Jiang Nuan finally finished bandaging the last wound and immediately pulled her hand back.
“That’s it.”
Bai Siyuan lowered his eyes to the bandage across his chest.
“Thank you, A Nuan.”
“Don’t move around, and don’t use your powers again.” Jiang Nuan put away the medicine bottles, deliberately adopting a colder tone.
“Mm.” He answered obediently, then asked, “Did I scare you just now?”
Jiang Nuan’s movements slowed.
Of course he had.
When her limbs had been controlled by his psychic power, leaving her unable even to struggle, her mind had gone blank for a moment.
In that instant, she realized that if Bai Siyuan wanted to, he truly could take away every choice she had.
But when she looked up, she saw what he looked like.
Bai Siyuan’s face was still pale. He lifted his long lashes and watched her cautiously, while the blood staining his chest remained painfully vivid beneath the moonlight.
Jiang Nuan pressed her lips together. In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to say, “Of course.”
“What do you think?” was all she said.
Bai Siyuan didn’t answer.
He only moved closer, as if afraid she might dodge him. First, he glanced up at her, then gently rested his head against her shoulder.
“Are you afraid of me,” he asked in a very low voice, “or are you afraid that you don’t hate me as much as you thought?”
“Bai Siyuan!” Jiang Nuan laughed despite herself, then raised a hand to push his head away. “I’m afraid you’ll die here!”
“Ungh—”
He let out a muffled groan.
Jiang Nuan’s hand froze at once.
“Did I touch your wound?” She had already leaned toward him, her voice suddenly tense. “Let me see. Did the bandage come loose—”
As soon as she drew close, she saw the faint curve of Bai Siyuan’s lips.
There wasn’t the slightest trace of pain in his eyes.
…He was faking it. The man was pretending to be frail.
She cursed him silently, but the hand pushing him away stopped all the same, allowing his head to remain on her shoulder.
Bai Siyuan’s voice was still weak. “A Nuan still worries about me.”
Jiang Nuan didn’t answer.
She turned her eyes away and decided to change the subject.
“So why is there anomalous energy here? And why did this place become a restricted zone?”
Bai Siyuan did not conceal the truth.
“Do you remember the first time you came here?”
Jiang Nuan nodded. Back then, she had walked all the way from the teaching building to the athletic field, running around excitedly as she took in a place that looked exactly like the university campus from her memories.
The only thing she had found regrettable was that there were no students in such a beautiful campus.
After she returned, Bai Siyuan had kept thinking about it.
Eventually, he came up with a solution.
He had released anomalous energy into the campus, then used his psychic ability to assign each fragment a set of behavioral rules: when classes began, when the lights went out, and who Jiang Nuan’s classmates were.
“For example, Ji Chuying, whom you’ve told me about so many times.” Bai Siyuan smiled at her. “I set her as your best friend.”
Jiang Nuan fell silent for a moment.
…Big brother.
The best friend you designed is a little too terrifying in practice.
Ji Chuying had smiled so widely that her face nearly split apart, all while clinging to Jiang Nuan as they climbed the stairs.
The anomalous energy itself could not leave.
The entire campus had been contained inside a high-grade spatial artifact and sealed within the eastern wing of the Bai family residence. The rules governing it had been written by Bai Siyuan.
It was just that his condition had been poor these past few days. His mutation level had grown too high, and he could no longer keep it under control.
Once his control loosened, the energy that had originally stayed in its assigned places was no longer content to remain there.
It began to converge and devour itself, eventually merging into a single restricted zone.
And so, the students and school regulations that were supposed to follow their scripts all went horribly wrong.
Classes became roll calls to determine who would die. Dorm inspections became corpse examinations conducted bed by bed. Enrollment records changed from tickets granting entry into death notices.
Jiang Nuan leaned against the wall and remained silent for a long while.
So the origin of this restricted zone… had actually come from a wish she’d made casually.
Wait…
“Controlling anomalous energy—isn’t that what the people from the Apocalypse Society do?”
“Yeah.” Bai Siyuan nodded. “Some of the Apocalypse Society’s research directions aren’t entirely bad.”
