(5/6)
Yuying University
Chapter 487: Revenge
“…”
Staring at the scene before him, Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but shiver, his heart slowly sinking.
This was why he hadn’t dared to wear the badge symbolizing the president’s position in front of the mirror in the administration building when faced with the approaching society members.
This was what Wen Jianyan had been worried about.
Although the badge could give him an advantage in status, based on his understanding of the instances… the greater the advantage it provided, the more vicious the backlash from its side effects would be.
Unfortunately, even though he had been on guard, when faced with the dead end of being surrounded at the library, Wen Jianyan was forced to use the badge. After all, he had no other choice.
And now, he had to bear the price of using it.
As Wen Jianyan was deep in thought, several urgent footsteps suddenly came from the darkness ahead, the sound approaching quickly from a distance.
Startled, Wen Jianyan immediately let go, reflexively straightened his collar, and looked up.
It was indeed Su Cheng and his group.
Their expressions were tense and alert, their clothes stained with black soot and blood. Although they hadn’t lost any members, it was clear that their mission had not been easy.
Upon seeing Wen Jianyan, the group’s tension immediately eased.
“Thank god, you’re okay!!!”
Tian Ye looked so moved he seemed about to cry.
Wei Cheng also let out a long breath, his shoulders relaxing. “Indeed, that was really close. We almost thought we’d never see you again.”
However, perhaps because he was used to it, Su Cheng seemed much calmer.
Su Cheng looked at Wen Jianyan and asked:
“How did it go on your end? Was it smooth?”
Wen Jianyan shrugged. “Pretty smooth.”
Everything went more or less as he had expected.
“Although I might have tricked a few people here and there,” Wen Jianyan thought for a moment and added, “but I think they should be thanking me.”
After all, by burning down the building, the other anchors were spared an ideological and moral education class and would be contaminated by the instance one less time.
Rounding it up, how was that not a great deed?
In the “Integrity First” Livestream Room:
[…]
[Bro, I’m begging you, have some shame.”]
As a long-time victim, Su Cheng looked at Wen Jianyan with a suspicious expression, clearly not quite believing his words.
“Ahem, let’s not talk about that for now,”
Wen Jianyan cleared his throat, promptly changing the subject. His gaze swept over Su Cheng’s group, finally resting on the wounds on their bodies:
“What about you guys? Did you run into any danger?”
Su Cheng noticed his gaze, lowered his head to move his arm, and said, “This was from when we were attacked by the monsters after the class bell rang.”
It was the same invisible monster that had attacked them in the previous school year.
This time, without Wen Jianyan, whose SAN value had dropped to a critical point, to lead the way, they couldn’t avoid the attack and could only take it head-on.
“But luckily, not long after we burned the building down, the attack stopped and hasn’t appeared again.”
He looked at Wen Jianyan and guessed with some uncertainty, “Is it because we burned down the lecture hall?”
“Yes,” Wen Jianyan nodded, affirming his thought. “At least until the rules are rebuilt, this kind of attack won’t happen again.”
“That’s good.”
Su Cheng let out a big sigh of relief.
It had to be said, their current state was at the end of its rope; they could hardly withstand another wave of attacks.
Wen Jianyan made a point of looking at Arnold behind them and asked:
“What about you? How are you feeling?”
Half of Arnold’s face was still charred. He twitched the half of his face that could move and gave a helpless, bitter smile:
“Still alive.”
Clearly, the experience of being used as a human torch twice in a row had taken a heavy toll on him, almost to the point of being irreparable. Even with his talent for coming back to life, he had been pushed to his limit and probably wouldn’t survive another use.
“So what’s next for us? Where are we going?”
Just then, Yun Bilan asked from the side.
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, pondering for a few seconds.
Soon, he looked up. “Let’s go to the administration building.”
“If I’m not mistaken, Orange Candy should be trapped behind the mirror on the first floor of the administration building right now. And with the student council and the vice principal likely distracted by the fire at the lecture hall, we might have a chance to get in from there.”
