Global Collapse-Chapter 482 - 457: 2019 Test Cheating Group_1
As a sunny, kind, honest, and law-abiding player, Gu Mian certainly wouldn’t forcibly bring anything strange in.
These strange things included Xiao Hong and her elder brother.
Actually, Gu Mian figured it would be easy to bring them in, but it would be disastrous if he couldn’t get them back out.
He could imagine how Xiao Hong and her elder brother, two ghosts, would react upon discovering his disappearance.
Xiao Hong would do nothing more than jump into the water and swim around erratically in a doggy paddle, trying to find him... She had done exactly that during the Dragon Boat event.
As for her elder brother, he would have to resign himself to catching other ghosts and calling them ’sister.’
So, when Gu Mian and the others entered the school gate, these two ghosts squatted at a distance outside the gate, truly resembling two dogs.
After leaving behind these two strange "things," Xiao Hong and her brother, Gu Mian successfully entered the school with his guitar case.
When passing the NPCs, Gu Mian deliberately eyed the contraband detectors in their hands. If he had that gadget, maybe he could find his parents, who had been missing for years and whom he had never met.
The NPCs under Gu Mian’s gaze silently shivered and took a step back in unison.
"As expected of an event in a horror game," Fatty said, looking up at the school in front of him. "Even the school is made to be so gloomy. Brother Chu, was your school’s atmosphere always this gloomy before?"
The school appeared somewhat gloomy and desolate, perhaps because no one had attended classes there for a long time.
"Not really," Chu Changge replied, walking slowly forward. "It’s just that sometimes people would jump off buildings to commit suicide. To prevent similar incidents, the school installed security bars on all windows above the third floor. So, if you encounter ghosts in rooms above the third floor, don’t even consider escaping by jumping out of a window."
"And have you noticed," Chu Changge said, glancing back. Behind him were the NPCs standing outside the school gate. "Those NPCs are all outside the school. They didn’t come in."
Gu Mian had noticed this too. Moreover, after entering the school, there were no other NPCs, only scattered examinees searching for their respective exam rooms.
"Even the NPCs are unwilling to set foot inside. I’m afraid this event will exceed our expectations. You all need to be careful." Chu Changge withdrew his gaze.
Fatty nodded, firmly committing this to memory.
A few more steps ahead stood a giant statue, about three stories high, engraved with the Lianhua School emblem—a trophy-like object.
Gu Mian stopped in front of this statue. "This event isn’t one where we’re directly transported in and then directly out. Everyone should gather here after finishing their tests to leave together... Xiao Qiao’s group chat should work in here, right?"
As he spoke, he tested it and found that the game panel’s built-in chat system was no longer usable. However, Xiao Qiao’s ten-person group chat hadn’t been disabled, though she had already changed its name to "2019 College Entrance Exam Cheating Group."
Quite a fitting name.
This group chat was indeed a powerful tool for cheating on exams. Plus, they had Chu Changge, who was like a walking encyclopedia. If this college entrance exam truly tested normal knowledge, with Chu Changge on their side, they would be invincible.
Finish copying all the answers within the first ten minutes, then leave with a flourish, leaving only their retreating figures for the other examinees to see. The thought was quite satisfying.
However, this time, everyone’s test paper wouldn’t necessarily be the same, and it was highly probable the questions wouldn’t be normal.
"Anyway, when all of you have finished your tests, you can pick a time to gather here," Gu Mian said, pausing briefly. "...If you feel it’s dangerous, I can go to the exam rooms to pick you up."
For a moment, Fatty thought Gu Mian sounded like a parent picking up their child from kindergarten.
Chu Changge spoke up, "Let’s play it by ear. If anything happens, we can communicate through the group chat."
"Alright, the event starts at seven. Let’s go find our exam rooms now." Gu Mian checked the time. It was already 6:30 in the evening; the sun’s radiance had mostly faded, and the school was gradually sinking into darkness.
「Lianhua University, Building 6, Exam Room 208. This was Gu Mian’s assigned room.」
He was very familiar with Lianhua University, so it only took him fifteen minutes to find his exam room: the westernmost classroom on the second floor of Building 6.
When Gu Mian entered the exam room, the overhead lights were already on. The room contained twenty-five desks, and there was no one at the podium. It looked like a perfectly normal classroom.
A dozen or so desks were already occupied, and their occupants were currently looking his way curiously.
Gu Mian, using the nickname Meiren Chu, wasn’t fazed at all. He walked a few steps into the room and immediately spotted someone he knew: 007.
She was sitting in the second seat of the row by the windows, looking up at him with wide eyes.
The desk in front of her was right where Gu Mian was standing. He glanced down; the seat number on it was 1.
What a coincidence.
It was a shame Xiao Hong wasn’t here; otherwise, the human and the ghost could be stuffing each other’s mouths with tasty treats right now.
He hadn’t expected that he and 007 would end up as deskmates, with him sitting in front of her. Gu Mian also knew she had been looking for her parents two months ago, though according to Fatty, she hadn’t found them in the end.
Gu Mian put down the guitar case he was carrying on his back, propping it against his desk. He plopped down onto his seat and then turned to look back at 007. "I heard you didn’t find the people you were looking for?"
He had spent a lot of effort getting 007 home, and it turned out to be all for nothing.
"Yes," 007 replied, not surprised for long about them now sitting at adjacent desks. "When I got home, they had already moved. New people were living there."
"Didn’t you suspect the family living in your house now?"
Since the global game started, murder and robbery have become common occurrences. Killing people to take their houses is also possible.
"No, the house was rented," 007 said, shaking her head. "Besides, my parents... they often move suddenly like this without telling me. They’re afraid I’ll worry."
