The moment Chen Lan shut the exam hall door, forty-three pairs of student eyes simultaneously extinguished.
The golden blood threads retreated from their whites like turned-off LED strips, but slowly, reluctantly. Only the sound of pencils scratching paper remained in the classroom—like forty-three small beasts grinding their teeth.
I clutched my HB Pencil, stood at the lectern with my back pressed against the blackboard. No way to retreat further.
"Lin Jin." Li Ming spoke first, his voice like a jammed tape cassette. "Lend it to me, just for a bit."
He extended his hand. A crack split his palm, leaking golden light—the same light from Imitation's final disappearance, Scarlet's War Authority looking at me through these students' bodies.
"No lending." I wrote in the air with my HB Pencil: [Exam Hall Rule: No Lending]
The characters glowed silver-white, solidifying into a wall between me and the students. But they didn't retreat—they pressed closer. Forty-three people's breathing merged into a damp tide, carrying the smell of rust and old paper—the smell of Rift Zone Corrosion.
"The teacher didn't say we couldn't borrow." Wang Fang said. Her voice was dual-layered—one layer her own, the other Scarlet's synthesized voice. "The teacher only said, after graduation comes freedom."
"Graduation means—" Liu Hao continued, a black mask's outline emerging on his face. "You can become anyone."
"We want to become you." Forty-three voices spoke as one. "Your story, let us copy it."
The lectern began to shake. Not physically, but at the rule level. The exam hall was originally Scarlet's simulator Rift Zone, and now the simulator had found its highest-priority simulation target—me.
[Simulation Beginning: Lin Jin]
Golden characters materialized on the blackboard like an exam countdown.
My vision began distorting. The forty-three students became forty-three mirrors. Every mirror reflected my face, but each was missing something—some lacked left eyes, some noses, some mouths.
They were "copying" me, using Corrosion to scrape off my Existence piece by piece and paste it onto themselves.
The HB Pencil burned in my palm, the crack pulsing like a heartbeat.
I had to do something, but everything would be wrong. Write rules, they'd copy them; don't write, they'd devour me; tear the Script, they'd go mad; don't tear it, I'd disappear.
"B-07 Squad, requesting backup." I whispered into the miniature communicator at my collar.
"Received." Shen Xingyao's voice was as calm as telling time. "Don't move. Wait three seconds."
Three seconds?
Three seconds for what? Enough time for Li Ming's hand to reach my face, for Wang Fang's mask to fully form, for Liu Hao's pupils to completely turn into golden拉丝.
But Shen Xingyao said three seconds, so three seconds it was.
First second—the classroom lights detonated.
Not the bulbs, but the concept of "light" itself. The entire exam hall plunged into absolute darkness—not ordinary darkness, but darkness where pupils couldn't capture a single photon. In that darkness, the forty-three students lost their target, their hands freezing mid-air.
Second second—spatial folding.
I felt myself pulled by an invisible hand—not my body, but my "position." I was moved from the lectern to the classroom's back door, pressed against the wall, my breathing swallowed by spatial folding. The students still surrounded the lectern, shouting "Lin Jin" at empty air.
Third second—rule replacement.
Shen Xingyao's Spatial sovereignty transformed the entire exam hall's rules from Scarlet's "simulator" to her "execution ground."
[Rule: Simulation Prohibited Here]
Silver-white characters materialized in the darkness like forty-three slaps across the students' faces. The golden blood threads in their pupils instantly burst—not retreating, but exploding like popped blisters, splattering golden blood.
But the blood didn't hit the ground. It was captured mid-air by spatial marks, condensing into forty-three silver-white orbs suspended above each person.
"Captain?" I whispered.
"Don't speak." Her voice came from right behind me, so close I could hear her breathing. She pressed against me in the back door corner, her black cloak wrapping us together like a shared invisibility cloak. "They're hunting for your voice."
"Them?" I paused. "Not the students?"
"Not for a long time." She said. "From the moment you wrote 'No Lending,' Scarlet replaced them."
"Replaced?"
"Yes." She said. "Another ability of War Authority—'soldier replacement.' Replacing 40 ordinary people with 40 of her 'concept soldiers.' These soldiers have no physical bodies. They're slices of the concept 'war.' Their reason for existence is to execute Scarlet's commands."
"What commands?"
"Capture you." She said. "Or kill me."
The moment she finished, the forty-three orbs suddenly turned, locking onto the back door's direction in unison. The students turned rigidly, their necks cracking like marionettes.
[Found you, little girl with the spatial marks]
Golden characters rose from the lectern—Scarlet's handwriting this time, sharper, more manic.
