Playing the Foolish Beauty in a Deadly Game - Chapter 59

The enforcement team captain probably didn’t expect Lin Qiao to bring up the matter voluntarily. He coughed and stepped forward, saying, “The Public Order Law stipulates that accessories like cat ears and dog ears are not allowed in public places. May I check them?”

Lin Qiao controlled the decoy to obediently take off the hat, revealing a pair of very realistic white cat ears.

The enforcement team captain’s expression became serious as he slowly reached out to touch them. Upon feeling a hard mechanism, his face relaxed, and with a twist of his wrist, he removed the cat ears.

Noticing the team captain’s gaze shift to the tail, the decoy controlled by Lin Qiao blushed and said, “That’s not convenient.”

The team captain didn’t insist but instead invited Lin Qiao to go to the Church.

Lin Qiao held the hand of his Doberman: “Can he accompany me?”

The team captain raised an eyebrow: “Yes.”

Yatagarasu didn’t quite understand why Lin Qiao was following the man with long dog ears. He grumbled, “I’m going too.”

This posed a bit of a dilemma. Only after consulting with his superiors did the captain agree.

The Doberman took out the calico cat and the white cat Lin Qiao from his pocket. He cradled the white cat and gazed at it tenderly: “Stay close to the black cat. I’ll take care of… Lin Qiao.”

The white cat Lin Qiao nodded, its tail tip trembling as it meowed softly.

The black cat circled around the Doberman’s feet until he put the white cat down. The black cat stayed close to the white cat Lin Qiao, watching the group disappear. Before getting into the car, Yatagarasu looked back at the white cat, finally leaving with a puzzled expression.

After everyone had left, Lin Qiao relaxed, the entire cat body sprawling into a cat pancake. He was both sleepy and hungry, meowing softly, and was licked several times by the black cat.

Now Nelson, the deceiver, was nowhere to be found. The evil spirits were still struggling in the ghostly flames of the campus, and the NPC support team had yet to arrive.

The color of the flames was not red and yellow, but green and blue. The dilapidated, mottled white walls stood under the clouds where the sun was about to rise. Those clouds, tinged with chaotic red, resembled the already dried bloodstains in the campus.

The black cat urged Lin Qiao to walk towards the broken wall outside the dormitory building, but Lin Qiao looked towards the teaching building.

The ghostly flames there were the most brilliant, with warm and cold colors colliding. It should have been very striking, but it was oddly harmonious because of the dense black.

Lin Qiao wanted to see the female teacher and students who had given him hints. He exchanged a protective shield for himself and the black cat for half an hour, then ran towards the teaching building.

Realizing what Lin Qiao wanted to do, the black cat bit Lin Qiao’s nape and carried him through the flames.

When they approached the classroom, they found that the female teacher and students had not left. They were sitting in the classroom having a lesson.

The female teacher took off her pink mask and smiled, saying, “Classmates, the last lesson has already been finished.”

“Do you still remember your target schools? Do you remember the class meeting when you first came to this class?”

The more than twenty students with black masks replied in unison, “We remember.”

The teacher’s clothes had already been ignited by the ghostly flames, yet she seemed to feel nothing: “Then let’s say it again, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

The first student stood up, took off her mask, and revealed a vibrant yet pale face. Lin Qiao remembered that she was the girl who had once sat in front of him.

The female student said loudly, “I want to go to college and find a good job. The major I chose for myself is directing. Hahaha, I want to pick handsome guys to act in the plays I direct.”

“Of course, if possible, I also want to find a handsome husband in life and have a beautiful daughter.”

“I won’t abandon her just because she’s a girl. I’ll use the money I make as a big director to buy her pretty dresses and let her enjoy everything I’ve never had.”

The girl laughed after speaking. She nudged her deskmate, who then took off her mask: “I want to be an obstetrician and gynecologist and plan to apply to medical school. If I encounter people who don’t want children, I’ll take them back and raise them as their mother.”

Other students also spoke up enthusiastically, with some wanting to be small supermarket owners, others wanting to open restaurants, and some wanting to be police officers. They talked lively, just like in previous years.

But Lin Qiao knew that their dreams would never come true. Their time was frozen here, and they had no bright future. They died at the age when they had the most aspirations, trapped in the place closest to the future. They stopped in front of their dreams and could not move forward.

The last male student stood up. He was the student who used to sleep next to Lin Qiao: “I want to be a teacher like you.”

“Thank you for always guiding us to do the right thing, no matter when.”

The ghostly flames burned the walls, and the desks and chairs had already turned to ashes. The boy who wanted to be a teacher was also burned through half his body: “You are a good teacher, the best teacher in this world.”

“Teacher, if there is a next life, I hope you can be our mother.”

The female teacher’s pink mask fell to the ground. She trembled with her hands and could no longer hold back her tears. If it weren’t for her, the students would be fine. The yellow-faced female ghost wanted to take revenge on her, and it was she who had involved her students.

