Chapter 17 | The Crazy Persona Must Not Collapse

The room was dim and murky, with only a small window letting in the faint, pale glow of twilight.

Ye Li pulled her gaze away from the surging horde of monsters beneath the window and turned to look at the other three in the room. Parting her lips, she said lightly, “All right, time for an open discussion!”

There were still several hours until midnight; they couldn’t let the long night go to waste.

Qi Yezhou suggested, “Let’s start by sharing what everyone has experienced so far.”

“Works for me,” Ye Li agreed without objection.

And so, the group began their conversation.

Luo Jiajia looked dispirited, seemingly still sulking, and showed little interest in speaking throughout.

However, since she had been with Qi Yezhou the entire time, he was familiar with her situation.

Le Jun remained relatively quiet as well, leaving the floor to Ye Li.

Consequently, almost the entire conversation unfolded between Ye Li and Qi Yezhou, with Le Jun and Luo Jiajia chiming in occasionally with brief additions.

Through their exchange, some of Ye Li’s doubts were cleared up.

First, including this run, Qi Yezhou and Luo Jiajia had looped in the ghost domain six times in total, just like Le Jun.

From this, Ye Li could conclude that the reason she had only experienced five loops was definitely because the Desperate Realm system had deliberately erased the original host’s memories.

The intention was obvious: to make serving her sentence more difficult.

She had to admit, this system was a real piece of work!

Second, Qi Yezhou and Luo Jiajia’s loop starting point differed from Ye Li and Le Jun’s.

Ye Li and Le Jun usually woke up right around when school let out, whereas Qi Yezhou and Luo Jiajia woke up at 5:55 PM—significantly later than the two of them.

This also explained why Le Jun was the only one who noticed something amiss and came looking for her after the huge commotion she caused by jumping off the building.

At that time, Qi Yezhou and Luo Jiajia hadn’t awakened yet, remaining completely oblivious in the library.

According to Qi Yezhou, aside from the first loop where they had waited until 6:00 without understanding what was happening and ended up in the monsters’ bellies, they had been trying to find ways to escape ever since the second loop.

In the beginning, upon waking up, they only thought about fleeing the library. But rotting corpses were everywhere outside, leaving them nowhere to hide, so their escape naturally ended in failure.

It wasn’t until Qi Yezhou came up with the idea of toppling the bookshelves and hiding in the storage room that their encounter with Ye Li in the previous loop took place.

As for why the four of them were trapped together in this looped space, no one had any clue, let alone knew how to escape.

For now, though their starting points differed, their other experiences were identical, and each loop ultimately ended in death.

Thus, this space indeed possessed specific constants.

Finding these “constants” was the key to unraveling the mystery.

What was currently known as a “constant” was that as soon as the clock struck 6:00 PM, the school transformed into a ghost domain and the living turned into rotting corpses, while time continued to tick forward.

Yet once the clock reached midnight, all the rotting corpses vanished, time froze, fog rolled in from all sides, and the entire school was swallowed by an eerie substance.

“So what should we do now?” Le Jun asked after sorting out his thoughts.

Qi Yezhou replied, “There’s nothing we can do. We can only wait.”

“Right,” Ye Li chimed in. “Last time, only the two of us made it past midnight. This time there are four of us, so let’s wait and see if anything changes.”

If nothing changed, they would just have to die once more!

Everyone knew this was their only option.

After a moment of silence, Ye Li spoke up again. “How much do you know about Wen Xue jumping off the building a month ago?”

She had kept this matter in mind all along; her intuition told her that there might be clues hidden within it.

Hearing this, the expressions of both Qi Yezhou and Luo Jiajia noticeably shifted.

Luo Jiajia in particular froze, an undisguised panic flashing across her face.

Not missing her telling reaction, Ye Li narrowed her eyes and asked her directly, “You should know quite a bit, right? You were classmates!”

“W-Why would you bring that up?” Luo Jiajia countered instead of answering, her voice trembling slightly.

Rather than explaining, Ye Li suddenly accused, “Did her death have something to do with you?”

“No, how could that be? It wasn’t me!” Luo Jiajia immediately waved her hands in denial, her voice rising in agitation.

“Then why are you so worked up? What was your relationship with her?”

“We were just deskmates!” Pressed by Ye Li’s barrage of questions, Luo Jiajia blurted out instinctively.

“Deskmates, huh…”

A smirk tugged at the corner of Ye Li’s mouth, her upturned fox-like eyes gleaming with shrewd intensity. “Then you must know what happened. Spill it. What was the real situation?”

Luo Jiajia looked awful, not wanting to bring up past events at all, but with everyone staring at her, she had no choice.

“She jumped because she was being bullied by other students and couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Bullying how?” Ye Li furrowed her brow slightly.

What Le Jun had mentioned earlier—about Wen Xue jumping off in a fit of pique after a dispute with a classmate—was clearly just the official narrative.

To push someone to jump from a building was obviously no ordinary conflict.

Luo Jiajia bit her lip, her voice barely a whisper. “Just... bullied like that...”

Seeing her hesitate, Ye Li pressed directly, “Humiliated her? Threatened her? Subjected her to silent treatment and ostracization? Or physically abused and assaulted her?”

Luo Jiajia hung her head. “A-All of the above…”

All of the above?!

Ye Li raised an eyebrow.

This wasn’t just petty squabbling between students; it was outright malicious bullying that subjected the victim to unbearable physical and mental torment, ultimately driving her to commit suicide by jumping off the building.

Beside them, Le Jun’s expression darkened visibly; having suffered bullying in the past, he related all too well.

Ye Li asked again, “Who was bullying her?”

“One is from our class, named Yi Lin...” By this point, Luo Jiajia had nothing left to hide and could only answer truthfully. “The other two are from Arts Class 14, named Chen Xiaoxiao and Fang Wen.”

A chill rose in Le Jun’s eyes, and he finally couldn’t help demanding, “If you all knew she was being bullied, why didn’t anyone stand up and stop it?”

Instead, they had stood by coldly, watching her get bullied past the point of endurance until death was her only release.

“We didn’t dare,” Luo Jiajia argued frantically. “Whoever dared to speak up would be bullied right alongside her. Yi Lin’s father is a member of the school board. No matter what she does, someone protects her and she gets away with it, but the rest of us could get expelled by the school...”

The rims of Le Jun’s eyes reddened. “So every single one of you chose self-preservation and looked the other way, letting your own classmate be driven to her death step by step? That’s truly cold-blooded!”

Unable to face his anger, Luo Jiajia kept her head down in silence, wringing her hands with intertwined fingers.

After a long while, she looked up at Ye Li and asked apprehensively, “So... are we trapped here because of Wen Xue?”

“I never said that,” Ye Li replied with a mischievous sneer playing on her lips. “Though it’s not impossible. Maybe she felt her death was too unjust and came back to take revenge on you!”