Chapter 50

Chapter 50

Lin Juan managed to catch up with one of the monsters.

This monster was relatively small, only about as tall as an average adult woman, and trembled uncontrollably when restrained by Lin Juan.

It had some subtle differences from the other monsters.

Lin Juan frowned at the monster he was holding.

The class monitor and the others caught up, out of breath. After a moment to recover, seeing Lin Juan hadn't moved, they asked, "Lin Juan, this monster..."

"Wait!" The class monitor cut herself off mid-sentence, her eyes widening. "There's a scar on its arm. I remember Hui Mei had a scar in the same spot. Can I come take a look?"

Lin Juan shifted slightly, signaling for the class monitor to approach.

She swallowed nervously, glanced at the reliable Lin Juan, and slowly moved closer.

"It's the same!" The class monitor examined the scar on the monster's arm carefully. "After Hui Mei was injured, she even joked with me, saying this scar looked like a crescent moon. I remember it clearly."

So, could this monster be Hui Mei?

Why had Hui Mei turned into a monster?

Countless questions flooded the class monitor's mind, leaving her bewildered. "I went out with Hui Mei. We should have left around the same time. Why did only Hui Mei end up like this?"

In terms of time spent, Zhou Ping and the two others had clearly been in the night version of the school longer. Zhou Ping and the others were normal, and she was normal too. Only Hui Mei, who had entered between them, had turned into a monster.

"Hui Mei, do you still recognize me?"

When she asked this, the class monitor didn't hold out much hope. When she received no response, she wasn't too disappointed. She instinctively looked at Lin Juan pleadingly.

Zhou Ping mustered his courage and walked around the monster. "If this monster really is a transformed Hui Mei, then what about the other monsters?"

Everyone fell silent.

Were those monsters also transformed from people?

What kind of people could they have been?

Lin Juan chimed in appropriately: "Only one class is attending the summer remedial lessons. The other classes haven't started school yet. Did you usually notice that the school only had this one class?"

The class monitor was taken aback. "Now that you mention it, Lin Juan, I think I subconsciously overlooked that."

It was fine if they didn't think too deeply about it, but once they did, Zhou Ping and the other two looked horrified.

They had thought it was strange enough that the school was trapped in an endless night, but now it seemed there were even weirder things going on.

Were they really at school for remedial lessons?

Shi Haochen, who was the first to react, opened his mouth: "Lin Juan, did you come from outside to rescue us?"

He was quick-witted. Since Lin Juan hadn't explicitly said so from the beginning, he didn't spell it out when he asked either.

Lin Juan gave him an appreciative glance and nodded. "Stand behind me. I'm going to let go of this monster in a moment. I need to see where it goes."

The four teenagers quickly moved behind Lin Juan.

Lin Juan released his grip, and the monster, now free, immediately scurried away.

This time, Lin Juan didn't chase it too closely, keeping a constant distance just behind it.

None of the four teenagers spoke. Subconsciously, they sensed that what was about to happen would overturn their understanding of reality.

The monster ran for a long time. The entire dormitory building seemed to have turned into a maze with no exit. They passed the same spots countless times, but the monster never stopped, and neither did they.

Along the way, they encountered many similar monsters. Those monsters seemed oblivious to their presence, going about their own business, their behavior eerily human.

A terrifying suspicion formed in the class monitor's mind.

After what felt like an eternity, their lungs nearly bursting from the run, the monster finally stopped.

Lin Juan moved to the side, and all five of them hid behind a wall.

The monster took out a key card and opened a dorm room door covered in cobwebs.

The class monitor covered her mouth, speaking in a hushed tone: "This is our dorm room. The monster is a bit far, so I can't see clearly, but what it's holding looks a lot like our key card."

After saying this, she took out her own key card from her pocket. "Look, the color and size match."

Indeed, Lin Juan glanced down. "It's the same."

"So that means we've now arrived at the dorm building where I live, but the entire time, we never left the dormitory building."

The boys' dormitory and girls' dormitory at Upward Middle School were some distance apart. To get from the boys' dorm to the girls' dorm, one had to exit the boys' dorm first. But they had been walking in circles inside the dormitory building the whole time without leaving.

"This school that only exists at night can't be measured by a normal school from the outside," Lin Juan offered an analogy. "Have you heard of the concept of the 'surface world' and the 'other world'? You can think of the world we're in now as the 'other world,' and the normal school during the day as the 'surface world.'"

