Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

But no, that's not actually the case. The sound only "seemed" to be coming from inside the classroom; in reality, it was located in some unknown direction and was constantly approaching, making it sound like the sound inside the classroom was gradually getting louder.

The subtle differences would be hard for an ordinary person to detect, but Gao Hai was able to make a judgment. However, even though he was certain the sound wasn't coming from inside the classroom, it didn't mean the classroom was safe, as he had experienced similar situations before. Right now, he probably didn't have many options. With such strange sounds in the corridor, conducting a normal investigation was practically impossible; he had to find a room to hide in.

Click——

After gesturing for Hayasaka to step back a little, Takami opened the classroom door.

【Hahaha--】

In that instant, it seemed as if I saw something.

The tables and chairs lay overturned on the ground, covered with filthy words and vicious curses.

Cut hair, a cabinet stuffed with trash, a girl covering her face, and children laughing and playing around her.

The world outside the window was a blood-red color.

The girl outside the window lowered her hands from her face and smiled.

Outside the window were children lying on the ground, fingers pierced by nails, teeth pulled out, and figures struggling and wailing.

But none of these scenes are in this classroom; it's just an empty little classroom where nothing has been left behind.

Although the black sludge had completely submerged the ground and covered the walls, and even the ceiling was dripping black, murky liquid, at least for Gao Hai, who had stepped into the classroom first, all he felt here was emptiness.

"Come in, and hurry up."

After confirming that nothing would suddenly appear and kill him, Takami turned around and gestured for Hayasaka to come in quickly.

Those loud sounds have vanished, as if they had never existed.

Amidst the pungent stench, Gao Hai slowly walked to the classroom window. He stared silently at the darkness outside the windowpane, then reached out to try and open the window, but to no avail. The window seemed to be fixed to the wall, and no matter how hard Gao Hai pulled, it wouldn't budge.

This place seems to have become a kind of distorted state of mind for Chiyo Hachiya herself.

If that's the case, then why is this place so empty and desolate?

It's like a small classroom being expanded into a boundless wilderness, with no way to see where the boundaries are.

No, that's just my imagination.

The classroom was still a classroom, but it was empty. There was nothing there—no desks, no blackboard, no teacher, and no students. Or was it... just an illusion, that it was actually full of people listening to the teacher, completely ignoring me? Or was I ignoring them, and that in this seemingly empty space, many people had actually turned their heads and were watching me?

"..."

For a moment, it seemed as if I saw a classroom full of headless students.

Blood was gushing out.

Crimson color gushed out from the severed necks, like a bursting fountain.

They turned their heads.

Every student turned around.

In the bright and sunny classroom, everyone was watching him, smiling at him, standing up, and slowly moving closer to him.

No.

There was indeed nothing there.

Even if something may have existed in the past, it is now equivalent to nothingness. Anything that enters this place afterward will also be unable to remain, because in this distorted space, only nothingness is allowed to exist.

"We should go."

Gao Hai opened the classroom door and quickly returned to the corridor.

His fingers were already starting to turn black.

Hayasaka, who had rushed out behind him, cried out in pain as he discovered that his fingernail had cracked and dark red blood was flowing out.

"What just happened?"

Hayasaka, who was completely unaware of the unusual situation in the classroom, asked somewhat nervously.

"This place is digesting us."

As Gao Hai spoke, he raised his arm and looked at the faint black mark that was appearing on it.

It was as if something was slowly dissolving, with the color changing from light to dark.

Seconds later, a small patch of skin on Gao Hai's arm turned black, and black liquid seeped from the pores, dripping down to the ground.

That was a small portion of Gao Hai's skin and muscles that had been transformed into black sludge, dripping down like digested waste.

No wonder there's black mud everywhere here.

Chapter 50: Investigation, Search, and Speculation on the Other Side

Takami and Hayasaka have returned to the storage room where they started.

Although the door to the storage room was wide open, allowing people to come and go at any time, neither Takami nor Hayasaka had any intention of going out. They simply stayed obediently inside the room, showing no intention of venturing out at all.

After all, once they returned to the corridor and left the small room, this dark and distorted school building would generate an invisible force that would gradually transform their bodies into black filth, as if it were digesting them. This transformation process was initially difficult to detect, leaving almost no trace. However, when the transformation reached a level that could be perceived, the speed of transformation would increase to a terrifying degree in a very short time. If they went too far from the storage room and couldn't return in time, they would surely die.

