Chapter 73: Learning Materials
These two dismembered hands were clumsily drawn using simple strokes.
The five fingers were generally the same size and the same length, with circles drawn on top of each one to represent the fingernails. Even kindergarteners could draw better than this.
Bai Yan carefully compared the two and discovered that besides the left dismembered hand, a big red X was written over the number ‘6.’ Clearly, it was the wrong answer. However, Teacher Zhang didn’t put the correction beside the ‘6,’ so he might have repeated the drawings.
The lights inside the classroom brightly lit up the place, which made Bai Yan feel even more unwell.
After looking at an excessively bright place for a long time, his vision began to turn blurry, and a thin layer of mist on top of his eyes condensed into teardrops.
Bai Yan inadvertently rubbed his eyes, his line of sight increasingly becoming fuzzy the longer he stood there.
It seemed that he had recently been using his phone a little too much, so his eyesight had declined.
Sensing that Teacher Zhang was becoming more and more impatient, he simply neared his head to the blackboard, leaning in closer to the poor drawing and examining it.
Even if he were a ghost, he still couldn’t bear to see others happy because of him.
As a result, he used a second to mentally calculate the answer. In total, they found eight dismembered hands, and each hand had five fingers, so multiplying them would get 40 fingers.
However, there was one hand that had its pinky missing, so after subtracting one finger, the answer should be 39.
The two world’s numerical characters weren’t entirely the same, but since the app didn’t imbue them with this realm’s knowledge, this meant that everything was the same.
Bai Yan wrote 39 beside the dismembered hands, and when he saw the answer, Teacher Zhang merely stood at the side with disappointment, his mouth slowly picking up.
“Correct, go down.” Teacher Zhang said coarsely, looking vicious.
Bai Yan put down the red chalk, blowing on his hands to get rid of the chalk residue, then turning and going down so naturally.
Bai Yan answered the question correctly, but even with Teacher Zhang’s reluctance, he could still only let him go, starting to point at the next player to answer a question.
“The one wearing a black shirt, how many legs are there in this classroom?”
The man wearing a black-shirt slowly walked up the platform and calmly faced the blackboard, writing down a 9.
“Red-haired boy, answer this next. How many eyeballs are there in this classroom?”
Tom took the chalk and wrote down a 7 while his heart filled with joy. Luckily, the Eastern players also used the same numbers. If this were the same as the pinching beans game, which was based on Eastern traditions, he wouldn’t have lived.
All three people answered the problems correctly, causing Teacher Zhang’s mouth to arch higher than before, looking incredibly satisfied on the outside.
But, the players knew well that this ghost teacher was about to explode with rage.
None of the three players had died, so Teacher Zhang looked miserable than ever but still moved according to his character design, dryly praising the players with a few words.
After insincerely praising his students, Teacher Zhang grabbed a worn-out textbook, opening it up to a specific page and laughing menacingly, “Yesterday’s topic has been reviewed. Now, let’s start learning a new lesson. Students, open your textbooks to page 58. Today, let’s learn about a new type of question.”
‘What? He’s still going to teach?’
Bai Yan was stunned, his hand unhurriedly flipping through a math book and turning to page 58. The contents on it were a jumble of indecipherable texts, he couldn’t understand one word of it.
Every player occupied a table, so everyone was looking through the space below their desk, trying to find their respective math books.
Soon, including Liu Xiyu, the majority of the players opened their books and pretended to ‘learn.’
Seeing that a player couldn’t find his book, Teacher Zhang’s face pulled down, and he threw another piece of chalk, aggressively piercing the player’s cheek.
Sssss——It hurt so much.
The player covered his face, full of rage but reluctant to utter a complaint, while all the other players could only sit there and watch as he writhed in pain. But, they all just shot him a glance before reverting their lines of sight to concentrate on ‘studying’ the book.
While ‘studying,’ Bai Yan would seldom take a peek at Liu Xiyu. Liu Xiyu looked lost when facing the textbook, her little face puckering up as if she was racking her brain about the new topic.
Seeing this scene, Bai Yan was suspected a bit that this girl, in reality, might be an underachiever when it came to math. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been scared of the math teacher and still thought about this math class even in her dreams.
As Teacher Zhang’s bubbly spit splashed across the room during his lecture, Liu Xiyu became drowsy, and a fretful appearance emerged from her face, looking like she was unable to make sense of all of these new concepts.
However, right now, Bai Yan wasn’t in the mood to pay Liu Xiyu any attention, because along with Teacher Zhang’s lecture, his mouth was spouting out generous amounts of blood. In the next moment, a surging sea of blood bubbled out of his mouth, engulfing the entire classroom!
“I’m going. What the heck is happening? Is this old ghost gushing out water while teaching?”
“We’ll be done for if we trigger a dead end during a difficult situation. F*ck! Didn’t that brainless son who triggered this dead end?”
The bloody water covered the classroom and raised to everyone’s legs, soon reaching their knees.
This bloody water was really weird. Not only was its rising speed quick, but it was also sticky to the touch.
Once they came in contact with it, everyone was glued to their place, unable to move or get away.
Seeing that escape wasn’t possible, the players grew more anxious by the second. Teacher Zhang was still ‘teaching’ the textbook, but the more he taught, the more bloody water sprayed out of him.
The players began to frantically whisper, talking over if they should protest at the same time to make Teacher Zhang stop teaching.
“All of us should interrupt to stop him from teaching. If not, everyone would drown!” The middle-aged woman anxiously said, “This way, the fault will be on everyone, and he can’t possibly kill this many people all in one go?”