"I'm not a little girl." Shen Xingyao stepped out from the cloak, letting it fall to reveal full Administration tactical gear. "I'm B-07 Squad Captain, Shen Xingyao."
She snapped her fingers—not to drop a mark, but to "declare spatial sovereignty."
The entire classroom's space began "listening" to her.
Walls grew thin like paper. Floors grew soft like mud. Ceilings lowered like coffin lids. Every concept was compressed except for her and me under her protection.
"Authority Unleashed." She said softly. "Radius: seventeen meters."
Seventeen silver-white spheres spread from her feet—not marks, but "territory." Within these seventeen meters, she was space itself, and space was her.
The forty-three soldiers charged, but after entering the sovereign territory, their movements slowed as if someone had pressed the slow-motion button. Their hands reached for me, but the closer they came, the more transparent they became, finally dissolving into golden mist absorbed by sovereignty.
"I'm not here to fight." Shen Xingyao said. "I'm here to collect someone."
"Who?" Scarlet's characters asked.
"Lin Jin's chemistry teacher." She said. "Teacher Zhang, where did you hide him?"
"Chemistry teacher?" The characters laughed. "That old man? Too boring, his story was bad. I deleted him."
"Deleted?"
"Yes." The characters said. "Deleted from the level of Existence. Now this school has no chemistry teacher position, no Teacher Zhang person, not even the concept of chemistry class."
I froze, flipping through my schedule. The chemistry class slot had turned blank.
"You see." The characters said. "This is how Narrative Authority should be used. Not writing nonsense, but writing 'nonexistence.'"
Shen Xingyao didn't speak. She simply reached out and grabbed.
She grabbed a golden pen—a Parker fountain pen with "ZHANG" engraved on the cap.
"Existence deletion requires a medium." She said. "This pen is the medium. Destroy it, and Teacher Zhang returns."
She tossed the pen to me. "Use your real HB Pencil and write 'Existence.'"
I caught the golden pen. It felt ice-cold, like a dead man's finger. I pulled out my HB Pencil and wrote in the air:
[Teacher Zhang, Exists]
The moment the characters landed, the golden pen detonated.
It exploded into golden powder that hit the floor and condensed into a human silhouette.
Teacher Zhang appeared at the lectern, his face still blurred, but with a body now, a voice, a sense of presence.
"Lin Jin?" He looked at me blankly. "Why am I here?"
"Don't ask." Shen Xingyao said. "Hurry and leave. The exam hall is collapsing."
She wasn't wrong. The confrontation between sovereignty and War Authority was making space unable to bear it. Walls began cracking, but the fissures showed not cement but golden characters, like blood.
"Want to leave?" Scarlet's characters flooded from all directions. "The homework isn't finished yet."
[Question 51: Please write War Authority's weakness]
A new question materialized on the blackboard, written in Scarlet's handwriting.
"Know the answer?" Imitation's voice echoed through the air. "If you don't, you die."
"I know." I said. "War Authority's weakness is—"
I wrote on the blackboard with my HB Pencil:
[Requires an Audience]
The characters were silver-white, like knives.
"War without spectators is just a brawl." I said. "Your War Labyrinth needed forty-three soldiers as an audience. Now I've torn up their Script. No audience anymore."
"Therefore, the war ends."
The golden characters began retreating like lights being turned off.
Scarlet's characters appeared one final time—not a threat, but an evaluation:
[Correct answer, plus ten points]
[I've received your story]
[Next exam, I'll set the questions]
---
16:00, outside the exam hall.
We stood on the teaching building's rooftop. Forty-three students lay on the ground, unconscious. Their pupils had returned to normal, but each clutched a slip of paper that read:
[Lin Jin, lend me your workbook to copy]
"They'll forget what happened today." Chen Lan said. "But they'll remember this line like sleep-talking, like an obsession."
"What does Scarlet want with my workbook?"
"Teaching material." She said. "Your method of changing questions is a new game for her. She wants to turn war into an exam too."
"Then she has to get past me first." Shen Xingyao said. "The seventeenth mark has already locked onto her main body."
"Where?"
"At..." She looked at me. "In your next workbook."
I paused, then understood.
Specialized derivative training, set sixteen, question 51, War Authority's weakness.
I wrote the answer: Requires an audience.
That answer transformed into a mark, captured by the seventeenth mark, reverse-tracing to lock onto Scarlet's main body.
"So where is she now..."
"Writing question 52." Shen Xingyao said. "About Spatial Authority's weakness."
She smiled—a rare smile, like ice cracking:
"She wants to test me."
"Then let her test." I said. "I'll set the question for her. Specialized derivative training, set seventeen: Find Scarlet's Arrogance Value."
"The answer?"
"Infinity."