"In the surface world, the sun rises and sets, there are no monsters, everything is normal. But when you enter the other world, you see the true face of the world. Everything that happens in the other world goes unnoticed in the surface world."

"If Hui Mei is a monster in the other world, then are all the classmates in the surface world monsters too?" The thought that she might have been spending months together day and night with a classroom full of monsters made the class monitor shudder.

"Not necessarily," Lin Juan denied this. If they were all monsters, Lin Juan would have been able to sense it from the beginning.

The difference between humans and the supernatural was very clear.

"If we go over and open the door now, will we see a room full of monsters?" Zhou Ping's voice trembled slightly.

Lin Juan: "You could try."

"Better not," Zhou Ping shook his head vigorously. "The novels all say you absolutely shouldn't be curious when it's not the time for curiosity."

Lin Juan smiled slightly. "Dawn should be breaking soon."

"Lin Juan, I don't mean to discourage you, but we've been here for what feels like forever, and the sky has never gotten light. The only light here is that green moon." Shi Haochen's tone was helpless.

They had tried countless methods to escape the night, none successful.

"That's because it felt no threat," Lin Juan looked out through the window at the end of the corridor. "One of you saw a pair of huge green eyes. Let's assume, for now, that the green moon is one of them. Then, where is the other one?"

Following Lin Juan's line of thought, Shi Haochen had a sudden realization: "It's the sun during the day!"

Yes, if the sun were also green, they would have noticed something was wrong.

"A simple illusion, just like how during the day, you also couldn't notice that the entire campus was in an abnormal state."

Lin Juan didn't explain further. All four were smart; they understood as soon as he mentioned it.

"Lin Juan means that the normal sun we see is actually because our perception is deceived?"

"Correct."

Encouraged by the confirmation, Shi Haochen's face flushed slightly, masking his excitement as he continued with his speculation: "Does Lin Juan intend to use the moon to return to the daytime campus?"

"Yeah." Lin Juan nodded.

With their next steps decided, there was no need to stay in the dormitory any longer, so they headed downstairs together.

Perhaps sensing that their secret had been discovered, the path out was much harder than when they arrived.

One after another, monsters emerged from behind the dormitory doors, ferociously lunging at them, as if determined to keep them there forever.

These monsters were fiercer than any they had encountered before.

Lin Juan had to protect the four students, so his movements had to be swift.

The class monitor only saw a monster open its gaping maw, the foul stench assaulting her nostrils, and before she could react, Lin Juan had already darted in front of her, kicking the hulking monster away.

Within moments, the monsters were either smashed into the walls or embedded in the ground. Lin Juan was incredibly powerful—so much so that even the mindless, aggressive monsters grew fearful and hesitated, not daring to advance.

They only dared to watch from a distance.

Shi Haochen and the others breathed a sigh of relief.

They couldn’t be of much help; the only thing they could do was not be a burden.

The four of them walked back-to-back behind Lin Juan, keeping a vigilant watch on their surroundings to prevent any surprise attacks from monsters.

The monsters were too intimidated, and the rest of the way was smooth.

"Why is the dormitory door closed?!" the class monitor blurted out in shock.

Shi Haochen stepped forward, tried pushing the door, and his expression turned grim: "It’s locked shut."

In the nighttime school, the entire dormitory was dilapidated, and most doors were half-broken wooden ones, but blocking their path now was a gleaming silver metal door.

Shi Haochen tried it—the door was extremely sturdy. Even using all his strength, it didn’t move at all.

"Zhou Ping, come help me. Let’s see if we can break the door open."

Zhou Ping and Zhu Zhihui, who had been pumped up watching Lin Juan fight and eager to prove themselves, ran to the door without a second thought. The three of them pushed together, but the door remained immovable.

"This door is weird—there’s not even a lock," Zhou Ping said, rubbing his sore shoulder as he searched around the door.

"No one goes out after dark."

A raspy voice spoke suddenly, startling Zhou Ping and the others: "Who’s there?!"

Lin Juan seemed to sense something and looked toward the left.

It was the dorm monitor’s office.

"Creak—"

The sound of a door opening, followed by heavy footsteps mixed with the clanking of an iron rod, gradually approached them.

A mountain-sized monster in a dorm supervisor’s uniform, holding an iron rod, was walking toward them.

"Crap, another one?!"

Zhou Ping and the other two immediately scrambled behind Lin Juan.

