Hell High School (6): He is a player

Because the quilt got wet from the sudden downpour, Tan Xiao and Wen Yi naturally squeezed onto the same bed tonight during their rest time.

After confirming their relationship, the two of them didn’t engage in any more intimate actions at this time. On the contrary, the atmosphere between them seemed even more innocent than before.

Tan Xiao lay flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Due to his overly tense emotions, he felt very stiff all over.

However, he was the first to break the silence: “School starts tomorrow, we have to get up early. I’ll turn off the light first.”

Wen Yi responded softly, “Mm.”

With the click of the switch, the room’s light dimmed instantly.

Tan Xiao still felt a bit unreal: “Wen Yi, are we really dating?”

He always felt like everything that happened today was like a dream. When his vision became blurry, he couldn’t help but overthink and really needed to confirm everything again.

Wen Yi’s voice rose by eight points: “No turning back.”

He obviously thought Tan Xiao was having regrets.

“No turning back, I definitely won’t regret it!”

Where do you see couples breaking up right after they start dating? Even if Wen Yi wanted to backtrack, Tan Xiao wouldn’t agree. After saying this loudly, the dormitory fell silent again. He quietly reached out his hand; since they were close enough, he could sense that Wen Yi’s hands were obediently resting by his side, probably touching his thigh.

Tan Xiao realized this and, the thigh that was touching his, tensed up unconsciously. He took a deep breath and then gently held Wen Yi’s right hand.

Wen Yi immediately turned around and tightly clasped Tan Xiao’s hand, their fingers interlocked, creating a highly ambiguous atmosphere. In the darkness, the two remained silent, quiet enough to hear each other’s breathing and heartbeat, feeling the warmth from Tan Xiao’s fingertips. Wen Yi’s face turned as red as a ripe tomato.

Of course, Tan Xiao wasn’t any better off; his handsome face was equally flushed and hot. Perhaps because the darkness amplified emotions, when their hands were intertwined, his heart raced particularly fast, and it took a long time for him to calm down.

The corners of his lips were lifted high, and his voice was very gentle: “Good night, Wen Yi, sweet dreams.”

“Good night, Tan Xiao.” The voice was still somewhat hoarse, but the tone was almost as gentle as Wen Yi could manage.

Perhaps because of Wen Yi’s sincere blessing, that night, although it took Tan Xiao nearly half an hour to fall asleep, he slept soundly and dreamlessly.

And on the day when the time reached midnight, players successively appeared in the instances of various games.

After finishing the game, players could analyze a lot of content through discussions on the forum.

There were many types of game instances, but generally speaking, they were mainly divided into supernatural and non-supernatural instances.

A supernatural game involved ghosts, requiring unconventional methods to solve problems. Games without supernatural elements usually involved natural disaster survival or physical means to deal with monsters, like vampire or zombie crises. Overall, beginner-level simple games were not too difficult to complete.

This was Xia Yizhen’s second time entering a game instance22. Her first beginner instance was the Harvest Farm. The beginner instance was simple level, with the task of working on the farm for seven days, and the game ended after seven days.

Every player entering the farm was a temporary worker. Everyone used their own bodies, with tasks like feeding poultry and livestock, and harvesting crops.

Because it was a simple level, as long as you worked diligently, strictly adhere to the farm rules, and didn’t have too much bad luck, you could pass smoothly.

The animals and crops in the game were several times larger than those in real life and looked quite similar. Although the animals had a bit of a temper, they didn’t eat people.

Only if you steal farm products, slack off… violating the farm management rules that were torn off by others, would you be fired, and the game would end immediately. In severe cases, you might even be executed on the spot by the manager and turned into feed for the crops.

For Xia Yizhen, who had been working in the countryside since childhood, she was strong, had rich experience in farming and animal husbandry, and even drew the “Strength of an Ox” talent when she started the game. The farm instance was really not difficult for her.

After finishing the instance, she received a B-grade novice evaluation for her outstanding performance and also obtained a lot of farm produce.

In a large-scale instance like “Plague Infection,” the basic rewards were mineral water and bread.

Xia Yizhen obtained a large amount of milk, eggs, wool, flour, and fresh fruits from the farm instance.