Although he said this, Wen Jianyan wasn’t confident in his heart.
Every word he said was true. Going to the administration building now would meet far less resistance than before. But the key was… their real problem hadn’t been solved.
The mirror images.
The two “people” who had left the mirror were still missing. Because of this, Wen Jianyan had no reflection in the mirror and naturally couldn’t enter it.
All they could do now was go to the third floor of the administration building and try their luck in the vice principal’s office.
However… Wen Jianyan knew that the hope was still slim.
If there had been clues to enter the mirror world in the vice principal’s office from the beginning, then the dead man’s eyes that could change one’s vision wouldn’t have led him back to the first floor.
It wasn’t logical.
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes and took a deep breath.
But unfortunately, they had no other options.
They could only hope for the best and give it a try at the administration building.
“By the way.”
Suddenly, Su Cheng spoke.
“?”
Wen Jianyan looked up towards Su Cheng.
“There’s something you might want to see.” As he spoke, Su Cheng stepped forward, took out two pieces of paper with scorched edges from his pocket, and handed them over.
Wen Jianyan took the papers from Su Cheng’s hand, glanced down at them, and then froze slightly.
“Is this… a lending slip?”
“Yes,” Su Cheng nodded.
“After you left, the fire died down, and the entire library was almost razed to the ground,” he pointed at the scorched edges of the lending slips. “I found it in the ashes. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to have been burned.”
“…”
Hearing this, Wei Cheng and Tian Ye were both startled and subconsciously glanced at him.
On the other side, Wen Jianyan’s attention was completely captivated by the lending slips.
He carefully brushed the ash off the slips and, in the faint light, made out the words on them.
The name on the first lending slip was Richard.
His name was signed messily on it, the date on the edge already blurred by the smoke.
Clearly, this was what he had left when he went into the library to find a book.
And the other one…
On the scorched yellow paper, the text after the borrower’s name was blurry, but it could still be faintly discerned…
Borrower: Wang Chuni.
Wen Jianyan was stunned for a moment, then his eyes widened, and he let out a very soft, very short “Ah.”
…So that’s how it is.
His sudden exclamation startled the others.
Su Cheng asked quizzically, “What is it?”
Wen Jianyan murmured, “I’ve been wondering why there was always a third person in a movie that was supposed to have only two people… Now I finally understand. So that’s how it is.”
The two movies, “Brave Richard” and “A Day in the Life of Wang Ni,” had two protagonists and two bodies.
But there was always a vague presence of a third person, a third body.
The numbers never added up.
This had greatly disrupted the structure of the story, which made it extremely difficult for Wen Jianyan to rearrange the timeline and sort out the sequence of events.
But at the moment he saw the name, Wen Jianyan’s mind suddenly became clear, as if the clouds had parted to reveal the sun.
In the movies, the true appearances of Wang Ni and Richard were always unclear. They were either blank and blurry, or they took on the appearance of the anchors who had died in the movies. But there was only one person whose face remained consistent, even if it was just her head that appeared.
That was Chu Chu.
The so-called illusion he experienced in the kitchen was actually the event itself with “all supernatural elements removed.” And in the lecture hall of that illusion, Richard was slumped over his desk with an empty space beside him, and no one else. It was because of this that Wen Jianyan came to a conclusion before leaving the illusion.
—“Chu Chu doesn’t really exist.”
In the illusion, when he saw the empty seat next to Richard, Wen Jianyan had clearly realized this.
But he never knew how “Chu Chu,” as a supernatural product, had appeared in the story and silently lingered around the protagonist without being discovered.
Until now.
What if… she was actually Wang Ni’s mirror image?
Perhaps it was just a different naming habit, or perhaps it was a deliberate obstacle created by the instance to prevent them from solving the puzzle…
In short.
Wang Ni and Chu Chu were the same person.
It was just that every time the instance opened, Wang Ni’s face would be replaced, while the mirror image, as a supernatural product, could always appear with the original owner’s face.
So, Chu Chu’s unchanging face was actually Wang Ni’s own face.
