The Whole School Draws Lots, and I Solve Problems in the Dungeons

At eight on Wednesday evening, eight names appeared simultaneously on every screen at Mingchuan University. Ten minutes later, the students and faculty who had been selected entered an old library that had been demolished eight years ago. 【Return the ninth key before midnight.】 The key box had only eight slots, but there were nine sign-out slips. While everyone else was busy searching for keys, Chen Jianwei, who worked at the lost-and-found, asked first: “Are you counting the same set of things?” After they cleared the challenge, classes resumed as usual, and the next drawing went ahead as usual too. Chen Jianwei and several companions who had been strangers before traced each question through receipts, recordings, and old files: What exactly did the System announcement say, and what explanations had other people added to it? And there was another question about the public list of selected names that nobody had answered: Who decided which people would appear on it?