VAP - Chapter 182
Chapter 182: The Ruler in the Endless Deep Darkness (15)
Imitating a student's recitation wasn't difficult, but it wasn't exactly simple either. Three players failed their teachers' inspections and were ordered to the disciplinary room after class at noon.
Among the three, only one person's issue was with the recitation itself, rather than their acting.
Song Zhan grumbled, "I know the text, I just got stuck in the middle."
Tang Ying was both angry and worried, but she had to admit that asking her cousin to fluently recite two full pages without faltering was a tall order.
The other two players who were singled out were even more panicked. The disciplinary room—the name alone sounded ominous. The academy's daily curriculum was already inhumane enough; how twisted would the punishments be?
The young man with the small braid said, "The students who were punished yesterday all came back unharmed. Don't worry too much, or you'll lose your composure."
Tang Ying wanted to say that instance NPCs and players were completely different. NPCs could heal rapidly, but could players? However, she glanced at Song Zhan and ultimately swallowed her words.
Song Zhan was unfazed. "It's fine. I'm not afraid of anything that doesn't require brainpower."
Tang Ying said, "Your self-awareness is as accurate as ever."
After class let out at noon, Yue Du and Ah Jiu walked to the disciplinary room door to find Tang Ying already waiting. She had her head tilted, pressing her ear to the door to listen for any sounds from within, but she heard nothing.
Yue Du asked, "Are you going to wait here?"
"Yeah," Tang Ying said. "I can't rest easy otherwise. You two go on ahead. I'll be back at the dorm before the lunch break is over."
"I'll bring you a meal then."
"Nothing spicy, if you can. Thanks."
Yue Du hadn't seen the punished students in the meditation room yesterday, so she figured the punishment wasn't short; they likely wouldn't be out before the end of the lunch break. Tang Ying was just waiting here for her own peace of mind.
As they walked out of the academic building, Ah Jiu suddenly turned and glanced up.
"What is it?" Yue Du paused, then realized. "Is it Xuan Jiu?"
"It's her, standing by the window and smiling at us." Ah Jiu took Yue Du's hand, this time lacing their fingers together. Yue Du was preoccupied and didn't pay it any mind, letting her do as she pleased.
At this time yesterday, the players had all gathered to strategize. Now, with little to discuss, they sat scattered in twos and threes.
Yue Du found an empty table and set down her tray, surveying her surroundings as she ate. Suddenly, she heard a sharp clatter nearby. Looking toward the sound, she saw a small, thin girl crying softly, her shoulders hunched. Her hair and clothes were splattered with food and soup, and the pieces of a shattered porcelain bowl lay at her feet. She was in a sorry state.
The boy opposite her berated her loudly, "What are you crying for? I told you to get the beef filling! Is this beef? And you have the nerve to cry? Is this your attitude toward your senior mentor?"
The girl didn't even bother to wipe away the filth, apologizing profusely. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! The auntie said they were out of beef filling, so I..."
"Couldn't you have come back to ask me before buying something else? You just bought lamb without a word! I fucking hate lamb!"
The girl was sent to buy another meal. The other students had only glanced up instinctively at the sound, then resumed eating and chatting as if it were none of their business—a common sight.
Yue Du frowned and muttered to herself, "Senior mentor?"
She had seen the term in the academy's regulations. It stated that if new students were "insubordinate," they would be assigned an older student as a "senior mentor" to correct their daily mistakes until their behavior improved.
It was worth noting that these older students weren't children the academy had raised from a young age, but rather students from the outside world sent here by their parents.
Logically, this arrangement should have been quite humane. People with similar experiences ought to better understand the new students' situation and empathize with their feelings, thereby offering guidance and help. But now, it seemed things weren't so simple.
After witnessing this scene, Yue Du paid closer attention to similar dynamics as she scanned the cafeteria. She soon discovered it wasn't an isolated case—arrogant students ordering others around, and timid students complying meekly. They just weren't making as big a scene as the last pair.
Was this tacitly approved bullying, or...
After her meal, Yue Du went to the counter to get a takeout box for Tang Ying and chatted briefly with the serving lady. The woman was dismissive during normal conversation, but the moment Yue Du mentioned the "Great Lord of Fire," she opened right up. There was no doubt about it—everyone in this academy was a follower of the Red Copper Bird.
Tang Ying made it back just before the lunch break ended. One look at her expression told Yue Du that Song Zhan was still in the disciplinary room. Without saying much, she simply handed her the food container.
"Thanks." Tang Ying sighed and dug into her food.
Yue Du lay back on her bed, making idle conversation with Ah Jiu.
"Half the day is gone, and we haven't seen any supernatural phenomena. It seems the ghosts only come out at night," Yue Du said.
"You don't actually have to worry about ghosts," Ah Jiu said. "Don't you have Deep Darkness Judgment? It's effective against spirits, too."
Deep Darkness Judgment was the black jade dagger she had received as a reward. Its item description specified that it could inflict damage on spiritual entities.
Yue Du said sullenly, "Effective is one thing, terrifying is another."