This also explained why, in the lecture hall, Richard, who was sitting next to “Chu Chu,” rushed out of the classroom to vomit—after all, by then, he should have stopped drinking the school’s water and started using bottled water.
He shouldn’t have trusted anyone else so easily.
Unless—he thought the person handing him the water was trustworthy.
One by one, the overlooked clues connected in his mind. Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but take a deep breath, his fingertips holding the paper turning slightly white.
Although there were still mysteries related to the movie plots, among the many yet-to-be-revealed truths, Wen Jianyan, with his keen sense, had caught onto one point—
“…How did all this begin?”
He couldn’t help but mutter to himself.
If Chu Chu was Wang Ni’s mirror image, then how did she leave the mirror and enter the real world?
“…”
Wen Jianyan felt a shiver climb up his back. He slowly blinked.
Ah.
He knew.
To be precise… it was an answer he had known from the beginning.
Richard’s strangeness started a week ago.”
And according to the clues in Richard’s backpack, Wen Jianyan knew that Richard had gone to the gymnasium a week ago.
So, what was in the gymnasium?
Wen Jianyan was stunned, his lips moving silently.
—The swimming pool.
What a perfect mirror.
Because Wen Jianyan had been lost in thought for too long, Su Cheng couldn’t help but call out to him again:
“Hey, you haven’t said a word for three minutes. What’s wrong?”
Wen Jianyan snapped back to reality.
He looked up, a strange light flashing in his eyes:
“We’re not going to the administration building anymore.”
“Huh? Then where are we going?” Tian Ye asked, startled.
Wen Jianyan folded the lending slips and put them in his pocket. He stared at the group in front of him and said, word by word, “The athletic field, the gymnasium.”
There, was the second “mirror” on campus.
And if he wasn’t mistaken, it was also one of the entrances to the underground warehouse.
*
The group ran quickly under the cover of night.
Soon, they arrived at the empty athletic field.
It was pitch black and deathly silent all around. Just standing on the field gave one a sense of emptiness and insecurity.
The gymnasium stood silently not far away, dark and eerie.
They had arrived.
Wen Jianyan took two steps forward, then his body swayed slightly.
He took a deep breath and turned to look at the others beside him:
“You, Yun Bilan, and Wei Cheng go check the area around the gymnasium up ahead. See if there’s any danger and if you can open the door.”
From their previous experience, the gymnasium door was very difficult to open. This time, without any help, they could only rely on themselves to open it.
Su Cheng paused. “What about you?”
“We’ll wait for you here,” Wen Jianyan said.
“?” Yun Bilan showed a suspicious expression. “What are you plotting?”
Wen Jianyan: “…What kind of image do I have in your mind?”
Yun Bilan: “You know very well.”
Wen Jianyan: “…”
Fine.
“Alright, alright,” he sighed. “I’ve been running around and working so hard for so long, can’t I slack off for a bit?”
Under the night sky, Wen Jianyan’s face was indeed excessively pale, perhaps an illusion, as if he were about to dissolve into the darkness at any moment.
Even though he stated his intention to slack off so blatantly, looking at Wen Jianyan’s obviously exhausted face and thinking about the threats he might have faced while turning the tide on the brink of life and death, the group couldn’t help but soften.
Yun Bilan sighed. “…Alright.”
Before leaving, she added worriedly, “Contact us immediately if there’s any trouble, you understand?”
“Of course, of course,” Wen Jianyan nodded.
Yun Bilan glanced at Arnold, who was slumped to the side, half-dead. “If you encounter danger, let him take the fall.”
Arnold: “…”
Do you have any manners?
Wen Jianyan patted Su Cheng’s shoulder and said with a smile, “We’re counting on you.”
The three turned and walked straight towards the gymnasium. Soon, their figures disappeared into the darkness.
Watching their figures being swallowed by the night, Tian Ye turned his head. “So now we—”
He had only turned his head halfway when he suddenly felt a weight on his shoulder.
“?!”
Tian Ye was severely startled and subconsciously looked over.