The thing the female teacher could never let go of was this. She blamed herself and felt guilty: “I didn’t take good care of you. Out of more than forty students, only twenty-three are left. I don’t have the right to…”

The male student, however, joked: “Forty-eight kids are too many. Twenty-three is just right.”

“Teacher, are you going to agree or not? If you don’t agree soon, we won’t be able to wait any longer and will be burned up.”

The female teacher laughed through her tears. She walked towards the students and embraced her twenty-three children.

The female teacher noticed Lin Qiao. It seemed that she knew what Lin Qiao wanted to do, so she shook her head at Lin Qiao through the ghostly flames. There was no need to put out the fire; this big fire was just what they wanted.

Other evil spirits might not understand the female teacher and her students. They were already ghosts, so why think so much? Ghosts have no organization, no discipline; they just need to eat people, satisfy their desires, and fight among themselves.

But the female teacher didn’t want her students to become like that. Her profession and sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow her to watch her students turn into evil spirits, living forever in slaughter and becoming “animals” driven by instinct.

They were teachers and students, representing “education” and “the future” in this world.

The female teacher, who saw pets turning into humans, was so persistent because she wanted to find a future for her students.

Lin Qiao didn’t understand why the female teacher chose to die with her students on the eve of dawn, willing to disappear in the fire. However, Lin Qiao respected the female teacher’s choice. He and the black cat ran down the stairs and successfully ran out of the school gate when the protective props failed.

Outside, the rescue team had gathered, and the fire truck had arrived, but there was no intention of putting out the fire. A conversation among several humans fell into Lin Qiao’s ears: “After all these years of haunting, we can finally get rid of it completely. Burn it, burn it, and get rid of the evil spirits once and for all.”

“Don’t let the fire spread to the nearby buildings. Dig a firebreak and cut down the trees.”

“Aren’t there a few good ghosts inside? Are we just going to burn them all?”

“What good ghosts and bad ghosts? They’re all ghosts. Even good ghosts can turn into bad ones.”

“Humans and pets have already given up a lot of benefits. We can’t possibly cooperate with ghosts, can we? Who would want ghosts to be above humans? They willingly fall into depravity and are beyond redemption. Who in their right mind would help them?”

Lin Qiao stopped in his tracks. So, even though they could put out the fire, the support team chose to stand by and do nothing. They wanted the flames to purify everything and completely eliminate the haunted danger zone. Humans wouldn’t care what the ghosts inside thought, whether they became ghosts involuntarily or had their own reasons. They were unwilling to distinguish between good and bad ghosts. If possible, humans would want all ghosts to disappear.

The ghosts’ willing descent into depravity and the humans’ inability to integrate—this was probably why the female teacher chose to disappear with her students.

Lin Qiao didn’t know how to react for a moment. Neither the female teacher nor the humans were wrong. Different positions led to different thoughts on each side. Lin Qiao was just an outsider.

In a daze, Lin Qiao suddenly thought about why the ghosts in this scenario game all had colors, and the colors were the same as the opera masks. Perhaps for the game, this scenario world was like a stage where humans, pets, and evil spirits, along with players, all took the stage and performed wonderful plays. It was a place where the game could act without restraint, a worldview that the NPCs in the scenario world could not resist.

The creatures born in the scenario were adapting and living, being manipulated at will.

Lin Qiao was quite impacted. In the first scenario, most of his time was spent on the plane. It was like peeping through a tube, and although he could experience the worldview of the “Airplane Escape” scenario, the scope was small, the characters were more concentrated, and the conflicts were more obvious. So Lin Qiao didn’t experience too many stories in the scenario world. This time was different. The simple “Best Streamer Competition” involved three forces in the scenario world.

The only thing Lin Qiao felt was the authenticity, unparalleled authenticity.

The entire school turned to ashes under the burning of the ghostly flames. On the high-rise of the experimental building, there was a figure standing there.

Nelson looked down at the entire campus, his face expressionless.

The female ghost wearing a yellow mask clung to Nelson, extremely intimately combing his hair for him.

The ghost’s movements were bold. Her twisted head was about to fall off, yet she still couldn’t bear to let go of Nelson. She slid her pale hand into Nelson’s clothes through the neckline, and her crimson tongue slowly extended. Nelson, however, had no intention of stopping her.

Just as the ghost was about to make her next move, she was interrupted by a teasing voice from behind: “I didn’t expect that a Fraudster would stoop to selling their looks.”

The ghost turned her head sharply, only to see the Dao Zhang who should have died in the dormitory building.

Dao Zhang still had his unkempt beard. He flicked his duster and said, “You always like to complicate things. You have too many schemes. After all that effort, you end up with nothing. What’s the point?”

The ghost realized that Dao Zhang was mocking Nelson and thus made a threatening sound.

But in the next second, Nelson pressed his hand on the ghost’s head. The rising light caused the ghost to look shocked. Before she could react, she turned into dust.