Lin Juan stared at the monster. This one was slightly different from those they had encountered earlier in the dorm—larger in size, with thick limbs, and a faintly human-like head. The only difference was a pair of eyes bulging atop its head.

Those eyes rotated 360 degrees, emitting a distinct green glow in the dim environment.

Green eyes again.

"Students who break the rules must be punished." The dorm supervisor monster grinned, its voice full of malice.

It stared at Lin Juan and the others as if they were a delicious meal served up on a platter.

Shi Haochen and the others felt their hair stand on end under its gaze, but relying on Lin Juan’s presence, they steeled themselves to glare back.

What? Think your big eyes scare us?

Unexpectedly encountering such bold "food," the dorm supervisor monster hesitated for a second, then smiled even wider: "I like students with personality. They’re the most prone to making mistakes. And when they do, I can punish them however I want."

Behind Lin Juan and the group were a horde of smaller monsters; in front, a solid metal door. The dorm supervisor monster stood on the only possible escape route, drooling greedily.

"Hah," Lin Juan scoffed, "I’d like to see how you plan to punish us."

With that, Lin Juan leaped into the air, bringing down a powerful kick from above.

The dorm supervisor instinctively crossed its arms to block overhead.

But how could it possibly withstand Lin Juan’s strength?

With a loud crash, the ground shook, forming a massive crater. The monster was buried deep in it, not even letting out a scream before being knocked out.

Lin Juan landed beside the crater, looking down scornfully at the unconscious dorm supervisor: "And I thought it would be stronger."

His tone, implying "that’s it?" was particularly taunting.

Zhou Ping cautiously tugged at Lin Juan’s sleeve: "Lin Juan, isn’t this a bit too provocative?"

"It’s fine," Lin Juan whispered, "I did it on purpose to send a message to that thing watching us. It’s hiding up in the sky, and I can’t easily reach it."

If only he had wings.

Shi Haochen walked over, looking down at the dorm supervisor stuck in the floor, his voice filled with awe: "Lin Juan, you’re just too strong."

Such a massive monster, taken out with one kick, without any chance to fight back.

With Lin Juan taking action, even the sturdiest door was useless.

With one powerful kick, he kicked it open, and Lin Juan led the four out of the dormitory.

Outside, the green moon hung high overhead, seemingly larger than before.

"It’s so high up," the class monitor said, looking up. "What exactly is that thing?"

"We’ll know once we bring it down."

As Lin Juan spoke, the scenery before them abruptly changed. The blinding sun hung high, and the sudden intense light forced them to shut their eyes.

When they opened them again, what greeted them was the all-too-familiar campus.

The campus during the day.

Zhou Ping looked at himself, then at the students coming and going on the sports field, unable to believe it: "We're out?"

"Class is about to start, Zhou Ping. What are you still doing outside?"

A stern voice rang out from not far away. Zhou Ping turned to see their head teacher.

"Teacher, we'll go back to class right away."

Under the natural intimidation that a teacher holds over students, Zhou Ping replied instinctively.

"Hurry up. Time is tight in senior year—don’t linger outside and waste it." The head teacher gave them a searching look before turning and walking toward the school building.

"Lin Juan, should we go to class?" Already aware that this school was abnormal, they couldn’t bring themselves to attend class as if nothing had happened.

Seeing the students walking around the sports field, they couldn’t help wondering: Would these students turn into monsters?

"Let’s go to class for now," Lin Juan said, noticing their unease. "Don’t be afraid."

With Lin Juan by their side, Zhou Ping and the others slowly calmed down, trying not to show anything unusual in front of teachers and classmates.

"The monthly exam is coming up. Prepare well, everyone. If you do well, the school will reward you. If you don’t, you might be cut from the class. I hope none of you in our class get filtered out this time." The head teacher stood at the podium, voice stern.

The classroom fell silent.

As soon as class ended, the class president rushed to Lin Juan’s desk: "Lin Juan, the monthly exam has been scheduled earlier."

They had only been in class for less than half a month—the exam shouldn’t be happening now.

Only the president, Zhou Ping, and a few others sensed something wrong. They didn’t dare act too obviously but had secretly checked several times. Aside from them, no other students noticed anything unusual about the school.

The president also saw Hui Mei.

Hui Mei appeared unscathed in the daytime campus—not as a monster, but as her real self.

The president was close to her, but having seen Hui Mei’s monstrous side, she was hesitant to be alone with her.