Wen Jianyan was resting his head on his shoulder.
His messy hair fanned out, covering his fair forehead, like a pile of snow on his shoulder. The young man’s similarly colored eyelashes were lowered, hiding his eyes.
“Y-y-you—” Tian Ye’s face immediately flushed, and he started to stutter. “W-w-what—what’s wrong?”
“Don’t talk, let me rest.”
Wen Jianyan’s voice was very low.
“…” This time, Tian Ye didn’t dare to make another sound. He stood there stiffly, half of his shoulder supporting Wen Jianyan’s weight, and it quickly started to go numb.
Only about half a minute passed—but for Tian Ye, it felt as long as a whole century—before the weight on his shoulder finally moved.
Tian Ye’s tense shoulder relaxed. He let out a long, slow breath and turned to look at Wen Jianyan, his expression a little uneasy:
“Bro, what happened to you just now?”
Wen Jianyan shrugged and said, “I told you, I was just resting.”
As if what had just happened was perfectly normal.
“…”
Tian Ye wanted to say something but held back.
“Don’t worry, I was just teasing you,” the smile on the young man’s lips deepened. He suddenly leaned in close. “Are you angry?”
Startled by the other’s suddenly close face, Tian Ye hurriedly stepped back and, in his carelessness, started stuttering again:
“N-no…”
Seeing Tian Ye’s gaze unnaturally avert elsewhere, Wen Jianyan’s expression darkened slightly.
He subtly opened his collar and glanced down.
—As expected, the badge mark had spread.
As time went on, this condition would only get worse.
Tian Ye was easy to fool, and Arnold could barely stand, let alone notice anything unusual about him.
If it had been Su Cheng or Yun Bilan who had stayed behind, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get away with it so easily.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and let go of his hand.
He looked at Tian Ye. “Let’s go, let’s see how they’re doing.”
*
On the other side.
Su Cheng and the other two walked towards the gymnasium.
Halfway there, Wei Cheng turned to look at Su Cheng and suddenly asked, “When you gave him the lending slips, why didn’t you tell him the whole story?”
Su Cheng paused. “What?”
Wei Cheng’s brow furrowed deeply, seemingly worried. “You know what I’m talking about.”
After Wen Jianyan left, the fire in the library had indeed died down, but not by much, and certainly not to the point of being non-threatening.
Risking being burned along with the library, Su Cheng, under Yun Bilan’s cover, had rushed in and, behind the almost-incinerated front desk, had found these two lending slips—
They weren’t “found,” but rather retrieved.
And the person who retrieved these two lending slips clearly knew where they were and had rushed in directly for them.
As a prophet, Su Cheng naturally had this ability.
Wei Cheng didn’t find it strange that he used it on such an occasion. What he couldn’t understand was…
Why didn’t Su Cheng tell Wen Jianyan this, but instead brushed it off with the word “found”?
Su Cheng turned his head, his dark eyes looking at Wei Cheng, and paused on him:
“My leader doesn’t allow me to use my ability.”
Wei Cheng was stunned.
He almost immediately understood Su Cheng’s meaning.
As a member of Orange Candy’s team, he had long known that overusing one’s talent would lead to the user’s alienation, and could even lead to irreversible, terrifying consequences.
And Su Cheng now seemed to have reached such a dangerous critical point, which was why Wen Jianyan had forbidden him from using his talent.
“But some measures must be taken,” Su Cheng said, “even if someone has to pay the price.”
Wei Cheng pondered for a moment, then nodded. “I understand.”
He could accept this answer.
Yun Bilan followed behind them, listening to their conversation with a cold eye.
Only she knew that Su Cheng was still not telling the whole truth.
The reason Su Cheng knew where those two lending slips were was partly due to his talent, but more importantly…
During the previous film appreciation class, Wen Jianyan and the others had gone to “A Day in the Life of Wang Ni,” while they had stayed in “Brave Richard.” There, they had encountered Scarface, who was being haunted by a vengeful spirit.
