The class teacher glanced at him, then smiled and said, "She's resting, and for the next while, I'll be taking over as the head teacher. You don't need to worry about her, I've looked over your schedule, this is your third day... strictly speaking, it's the second day, right?"

"So, unless something unexpected happens, I'll be the head teacher for the next while."

She pointed to her chest badge, "You can call me 'Head Teacher 040'."

"Alright, Teacher."

...

Lin Yi then found a spot with Wei Liang that was far from the windows near the corridor and sat down near the back desks and the area with bookshelves.

After sitting down, Lin Yi compared the time on his watch with the clock above the blackboard.

8:26.

In fact, they had entered the classroom at 8:20, but there had been some delays after that.

After sitting down, Wei Liang glanced at Head Teacher 040 and couldn't help saying, "Old Lin, this new Teacher Lin seems pretty nice, though she doesn't have the pure desire of a royal sister like our old class teacher did yesterday, this girl-next-door vibe really gets my little heart thumping!"

"..." Lin Yi was speechless for a moment, "Aren't you the white silk lolita type?"

"Don't be silly! Being into white silk loli is one thing, but actually going for them is illegal!" Wei Liang said disdainfully, "XP is fine kept inside, but for everyday life, it's all about the girl-next-door in black socks, especially if she has the teacher attribute."

"I suspect that's another one of your XPs." Lin Yi said, "Also, how do you know her last name is Lin?"

Wei Liang rolled his eyes, "Didn't you hear her say her name was 'Lin Shiling'? Also, don't talk nonsense, as far as XP goes, the White Silk Lolita Cult is my one and only true god!"

"Please! It's 040, not Lin Shiling!" Lin Yi facepalmed, "That's the number on her badge, bro!"

"Eh...? Okay..." Wei Liang was momentarily stunned, then shamelessly declared, "I don't care, from now on when I say Teacher Lin, you know I mean her! In my heart, she's Lin Shiling now!"

"Enough, I'm off to get some little notebooks!" Wei Liang said, and then got up from his seat and walked towards the H-comic section on the bookshelf.

"Liangzi, what happened to you being pure-hearted?" Lin Yi couldn't help but remind him.

"Pure-hearted my ass. The real deal is what you can eat, I'm going to find some spiritual nourishment in the books first. Want me to scrounge some up for you?"

"No, thanks." Lin Yi refused, and then started looking around the entire classroom from the back row.

Lin Yi looked slowly, his gaze passing over each person in the classroom. Since the experience students were sitting sparsely, and the rows of seats in the classroom were somewhat curved, Lin Yi could take in the expressions of most of them.

To his surprise, there were only 23 students in the tiered classroom now, and not one of them was a non-human unit or a sports student, all were experience students.

"Huh...? The number of people seems a bit off!"

Lin Yi was slightly startled, then shook his head as if to dismiss the thought.

He began to quickly do the math.

"Counting both me and Liangzi, there were a total of 96 individuals, oh no, 96 units in the classroom when we left last night... Now there are only 23 people in the classroom?"

Lin Yi narrowed his eyes in thought, and as he pondered, he recalled the faces of those from the night before in his mind to match them with the people currently in the classroom:

"96 units... minus me and Liangzi makes it 94 people, among them 18 sports students..."

"38 severe polluters, including 'non-human units' 22 and 'peculiar art students' 16..."

"38 experience students, including 13 who came before me and 25 who were new yesterday..."

"The sports students also left yesterday, they moved out in a group, it's normal for not a single one of them to be back in the classroom now."

"The severe Polluters probably left at 4:30 and won't return to the classroom until the evening when the sun starts to set, so it's quite normal that they're not here..."

"As for the Experience Students... those 13 early arrivers left after 8 PM, and now 10 have already returned here..."

"Of the 25 newcomers, it seems like some followed us back to the dorms, but a few turned back halfway to the classroom. I can't speculate on their situation, but currently, there are only 13 people in the classroom. The whereabouts of the remaining 11 are still unknown..."

"Emmm... Have they not arrived at the classroom yet? Or did they... fall victim?"

However, subtracting and adding up, the final count appears to be around 20 people. If the remaining Experience Students are included, the number will increase, but since there are only 38 Experience Students in total, this count still seems normal.

Of course, that's provided all the Experience Students survive...

Throughout this simple thought process, Lin Yi remained cautious of that dark tide-like breath in his mind, ready to surge at any moment. But it seemed that his precise awareness kept the strange phenomenon, which usually accompanied his reflections, from descending upon him.

He then looked at the mere 23 Experience Students in the classroom.

Among these 23 Experience Students, 10 were returning students with expressionless faces. The other 13 were freshmen who had just arrived yesterday.

On the faces of these new students, the playful and lively demeanor from yesterday was hard to find. A small number still wore a look of unsettled terror, while the rest seemed utterly despondent. They slouched in their chairs, some with their necks crooked staring at the clock on the blackboard, others gazing out at the Green Forest Belt, their expressions lost somewhere between distraction and stupefaction.

Lin Yi suddenly realized what those wooden expressions on the returning students meant—it seemed some of the freshmen were already walking the same path as the older ones...

Suddenly, Lin Yi's eyes lit up.

"What's that...?"

He saw on the floor, not too far away, a place where the plaster-like traces hadn't completely faded, a digital camera lying on the ground.

He remembered the camera was previously in the hands of a somewhat fashionably dressed young man. But now, the camera was here and its owner had disappeared.

Near the camera, a large plaster-like smear was visible. Seeing that smudge, Lin Yi instantly envisioned a scene in his mind...

In the darkened classroom, the owner of the digital camera hadn't scrambled under a desk before the lights went out. Instead, he took the camera and filmed around him, and then he was killed by a non-human classmate.

After his murder, blood spilled all over the floor, eventually turning into that large plaster-like smear over there.

"In other words, the digital camera might contain footage about what happened in the classroom after the lights went out?"

With that thought, he quickly stood up and walked towards the digital camera.

Perhaps all the experience students in the classroom had become numb, so even if they noticed the camera, they didn't pay much attention to it, and certainly didn't think to pick it up and hand it to the teacher.

It wasn't until Lin Yi reached the camera and was about to bend down to pick it up that a cry of horror came from beside him: "No... don't touch it!"

Lin Yi looked toward the voice and immediately saw a gaunt girl curled up in her chair, looking at him with terrified eyes. Her head shook uncontrollably as she kept mumbling, "That digital camera is ominous, it caused Pan Jian's death..."

"If it weren't for it, Pan Jian wouldn't have been attacked... wouldn't have died..."

"I heard Pan Jian's screams... It was so terrifying... so frightening..."

"I... I saw Pan Jian fall in front of me... His face was towards me... He died so miserably... so miserably..."

"No, no, no... Don't pick it up! You must not pick it up!! It will kill you!"

"Kill me?" Lin Yi glanced at her and let out a sigh in his heart, "That's just a blind belief about the truth from your perspective."

But he had no time to say more, as such matters could not be clarified with words. Speaking too much might instead break the girl's perception of reality.

So, under the intense and fearful gaze of the girl, he silently picked up the digital camera.

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