It was like someone being afraid of cockroaches or spiders. It wasn't that they couldn't kill them—a smack with a slipper would do the trick—but they were still afraid. Fear wasn't an emotion that could be so easily dispelled.
Ah Jiu rolled over on the top bunk and suddenly said, "In that case, sleep with me tonight."
Yue Du was speechless.
"I'll sleep on the outside. If anything comes, it'll have to deal with me first. How about it?"
The Yue Du of yesterday had refused. The Yue Du of today fell shamefully silent. After a long moment, she cleared her throat. "You don't have to sleep on the outside, but sleeping together is fine. We can watch out for each other."
Ah Jiu said cheerfully, "That's more like it. You should rest now. Nothing strange happens during the lunch break, so it's a good time to catch up on sleep."
Yue Du hummed in agreement and closed her eyes to sleep.
Listening as the breathing from the bunk below grew long and steady, Ah Jiu pressed her temples and gave a smile that seemed almost troubled.
Oops. In my excitement, I almost forgot the fundamental purpose of the game and was only looking out for myself.
I'll have to be more careful from now on.
In the afternoon, the group spent some time in the meditation room as usual. Whether it was an illusion or not, the room felt a degree hotter than yesterday, though it was still within the range of human tolerance.
After leaving the meditation room, Tang Ying ran to the disciplinary room to wait without even wiping the sweat from her brow. Yue Du and Ah Jiu exchanged a glance and decided to follow her.
A few minutes later, the door was suddenly pushed open from the inside. A middle-aged man with a long, thin face, dressed in the academy's instructor uniform, strode out. Perhaps surprised to find people waiting by the door, he stopped short and asked with a stern face, "What are you doing here?"
Tang Ying answered quickly, "My brother is a bit slow. He messed up his recitation this morning, so he ended up in the disciplinary room. I'm just waiting to see when he'll get out."
The man said dismissively, "Oh, him. He'll be out soon. You can wait here."
With that, he flicked his sleeves and walked off.
Tang Ying let out a heavy sigh of relief.
Before long, Song Zhan appeared. There were no visible injuries on him, but despite not having been in the "sauna" of the meditation room, his face was covered in fine beads of sweat. He was grimacing as if he had just endured inhuman torture.
The moment he saw Tang Ying, he wailed, "Sis, the people here are all perverts!"
Tang Ying's heart leaped into her throat. "What did they do to you?"
"They... what's it called... right, they did wax play!"
Tang Ying was speechless.
Yue Du was speechless.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Song Zhan asked, bewildered by their shocked expressions.
Tang Ying took a deep breath. "You... explain in detail."
Song Zhan gathered his thoughts. "When I first went in..."
When the three punished players entered the disciplinary room, their hearts were pounding with anxiety, terrified they had already crossed a fatal line and would die today.
But the long-faced man guarding the disciplinary room didn't harm them. His attitude wasn't even that bad; he just made them memorize both yesterday's and today's texts thoroughly. That alone took a considerable amount of time.
With someone watching over him, Song Zhan rushed to study without distraction and barely managed to finish his recitation after the other two. But before they could breathe a sigh of relief, the instructor declared that since they could recite it perfectly now, their earlier failure proved a lack of diligence. For that, they had to atone to the Lord of Fire.
The three of them then lost consciousness. When they awoke, they found themselves stripped of their outer clothes and bound to the floor. Only then did they notice dozens of crimson candles hanging upside down from the ceiling. They seemed randomly placed, but with their wicks pointing downward, they formed the outline of a bird.
The candles were lit, their flames stubbornly burning upward, but the wax melted and dripped down even faster, scalding marks and blisters onto the punished students' bodies, as if drawing the crude silhouette of a bird.
This so-called "wax play" had nothing to do with recreation; it was pure torture.
At this point, Song Zhan's face was a mask of misery. "Luckily, I have the 'thick skin' buff from a previous instance reward, or the pain would have killed me. Ah, I wonder if they sell burn cream anywhere in this academy."
Tang Ying's brow twitched. "They should. Did it blister? Go buy medicine first. If you wait too long, it could get infected." She turned to Yue Du. "We're going to head off."
"Alright," Yue Du said. "Treating the wound is what's important."
After the cousins left, the other two punished players emerged, their faces deathly pale. They had to recover for a long moment before they could finally drag themselves away to buy medicine. By comparison, Song Zhan's skin really was thick.
Yue Du tried pushing the door. Strangely, though the last player clearly hadn't locked it, the door wouldn't budge. It seemed the two players who had tried to investigate the disciplinary room yesterday afternoon hadn't been lying.
"We already know what the punishment is, yet they still won't let us in. Could there be something else inside?" Yue Du tried a couple more times before giving up. "Ah Jiu, can you open the door?"
Ah Jiu roughly estimated the door's structural integrity, then spread her hands. "Perhaps. But it's difficult to control my power with that much precision. I might end up destroying the entire academic building."
"Then never mind, thanks," said Yue Du.
The situation with the disciplinary room was strange, but it wasn't the most pressing problem. Yue Du temporarily set her suspicions aside and braced herself for the coming night with extreme caution.
