see with.”

Wen Jianyan slowly took a deep breath, lowered his eyes, and fumbled in his pocket for what he was looking for.

His fingers opened, and two eyeballs lay in his palm.

These were the two hidden items he had finally obtained after completing two life-and-death challenges.

In fact, he had been puzzled when he got the second eyeball—generally speaking, there wouldn’t be duplicate hidden items in an instance. As collectibles, their value lay in their uniqueness.

But in this instance, Wen Jianyan had obtained a second eyeball.

This immediately made him think of Richard.

Richard, who had gouged out his own eyes in the washroom.

And these two eyeballs happened to be held separately in the hands of two corpses.

Perhaps, they were once Richard’s eyes.

What did they once see, that their owner would rather gouge them out than face it directly?

More importantly, could they reproduce it once more?

With this thought, Wen Jianyan slowly exhaled. He raised his hand and held one of the eyeballs up to his eye.

The eyeball, reeking of blood and rot, hovered a few inches in front of his eye, staring back at him blankly and lifelessly, with no reaction at all.

If one doesn’t work, what about two?

The second eyeball was also raised.

The moment it was held in front of his eye, Wen Jianyan’s vision was instantly stained crimson.

Without any warning, the originally solid eyeballs suddenly became transparent, as if compressed into a narrow, thin lens by some invisible force. Through this dark red lens, everything seemed to become instantly distorted.

“!”

Wen Jianyan’s breath hitched. A cold sweat had broken out on his palms without him realizing it, but his heart was pounding fast.

—He had guessed correctly.

In many instances, special items that could be taken out also had hidden plots and paths that could be activated within the instance itself.

And the two items he had obtained seemed to belong to this category.

Wen Jianyan steadied himself, turned his direction slightly, and through the dead man’s eyes, once again “looked” at the principal’s office in front of him.

In the crimson field of vision, the place where the door should have been was instead a smooth wall.

Just as I thought.

Wen Jianyan slowly exhaled.

This proved that the last time he came here, what he had seen in his low SAN state was by no means a hallucination. On the contrary, in that state of extremely low SAN, what he had seen was what it was supposed to look like.

However…

Compared to last time, this time, Wen Jianyan saw far more.

He lowered his head, his gaze fixed on the spot where the doorknob should have been.

But now, what appeared there was a red human face.

The lines of the small face were very simple, yet its features were distinct. It didn’t look like it was drawn on, but rather like something real. The corners of its mouth were turned high up, revealing a strange, spine-chilling smile.

Under Wen Jianyan’s gaze, the eyeballs on the face moved slightly, looking towards a direction to the side.

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through Wen Jianyan’s eyes, as if a sharp needle had stabbed them.

“Hiss!”

Wen Jianyan gasped sharply and subconsciously snatched the eyeballs away from his eyes.

He covered his eyes. The eyelids under his palm were burning, and seemed to still be twitching slightly.

It took a full few dozen seconds before Wen Jianyan finally recovered from the terrible pain. He let out a breath, lowered his hand, and glanced towards his upper right corner.

Wen Jianyan’s heart sank.

That’s right, his SAN value had been chipped away by 5 points.

It seemed that while using the dead man’s eyes, he would also have to pay a price.

Wen Jianyan turned around. Following the direction the bloody face had been looking in from his memory, he looked over. It was a gray-white wall, on which dirty fingerprints and scratches could still be faintly seen, looking no different from any other wall.

Unless—

Wen Jianyan gritted his teeth and once again raised the dead man’s eyeballs to his eyes.

The familiar crimson vision appeared again.

Sure enough, on that gray-white wall, another bloody, smiling, eerie face appeared.

It seemed to know that Wen Jianyan was “looking” at it. So, its blood-drenched-like eyeballs slowly moved downwards, looking in another direction.

The piercing pain struck again. Wen Jianyan pressed down on his burning eyelids and bent over.

This time, even after the eyeballs as items were moved away, his vision remained stained crimson for a few short seconds after.

He blinked hard, and it took him a long while to recover.

Wen Jianyan straightened up. Unknowingly, a layer of cold sweat had broken out on his back, making his shirt stick to his skin and causing him to shiver.

This is it.

His direction this time was correct.

In the “Yuying Comprehensive University” instance, the principal’s office did indeed exist.

It just wasn’t on the third floor of the administrative building.

This “office” on the third floor was just a diversion, a false illusion, a fatal trap that would kill anyone who entered it indiscriminately. This was also why Bai Xue had given him that “advice” before entering this instance.

The mission Orange Candy had taken, which seemed simple, was actually fraught with hidden killing intent, terrifyingly so.

Not to mention that the administrative building only appeared during the Moral and Ideological Education class. Even if they had managed to enter the administrative building through a life-and-death struggle, they would have been killed in the fake principal’s office on the third floor.

Thinking of this, Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but shudder.

Although they were completely unaware of it at the time, looking back now, the entire process was riddled with traps, filled with countless seemingly ordinary but in reality extremely sinister killing intents.

The style of this mission was just like this instance itself.

It was the endless malice hidden beneath a seemingly calm surface.

“…”

Wen Jianyan lowered his head and looked at the eyeballs in his palm.

But at least now he knew how to find the real principal’s office.

Although he would have to pay a certain price, it was a risk he had to take.

After mentally preparing himself, Wen Jianyan went down the stairs. Following the direction the last face had been looking in from memory, he once again raised the dead man’s eyeballs to his eyes.

One.

Two.

Three…

Following the guidance of the bloody faces, Wen Jianyan once again descended the stairs.

Just like that, he left the third floor via the stairwell and entered the second.