Su Cheng had used some… unconventional methods to obtain information from Scarface, which was how he knew these key details.
Looking at Su Cheng’s back, Yun Bilan frowned.
She had a strange feeling.
It was as if they were parting ways, drifting further and further apart.
*
Wen Jianyan led Tian Ye to the front of the gymnasium.
But unexpectedly, the gymnasium door was already open. Inside, it was pitch black, and the air was cold and murky.
Wen Jianyan looked at Yun Bilan’s group, surprised:
“You guys did this?”
Yun Bilan shook her head. “No.”
Wei Cheng explained, “When we arrived, the gymnasium door was already like this.”
Wen Jianyan stepped forward and slowly reached out, brushing his hand over the door.
The surface of the door was smooth, with no signs of being broken from the outside.
He retracted his gaze and said, “Let’s go.”
The group walked into the gymnasium.
As soon as they stepped inside, a cold, damp, and sickly sweet smell of blood hit them.
The gymnasium was unlit, pitch black all around, making one’s hair stand on end.
Wen Jianyan silently turned on his flashlight and, as he walked, shone it ahead.
Unlike the last time he was here, this time, the gymnasium was a mess.
The grounds were disorderly, equipment had fallen over, and the floor was covered in a strange liquid of an unidentifiable color, sticky underfoot and very uncomfortable.
Before taking two steps, Wen Jianyan abruptly stopped.
The pale beam of light flickered and landed not far ahead.
On the ground, a pale, damp corpse lay face up, its features blurred, its mouth and eyes wide open like black holes. A puddle of water had collected beneath it, and its neck was twisted at a very strange angle.
“That…”
Tian Ye’s voice trembled slightly. “What is that?”
Wen Jianyan didn’t answer.
He slightly adjusted the angle of the flashlight in his hand and slowly shone it further away.
One, two, three…
Under the slowly moving beam of the flashlight, more and more corpses appeared on the ground. They lay or were sprawled, motionless in the darkness. There were puddles of water on the ground, a dense and chilling sight from a distance.
However, the only thing they had in common was that none of them were moving.
Everything was so messy, as if a brutal fight had taken place.
“Wait a minute,” Wei Cheng froze, as if he had suddenly thought of something, and asked with some uncertainty, “Could it be…”
Wen Jianyan retracted the flashlight and slowly nodded:
“It should be.”
After all, besides that person, no one else in this instance could cause such great destruction.
And this also answered a question that had been puzzling Wen Jianyan.
After the outdoor practical class, he had followed Grave Soil into the warehouse and then met Hugo in the warehouse—but the question was, how did Hugo find his way there?
However, thinking back to what happened the day before, all questions were answered.
The day before the outdoor practical class was the physical education class.
And Hugo had taken Wen Jianyan’s place to enter the gymnasium. Even after the P.E. class was over, he was not seen leaving.
It seemed now that he probably hadn’t returned to the dormitory that night at all, but had stayed in the gymnasium all night, entering the underground warehouse through the passage inside the gymnasium, and had passed out due to his severe injuries.
So, the next day, he met Wen Jianyan, who had been transported in a Grave Soil bag.
And after leaving the underground warehouse with Wen Jianyan’s help, just like many times before, Hugo left the cafeteria and disappeared without a trace, leaving them no information. He naturally did not participate in any of their subsequent actions, not even showing up when the Bricklayer clashed with them and Orange Candy was replaced by her mirror image.
Wen Jianyan surveyed the gymnasium before him.
He complained expressionlessly:
“In any case, at least we finally know what Hugo has been up to all this time he was missing.”
Tian Ye hadn’t quite caught on and subconsciously repeated, “Huh? What was he up to?”
“He was seriously injured here before.”
If Wen Jianyan hadn’t been transported into the warehouse at that time, Hugo, who was at the end of his strength, might have really been trapped and died down there.
Wen Jianyan pointed to the countless floating corpses on the ground and concluded:
“—And now, he’s come back for revenge.”
__
Author’s note:
Hugo: A cool guy, but holds a grudge.