She cautiously asked Hui Mei a few questions, but Hui Mei, like the other students, seemed completely normal.

She had no memory of turning into a monster.

The four of them shared all the information they gathered with Lin Juan.

When the exam began, Lin Juan stared in confusion at the test paper.

How do I say this? It felt familiar, yet he couldn’t solve the problems.

After all, it had been years since he was in high school.

Lin Juan quietly observed the room. The students were working seriously, but a few clearly looked uneasy.

Lin Juan took note of their faces and, after the exam, asked the president about them.

"These three students… they seem to be at the bottom of the class…" The president paused. "Wait, no—I remember their grades weren’t the worst. Why did I instinctively say they were at the bottom?"

A sharp pain pierced her mind, as if something was stopping her from thinking further.

"Empty your mind. Don’t think about anything." Seeing her suddenly pale, Lin Juan quickly warned her.

The president was used to this by now. She stopped thinking, and the pain soon subsided.

"Lin Juan…"

"I already understand. You don’t need to say more."

According to the president, these three students were the worst in the class, yet she remembered their grades hadn’t always been poor. Clearly, their performance had dropped after the supernatural domain took over the school.

Were their expressions changing because they knew what would happen if they were filtered out for poor grades? Or had they experienced it before?

To escape, the loop had to be broken.

What was the beginning of the loop? The end? And what was the purpose of repeating it again and again?

Lin Juan had only been here two days at most. He only knew that the sun and moon in the sky were the eyes of the entity that created the domain. But what was the entity itself? Where was it hiding?

The entire campus was pervaded by an eerie atmosphere, as if the whole school itself was the anomaly.

Could it be that the anomaly really was the school?

It had only been two days. No need to rush, Lin Juan told himself quietly.

The monthly exam took two days. On the second day, back in the exam room, Lin Juan held his forehead and pretended to be sick.

"My head hurts so much, teacher. I’d like to ask to be excused."

Aside from the president and the other three, who looked over worriedly, no one else even glanced over.

This was far from normal.

In school days, curiosity was at its peak. Even during an exam, it was impossible for no one to pay attention to a sudden incident.

Lin Juan felt these students seemed even more mechanical.

The teacher stood up, frowning. "Lin Juan, this is your first exam since joining the class. It’s very important. Can you hold on a little longer?"

"But my head really hurts badly." Lin Juan put on an expression of extreme discomfort.

"Then you’d better think it over," the teacher said, no longer dissuading him. Her expression turned somewhat strange—expectant, yet regretful. "If you don’t do well this time, you’ll be filtered out of our class."

"I’ve made up my mind."

"Zhou Ping," the teacher’s gaze swept the exam room and landed on Zhou Ping, who was craning his neck to see, "please take Lin Juan to the infirmary."

Taking Lin Juan to the infirmary would inevitably take away from Zhou Ping’s exam time and affect his final score. The teacher’s move was clearly meant to ensure Zhou Ping wouldn’t stay in the class.

With his goal achieved, Lin Juan stopped pretending. When Zhou Ping came over worriedly to support him, he stood up straight and walked out briskly.

There was no sign left of his earlier sickly weakness.

The teacher realized it too but didn’t stop them. Instead, she watched them leave with an amused smirk.

Zhou Ping also realized that Lin Juan had been faking it.

As they walked through the unnaturally quiet campus, Zhou Ping couldn’t help asking, "Lin Juan, did you pretend to be sick to skip the exam and get a bad grade on purpose?"

"Not really. It’s just that I already graduated, and I really didn’t want to sit through exams again." Staying in the exam room yesterday was all Lin Juan could take already.

Making someone who graduated years ago retake high school exams is pure torture.

Zhou Ping hadn't expected that reason and froze for a moment.

Lin Juan, seeing his spaced-out look, continued, "There's another reason. I wanted to see the campus during the day. My schedule's usually too packed, so today was a good opportunity."

Though he said that, Zhou Ping couldn't shake the feeling that avoiding the exam was Lin Juan's real motive for faking illness to leave the exam hall.

In truth, Lin Juan had another idea: he wanted to see if deliberately skipping the monthly exam by pretending to be sick would provoke the supernatural presence lurking in this school.

To deal with the supernatural, you first have to find it. In two days, he'd only found a pair of supernatural eyes. What if, like the last time in the laboratory illusion scenario, he ended up stuck here for months? Lin Juan couldn't imagine it.

He really, really, really did not want to go through several more months of high school!