“What you’re saying is a terrible idea. ‘This way, the fault will be on everyone,’ but he could easily kill the chicken to warn the monkey(1). So, who’ll be this chicken? Will it be you?” The dark-shirt man said with disdain, “You should start it, and I’ll support you!”
This means to punish an individual as an example to others.With this revert, the middle-aged woman was at a loss for words, but she was still resigned to do it, “But, we can’t just do nothing, can’t we? Sitting around doing nothing, isn’t that like waiting for death?”
“There’s still no guarantee that we’ll die.” Ye Shangyu suddenly brought up, “Look at Liu Xiyu.”
One after another, everyone turned their heads to watch Liu Xiyu. The girl had already fallen asleep at some point in time as if she was forever giving up listening to the math lesson she won’t ever learn.
Because of her previous encounter, everyone assumed that Liu Xiyu was the app’s beloved daughter and was privileged inside the app. But right now, in the classroom where bloody water continued to rise, where she couldn’t avoid it, half of her body was already submerged in the bloody mess.
Since Liu Xiyu was resting her head on her desk, the bloody water was quick to swallow her whole.
“Let’s not call Teacher Zhang. We need to first wake up Liu Xiyu. If she dies, then we’ll also be dead!”
Teacher Zhang was still throwing himself into his lecture and turned a deaf ear to the chattering of the students below.
Maybe it was because he knew that these players were screwed, so he didn’t pay attention to them. However, the players didn’t take their chances on this one and continued to modulate their voices to their lowest levels.
During the discussion, one person was calling her softly. They all whispered Liu Xiyu’s name, but Liu Xiyu’s slumber was peaceful, completely not showing any signs of waking up.
Upon seeing this, the players’ voices gradually became higher, but still, they didn’t risk talking loudly.
When he saw that Liu Xiyu was sleeping soundly like a corpse, the black-shirt man swiftly grabbed a book and aimed it at her back, firmly throwing it.
The book violently landed on Liu Xiyu’s back and fell to the ground, but even with this, Liu Xiyu was still fast asleep.
Seeing that the black-shirt man still wanted to throw another book, Bai Yan abruptly said, “Liu Xiyu already explained. She can’t feel any pain in the dream. I suppose that also applies to her sense of touch. Your throwing books is useless, so save your effort.”
“What do we do then? Are we really going to rouse the old ghost?” The black-shirt man was basically against the student boycott, but as matters stood, he was also worried, “No way it’s over, we can’t just idly wait for death!”
“It’s too late!”
Ye Shangyu shook her head as her finger pointed to the ceiling.
While the players were quarreling, the sprinklers on the ceiling also activated, starting to rain down drops of blood on them.
When the players noticed this, the pillars of blood were already thick and immeasurable bloody water rained down on them from the ceiling, soon drowning Liu Xiyu.
The closest player to Liu Xiyu couldn’t pull her up. This was truly a hopeless case.
“… Oh God, she, she’s like this?” Tom’s face turned ghostly white, “Won’t we also die too?”
Ye Shangyu opened the app and shook her head as she said, “She’s still not dead. We haven’t failed the assignment yet. Or, maybe this is one of the game’s storyline, to not die from drowning in bloody water.”
After these words were uttered, the players’ hearts became settled, calming down, contrary to what one might expect.
There were numerous posts like this in the forum, but since they were all struggling with a hard level for the first time, not once did they think of this opportunity.
Seeing Liu Xiyu soak in the bloody water for ages and seeing that the game still wasn’t considered a loss, they were more convinced of this theory.
As a result, the players didn’t fret anymore, letting the bloody water surpass their heads.
In the next moment, the bloody water reached the ceiling.
Bai Yan closed his eyes, feeling that something was floating in the liquid and would bump into his head from time to time.
In the bloody water, everyone couldn’t open their eyes much less dare to breathe.
By the time where everybody couldn’t hold their breaths any longer, the endlessly chattering Teacher Zhang finally shut up. So, the bloody water that had touched the ceiling quickly fell, allowing everyone to open their eyes again and leaving them amazed by how clean their bodies were. Not a speck of blood could be seen on them.
“This is a dream…”
Bai Yan let out a deep sigh, bowing his head to look at the ground.
The floor was spotless, it was also clean of any bloodstains. Since the entire classroom was submerged in water, the learning materials, which were originally placed on top of the tables, were scattered on the ground.
He quickly counted them, but his face was gradually struck with bizarreness.
If he counted correctly, the learning materials on the ground seemed to have increased?
Even without him calling their attention, the others also discovered that something was amiss.
Everyone simultaneously cursed under their breaths and took advantage that Teacher Zhang turned his back on them to write something on the board, immediately scattering in all directions to re-find the new ‘learning materials.’
Ye Shangyu heaved a breath and once again took the risk of going near the platform, finding quite a few ‘learning materials.’
She then carefully handled the learning materials and placed them on the table, along with the discoveries of the other players, sorting them out.
After they counted them, Teacher Zhang once again turned around, his face miserable as he said, “Did you all understand the lecture I taught just now? … Since no one says otherwise, then that means you all understand.
Good! I’ll select a person to answer a problem. If it isn’t the right answer, then go out and stand!”
Teacher Zhang was done ruthlessly announcing this and ran his eyes across the entire room, shortly discovering a still-sleeping Liu Xiyu.
He smiled coldly, his voice mimicking the rumble of thunder, “Liu Xiyu, come up and answer my question! How many people have died in this classroom?”