Gu Mian thought for two seconds and somewhat understood. "Hiding from debts?"
007 nodded silently. "Two years ago, my dad’s company went bankrupt, and he incurred a lot of debt. For the past two years, debt collectors have been constantly showing up at our door, and our home was frequently splashed with paint. Despite trying our best to repay it, the amount was too large... so I dropped out of school to work and pay off the debt. If I worked locally, those people would definitely cause trouble at my workplace, and I’d lose my job."
Gu Mian remembered the first instance where he met 007. He recalled her saying back then that she didn’t go to school because she had no money. At that time, he had wondered just how poor someone had to be to not even afford school fees. It turned out she not only had no money but also had debts to repay.
Due to his innate bad luck, Gu Mian didn’t dare to work outside, afraid he’d implicate others and drive them to bankruptcy.
Just as Gu Mian was envying 007 for still being able to work, he suddenly sensed the classroom fall instantly silent.
He was all too familiar with this kind of silence; it usually occurred when the head teacher’s face appeared in the window of the classroom’s back door.
The exam invigilator is here.
However, the invigilator apparently lacked the head teacher’s leisurely inclination to observe from outside; it came straight in through the front door.
Gu Mian turned and saw a pair of empty eye sockets.
Fatty couldn’t understand why the exam invigilator was dressed like that. The thing on the podium was hunched over in a bizarre posture, clad in a bulky, filthy hazmat suit—the kind worn by lab technicians in zombie movies—with a damaged face mask on its head.
The entire classroom fell silent. All the examinees shivered, holding their breath as they stared at the terrifying thing on the podium.
It stood in the middle of the podium, its body contorting. Then, Fatty saw blood-red words appear on the blackboard behind it:
[Exam Time: 19:30—24:00]
[Exam Rules]
[1. Open-book exam; answers may be found within the school.]
[2. Test papers must be submitted to the invigilator before the exam ends.]
[3. Patrolling invigilators will be present during the exam. Students outside the exam room, if discovered by patrolling invigilators, will be dealt with as a violation.]
[4. Males are forbidden from entering the female dormitories.]
Fatty was focused on the third rule. "Patrolling invigilators... if caught by a patrolling invigilator outside the exam room, it’s treated as a violation..."
What kind of ’violation processing’ is that? Does it mean death?
He glanced at the time. It was 7:10 PM; there were still twenty minutes before they could start answering the questions.
Fatty couldn’t help but look again at the thing in the hazmat suit on the podium. Let’s just call it a ’thing’ for now, because it really doesn’t look human in any way. If they didn’t hand in their test papers to it before midnight, something horrifying would probably happen too.
This event seemed more bizarre and sinister than the previous Dragon Boat event. Not only Fatty thought so; the other players felt the same way.
The moment the invigilator entered the classroom, they were enveloped by a strange feeling. It’s odd. The players here have all been through many instances, and at least one event where death was real. Logically, they shouldn’t be this terrified.
But when these people saw the bizarre, contorted invigilator, an extremely terrifying sensation surged through them. Horror and despair welled up from within, suffocating them—it was the fear of confronting death head-on.
At this point, Fatty suddenly recalled what Chu Changge had said after they entered the school: "I’m afraid this event will exceed our expectations."
A bizarre thought suddenly popped into his mind: How many players will make it out of this event alive?
Just then, he saw a test paper materialize on his desk.
「...」
It was now 7:20 PM, still ten minutes before they could start answering. Everyone stared nervously at the test papers in front of them, no one daring to pick up a pen.
Gu Mian was also looking at the test paper in front of him. He’d forgotten to bring a pen. But that wasn’t a major problem.
Gu Mian examined the content on his paper. By now, the sky outside had turned completely dark. The classroom lights cast a hazy glow out through the windows, faintly illuminating the building opposite.
Gu Mian leaned by the window, looking at his test paper.
The test paper was very strange; it only had two questions.
One multiple-choice, one fill-in-the-blank. However, below these two questions was a large blank space, as if new questions would appear there later.
He first looked at the multiple-choice question above:
[The third floor of the school cafeteria is in the ( ) section.]
[A. East] [B. West]
Sure enough, these weren’t questions you’d find on a normal exam, and they seemed completely baffling. The format of the questions was similar to the ’Classroom Staff Exam’ instance they had experienced before... But were the two truly the same?
Setting that question aside for the moment, he then looked at the fill-in-the-blank question below.
[In the fish tank on the windowsill of Room 4244 in the girls’ dormitory, there are a total of 104 dead fish.]
This question was even more baffling; it was completely unclear where one was supposed to fill in a blank.
Seeing "girls’ dormitory," Gu Mian looked up again at the last exam rule on the blackboard:
[Males are forbidden from entering the female dormitories.]
He subconsciously glanced out the window. Next to their building was Female Dormitory Building 4. And he suddenly saw a face in a window of the building opposite.
A horrifying, completely rotten human face, held together by just two strands of sinew.
But the face vanished in an instant, as if what he had just seen was merely Gu Mian’s hallucination.
It was now just past 7:30 PM. The examinees in the classroom all took out the pens they had prepared beforehand. No one noticed the anomaly in the female dormitory building opposite.
Gu Mian heard another player’s voice from behind him: "Why isn’t it writing?" 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
He turned his head and saw the person with the pen trying to write on their test paper, but not a single mark appeared.
Gu Mian looked again in the direction where he had seen the face. "I’m afraid these are ’choices’ and ’fill-in-the-blanks’ in the truest sense."
These were choices and blanks that required them to use practical, hands-on experience to complete.