Also because of the abundant resources in the game, she didn’t hesitate and firmly chose not to give up her player identity, continuing to participate in the game. Only by obtaining more resources could she become stronger. After all, the god game still had an opportunity to exit, but the props needed to exit the game were extremely expensive, possibly requiring participation in hundreds of instances.

After spending seven days of feasting in reality, Xia Yizhen was once again pulled into the game world by the system.

However, Xia Yizhen’s good luck in the beginner’s instance seemed to have run out; this time, she entered a game instance that was clearly of higher difficulty, a supernatural-themed one.

[instance Name: Hell High School]

[instance Introduction: Yuying High School is an excellent high school with a high level of faculty. Until one day, Yuying High School disappeared in a sea of flames. After returning from hell, it re-entered the human world. Every student in the hellish high school is a demon tormented by intense flames.]

[instance Difficulty: Normal Level (Players who perform exceptionally should participate in higher difficulty instances, of course, you will also receive more abundant rewards.)]

[Main Mission: Survive for ten days in the instance (Try your best to survive in the school, a friendly reminder, never let them discover that you are human.)]

[Failure Penalty: None]

There were no novice players participating in this instance, so naturally, there was no novice protection. If the mission failed, there was no need for additional punishment; after all, if you die in the game this time, you will die in real life as well.

Seeing the content of the instance, Xia Yizhen’s face turned as white as a ghost. Her talent was being as strong as an ox, but being strong as an ox was of no use against ghosts.

Even the other players who had participated in supernatural instances as novices had unsightly expressions.

In many supernatural-themed games, there were only one or two ghosts, but the Hell High School game was actually a normal-level supernatural game, which meant that conventional violent methods to clear the game were useless.

All the students were ghosts, thousands or even tens of thousands in a high school. Surviving for ten days in an environment full of vengeful spirits, no wonder the system had low requirements for them; just staying alive was enough. For players, these ten days felt as long as ten years.

This was not a normal level; it should be a hell-level difficulty game, just like the title of the game suggests.

The game still kindly gave players one night as a buffer time.

At six o’clock the next morning, the school bell rang on time. Since it was the beginning of a new semester, there was no scene of parents sending their children to school. The students had already entered the school from the dormitory buildings or the main gate.

“Hell High School” was just a high school, and the number of participants in the instance was not the same as in a mega city like City S.

In the instance, the three hundred players were evenly distributed across the 60 classes of the three grades in the high school department. After all, having five or six extra people in a class is quite normal, but suddenly having fifty or sixty more would make the classroom very crowded.

When Xia Yizhen woke up, she was wearing a school uniform. In the four-person girls’ dormitory, the other three people were not breathing. Clearly, she was the only living person in the dormitory.

She was quite brave, not afraid of bugs or mice, but she was scared of ghosts, so she stayed up all night with her eyes wide open.

Fortunately, although her dormmates didn’t breathe, they didn’t come out and expose her outsider status.

The system had clearly blurred the NPCs’ perception, allowing them to accept the players’ presence.

Without needing to ask, Xia Yizhen followed her dormmates into the classroom, easily finding her kind among the crowd.

Although they were all wearing high school uniforms, each player used their own appearance in the game, sporting a face that bore the marks of a weary society.

The God Game provided protection for minors, with the age set at 16 according to global standards. Therefore, players entering the game would not be children, but the game loved the young and did not respect the old, allowing eighty-year-old grandpas to enter the game as well.

However, for elderly grandpas who were shaky or disabled people with mobility issues or even blindness, the game ensured that they had the most basic mobility and vision after entering, although their attributes would be slightly lower than those of healthy ordinary people.

Walking from the dormitory building to the dorm room, one could clearly see people in the crowd wearing school uniforms, some of whom were elderly men leaning on canes. This sight really reminded Xia Yi of her grandmother in the countryside.

After the fog descended, most public transportation was affected, and many base stations were destroyed, leading to regional disconnection. However, in the countryside, there was food and drink, so her grandmother shouldn’t end up like her, almost starving to death.

Being able to achieve a B-grade or higher in the last mission, the old woman might be even more capable than her.

Unlike Xia Yizhen and the other players who were trying to form a group, Tan Xiao and Wen Yi left very early. By the time the other players were up, he had already washed up and left with Wen Yi to go to the school cafeteria for breakfast.

