Chapter 9 Night is their home
Chapter 9 Night is their home
"You just need to abide by the rules honestly, be a normal student, and then leave the campus on the seventh day. Do you understand?" Xu Shunkang stared into Lin Yi's eyes, wishing he could write this sentence into Lin Yi's rules.
Lin Yi opened his mouth slightly, trying to restrain himself from thinking about the meaning of Xu Shunkang's words, and then first told the trouble he encountered: "I understand, but my roommate got separated from us, so I want to find him."
"You guys started school today... so the person you got separated from didn't even get his student ID?"
"He... may not have gotten it yet." Mao Feiyang walked into the stairwell. Lin Yi was not sure what his current situation was.
"Where did you get separated?"
"In the stairs."
"Stairs?" Xu Shunkang was slightly stunned. "Did he take the stairs on the left?"
"Left hand side? No, we got separated on the stairs going down to the basement."
"Basement?" Xu Shunkang's eyes showed a hint of doubt. "Strange, the rules of the teaching building say there is no basement..."
He began to think subconsciously, and his knowledge of this teaching building flashed through his mind subconsciously.
Classrooms, corridors, offices...then, the appearance of a stairwell broke into his memory.
It was a blue-gray isolation fire door with a green glowing emergency exit sign on it.
But as soon as he thought of this door, a feeling of fatigue surged from the bottom of his heart.
Xu Shunkang's expression suddenly changed. He shook his head violently and muttered, "Not good! That underground...that thing is beyond my knowledge of rules!"
Lin Yi narrowed his eyes, and a sharp light flashed between his eyes: "Beyond cognition?!"
"Shut up! Shut up!" Seeing that Lin Yi seemed to want to say something, Xu Shunkang's face instantly showed a nervous look.
His eyes flickered and he looked panicked.
After yelling at Lin Yi, he immediately closed his eyes and kept repeating: "The teaching building has no basement, the teaching building has no basement..."
As his thoughts became more and more firm, his understanding of the teaching building began to be consolidated again, and the feeling of fatigue that had just emerged in his heart was also nipped in the bud.
He opened his eyes again and took a long breath. He then examined Lin Yi and asked in a deep voice, "Is this why you have been thinking about the campus issue?"
"Yes."
"So you also feel that there is something wrong with the campus? Strange weather, buildings beyond our understanding, and... sneaky figures..."
"Yes, that's why I was thinking about this question...isn't it? If you have a problem but don't think about it, then isn't there something wrong with your brain?" Lin Yi looked at Xu Shunkang innocently.
"You... eh, you fucking..." Xu Shunkang was already a little angry, but at this moment he couldn't get angry anymore. The word "you fucking" kept turning around in his mouth for a long time, and finally he shook his head helplessly.
"You do have a point."
Lin Yi also followed his tone and said: "Yes, so can you tell me some useful information?"
"Senior Xu Shunkang."
"You?" Xu Shunkang subconsciously took a step back. Looking at Lin Yi's expression, he suddenly understood something. The anger that he had suppressed emerged again. "It's too dangerous for you to do this!"
Lin Yi shrugged and said helplessly: "There's nothing I can do, senior... I already have a roommate in crisis, and this guy next to me really can't give me any useful information."
Wei Liang did not refute, but just touched his nose awkwardly.
Xu Shunkang shook his head angrily: "No."
"Can't you give me any clues?" Lin Yi asked sincerely.
"No."
"why?"
"No reason!" Xu Shunkang said sternly, "That's not something you should know!"
Just when Lin Yi wanted to ask more questions, a voice sounded from behind him.
"Because the more you learn about the secrets of the campus, the more you can't help yourself..."
"This obsession is uncontrollable, just like the attraction of a magnet to a nail."
"You are only sensing the attraction of the magnet from a distance now, but once you understand more, you will get closer to the magnet. Once you exceed a critical value, you will not be able to escape the magnetic field."
"The moment you step into the magnetic field, your cognition will be subverted and shattered. If you can't rebuild your cognition, you're doomed."
A classmate who was wearing the same blue and white striped sportswear as Xu Shunkang walked up to Lin Yi.
"Xie Huayang, a sports student, I'm in the same batch as the fat guy." He introduced himself.
Then he looked at Xu Shunkang, frowned and urged: "Okay Fatty, it's getting late, control your emotions, don't get angry, we should go."
"Leaving so early?" Xu Shunkang was a little surprised.