Before it was even time for lights out, Ah Jiu, dressed in a simple white nightgown, lifted the bed curtain and climbed onto Yue Du's wooden bed. Claiming the bed was too narrow, she brazenly gathered Yue Du into her arms.
And she did, in fact, sleep on the outer side of the bed.
In the meditation room, Ah Jiu's body temperature had been on the cool side, but under the covers, she was as warm as a bolster pillow and gave off a faint, pleasant scent.
Yue Du had expected to feel uncomfortable or awkward, but she felt neither. Ah Jiu's embrace, much like her lullaby, possessed a special, reassuring power.
Still, feeling reassured was one thing, and being afraid of ghosts was another.
At midnight, the strange noises returned, worse than before.
Yue Du had been jolted awake long ago. Too tense to pay any mind to the arm Ah Jiu had wrapped around her waist, she listened intently to the surrounding sounds.
A scraping sound—a charred corpse being dragged by another of its kind.
A creak—a charred corpse climbing onto the empty top bunk, making the bed boards groan.
There was also a playful, childlike tapping coming from the bed board beneath her, loud enough to wake the neighbors, yet Yue Du had to feign sleep.
The smell lingering in the air grew stronger, almost choking. It made her want to cover her mouth and nose, to cough, but she couldn't move a muscle. The malicious gazes of the inhuman things never wavered, as if they knew the person behind the bed curtain was awake and were just waiting for her to show a flaw.
On the other side of the room, Tang Ying remained fast asleep, completely undisturbed by the charred corpses crawling everywhere or the acrid smell. Song Zhan had been right—the two cousins were incredibly heavy sleepers.
Unlike the relative safety of the top bunks, the bottom bunks were fraught with peril.
A young woman buried her entire face in her quilt, breathing cautiously to lessen the effect of the acrid air. Still, her throat began to itch, and she finally let out a single, stifled cough.
That one sound instantly drew the gazes of numerous inhuman things. They drew near, so close she could almost feel them against her scalp.
She desperately fought back the urge to cough, suppressing her instinct to scream. A long time passed before the eerie sensation on her scalp reluctantly faded.
A narrow escape.
But not everyone was so lucky. In another dormitory building, two men feigned sleep, their eyes squeezed shut, listening in agony to the sound of burning and the horrific screams of their companion coming from the center of the room.
Only Song Zhan slept on, blissfully unaware. He snored, occasionally scratching his stomach in his sleep. His ability to sleep through anything was clearly even better than his cousin's.
The Tang-Song cousins were terrifying in their own right.
The next day, the players gathered in front of the dormitory. The young man with the small braid looked grim. "Someone on our side died last night. We... we listened to him die."
"The guy was faking it well, but the smell of burning got to him, and he burst into a coughing fit. When he realized he couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore, he jumped up and tried to run from the room, but he didn't make it."
"When we checked at dawn, there was nothing left on the floor but a twisted, charred corpse."
Fewer people had died this time, but the problem this revealed was a fatal one: the danger at night was escalating.
Yesterday, there were only a couple of charred corpses staring them down. Today, a whole group of them were crawling all over the dorm, doing the same. Just pretending to be asleep wouldn't be enough to get through it. The acrid, burning smell in the dorms was getting stronger; sooner or later, it would become impossible to keep up the act.
Not even the Tang-Song cousins could sleep soundly in an environment thick with smoke and fire.
"But what else can we do besides feigning sleep? Are we supposed to fight them?" The girl who had nearly died last night said, her eyes red. "Fighting these monsters will drain our Rationality, and... and I don't even have a single offensive spell!"
The young man with the small braid said helplessly, "I don't want to fight either, if I can avoid it. But it's better to be prepared than to be caught off guard. We might even be able to take them down."
He looked at Tang Ying, then at Yue Du. "What do you two think?"
"I agree," said Yue Du.
"No objections from me, either," said Tang Ying.
"Then it's settled. I know that for all of you to have made it this far, you must have fought monsters before, more or less. Some of you might even have trump cards to save your lives." As he spoke, the young man's gaze swept over Yue Du and the Tang-Song cousins, his meaning clear. "Protect yourselves as best you can. If you have energy to spare and can help a player next to you, that would be for the best. But if you're unwilling to step in, that's fine too. We'll all have to rely on our own skills."
Hunkering down and feigning sleep was a dead end. Preparing for a fight was truly the only way out.
In truth, it wasn't just the nights that were getting worse. The daytime situation was also deteriorating. The lessons grew more difficult, the temperature in the meditation room climbed, and between classes, older students could be seen bullying new ones everywhere. All of it served to stir up the players' feelings of irritability, anxiety, and fear.
That afternoon, Yue Du opened her eyes in the meditation room to a world washed in crimson, just as the high-Spirituality teammate of the young man with the small braid had seen on the first day.
It certainly wasn't a symptom of heatstroke. But Yue Du didn't recover quickly. Instead, the crimson gradually resolved into blurry patches of color that pulsed, writhed, and spun as they drew closer.
In that hazy, crimson world, Yue Du heard a cold snort tinged with displeasure.
The timbre was familiar. It was Xuan Jiu's voice.
The next moment, the crimson shattered.
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