Global Collapse

Chapter 9 Big Data Technology Launch
"Dr. Gu!"

Seeing the fat man crying his eyes out, Gu Mian ran over, wanting to deliver the final blow.

Fortunately, he was prepared and dodged it in a flash.

In the dimly lit dormitory, Chu Changge stared at the motionless human figure at the door: "What you just did..."

Gu Mian put down the chair she was holding: "I just saw it lying on the door, its back facing me, and I felt a tickle in my heart, and then..."

The fat man's crying abruptly stopped: "You felt an itch in your heart, and then this happened?"

Gu Mian nodded; that was roughly the process.

Seeing Gu Mian nod, the fat man rubbed his hands excitedly: "These ghosts are afraid of physical attacks?"

"You'd better not try," Chu Changge shook his head. "They might just be afraid of Gu Mian's physical attacks."

The fat man was completely confused and didn't quite understand.

Gu Mian didn't intend to dwell on this. He looked at the two of them and asked, "Why didn't you wait for me before coming up here?"

The fourth floor was very quiet.

He clearly saw the students enter the dormitory building, but when he came back at night, it was empty, and he didn't know where they had gone.

“We ran into a bit of an accident, I’ll explain later, let’s look at the clues first,” Chu Changge said as he took out something: “This is something we just found, but we hadn’t had a chance to look at it before the ghost blocked our way.”

Gu Mian looked down and saw a yellowed notebook, seemingly soaked in water, with several large characters printed on it—

Class Log

"Homeroom teacher - Kosaka"

He took it and turned to the first page.

The date field was flooded and the original text was no longer visible, but fortunately the main content was not missing.

"I've noticed that everyone seems to frequently call Li Quanmei to the warehouse and secretly bully her. I definitely need to have a proper talk with everyone about this sometime."

The first page contains only this one line of text.

Just as Gu Mian was about to turn to the second page, his panel suddenly popped up.

[Side quest activated. You must survive in this instance for another five hours starting now. You cannot leave the instance until the side quest is completed.]

[Side Quest Reward: 1 Lottery Draw Attempt]

"What the hell!" Gu Mian paused slightly.

I've only ever heard of not being able to leave a dungeon without completing the main quest; I've never heard of not being able to leave without completing the side quest.

He knew this game often made things difficult for him, and there was only one possibility for this side quest to appear now.

"The truth may be coming to light soon," Gu Mian said. "Get ready."

Chu Changge and the fat man both gave him a strange look; it seemed neither of them had received any extraordinary side quests.
Gu Mian pinched her forehead: "I guess they think it's not right to let me out so easily, but the dungeon makes me stay here for five hours."

He turned to the second page as he spoke.

"I've had a good talk with everyone, and the students promise they'll be good friends with Li Quanmei. What a relief!"

He turned to the next page.

"Li Quanmei said she has something to tell everyone tonight and asked everyone to wait for her in the warehouse. It's time for everyone to apologize to her properly there."

The next page no longer featured black and white text, but large, blood-red characters that slowly filled the entire notebook.

"I was wrong!"

"I was wrong!"

"I was wrong!"

Then there was a blank space.

Gu Mian remained silent for a while.

"With these added, we should be able to figure out the truth." As he spoke, he took out a photograph from his white coat, as well as a piece of white paper with red writing that he had taken from Zi Xinbingling's corpse.

The photo shows the contents of a book, half a page is missing, and there is an image of a talisman on it.

That piece of paper was the one that Zi Xin Bing Ling had seen before.

The two people beside her stared silently at what Gu Mian was holding.

With these things, all the mysteries have been solved, and their conjectures are no longer unfounded speculations.

Li Quanmei was bullied by everyone, but she eventually snapped and tricked everyone into going to the warehouse by using the teacher. Then she set it on fire and burned everyone to death.

The twenty-eight vengeful spirits returned to seek revenge, killing Li Quanmei, placing a talisman to imprison her, hiding her somewhere, and continuing to torment her. The students weren't in their dorms at night; they must have gone to find Li Quanmei.

Without Gu Mian saying anything more, Chu Changge and Fatty were able to connect all the clues together.

The two figures flickered a few times like a snowflake screen, about to disappear, while Gu Mian remained firmly in place.

The fat man reached out as if to pull Gu Mian away, but before he could touch her, she disappeared.

Only Chu Changge's words, "Be careful," remained in the air.

There were still five hours before he could leave the instance, and he glanced at the picture of the talisman in his hand one last time.

The first line reads: "The Spell to Nourish the Soul of a Vengeful Ghost".

The meaning in the middle is that if this talisman is placed on a corpse, it will be suppressed and unable to move too far from the corpse.

The last line reads, "Remember, this talisman will..."

Although Gu Mian was not good at Chinese, he could still combine the context and make connections to the following text.

"The following content should be that this talisman will no longer be able to suppress vengeful spirits after ten years. Moreover, since it is a soul-nourishing spell, imprisonment is only a side effect; the vengeful spirits will become even more terrifying after ten years of soul-nourishing."

He remembered that the notice posted outside the school said that the fire occurred on the night of November 26, 2008, so Li Quanmei should have died around that night.

Today, the digital clock on his desk showed the date as November 26, 2018.

At some point after this time, it will probably be exactly ten years.

The dungeon was delayed for five hours just so that he could wait until this tenth year.

When the vengeful spirit awakens, this dungeon will become even more terrifying. It was originally three and a half stars, but who knows how terrifying the difficulty will be after the change.

"The dungeon has gone to such lengths to kill me," Gu Mian sighed.

Just as he was sighing, a pair of very familiar sneakers suddenly appeared in front of him.

Gu Mian looked up and saw a female teacher with a ponytail and a round face. She should have looked very cheerful, but at this moment her face was full of worries.

"Kosaka?" Gu Mian touched her chin.

The female teacher nodded: "Hmm..."

He was the only innocent person in that accident, and Li Quanmei used him to kill the other twenty-eight people.

Seemingly sensing Gu Mian's thoughts, Kosaka bent down slightly and covered her face tightly with her hands: "No... I'm not innocent..."

"If only I had noticed Izumi's strange behavior sooner, if only I had stopped them sooner, if only I hadn't taken this so lightly back then, if only I had cleared up the misunderstanding in time... then all that would have been fine."

"Why can't you discuss things with the teacher?"

She choked up as she spoke and lowered her head.

"Over the years, I could have left, I could have gone elsewhere, but I've always stayed here, wanting to find her, wanting to take her with me."

"I told her that no matter what happens, the teacher will always protect her, but I failed to do so."

Gu Mian saw snot mixed with tears flowing from between the teacher's fingers.

“I want to save her, but I have no idea where she is,” she said, trembling. “I know she’s hidden somewhere.”

"I can only search desperately here, but I can't find it at all."

"Find her body and remove the curse from her so she can leave."

“Every night, I could hear screams coming from the classroom, but I couldn’t get into that building at all. I tried throwing stones and banging my head against it, but I couldn’t break through.”

"I could only listen from the outside, listening to the child who once trusted and relied on me being tortured."

"She might think the teacher has abandoned her, right? But the teacher hasn't..."

"The teacher is always here..."

Gu Mian looked at Kosaka, who was squatting on the ground. He thought for a moment, then went over and helped him up.

"For my safety, for your safety, and for Li Quanmei's safety, come with me to the teaching building."

Kosaka looked up in astonishment: "But I can't get in..."

"Let's talk about it when we get there."

I'm a little worried that people won't understand. The instance is a randomly matched virtual one, but the event is held in a real location.

The dungeons you normally enter are fake, but some special dungeons and events are held directly on Earth.

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(End of this chapter)