“I want to eat mixed noodles today.”

Yuying High School had subsidies, so a serving of mixed noodles in the cafeteria cost only 1.5 spirit coins. If you wanted a fried egg, it cost an extra 0.5 spirit coins.

They established their relationship, but now they didn’t dare to hold hands openly like before. After all, they agreed not to let the teachers find out, so they have to keep a bit of distance in front of others to avoid suspicion.

But it didn’t make sense that they could hold hands before, and now that they were in love, they couldn’t. So they simply wake up a bit earlier, taking advantage of the fact that there were only two or three students in the school, to secretly hold hands.

They didn’t go to the classroom because they could still feed each other during breakfast in a lovey-dovey manner.

Wen Yi wanted something like what Tan Xiao had, but he only liked eating egg whites, not the yolks.

After he finished eating the edges of the fried egg, Tan Xiao naturally picked up the yolk and swallowed it in one bite.

Compared to the fried egg, Tan Xiao preferred peanuts, the crispy and fragrant kind that perfectly complemented the mixed noodles. So when he ordered, he specifically told the vendor, “Uncle, please add more peanuts for me.”

The vendor gave him another scoop, as they had come too early and needed to reserve enough for other students.

Tan Xiao alternated between bites of noodles and peanuts, praising, “Mixed noodles without peanuts have no soul.”

However, halfway through the noodles, the peanuts were gone.

Seeing this, Wen Yi picked up his chopsticks and took all the peanuts from his bowl, placing them one by one into Tan Xiao’s bowl: “I don’t like peanuts, you eat them.”

Tan Xiao made a heart shape with his fingers: “Love you.”

Although it was just a free side dish that came with the noodles, not something valuable, Tan Xiao felt that the peanuts Wen Yi gave him tasted especially good.

His dear wife was so good to him! He should also be good to Wen Yi.

After finishing the noodles, Tan Xiao went to the window and got two big cups of hot soy milk, one for himself and one for Wen Yi: on such a chilly day, one should drink something warm.

They were almost the first to arrive at the classroom, with only a few students in the class, all of whom were class leaders: the class monitor, the deputy monitor, and the study committee member.

The school’s morning self-study session is free reading time; you can recite any subject you want.

There was no fixed teacher for the morning self-study session, but the homeroom teacher would randomly appear at the podium, behind the classroom, by the desks, or by the windows.

If a student who was chatting, playing on their phone, or doing small tricks suddenly turned their head, they might just come face to face with the homeroom teacher’s somewhat distorted and fierce face sticking to the window.

Even if they hadn’t done anything wrong, suddenly facing such a face could scare half their life out of them. After all, fearing the homeroom teacher was basically an instinct ingrained in students’ bones.

But today, on the first day of school, Tan Xiao wasn’t startled by the sudden appearance of the homeroom teacher at the classroom door; instead, he was taken aback by the few extra people in the class.

There were suddenly five more people in their class—three boys and two girls. One of the girls was okay; although she looked a bit haggard and had heavy dark circles under her eyes, it was normal for a senior year student.

Most senior year students, as soon as school starts, exude a faint aura of despair.

But another girl looked just like the cafeteria lady, not just old, but really old. And the three boys—one was a rebellious troublemaker, one was a construction worker, and one was even an old man with a face full of wrinkles!

If they weren’t wearing the same school uniform, Tan Xiao would have guessed they were teachers attending an open class.

Tan Xiao secretly wrote a note to Wen Yi: “Wen Yi, Wen Yi, have you noticed that there are a few more people in our class? They are so strange, and there’s even an old man with a face full of wrinkles!”

He was so old, you couldn’t use the excuse of looking old to convince him anymore!

Wen Yi’s expression changed: For ordinary NPCs, everyone knew that players were added to the script, but they would ignore the players because once the script started, ordinary NPCs would lose their memories and during the day, they would think of themselves as normal high school students.

Of course, at night, they would regain their memories as ghosts.

However, as time goes by, players will become unavoidable.

Tan Xiao’s ability to notice the player’s unusual appearance on the first day only indicated one thing: he, like those outsiders who were killed and toyed with, was also a human player.