Gui Sheng let out a few sharp "Ah! Ah!" cries, panted for two seconds to catch his breath, then froze for a moment—his mind lagging behind the chaos.
His little ear was still hidden in the male student’s collar, and now, with both sides colliding, the noise erupted—too many voices, too much clamor. His sluggish reflexes couldn’t pin down the urgency.
He huffed, then straightened up and relayed, bright and brittle, what his little ear had caught:
Gui Sheng: "Instructor! Security! Hurry—!"
Gui Sheng: "Stop that girl—she saw it!"
Gui Sheng: "Barge the door down! Stall the one with the black whip!"
Gui Sheng: "Boom!—"
A dozen amnesiac players threw themselves at the door, their bodies—honed across countless survival trials—now pushed to brutal, desperate limits.
The heavy door stood no chance. In under two minutes, their reckless, almost self-destructive force shattered it open.
Some amnesiac players lunged at the instructors. Others bolted outside the Reflection Hall, voices raw and shrill: "Murder! They’re killing students in the Reflection Hall—!"
The exam hall was close. If they kept screaming, every student would hear. The instructors sprinted after them, abandoning their posts.
Lin Jiazhe kicked the door wide open, wiped her tears, and finally saw the scene inside with terrible clarity.
Hong Zhenjiang leapt off the table, shoving through the crowd of players, yelling at her: "Jump—NOW!"
But Lin Jiazhe couldn’t jump.
The moment she’d kicked the door open, a male teacher inside had already raised the black-tree whip.
The two loudest shouts of her life happened today: first in the exam hall, cursing Hong Zhenjiang; now, screaming at him—
"Black dendritic injectors—covering the entire head—hidden inside the dark tree trunk!"
Ning Su blew his whistle, sharp and urgent: "Dooo—! Doo-doo!"
Ji Zeming was already running, rallying a swarm of panicked, curious students toward the Reflection Hall: "Murder! They’ve killed students in there—!"
The black-tree whip coiled around Lin Jiazhe, dragging her deeper inside.
The cramped attic of the Reflection Hall reeked of blood. Thick, fresh scarlet pooled across the floor, strewn with chunks of flesh.
Her fingers scraped weakly at the ground, leaving smeared black trails. Hair and shirt soaked red, she was nearly inside—
Hong Zhenjiang braced his hands against the edge of the hole and vaulted onto the second floor.
"Don’t come over!" Lin Jiazhe screamed at him. "Don’t save me—just run!"
She knew the school would silence anyone who witnessed them transferring students’ memories.
If she died, Hong Zhenjiang would live. But if he stepped in, he’d die too. Even if Ning Changfeng saw it, he’d be killed.
Only her death could end this cleanly.
This was already the best possible outcome.
She had come here resolved to die.
Truthfully, after seeing that male player—the one who kept following the guy who’d initially brought him into the game, even after being hurt over and over—and after her second time in the Reflection Hall, she had already considered finding a quiet place to die.
She couldn’t bear it anymore. She refused to endure that cycle again: clinging to someone, giving them her whole world, only to be broken by them.
Three trips to the Reflection Hall had sealed her fate.
She had solved everyone’s problem. Dying here was a fitting end.
Suddenly, Lin Jiazhe’s vision swam. Realization struck, and she sobbed, "Get them out of here! Admit your mistakes—now!"
Hong Zhenjiang hesitated. During the planning phase, Ning Su had mentioned he could hear sounds from the Reflection Hall. Earlier, when Ning Su blew the whistle, it was the signal: Mission complete. Protect yourselves.
They already knew. He didn’t need to deliver the message.
That split-second delay cost him. Just as the shadows were about to drag Lin Jiazhe into the room, an amnesiac female player lunged onto her.
The woman pinned her down, clawing at the dark vines coiled around Lin Jiazhe’s body.
The vines writhed like living things, burrowing into flesh. The female player tore them free with her bare hands—only for the tendrils to twist into her own wrist instead.
Lin Jiazhe stared at the woman’s bloody, mangled arm, tears carving tracks through the grime on her face.
"It’s okay… Don’t be afraid," the woman murmured, voice steady.
Lin Jiazhe parted her lips, but the words evaporated.
In the last second before her memories dissolved, another amnesiac player—a man who’d been kneeling on the ground—grabbed her and hurled her toward Hong Zhenjiang.
Hong Zhenjiang caught her in one swift step.
Lin Jiazhe’s mind went blank.
The first flicker of her new, hollow existence was this:
A woman with a grotesque wound splitting her arm from wrist to shoulder.
A man missing half his leg.
And the two of them, shoving her from the jaws of death—straight into the safety of someone’s arms.
Lin Jiazhe didn’t know how her freshly fallen tears had formed. She reached out toward them, gripped by an inexplicable reluctance to leave.
Then she felt a violent jolt—before being swept into someone’s arms and plunged into the inky lake.
Ji Zeming sprinted over with a crowd, shouting in shock, "Someone’s really dead! And others are badly hurt! Saving a life is worth more than building a seven-tiered pagoda—consider it karma for the college entrance exams!"
"Call an ambulance!"
"We need the police—now, hurry!"
"Go see what happened!"
"Several students fell into the lake—pull them out!"
Gui Sheng: "Why are there so many people coming?!"
Gui Sheng: "They’re calling the police!"
Gui Sheng: "Stop! STOP THEM!"
Gui Sheng: "My son’s memories are transferred! Get him back to the exam—don’t let this ruin his focus!"
Gui Sheng: "You’re sure nothing will go wrong?"
Gui Sheng: "Relax! Memory loss isn’t unique to our school. Even if someone finds this shack, they’d never recognize these as memories or locate the neuron transfers. Only the principal can split the tree trunk to retrieve them!"
Gui Sheng: "Go, all of you—MOVE!"
Gui Sheng: "Ugh! What did I just step on?! A human lung?! SO GROSS!!! MY SHOE!!"
Gui Sheng: "Clean this up! Send the disciplined students back to their exams! Take the injured to the infirmary—DO NOT let ambulances past the gates!"
Ning Su patted Gui Sheng’s head. "Alright, that’s enough. Stay here and play—I’ll come back for you this afternoon."
He yanked two sets of clothing from Gui Sheng’s belly. With five minutes left before the exam, Ning Su and Ning Changfeng dashed with the crowd toward the shack.
Hong Zhenjiang and Lin Jiazhe had already been pulled ashore by Ji Zeming’s group. The moment the two arrived, the Gu Witch dragged them into the shadowy woods.
He Xin helped Lin Jiazhe into dry clothes while the Gu Witch tied up her hair—then smeared her face with swarming ants.
Hong Zhenjiang, now changed, saw Lin Jiazhe’s face mottled red and black from ant bites and rounded on the witch. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Ning Su answered flatly, "Saving her."
The Gu Witch glanced at Ning Su.
Ning Su was looking at Hong Zhenjiang, explaining to him: "Lin Jiaze always kept her hair loose, often using it to cover her eyes and avoid direct eye contact. Her face was smeared with blood and dust, and in that brief moment—less than a minute—no one likely got a clear look at her features. If we make some quick changes to her appearance now and bring her into the exam hall, she might be able to slip through unnoticed."
The school might not let students who witnessed the memory transfer go unpunished, but with the situation having escalated this much, it was impossible for them to punish all twenty-plus students involved in the Reflection Hall.
Ning Su had listened carefully—no one had shouted Lin Jiaze’s name loudly. Blending in as just another troublemaker from the Reflection Hall wouldn’t be difficult.
