In the school cafeteria, a large number of students were already lined up for food, and the players couldn’t hold back any longer, rushing to the various windows with their trays.
However, when they saw the food at the windows, their expressions changed dramatically.
Meat. All meat.
It was all raw meat, bloody and messy meat sauce accompanied by a few slices of lettuce.
Some of the meat was even poorly cleaned, with dirty organs still hanging from it.
One player couldn’t help but vomit in the cafeteria.
Recalling the girl who had committed suicide by jumping off the building the previous night and now seeing this meat made it hard not to connect the two.
All the corpses had disappeared.
Was it possible that these corpses had already been moved to the cafeteria?
Looking at the reactions of the students around them, their faces showed no emotion, as if they were all dead.
They were completely devoid of the emotional expressions one would expect from an NPC like He Lecheng.
Xiao Huai quietly arrived at the farthest corner of the window with his tray.
The corner window only served soup. At least the soup looked clean, a regular bone broth without any foul smell.
Some players noticed and immediately followed suit.
The cafeteria lady was simmering the soup with a large bone. The players stared at the bone and collectively sighed in relief.
Human bones couldn’t be that large, so at least it wasn’t human soup.
Everyone thought that after Xiao Huai got his soup, he wouldn’t go for anything else. However, after getting the soup, he immediately went to another window and ordered a large portion of raw meat.
“?”
They looked at the bloody raw meat in Xiao Huai’s bowl, nearly choking back their urge to vomit again.
Xiao Huai noticed their stares and turned to look at them. “What’s wrong?”
Hu Jiang, being one of the group and a roommate of Xiao Huai, felt slightly more familiar and gathered his courage to ask, “Xiao… Xiao Ge… Don’t you think this meat is suspicious? I thought you were just going to have soup.”
Xiao Huai picked up a piece of raw meat with his chopsticks and calmly swallowed it, replying, “How can I get full just from soup? Plus, this meat is quite good.” He tilted his head, a smear of fresh blood from the raw meat on his lower lip, revealing a meaningful smile.
It was quite bizarre.
Scaring the newbies away, they turned their heads, unable to look at him any longer.
Although Hu Jiang was also frightened, he reasoned that since Xiao Huai was eating it, perhaps it wasn’t that bad.
As he said, they couldn’t go hungry just because the cafeteria served raw meat. Dying of starvation was far worse.
He followed Xiao Huai’s lead, filling his own bowl with the same raw meat, and sat down next to him. “Xiao Ge, can I sit next to you?”
Xiao Huai took a sip of his soup and shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
“Xiao Ge, can I ask you a question?” Hu Jiang asked hesitantly.
Xiao Huai merely gave him a look, signaling him to continue.
Hu Jiang asked, “How are you so sure the soup is fine?”
He was referring to how Xiao Huai went to get the soup first.
Xiao Huai smiled. “I just habitually get soup first; it’s the only place in the cafeteria that serves it. Besides, as for your concern, I don’t care. Humans eating humans isn’t something that only exists in fantasy. Even if you return to reality, how can you be sure it isn’t a world where people eat each other?”
As he spoke, he bit into another piece of meat.
Hu Jiang was left stunned; Xiao Huai was on a completely different level of sarcasm.
Xiao Huai looked at Hu Jiang, who was in a daze. “By the way, you’re eating pork. All the meat here is pork. It’s just of poor quality.”
Hu Jiang snapped back to reality, and his expression visibly improved.
They had been too tense, linking every piece of meat to something sinister.
Not being able to distinguish between human and pork meat was indeed a sign of losing their sanity.
As soon as Hu Jiang took a bite of the meat, Xiao Huai casually continued, “However, roasted human flesh tastes the same as pork. Want to give it a try?”
“Pff!” Hu Jiang nearly choked, a piece of meat getting lodged in his throat. He started coughing violently, pounding his chest and turning red in the face.
Xiao Huai’s smile grew wider at the sight, and he poured some soup into Hu Jiang’s mouth. Without waiting for Hu Jiang to regain his composure, he stood up to leave.
He had finished all the food on his tray.
Just a few meters from leaving, Hu Jiang called out to him, “Xiao Ge! Have you… have you really… killed… people?”
He finally asked the question he had been wanting to pose. Although he didn’t finish the question, with Xiao Huai’s sharpness, how could he not understand what he was implying?
Xiao Huai slowly turned around, this time without the teasing smile on his face. His expression was cold and devoid of emotion.
“I forgot.”
Even if Xiao Huai had killed someone, so what? How many of the chosen ones were without sin?
Murderers were never in short supply in horror games.
The gods passing their death sentences on them brought no pressure or burden at all.
Because they were all, in essence, social cancers.
---
In the afternoon study session, everyone dared not relax, as there was a test in the evening. If they didn’t cram during the afternoon, it would be hard to do well on the exam.
He Lecheng had left the after-class assignment on the blackboard: “Complete pages one to ten of the practice book.”
He warned Xiao Huai that he needed to double his homework, which meant twenty pages.
“What kind of assignment is this…? These questions are strange; why are they all essay questions?”
Not only the newbie players noticed this, but even the seasoned players in disguise were puzzled.
Ning Gaoqiang lamented, “Isn’t that good? At least you can just make up an essay, which is better than solving math problems.”
“Ha.” Xiao Huai suddenly chuckled coldly, causing Ning Gaoqiang to feel quite dissatisfied. “What are you laughing at?”
Xiao Huai didn’t look up at him. “Do you think writing is easy? The baldness rate of writers who keep writing is similar to that of mathematicians; creating is inherently a mentally exhausting task.”
He took out a pen and drew a line across the required word count for the essay.
Each essay had to be no less than two hundred words.
The word count requirement was off; elementary school essays required four hundred words, middle school six hundred, and most high school essays were eight hundred. Here, an essay only required two hundred words.
So for Xiao Huai, completing twenty essays in an afternoon wasn’t impossible.
The meaning behind the word count was key.
He didn’t slack off like before during the test; he immediately began writing his essays.
Everyone was racing against the clock. Ning Gaoqiang didn’t bother to listen to Xiao Huai’s odd remarks. The assignments were easy to handle; the evening exam was the real challenge.
The afternoon study session quickly came to an end. Many players, unable to bear the cafeteria food, planned to skip dinner, silently hoping for a menu change the next day.
Dinner lasted for an hour, with the afternoon classes ending at five-thirty and evening self-study starting at six-thirty.
Hu Jiang found Xiao Huai in the cafeteria. Just as he was about to sit next to him, he noticed someone else had already taken that seat.
Comments