The two of them headed to the infirmary first.

"Here about the headache, are you?" The infirmary door opened, and a middle-aged male doctor in a white coat stepped out.

His movements were stiff and slow, as if countless invisible strings were attached to him, controlling his every action.

Zhou Ping instinctively moved closer to Lin Juan.

This was the first time he had witnessed the abnormality of the campus during the day.

It also made him acutely aware that something was deeply wrong with this school.

"Your teacher told me—you have a headache, right?" The school doctor picked up a scalpel from the counter, his voice strangely cheerful. "Let me cut open your head and see where it hurts."

"Holy shit, why would you need to cut open someone's brain just for a headache?!" Zhou Ping was horrified.

The school doctor turned to him, his gaze ice-cold, like a snake hiding in the shadows, ready to strike at any moment. The whites of his eyes were larger than normal, his pupils shrunk to tiny points—deeply unsettling.

"Lin... Lin Juan, is he a monster too?" Zhou Ping stammered.

"Obviously, yes."

The monsters during the day maintained a human appearance, but their movements felt unnatural. Lin Juan wasn't sure if this monster had always been here or if it had appeared because he came.

After quickly subduing the monster, Lin Juan and Zhou Ping searched the infirmary and found some patient records.

"These names... they don't seem to be from our class," Zhou Ping said after going through all the records. None of the names matched the students he knew.

"Headaches, stomachaches, fevers... why does every ailment require surgery? The doctor here must be a complete maniac!"

"Let's check the surgery room," Lin Juan said, gathering all the patient records. "As far as I know, Upward Middle School's infirmary doesn't have a dedicated surgery room."

"No, it doesn't. I've been studying here for two years. Our school infirmary only dispenses basic medication and IV drips. For anything serious, we have to go to an outside hospital."

Pushing open the door to the surgery room, Lin Juan caught a strong smell of blood—but it disappeared instantly, leaving the room completely empty.

"Nothing here," Zhou Ping said after searching the room, puzzled. "Maybe we need to enter from the campus at night?"

What they saw during the day was only the surface.

But the problem was, the hidden supernatural entity seemed afraid of Lin Juan. The previous night, when Lin Juan wandered around, he hadn't even seen the green moon, let alone entered the campus at night.

After leaving the infirmary, Lin Juan thought that since they had gotten time off, they shouldn't waste it. He and Zhou Ping checked every area of the campus.

They didn't skip the abandoned gym or the swimming pool.

Finally, they reached the archives room.

The entire school was silent, empty aside from the exam-taking cram class. No students, no teachers, no staff. Under the bright sun, Zhou Ping felt no warmth from it.

Everything was clearly abnormal—so why hadn't they noticed it before?

What was clouding their awareness?

How long had they been trapped here?

Zhou Ping didn't dare think too deeply about it.

In the archives room, all the records were locked in cabinets. Zhou Ping had been here before to help out and knew where the keys were, sparing Lin Juan from having to break the cabinets open.

Inside were the records of all the students. Zhou Ping found his own, his friends', and others—some familiar, some not.

Until he came across one with a clearly wrong birth year.

"Lin Juan, look at this," he said, handing the record to Lin Juan. "This person's birth year is ten years earlier than ours!"

The record was somewhat yellowed. The photo showed a shy boy with his head lowered. Ignoring the birth year, everything seemed normal.

But the birth year was the record's biggest anomaly.

Normally, student records are taken with them after graduation and not left at the school. The owner of this record must have attended and graduated at least ten years ago—so why was it still here?

Gong Siyuan.

Lin Juan made note of the name. It was a pity he couldn't contact the outside world; otherwise, he could have asked Director Liu to look into it and probably uncovered this person's identity.

The sun set in the west. Unknowingly, they had spent hours in the archives room. Lin Juan stretched his stiffened legs, which had grown numb from staying in one position for too long. "Let's go, back to the classroom."

Just as the last exam ended, the teacher saw them walk in casually and scowled. "How convenient, Lin Juan."

"Not perfect," Lin Juan smiled slightly. "I chose the timing deliberately. Teacher, I found something and thought it should be handed over to the school."

The teacher took a deep breath. "What is it?"

Lin Juan produced an unsealed, empty file folder and slowly began removing its contents, completely at ease. "See for yourself, teacher."

As the contents of the folder were gradually revealed, the teacher's pupils contracted sharply the moment he saw the photo.

The sky abruptly darkened.