***
Bonus chapter! Thank you to alyanna for the donation! ^^
***
Ning Changfeng glanced at Ning Su, who was engrossed in eating while it was still hot.
Ning Changfeng had no choice but to speak up himself. “President Shi, how did you do on the exam?”
Ning Su: “...”
He raised his head in a daze.
Ning Changfeng wasn’t like this before. How did he turn into such a fool when facing Shi Tianzhu?
Even worse at talking than him.
He seemed to finally understand why he often ended conversations abruptly.
It’s genetic.
A person beside Shi Tianzhu, who was good at reading the room, quickly changed the subject. “What’s with those students being dragged out of the exam room?”
Ning Changfeng: “...”
He wasn’t foolish, and of course, he realized that he had misspoken, including before entering the school.
He turned his head to see Ning Su looking up at him.
The child’s eyes were filled with both questioning and expectation.
Ning Changfeng thought for a moment. In the past, it was misunderstandings that weren’t cleared up in time, which was why things ended up this way between him and Shi Tianzhu. He couldn’t let that happen again.
He seriously said to Shi Tianzhu, “President Shi, before we entered the school gate, I asked if you knew those mathematical concepts because I wanted to say that if you didn’t know, I could teach you.”
“…”
Not only did their table fall silent.
Several nearby tables also went silent.
Shi Tianzhu placed her chopsticks on the tray and looked up at Ning Changfeng. “Ning Changfeng, are you trying to insult me? It’s been like this since the individual competition.”
Ning Changfeng: “…”
Ning Su buried his head in his food, acting as if he hadn’t heard or seen anything.
Ning Changfeng: “…”
He truly had shouldered too much for this family!
He looked at his only friend and saw that his friend was placing a piece of grilled fish into his son’s bowl.
Ning Changfeng finally felt a bit of comfort.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not just doing this for no reason.”
After saying this, he also buried his head and ate.
The other players were completely puzzled.
It felt like they heard a lot, but at the same time, it felt like they heard nothing at all.
After eating lunch quietly and quickly, the players returned to the area near the examination rooms.
Outside the classrooms, there was a long corridor where many students were gathered after lunch, reviewing vocabulary and politics and history.
In the afternoon, they would be taking English and comprehensive exams.
Ning Su, Ling Xiao, and Ning Changfeng stood at the corner by the window, watching these students.
Before long, several players had gathered around them.
Ning Changfeng’s image as a lone ranger was deeply ingrained in the minds of the players, so they hesitated to approach him. Meanwhile, Ling Xiao was a completely unfamiliar face to them, so they directed their attention to the newly recognized top player, Ning Su.
“Hello Ning Su, I’m Lu Yue from the Jiuxing Guild. I watched your performance in the guild competition. You’re really amazing.”
The one who spoke was a male player who appeared to be around twenty-five or twenty-six years old. He was wearing a school uniform, exuding a gentle and clean aura.
Ning Su scratched his ear. “Ah, I have a friend named Su Wangsheng who is also in the Jiuxing Guild.”
Lu Yue immediately brightened up. “I know him! He’s a newcomer, but he performed exceptionally well in the individual competition.”
It seemed that this connection brought them closer, and without further pleasantries, Lu Yue asked directly, “What do you think about those students who were dragged out?”
Other players chimed in, “Was there something wrong with the exam papers? Their behavior was really strange.”
“In a level six dungeon, there’s no way there aren’t any ghosts or monsters, right? Could it be that they somehow invaded the students’ minds through the exam papers?”
Just as Ning Su was about to speak, they suddenly heard a terrified scream.
Startled, they quickly looked out the window.
In that instant, they saw a figure plummet from the window, moving so fast that only a black shadow and trailing long hair could be seen.
A girl had jumped off the building.
It happened right on the rooftop of their exam hall.
She fell from the thirteenth floor with a loud “thud,” blossoming into a crimson flower on the ground.
Screams erupted, and chaos ensued downstairs.
By the time Ning Su and the others arrived, the girl had already stopped breathing.
A pool of blood was growing beneath her, and besides the fractured skull, there were many deep scratch marks on her head.
She was clutching a crumpled piece of draft paper in her hand, and on her arm, three bloodied words were carved by some sharp object.
Xia Mengyu.
Ning Su was the one who noticed the unusual girl.
She had also written her own name on the draft paper.
“It’s Xia Mengyu!”
“Xia Mengyu? How could this happen? She was such a strong and optimistic girl!”
“It can’t be her, right? She still needs to use the scholarship from this exam to pay for her grandmother’s medical treatment!”
Just a few words, and the players could already understand the situation of this girl.
Lu Yue started a conversation with a female classmate next to him. “Hello, we’re new here. What’s going on with this girl?”
The girl was still panicked and upset, responding rather rudely, “Don’t you have eyes? Didn’t you see what happened?”
Lu Yue wasn’t angry. Instead, he pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
The girl froze for a moment, and as soon as she took the handkerchief, she started crying, “How could Xia Mengyu jump off a building?”
“She was optimistic and strong, and her grades were excellent.”
“This morning, she even said that she would do her best in this exam, win the scholarship to pay for her grandmother’s treatment, and send her younger brother to a school for the deaf and mute.”
The girl’s voice grew more choked with tears. “Why her? She worked so hard to study and live. What will happen to her grandmother and brother now that she’s dead?”
Ning Su pursed his lips and looked at the girl surrounded by the school security guards.
The security guards were blocking the view, only allowing a glimpse of Xia Mengyu’s hand clutching a piece of draft paper.
The draft paper had already been soaked in blood, and the words on it were probably blurred.
Ning Su still remembered the words on the draft paper. She had written her own name several times, each time more chaotic, each time with more force, until the last few were completely smudged by her tears.
Writing her name over and over with such force while crying, it was as if she was desperately afraid of forgetting who she was.
The name she had carved on her arm was still bleeding. Who knew what she was feeling on the rooftop as she carved her name into her arm, stroke by stroke?
The girl sat in the exam room, her face pale, looking terrified, desperate, and bewildered, as if the scene was unfolding right in front of her eyes.
The security guards carefully carried the body away.
“Stop looking, stop looking, hurry and prepare for the afternoon exam!” The teacher calmly herded the students toward the teaching building, showing no panic or surprise, as if this was a common occurrence.
“What on earth happened? I remember she was in our exam room, but she didn’t behave normally during the exam.”
Several players, like Ning Su, had been observing the exam room, and many of them noticed that something was off about this girl.
Now, seeing her sudden death, they felt a shiver run down their spines.
Ning Su said, “It’s the memory.”
Several people were taken aback.
They thought again about the system’s prompt—memory is important.
“You mean, during the exam, she suddenly lost her memory and forgot everything she knew?!”
The atmosphere suddenly became tense, plunging into a terrifying silence.
Even though, for many people, the college entrance exam was a distant memory, they could still sense how frightening this situation would be for a high school senior.
