Chapter 330 Honghuai Tenth High School

Chapter 330: Honghuai No. 10 Middle School

Su Bai was certain that the campus and corridor before him were entirely unfamiliar. Yet, the slogans and posters adorning the corridor walls all bore the inscription "Honghuai No. 10 Middle School," confirming his continued presence within the fabricated Honghuai City.

School buildings were typically not very tall. Su Bai surmised he was on the top floor, surrounded by classrooms belonging to the senior year. Through the glass windows on the opposite side of the corridor, he could observe Honghuai City's towering buildings, bustling streets, and the ceaseless flow of traffic.

Compared to the modest Fog City painstakingly erected by the Fog City Lord, this illusory "Honghuai City," conjured by the eerie entity, boasted a far grander scale and an unsettling degree of realism.

Had Su Bai not encountered phenomena utterly impossible in the real world, even with his memories restored and despite minor architectural inconsistencies within this "Honghuai City," he would have struggled to accept its artificiality.

This city was simply too real.

The Honghuai No. 10 Middle School, where Su Bai currently stood, betrayed no hint of falsehood. His arrival seemed to coincide with class time; though the corridor was empty, the adjacent classrooms buzzed with students and teachers engrossed in college entrance exam preparations.

Each classroom presented a unique tableau of individuals and lessons. As Su Bai walked down the corridor, he even spotted students dozing at their desks and others furtively playing on their phones in the back row.

Reflecting now, such intricate details were conspicuously absent in the earlier Fog City.

But...

What was the true intention of that eerie entity masquerading as Su Xuan?

Why had it transported him to Honghuai No. 10 Middle School?

Su Bai had some prior knowledge of Honghuai No. 10 Middle School. Among Honghuai City's ten high schools, Honghuai No. 1 and Honghuai No. 9 were the most renowned. However, No. 1 was celebrated for its astonishingly high college admission rates, while No. 9 gained notoriety for its students' frequent involvement in brawls, earning it a reputation as a notorious hotbed of delinquency.

Honghuai No. 10 Middle School, a relatively new institution established merely five or six years prior, was desperate to avoid the ignominy of becoming another poorly regarded school like No. 9. Driven by an ambitious spirit, it aspired to match Honghuai No. 1 Middle School's admission rates within a decade.

Nevertheless, a significant disparity existed in the caliber of students between No. 1 and No. 10. Even with a ten-year plan, achieving No. 1's admission rates seemed an utterly fantastical goal.

Su Bai's awareness of Honghuai No. 10 Middle School stemmed from classmates who described its academic atmosphere as even more oppressive than No. 1's. If the intense, high-pressure learning environment at No. 1 was fueled by fierce internal competition among students, then No. 10's atmosphere resembled a group of ordinary students, unwilling to engage in such a rat race, confined within the most stringent of prisons. Most teachers, enduring the immense pressure of college admissions, were as unfeeling as prison guards, resorting to private physical punishment and verbal abuse, and even stratifying students into rigid hierarchies based on their grades.

Rumor had it that at Honghuai No. 10 Middle School, high-achieving students enjoyed absolute impunity, while their struggling peers endured relentless torment. Yet, due to the school's demonstrable improvement in teaching quality and the bullied students' inability to produce concrete evidence, not only did relevant authorities turn a blind eye, but even the parents of these students sided with the school.

Consequently, the campus environment at Honghuai No. 10 Middle School grew increasingly warped. A growing number of students transferred or dropped out, and ambulances were occasionally summoned to transport students away. The school, however, meticulously concealed these incidents, cloaking itself in the glittering facade of rising admission rates and academic achievements. The general public's understanding of Honghuai No. 10 Middle School likely paled in comparison to the firsthand accounts circulating among students like Su Bai's peers, yet these student narratives were routinely dismissed as unreliable rumors.

At this very moment, Su Bai stood in the corridor of Honghuai No. 10 Middle School.

"Bang—bang!"