The blood-red light of the second floor painted the ground. The doors to the rooms were tightly closed. Wen Jianyan held his breath slightly, being extra careful. However, contrary to his guess, the face did not look towards the second floor.

Quite the opposite, the eerie smiling face lowered its eyelids and slowly looked towards the bottom of the stairwell.

Still further down?

Wen Jianyan thoughtfully put away the eyeballs and quickly went down to the first floor.

But before he had time to leave the stairwell, two dark figures rushed in from outside without any warning. Wen Jianyan tensed up.

But soon, he recognized the faces of the newcomers and couldn’t help but be slightly taken aback:

“…It’s you?”

Brother Hu and A-Bao were panting heavily. They were clearly also very startled by Wen Jianyan, almost reflexively activating their items:

“It’s, it’s you?”

Wen Jianyan’s gaze swept over their deathly pale faces. He keenly sensed that something was wrong and pressed on:

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Brother Hu caught his breath and replied, “The people… the people are all gone.”

“The people are gone?”

Wen Jianyan was also stunned, not expecting the other to say such a thing.

“What do you mean?”

A-Bao: “Just, literally!”

He raised his hand and pointed to the lobby behind him, his deliberately lowered voice filled with unconcealable panic: “Everyone is gone!”

“Just now, after we separated from you on the second floor, we came back to the first floor, only to find that everyone was gone. And this lobby is very strange, cold and gloomy… We felt more and more panicked the longer we stayed, so we decided to go back upstairs, and then we ran into you here.”

“…”

After listening to A-Bao’s account, Wen Jianyan frowned and said, “Let’s go, let’s go take a look.”

The two looked at each other. Although they still had lingering fears, Wen Jianyan’s appearance had clearly given them a shot of courage. So they sighed and nodded.

“Alright.”

Wen Jianyan followed them to the lobby.

The lobby was still as he remembered.

However, Zhao Ze and the others who were supposed to be waiting here were nowhere to be found.

Wen Jianyan walked towards the entrance and tentatively raised a hand to push.

It wouldn’t budge.

Then, he turned around and came to the door of the security office.

Looking inside with the dim light, the security guard was still sitting in the same spot, unmoving, like a dark silhouette, without any sign of movement.

“Hello?”

Wen Jianyan tried to speak. “Excuse me, have you seen the other people who were here?”

The security guard remained silent.

Wen Jianyan thought for a moment, then lowered his head and turned on his flashlight.

From behind, Brother Hu’s voice, trying to suppress his panic, came: “Bro, buddy, what are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” As he spoke, Wen Jianyan cautiously raised the flashlight and shone it into the security office.

“…”

Behind him, Brother Hu and A-Bao’s faces were deathly pale.

We’re not reassured at all!!!

Wen Jianyan was completely unaware of the feelings of the other two behind him. Of course, he knew what he was doing—for the security guard in the security office, only violating the rules would trigger a crisis. Other risks were not too high.

He carefully moved the flashlight, letting the beam of light slowly sweep across the security office.

All the furnishings were no different from his memory.

Until—

The beam of the flashlight fell on the position of the figure.

Wen Jianyan was taken aback.

The place where the security guard should have been sitting was completely empty under the flashlight’s beam. Not to mention a person, there wasn’t even half a shadow.

…No security guard?

No.

Previously, I clearly saw a pale, dead hand reach out from the security office. So why is the security office empty under the light?

With this thought, Wen Jianyan turned off the flashlight.

As the light disappeared and darkness fell, the unmoving figure appeared again in the darkness.

“…”

In an instant, Wen Jianyan felt a chill run down his spine.

He put away his phone, slowly backed away, and moved away from the security office.

It was just like the last time he came here last school year. He had never seen the security guard in person from beginning to end. This might mean that this so-called “security guard” didn’t actually exist in the same reality they were in.

Wen Jianyan knew that this only meant one thing.

“This road is blocked.”

To solve the current puzzle, or to avoid becoming the next victim, he had to approach it from another angle.

Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes and looked at the eyeball in his palm, a thought turning in his mind.

…Perhaps, this is related to my original goal?

So, he once again raised the eyeball and held it to his eye.

His vision was once again stained crimson.

However, in this strange red space, Wen Jianyan did not find that familiar face.

He frowned, as if he had suddenly thought of something.

Wait a minute.

Strictly speaking, it’s not that I’ve never seen the security guard’s form in person.

In the previous school year, I also “saw” its existence, but it was indirect.

With this thought, Wen Jianyan turned around and looked towards the medium from his memory.

The next second, his movements froze.

“…What’s wrong?”

From not far away, Brother Hu’s voice came.

Wen Jianyan did not answer immediately.

He seemed not to have heard Brother Hu’s voice, rooted to the spot, unmoving, maintaining the same posture as before. Through the crimson lens, Wen Jianyan stared fixedly at the distance.

In the red vision created by the eyeball, the full-length mirror in the lobby, used for passersby to tidy their appearance, showed an extremely strange color. And on the surface of the mirror was a huge, crimson face.

As if sensing Wen Jianyan’s gaze, the face “looked” over. The corners of its mouth were turned high up, its smile making one’s scalp tingle.

Wen Jianyan’s face was pale, his breathing rapid, and even his temples were beaded with fine sweat.

Then, under Wen Jianyan’s gaze, the eyeballs slowly rolled back, until the entire eyeball turned a blood-red color, as if…

The eyeball had rotated one hundred and eighty degrees in its socket, within the skull—

Looking back.

“It was so much better when we were in school.”

“Yeah, look,” A-Bao also leaned his head over, “I can’t believe the entertainment activities of the instance NPCs are even richer than ours—”

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