"It's too early." Xie Huayang came closer and lowered his voice, "We are short of manpower today, and you just pulled up all the hatred. The time, place and people are not on our side. Why don't you leave early and wait for death?"
"Uh..." Xu Shunkang was choked and his anger suddenly dissipated a little.
He looked at Lin Yi and Wei Liang and said hesitantly, "What about them?"
Xie Huayang glanced at Lin Yi and Wei Liang calmly: "They made you angry, but you are still thinking about them?"
"If you ask me, their life or death is none of our business!"
"You've advised them twice, and I've said twice. As for the rest, they can listen if they want to, and if they don't want to, then whatever they want!"
Xu Shunkang was still a little hesitant, but Xie Huayang suddenly said, "It's hard to persuade a ghost who wants to die with kind words. If they are like Yuan Tietou, it will be useless no matter how many times we persuade them."
Although he knew that Xie Huayang was deliberately provoking him, when he heard the name Yuan Tietou, Xu Shunkang's anger, which had just subsided, broke out again.
He grabbed Xie Huayang by the collar and growled, "Shut up! Stop talking about Datou! Do you think it's true? We had a chance to save him!"
"What a shitty chance! He thought he understood the rules, but he understood nothing!" Xie Huayang slapped Xu Shunkang's hand away. "Didn't we persuade him? Didn't we tell him not to do that? But he didn't listen!"
He pointed at Lin Yi and Wei Liang and said, "Just like those two self-righteous idiots, they refuse to listen! You just met them by chance, why are you wasting your time talking to them?"
"Excuse me for interrupting... I'm not refusing to listen..." Wei Liang raised his hands and said weakly.
Xie Huayang pointed to the quartz clock on the classroom wall and said, "It's eight forty-three now. Are you going to leave or not? If you don't leave, I'll leave first!"
"If you want to leave then go ahead!"
"Then I'm leaving! I won't keep you company!" Xie Huayang turned around without hesitation.
"Wait a minute, you f*cking boy!" Xu Shunkang was like an air pump, the anger being pumped up and then suppressed in his body.
But now it was just pulled up and then pressed down again.
His face was full of resentment.
He clenched the comic book in his hand and said through gritted teeth: "I haven't finished reading this comic yet."
"What's so good about the Minotaur comics?" Xie Huayang snatched "Green War of Mountains and Seas" from Xu Shunkang's hand. "Hong Kong comics just can't get rid of this kind of brain-dead Minotaur plot that disgusts readers. I've finished reading this one a long time ago. It gets worse and worse as it goes on. The finale is a bunch of nonsense. It's a mess. I think it's better to read some pure H comics!"
"I have a few works of Mr. Oda Non in my collection. I'll lend them to you for your appreciation later." He patted Xu Shunkang on the shoulder and urged him, "Hey, let's go! Let's go! Hurry up!" Xu Shunkang's anger had almost dissipated at this moment. He hesitated for a moment, but still said, "There's still some time. I'll say one more word to them."
"Hurry up." Xie Huayang also knew that he couldn't push too hard.
Xu Shunkang came to Lin Yi and Wei Liang and said seriously, "We are leaving soon. You two should be careful."
"Where are you going?" Lin Yi asked subconsciously.
"What are you going to be careful about?" Wei Liang blurted out almost at the same time as Lin Yi.
Xu Shunkang said: "You are not allowed to leave the teaching building after 21:, so we have to leave first."
"After we leave, you have to be careful of everyone except you."
"because……"
He looked around, his cold eyes sweeping over the faces of the students who had gathered around him earlier.
"The night is their home turf..."
Lin Yi and Wei Liang were shocked.
"Remember, abiding by the rules is your only means of self-protection."
After saying that, Xu Shunkang followed Xie Huayang towards the classroom door.
Before leaving, he seemed to have thought of something, turned to look at Lin Yi, and said with a smile: "However, theoretically speaking, it is relatively safe to spend the night in the classroom. I hope to see you tomorrow... Wish you good luck."
After saying that, he opened the door and walked out with Xie Huayang.
The moment the classroom door opened, wisps of thick fog drifted in from the crack in the door like midday smoke.
Outside the classroom, the biting cold wind mixed with icy water vapor constantly washed over the campus. The entire classroom seemed like a sailboat sailing on the Caribbean Sea at night, which could capsize in the waves and thick fog at any time.
As Xie Huayang and Xu Shunkang left, some students followed suit and left the classroom.
