Several players who had been lying on the dining table, sleeping, all lifted their heads.
Lu Yue said helplessly, “Why are you shouting so loudly?”
Zhou Xiang rubbed his head and walked over to sit across from Lu Yue. “I’m going to take a nap.”
He lay down on the table, facing Lu Yue, and stared at him with his eyes open.
Lu Yue laughed and said, “Why are you looking at me? Go to sleep.”
Zhou Xiang smiled, half of his face buried in his arms, and slowly closed his eyes while looking at him.
At that moment, the dining hall was particularly quiet, with specks of dust drifting slowly in the light and shadows.
“Thunk—”
Ning Su was startled.
He looked up to see that Shi Tianzhu’s pen had suddenly stopped, creating a point on the white draft paper. The “x” she had intended to write came out as only a “y.”
Ning Su gripped his pen tightly.
Shi Tianzhu calmly finished solving the problem and pushed it over to Ning Su. “Look, is this correct?”
Ning Su pressed his lips together, took her problem set, and said, “Yes, this is correct. Let’s stop here for now. I’ll tutor you again after class tonight.”
He lowered his head to review Shi Tianzhu’s problem set, the feeling of unwillingness growing stronger.
Before entering the game, Shi Tianzhu’s math skills were only at a middle school level. But in just two days, she had grasped at least the content from the first semester of high school.
She could leap from being in the bottom 100 of the grade within just a week.
It would only take a week...
Shi Tianzhu glanced at him and said, “Okay.”
She then turned her head to look out the dining hall window and said, “I’ll give it a try. After evening self-study, we players should gather.”
On the way back, Ning Changfeng pulled Ning Su under a tree beside the teaching building and asked him, “Is Shi Tianzhu... like them?”
He had figured it out, so Ning Su didn’t hide it. He nodded slightly.
The two of them stood silently under the sycamore tree.
Afternoon classes were about to start, and many students were rushing toward their classrooms.
The last burst of noise before class on campus didn’t reach their ears.
Ning Su said, “Will she end up like those other players?”
High-level players receive special treatment at the base; this was well-known throughout the base.
Ning Su still remembered that Ning Changfeng had said in the <Flower Servant> instance that he wouldn’t die so easily.
And what about Shi Tianzhu?
Ning Changfeng said, “I suspect her amnesia process will be slower than that of regular players. You can see it as the system’s care, or you can consider it as high-level players having better physical attributes than regular players.”
Ning Changfeng patted his shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, there will definitely be a way.”
“In the <Flower Servant> instance, at first, we also thought that a player’s appearance determined their life or death, that their fate was sealed from the moment they entered the instance. But later, Fang Qi opened up another path, proving that players with strong physical attributes and resilient blood vessels could also survive. This instance must have another way out, too.”
Ning Su nodded. “Yes, there will definitely be a way.”
Ning Changfeng said, “This time, we’ll protect her together.”
Ning Su lightly slapped his outstretched hand, “Let’s go. If we don’t get to the classroom soon, we’ll have to go to the Reflection Hall to write a self-reflection.”
Ning Changfeng: “...”
Ning Su pulled the dazed Zhou Xiang, who was standing at the entrance of the teaching building, and led him toward the classroom.
In the afternoon class, Zhou Xiang kept his head down.
He had stacked up a tall pile of textbooks in front of him, making it hard to see what he was doing specifically, though it seemed he was writing something.
Dinner time was only an hour, so there wasn’t much time to talk. Exhausted from the day, everyone quickly ate and headed back to the classroom, not getting a chance to speak until after evening self-study.
Qingyi High School’s evening self-study ended at 10:30 PM, but for the senior students, it was clearly too early to go to bed at that time.
Even after evening self-study ended, the classroom remained open. Additionally, the library’s study room and the study room in the dormitory were also available for use.
Ji Zeming and others occupied one of the library’s study rooms, and after evening self-study, many players who received the notice rushed over there.
As Ning Su and his group were just leaving the classroom, they bumped into members of the Yongming Guild.
The Human Pupa Master looked at Ning Su and suddenly walked over to him. “Do you know Weiwei?”
Ning Su was taken aback.
Weiwei was the name of the Human Pupa Master’s younger sister, and after her sister died, she started using this name in the game.
The Human Pupa Master started laughing to herself, “I know you know her, you definitely know her.”
Whether it was due to the aftereffects of the amnesia process or not, her memory seemed to be in chaos.
Zhou Xiang wrote in his notebook, “Amnesia begins with forgetting the shallowest and least important things; the most important things in the heart are remembered until the end.”
Just like Lu Yue in his memory.
Just like the Weiwei in the memory of the Human Pupa Master Xue Wei.
Ning Su hadn’t yet answered when she was already taken away by the Gu Witch.
She was in a daze for a moment, then turned to look at Ning Su, and then looked at Ling Xiao.
On the campus road late at night, the streetlights were dim.
She curled her purplish-red lips into a smile again. The bloodthirsty feeling had significantly diminished, no longer resembling a killer Human Pupa Master, but rather like a rebellious and mischievous high school student.
When they arrived at the self-study room, many players were already there.
Quite a few players were still holding vocabulary books and Chinese textbooks.
Most of the players were in a bad mood; those who didn’t bring anything were even more agitated when they saw others studying.
“What did they call us here for? Don’t they know how precious time is?”
“Yeah, by now I could have memorized an entire unit of English vocabulary or several paragraphs of text. This is so annoying!”
“Shi Tianzhu called us here, and she hasn’t even arrived herself. Is she going to improve her ranking by wasting our study time?”
There was no need for teachers to constantly remind them; now the players were treating studying as their lifeline.
They were racing against time to study, as that was the only way they could hope to score 600 points in the college entrance exams—the only way they could see to survive.
Anyone who wasted their time was as good as taking their life.
Ning Changfeng said, “Get real. With the way you’re studying, even if you work yourself to death for the next two months, you still won’t score 600.”
“...”
It was clear that several players were furious, but they held back and didn’t dare to retort to Ning Changfeng.
Just then, Shi Tianzhu entered.
Zhou Xiang noticed that after four or five hours of amnesia, he began to forget academic memories, and after six or seven hours, he started forgetting things that happened before and after entering the dungeon.
It had been nearly nine hours since Ning Su heard the “gudong” sound at noon.
Shi Tianzhu stood calmly at the front of the self-study room and said, “This is the third night since we entered the dungeon, and four players have already been dragged away by the school teachers after they were found to have lost their memories.”
“Currently, several players are still in the process of losing their memories, including myself.”
The players who were about to make a fuss suddenly paused.
Shi Tianzhu continued, “All those who are experiencing memory loss have been to the Reflection Hall. More players who have been to the Reflection Hall are likely to show signs of memory loss soon. This...”
She hesitated for a moment.
Placing her hands behind her back, she continued, “This is likely related to the number of times one has been to the Reflection Hall. After just one visit, about a dozen players have shown signs of memory loss. The probability of memory loss increases with each additional visit—two, three times, or more.”
