HTCYH Ch 43

Chapter 43: Death Academy

Tu Si was a dodder-spirit with extraordinary adaptability. Once he understood Wuming’s painstaking intentions, Tu Si began to genuinely enjoy university life.

For first-year students who had just endured the grind of the college entrance exams, freshman year was the start of a new journey, a new beginning, and the dawning hope of adulthood for young people looking toward the future.

For Tu Si, however, freshman year was more like a vacation, like stepping into a deeply immersive film. Dressed in bright clothes, riding spirited horses, youth was not to be wasted, and every step forward was a discovery. The passionate freedom of the young wove for him a dazzling dream, one that made him both captivated and reluctant to let go.

At four or five in the evening, sunlight slanted through the slightly yellowed glass windows. The clock on the wall struck the hour, and the rustling sound of papers being handed in signaled the end of the semester. His classmates packed up their belongings, cheering for the arrival of the holiday, but Tu Si felt a little disheartened. It was like knowing you were in a dream—happy as a weekend—but it was already ending, and Monday was just around the corner. Soon you would wake up to work like a beast of burden again. Time ticked relentlessly away, and in the haze of semi-consciousness, you knew the alarm clock was about to ring, yet you still buried your head under the covers, praying for just a little longer.

Tu Si gloomily bid farewell to his classmates one by one, holding in his hands a buy-one-get-one milk tea from a group order. He planned to take it back to the Bureau for Wuming to drink, hoping to coax Wuming into replicating another cup for him to taste.

Just as he stepped out of the teaching building, something fell from above, brushing past his nose and smashing at his feet. Then came a sudden flood of red—liquid splashed all over Tu Si, and something with the texture of tofu struck his right cheek, sliding slowly down until it plopped onto the ground with a squelch.

Tu Si knew he was in a school. He forcibly suppressed his instinct to extend his tendrils and feed on the remains, and instead pulled out his phone to dial 120.

But his phone was slick with red-and-white viscous fluid smeared all over his hands and body. The phone became slippery and hard to handle. After much effort, he managed to light up the screen. Immediately, it began flickering wildly, as if disrupted by some strange interference. The glare was so piercing that it was like waking at midnight to use the bathroom, only to find your phone’s brightness turned up to maximum. The blinding light seared Tu Si’s vision, leaving him momentarily sightless. He snapped his eyes shut, waiting for the white blaze to fade.

In that instant with his eyes closed, Tu Si felt the liquid lift away from him, like fluids in a weightless environment, slowly floating upward before drifting off. When his vision cleared from the brief blindness, he saw the scattered mess on the ground re-forming into a uniformed boy. The boy lowered his head, brushed past Tu Si, and walked up the stairs.

Tu Si licked his lips, finding no trace of flesh or blood. Puzzled, he glanced around, scratched his head, and let out a short sigh. He pulled out his phone again and saw the red-eyed app icon had reappeared. His sigh deepened as he forcefully tapped it open:

Cultivator’s Name: Jiang Tukui

Ascension Level: Foundation Establishment

Experience Required for Core Formation Stage: (700/1200)

Game Items: Crimson Peach Blossom Orb, Flame Bone Crystal

Clicking into the game interface, the display read:

Game Title: Death Academy

Synopsis: Children nowadays are fragile, always seeking death at the slightest hardship. Their parents are deeply troubled. Please help educate these weak-willed children, teach them resilience, and turn them into outstanding successors of the new era.

Difficulty: ★★★

Danger Level: ★★

Death Rate: 99%

Game Rules: A cultivation world where the strong rise to the top. Cultivators are not bound by petty concerns. Demon cultivators, beast cultivators, Dao cultivators—anyone who ascends to godhood is a true cultivator.

Clear Reward: +500 Ascension EXP, +20 Points, Bone Fragment

Tu Si scrolled through the information and found that aside from the name, all other details were his original account’s data—his level, his items—all returned intact.

His eyes fell on the bright crimson Flame Bone Crystal. The item description noted it could refine souls. Tu Si clearly remembered that this polluted crimson-black crystal had been taken by Liang Tiancai. Yet after exiting the game, it mysteriously appeared in his reward bundle. At the time, the crystal had been corrupted, dark red and tainted. When he had asked Wuming, the reply had been a dismissive “Just leave it there, don’t take it out.”

Now, staring at the purified red crystal, Tu Si nearly rolled his eyes into the back of his head. So that was what Wuming’s so-called player-return project really meant. Returning wasn’t hard—the challenge was purification! And yet Wuming had put on an act, even establishing a research group for game returnees. Wasn’t this essentially false advertising, a research scam? Once he cleared this game, Tu Si decided he would use this as leverage to threaten Wuming into making him milk tea!

Closing his phone, Tu Si finally took the time to examine his surroundings carefully. This teaching building was different from his real university’s. The stairs were open and simple, the wall beside the railing lined with classic quotes from famous figures. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the railings, though a faint smell of musty cloth lingered. Beside the corridor stood classroom after classroom, with no central hall, only narrow overhanging galleries. Following the gallery, Tu Si saw all the classroom doors tightly shut, each marked with a plaque: Class 1 of Year 1, Class 2 of Year 1, in sequence up to six rooms. The last was Class 7 of Year 1, conspicuously missing Class 4.

Just as Tu Si was about to head upstairs to see if the second floor was for second-year classes, there came a heavy “thud.” He turned toward the sound and saw that in the very spot where he had stood earlier now lay a crumpled heap of human flesh. A uniformed boy’s head was smashed like a watermelon, his neck twisted unnaturally, his body toppling in a grotesque inversion. Yet his face was turned toward Tu Si, grinning at him. If not for the fact that the boy had landed headfirst and half his skull was pulp, Tu Si might have thought he was even trying to wink.

This time there was no blinding phone glare. In a short moment, Tu Si clearly witnessed the entire restoration process: like a video being rewound, the heap reassembled into a boy. The boy stood, lowered his head, and walked back into the teaching building. Ten minutes later, the boy became a heap once again.

Tu Si watched the cycle play out twice, dumbfounded. Death Academy—was it the endless death loops of suicidal children? Was his task to stop their deaths?

Bewildered, Tu Si nevertheless decided it was better to take action than to stand around watching an endless replay. So, when the boy reformed once more from a mangled heap, Tu Si followed him closely, observing as they ascended together.

The boy who jumped was delicate in appearance, about 173 centimeters tall, slender, with the look of malnutrition. His bangs hung long, covering most of his eyes. With lowered head and expressionless face, he walked quietly upward. Once on the rooftop, he tilted his head back, gazing at the sky in silence for a while. Then, without a word, he stepped onto the edge of the rooftop and leapt.

In that instant, Tu Si extended his tendrils, trying to pull the boy back. Unexpectedly, the seemingly weightless boy turned heavy as a mountain the moment the tendrils wrapped around him, dragging the unprepared Tu Si down with him from the rooftop.