In fact, if Gao Hai hadn't been careful enough and hadn't immediately returned to the storage room after discovering the anomaly, he and Hayasaka would probably be two lumps of black sludge in the corridor by now.

"How could such a thing happen..."

Hayasaka looked at his bleeding fingers, his nails all split open, his voice trembling slightly, filled with confusion and fear.

She hadn't noticed anything unusual while she was outside. Even before Gao Hai said he was leaving, she hadn't realized her nail was cracked and part of her finger skin had turned into a black sap. Even now, she didn't feel much pain. Normally, someone with an injured finger would be very sensitive, but she only felt a very slight stinging sensation, as if her perception of pain had been diminished.

"Perhaps it's the effect of some kind of out-of-control rules. After all, according to the information we've gathered so far, Hayate Elementary School has been in a state of complete chaos in its later stages."

Gao Hai wasn't surprised; he simply shook his head slightly and said calmly.

Gathering a number of students beyond the controllable limit to conduct an experiment that is fundamentally uncontrollable and extremely dangerous.

Once a class was wiped out due to a strange, uncontrolled force, the relevant classes were immediately sealed off and entry was prohibited. Later, because too many classes were sealed off in the old teaching building, a chain reaction of crises occurred, so all the students were simply moved to the new teaching building.

To be honest, Gao Hai didn't know how to evaluate this behavior. While the Red Nut Gray Hole experiment was equally insane, the eventual loss of control was largely due to the deliberate indulgence of the organizers. Before the suicidal act of pulling the power switch, at least the experiment itself was under strict control and had some basic order. But the "Campus Ghost Stories" instance, whether it's Fujika Middle School or Hayate Elementary School, is filled with a strong sense of shameless suicidal behavior. Even though the things they're researching are extremely uncontrollable and dangerous, the researchers seem to have completely ignored any practical and effective safety precautions. It's as if their brains have been eaten by zombies, which is incredibly frustrating.

Are all the so-called "Zhaohe men" this brain-dead? Given the situation at Zaoli Elementary School, it's probably impossible to summarize a useful set of rules, right? Who knows how many classes are locked down, how many unknown, bizarre rules are impossible to record, and how encountering them would mean certain death? Gao Hai simply couldn't understand what these researchers were thinking. Did they really not care about their own lives? But based on the information he found about the researchers before their deaths, when it came time to send them, weren't these bastards panicking and regretting it?

Perhaps this is the boundary between normal people and madmen; after all, you can't judge those things by common sense.

Fortunately, I have a backup plan that I can use.

With his eyes closed, Gao Hai began to focus his attention on the police officer he had summoned.

pat-

The ventilation duct door was pushed open and then fell to the ground.

The police officer, whose face was blurred, crawled out of the pipe. His body, which had been compressed and deformed, trembled twice before quickly returning to its original shape, and then he drew his pistol.

Under the stark white light, what appeared before the police officer, and also within Gao Hai's view, was a room that looked somewhat familiar. Rows of cabinets were stacked on top of each other, and the sounds of things clattering together could be heard constantly. Bloodstains remained on the table, which resembled an autopsy table, and what looked like foul-smelling yellow grease was scattered everywhere. However, due to the sensory deficiencies of the police officer, who was acting as a supernatural being, Gao Hai, whose senses were synchronized, couldn't smell anything.

This place… yes, it’s the same place I saw in the afterimage of my memories. That means Sato and a researcher dissected a person here, a twisted figure, seemingly transformed into a monster by some kind of contamination. And the dissection happened right when Chiyo Hachiya sneaked in through the ventilation duct. Come to think of it, why would Chiyo Hachiya do something like this? Normally, an elementary school student wouldn’t want to crawl into a duct, especially one as dark, dirty, and narrow as this. Did she have some compelling reason to come here?

While the officer was thinking, he walked up to one of the autopsy tables and saw a report placed next to it.

The report itself was entirely handwritten, and the handwriting looked so neat that someone seeing it for the first time might mistake the writer for a respectable person. Of course, once you've read the content, that thought will disappear.

Autopsy Report

[Object Name: Hachiya Ryohei]

[Target Age: 6 years old]

[Height of the person in question: 103cm]

[Subject's weight: 558kg]

[Source: Bee House Orphanage]

[Confirmed Status: Severe Pollution Transition]

[Anatomical analysis: More than 70% of the subject's body tissues and organs had been transformed into pure fat, 30% of the bones had softened, and the subject had experienced a dramatic increase in weight. When discovered, the subject had lost the ability to move independently, but still possessed complete vital signs and had not lost vitality due to the physical mutation. The subject died only midway through the autopsy.]