Two deafening thuds erupted beside Su Bai. He turned, his attention drawn to the commotion emanating from an adjacent classroom. Desks and chairs in the back row had been violently overturned by the teacher, who moments ago had been lecturing. Contents from the desktops lay strewn across the floor, and a student had been knocked to the ground.

Su Bai initially assumed the target would be the student he had seen earlier, hiding in the back row and playing on his phone. However, he quickly realized his mistake. Instead, several students brazenly held their phones, gleefully recording the entire spectacle.

"Zhang Chen, your weekly test ranking plummeted another twelve places. If you had exerted even a modicum of effort, our class ranking wouldn't have stagnated," the teacher declared coldly, glaring at the student on the floor. "Now, everyone's hard work has been undone because of you. It was only by dragging your dead weight that we barely maintained our ranking. Do you think you deserve this?"

"Yeah!"

"Zhang Chen, you're utterly useless."

"Why don't you just transfer to No. 9 Middle School next door and find your own kind?"

The surrounding students joined in the taunting chorus.

"I didn't say that," the teacher remarked, casting a dismissive glance at the student on the floor. "Clean up this mess, then proceed to the self-study room and practice on the computer for four hours. Don't let me see you idle in the backend logs."

The boy on the floor, previously motionless, began to tremble at the mention of "self-study room." He slowly lifted his bowed head, his eyes pleading with the cold-faced teacher, his voice trembling as he implored—

"Teacher, I truly have been trying my best! I've been giving it my all! I study at tutoring classes until ten every night after school. I really am making progress! If I hadn't been sick with a fever during the last exam, I would have definitely improved! Please, don't send me to the self-study room. I promise I'll improve in the next weekly test!"

"The self-study room is not a punishment. Spots are limited, and your parents specifically requested that you spend more time practicing there. This time, they will be satisfied," the teacher stated, then gestured to the boys holding phones. "Take Zhang Chen to the self-study room. Lock him in for five hours."

"Got it," the boys chorused, smirking at Zhang Chen as he struggled to rise. "Let's go, Zhang Chen. The self-study room is such a great place—we wish we could go there too!"

"I won't go! I don't want to go! I want to drop out! I'll report all of you bastards!" Zhang Chen, who had been submissive moments before, now struggled wildly. It took four or five boys to restrain him.

Even as he was pinned to the floor, Zhang Chen shrieked hysterically at the top of his lungs—

"I don't want to go to the self-study room! Don't think I don't know—Xiao Lou only died after he was sent there! You bastards drove him to his death! Now you're trying to kill me too! Does a few more deaths not matter as long as the grades go up?"

"Slap!" One of the boys struck Zhang Chen across the face.

"Why would the teacher ever think something like that?" The previously cold-faced teacher forced a smile. "Zhang Chen, sending you to the self-study room is merely to allow you to practice more on the internal network computers. These computers are loaded with questions and explanations meticulously compiled by our teachers. If you stay there for six hours and continuously practice, you will undoubtedly improve. As for Xiao Lou, the teacher is unaware of what transpired with him, but it likely has no connection to the school, does it?"

"Take him to the self-study room."

The teacher waved his hand, and the boys dragged Zhang Chen, now gagged and unable to utter a sound, out of the classroom.

Su Bai witnessed this unbelievable scene, finding it difficult to reconcile such an occurrence with the reality of a school. In his own world, he had encountered numerous teachers. While not intimately familiar with most, they generally performed their duties conscientiously, and many had shown him unforgettable kindness.

For a moment, Su Bai couldn't discern whether such a situation genuinely existed at Honghuai No. 10 Middle School, or if it was merely a nightmare fabricated by the eerie entity.

What was the entity's purpose in showing him this?

The students, dragging the struggling Zhang Chen, brushed past Su Bai without a glance, as if no one else existed in the corridor besides them.

"The game is about to begin," "Su Xuan's" voice echoed in Su Bai's ears like an administrator's. "From now on, you are Xiao Lou."