Lin Yi noticed that almost all of the students who left were wearing the same blue and white sportswear.
In other words, they are all athletes.
After the gym student left, the classroom door was closed again.
The cold wind outside the door could no longer blow in, and the large and empty classroom gradually became warm again under the clear yellow light of the incandescent lamp.
As Lin Yi watched the athletes leave, Xie Huayang's words floated in his mind: [Because the more you understand the secrets of the campus, the more you can't help yourself... This inability to extricate yourself is uncontrollable, just like the attraction of a magnet to an iron nail.]
"Can't help myself? Is that the guiding feeling I felt earlier?"
"Don't think..."
"Keep thinking..."
"Damn, is this how you play it?"
Lin Yi glanced at the clock on the wall, then looked at the time on his watch.
20: 47.
"It's almost nine o'clock..."
Lin Yi took out the student rules and flipped through them, and found the one about staying overnight.
[Article 6 of the Student Code: Please leave the dormitory between 6:00 and 7:40, and return to the dormitory between 21:00 and 22:00. After returning to the dormitory, do not leave the dormitory outside of this period... If you do not return to the dormitory before 22:00, please return to the classroom at all costs. The lights in the classroom will not be turned off, so please stay in the classroom overnight.
During this time, if you notice anything unusual happening in the dorm or outside the classroom, please ignore it, especially if you hear a voice calling your name.
Be wary of roommates who are not staying overnight, especially if they ask you anything about your student ID.
Let’s take a look at the rules regarding this period in the teaching building regulations.
【Evening self-study time is after 18:00, but the school does not force students to participate in evening self-study unless the current time is past 21:00.
After 21:00, you are not allowed to leave the classroom. Please study on your own until 7:40 the next day. You can browse any book, but remember not to sleep in the classroom (the last sentence is bold, underlined and marked with a lot of eye-catching exclamation marks).
During this period, if you see anything unusual outside the window or someone calls you outside the door, please ignore it. 】
Lin Yi stroked his chin and began to think.
「学生守则上写，返回宿舍的时间是21:00~22:00之间，而教学楼守则上的规则是21：00之后禁止离开教室。」
"That is to say, under normal circumstances, we should leave the classroom before 21:00 and arrive at the dormitory before 22:00, which means we have an hour to travel..."
He flipped to the end of the teaching building manual, opened the map, and observed the location relationship between the teaching building and the dormitory.
The teaching buildings on the map are exactly the same as those described in the teaching building rules. There are three buildings in total, built side by side, connected to each other by bridges in the middle, just like three "目" characters placed together.
The distance from the teaching building to the dormitory is about the same as the distance to the school gate, and the road is also dotted with street lights like rice.
"Judging from the rules, an hour should be plenty of time for the journey."
「可是，学生守则里写了22:00之后如果没有回到宿舍就返回教室自习到第二天的7：40，但教学楼守则里写了21:00之后禁止离开教室……」
“Isn’t this a conflict?”
"No, no, there is no conflict... Just because you are not allowed to leave the classroom doesn't mean you are not allowed to enter, so those who don't have time to return to the dormitory can go back to the classroom to study. Right, right, that's right."
"However, you are not allowed to leave after 21:00..."
Lin Yi glanced down at his watch. The current time was 20:52. From the time the gym student left till now, he had been thinking about the matter for a total of 5 minutes.
But during these five minutes of thinking time, he did not feel the same tiredness as before.
"Why am I not tired or sleepy now, but I was so tired before?"
Lin Yi took a deep breath, then looked around, taking in the entire circular classroom environment.
There are now more than sixty students in the huge classroom, and there are about forty students who have gathered around Lin Yi and put enough pressure on him.
These people all have one very notable characteristic, which is that they huddle in their seats, as if they wish they could embed themselves in them.
They hung their heads, some stared blankly into the air, while others stared straight at other students in the classroom.
The other students were the more normal ones like Lin Yi and Wei Liang, and there were probably less than twenty to thirty of them.
Lin Yi told Wei Liang about his discovery.
After listening to this, Wei Liang was puzzled and asked, "I have no objection to you saying that those thirty or forty people have problems, but how can you be sure that the rest are normal? Some of them are neither positive nor negative, and you can't tell that they are abnormal just by observing them, right?"
Lin Yi shook his head: "I don't make judgments based on this level of observation."
Thanks to the book friend "Keli Fried Fish" for the reward!
(End of this chapter)