[Analysis and Judgment: The subject is one of the students "Chiyo Hachiya's" companions in the orphanage. She had visited Chiyo several times at the school. Because Chiyo was isolated and ridiculed by the students, and because the subject's obesity drew attention, she began to be subjected to a barrage of insults and abuse from the students. Specific insults included "fat pig," "pig's head," and "disgusting thing with oil under its skin," etc. It is speculated that a consensus among the students triggered or created some kind of supernatural rule, causing the subject to be cursed and corrupted, transforming her into this form.]

[Conclusion: This is strong evidence that the research has entered a new phase. A person who doesn't live within the Hayate Elementary School campus and has always been far removed from the environment where the ghost stories originate has successfully triggered the ghost story rules after being formed in a very rudimentary way by the students. This means that the eerie power of Hayate Elementary School has begun to slowly extend beyond the school. If we can effectively control this power, then perhaps we can successfully defeat the army of the Kingdom of Ameri through these students' imaginations. Everyone at the Hachiya Orphanage must be kept under strict control at all times. We need to figure out how this rule works, and the surveillance of Hachiya Chiyo herself must be increased. Even though her counter-surveillance awareness has become increasingly strong, we must ensure that we can keep track of her whereabouts at all times.]

The report itself is very simple, but it is enough to explain a lot of issues.

So, did Chiyo Hachiya, hiding in the ventilation duct, witness the researchers dissect and kill her brother alive?

I wonder if Chiyo Hachiya recognized who was lying on the dissection table at the time. Hmm... she probably did, which is why she went so crazy later and did something like destroying the entire Hayate Elementary School. It has to be said, for an elementary school student, this child's drive was incredibly strong. Is it because she was an orphan that she was so precocious and powerful?

After putting down the report, the officer walked to a cabinet and opened it.

A corpse, its shape almost unrecognizable and reduced to fragments of frozen flesh, was revealed, accompanied by gusts of cold air.

Beside the corpse's feet lay a note, roughly noting which class the mangled remains belonged to, what had happened to them, and how they ended up in the autopsy room. Incidentally, although the remains had lost their vitality, the autopsy report indicated that if thawed, the student might be able to come back to life. Of course, as a mass of unrecoverable fragments, living on in perpetual, agonizing dismemberment.

Opening the second freezer, Gao Hai found a headless corpse inside, completely frozen solid. But after the body was revealed, Gao Hai noticed that it was still trembling slightly, as if it wanted to come back to life.

The third… the fourth… each of the thirty-odd freezers contained a corpse, each still capable of movement, not truly dead. The records they left behind indicated that these beings were all students who had lived at Hayatei Elementary School, and their experiences were largely similar: after being ostracized by the student body, they were transformed into some bizarre form, unable to truly die yet not truly alive, becoming utter monsters.

As for individuals like Ryohei Hachiya who are dissected and killed, the report suggests they might be stored elsewhere. It seems that researchers are more concerned with those who can be killed after mutation, since their goal is to create devastating weapons capable of causing mass destruction, not a bunch of high-threat creatures that can't be killed.

The autopsy of Ryohei Hachiya... must have taken place after the orphanage had been abandoned.

The truth behind the so-called "poisoning deaths" of everyone at the orphanage was likely a scheme to control Chiyo Hachiya's family, who were beginning to be transformed by a strange force. Based on the current clues, it's highly probable that Chiyo Hachiya somehow discovered her family's whereabouts, which is why she infiltrated the area. Therefore, she may have crawled out of the ventilation ducts and been active in this area.

As soon as Gao Hai had this thought, he immediately saw some new traces in the autopsy room through the eyes of the police officers.

Tiny, dirty footprints.

And the blurry handprints on the handles of those freezers.

It seems as if you can see a small figure silently standing beside the dissection table, reaching out to touch the corpse that has been dismembered into eight pieces.

Then, she opened all the freezers, looking for her family members who had been cut open and frozen, but found nothing.

So she walked outside, heading deeper into the research base beneath Zaori Elementary School.

Click——

The door to the autopsy room opened, and the silent police officers continued their investigation under Gao Hai's instructions.