Shi You was a hardworking seventh-year student at Yinhuai High School.
Yep, that's right. Twenty-one-year-old Shi You had already repeated a year four times.
But as an older repeat student, Shi You wasn't worried. His school was weird to begin with, and every so often a batch of even more bizarre students would transfer in.
Like the girl in the front row who was obviously pregnant, the silver-haired old man sitting in the corner, and the bald middle-aged man up front who'd been called on by the teacher and was shaking like a leaf.
His desk was shaking along with the man. Unable to take it anymore, Shi You poked him. "Could you stop shaking?" It was making it hard for him to take notes.
But after Shi You spoke, the man started shaking even harder.
Shi You: "..."
The teacher for this class looked a little scary, with a big mouth and a habit of spitting when he talked, but he took his lessons seriously. That was no reason to be this terrified.
To keep the man from holding up the lesson, Shi You wiped the spit off his notebook with a disgruntled look and cut off the teacher, who was getting closer and closer to the man. "Teacher, why don't you get back to the lesson?"
As soon as he spoke, everyone held their breath.
Then the new "transfer students" saw the "teacher," whose mouth split sideways to his ears, with living flesh writhing inside and black, sticky fluid dripping from it, actually stop.
Its mouthparts slowly contracted. The "teacher" grinned even wider. "Ah, right. Class..."
After class, the transfer students crowded around Shi You like he was their last hope.
But Shi You didn't like making friends, because those people always ended up unable to stand the school's rules and transferred away before long.
Unfortunately, the transfer students were always getting startled over nothing, so as a "veteran" of the school, Shi You had no choice but to help out now and then.
For instance, he'd help persuade the long-haired "senior sister" who knocked on doors at night to leave.
"Senior, this is the boys' dorm. You can't come in, and your hair is too long. It breaks the school rules."
Or help his timid roommate get rid of a spider with human legs.
"It's normal for spiders at school to be a little bigger."
Inside the confidential office of the Huaxia Branch of the Global Anomaly Zone Cleanup Bureau, an investigator tracked the mission.
Anomaly Zone Instance: Yinhuai High School
Rank: S+++ (highest-ranked known anomaly zone: 1)
Fatality rate: 98.8% (highest-ranked known anomaly zone: 1)
Initial information: All living creatures active on campus are mutated entities.
Additional information: According to survivors trapped in the instance, they made it through safely by following an NPC student named "Shi You."
Additional information: This NPC shows no signs of mutation and can "restrain" mutated entities in the instance to a certain extent. He can move freely around campus, has no conscious intent to attack, and has no record of harming anyone.
Additional information: The cleanup team intervened. This NPC triggered a rampage, leaving eight members of the cleanup team seriously injured and forcibly evacuated.
Cheng Che, the cleanup team leader who had triggered the rampage, raised an eyebrow during questioning and recalled:
"Well... all I did was say..."
"'Kid, if you keep taking notes like that, you'll never get into college.'"
Theme: Love and peace