…He admitted that far too calmly.
Jiang Nuan thought seriously for several seconds.
She was an official member of Unit Zero, while Bai Siyuan was the head of the Bai family, which maintained cooperative ties with the Apocalypse Society.
Strictly speaking, she should restrain him now and take him back for questioning. After all, although the Apocalypse Society had been chiefly responsible for the previous restricted zone, he was hardly uninvolved.
She lowered her eyes to the man leaning against her shoulder, who had just taken the opportunity to snuggle a little closer.
She would wait until he was feeling better.
…If Shen Wu ever read his thoughts, he could make sarcastic remarks about it for half a year.
She could almost hear his voice:
“Oh, so Miss Jiang’s idea of ‘restraining’ a suspect is letting him sleep on her shoulder.”
The clock on the table showed that it was eleven.
Jiang Nuan’s heart tightened. She had to find Qi Sui and Qinian.
She still didn’t know whether the danger on Qinian’s side had been resolved, and Qi Sui had entered the men’s dormitory building, after which there had been no word from her.
There was also the enrollment inspection at midnight.
She couldn’t stay here any longer.
Jiang Nuan gently pushed the head from her shoulder away and stood up.
“Wait here.”
“I’m going to find Qinian and Qi Sui. I’ll come back for you afterward. We’ll try to leave this restricted zone before midnight.”
The trace of gentleness on Bai Siyuan’s face slowly sank away. He reached out and gripped her wrist, which hung at her side.
“A Nuan, why do you have to go find them?”
Jiang Nuan frowned.
“They’re my teammates.”
“Just teammates.” The strength of his grip increased slightly. “Wouldn’t it be better to let them die here?”
Jiang Nuan’s heart gave a jolt, and she looked down at him.
The man who had pretended to be in pain moments ago to make her soften toward him now had nothing but a bone-chilling coldness in his eyes.
“Big brother.” Jiang Nuan’s voice gradually turned cold. “This is a Class A restricted zone. Even if I don’t go looking for them, it’s not very likely that they’ll die here.”
Bai Siyuan lowered his head and glanced at another patch of bloodstains on his clothes, which had long since dried.
The red had dried, but its edges had spread in a strange pattern.
It wasn’t the seepage from the inside out caused by the backlash of his earring just now. It had splashed onto him.
The corners of his lips lifted slightly.
“That may not be true.”
*
One hour earlier.
The men’s dormitory.
Qinian watched as he walked toward this dorm room, climbed onto the bed, and sprawled out with all four limbs extended, the blanket pulled up to his chin.
At present, the only part of his body still obeying his commands was his eyes.
He stared into the darkness before him.
There were three other “roommates” in this room. At that moment, they too were lying stiffly on their respective beds.
He never would have imagined that Qinian would one day be forced to experience life in a university from the Old Era inside a Class A restricted zone.
But what he couldn’t understand was this: the lights-out time was ten o’clock.
Qinian clicked his tongue inwardly.
He didn’t understand how universities in the Old Era had operated, but he had a strong intuition that the principal of this school had probably never attended university himself.
He had once read an Old Era journal, and it had stated very clearly that university students had only just begun their nightlife at this hour.
Yet here, they turned off the lights at ten and pretended to be dead with their eyes closed.
This wasn’t a university. It was a preview of a morgue.
At the thought of the words “morgue,” the trace of casual indifference in Qinian’s heart suddenly faded.
In the darkness, the several “roommates” across from him lay rigidly straight, their blankets pulled up to their chins, utterly motionless.
Then he heard a sound.
Footsteps were approaching from the end of the corridor.
Qinian remembered what those “roommates” had said when he first entered the dormitory: The dorm supervisor is coming to check the rooms. Hurry up and get into bed.
The door opened.
The person stood in the doorway, their entire face swallowed by darkness, their features impossible to make out.
Qinian struggled to move his eyes in that direction.
Strange.
That figure seemed somehow familiar.
And then Qinian focused on the person’s right hand hanging at their side.
The dorm supervisor.
Was it really necessary to carry a knife?
