Chapter 5: The Puppet (1)

“Humans seek immortality, while puppets live forever.”

……

“Hey, stop sleeping and wake up! The teacher’s about to come to class!”

“If you get caught, don’t expect me to help you.”

“Wen Yingchao!”

Wen Yingchao opened his eyes.

The afternoon sunlight filtered through the gaps between the tree branches and leaves, scattering unevenly across the desktop. A breeze swept in through the window with a soft rustling sound, making even the dappled shadows on the desk sway.

Tiny droplets of condensation gathered on the can of iced cola at the corner of the desk.

Is this a school?

Wen Yingchao remembered that he’d just been confronting Gu Yunjiang.

Even if this was a dream, he was well past school age.

Besides, the pain he’d experienced had felt so real.

The puppet game.

He quickly reached a conclusion.

Judging by the current situation, Gu Yunjiang had most likely extracted the fortune-teller’s ability and used it on him.

However, this game scenario was different from the one Wen Yingchao had read about in the novel.

When Gu Mowan was dragged into the puppet game in the original story, he had experienced a battle royale. The moment the game began, a gun had already been pressed against the back of his head.

Wen Yingchao quickly calmed himself down.

There was already a perfectly good scenario available, yet Gu Yunjiang had deliberately created a new one for him.

However he looked at it, this couldn’t be good news.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re finally awake! Hurry, hurry, class is about to start. Let me copy your notes from the previous lesson. I’m afraid the teacher will check them.”

The person who had woken him up appeared to be his deskmate.

Wen Yingchao couldn’t tell the difference between his deskmate and a puppet.

“What class do we have next?” he asked casually, pretending he was still half-asleep as he discreetly probed for information.

“Chemistry, bro! I didn’t memorize those formulas the teacher taught us yesterday. Hurry up and let me cram at the last minute!”

Wen Yingchao looked at the towering stack of books beside his desk, which was piled higher than his head.

Wen Yingchao: “…”

Case closed. This was definitely high school.

The system reminded him, “The chemistry textbook is at the very top of the pile.”

Hearing this, Wen Yingchao reached out, pulled down the topmost book, and handed it to his deskmate.

“Find them yourself.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency!” His deskmate clasped his hands together. “Your kindness is beyond repayment. In my next life, I’ll work like an ox or a horse to repay your great favor!”

Wen Yingchao: “Six.”

He played along. “No need to work like an ox or a horse. Just buy me a couple more cans of iced cola as a token of your gratitude.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

His deskmate was quite the comedian.

While the other boy buried his head in last-minute studying, Wen Yingchao quickly surveyed the classroom.

It was an ordinary high school classroom. Students were fooling around between classes, and people could be seen coming and going in the corridor outside. Some had their heads tilted back with textbooks covering their faces. One student’s face even had a paper airplane resting on it, yet he didn’t react at all.

Wen Yingchao silently called out to the system in his mind. Are you there? Can you give me some information? I can’t participate in this game without knowing anything, can I?

System: “I just reminded you where the chemistry textbook was.”

Wen Yingchao: “But the chemistry textbook was right at the top of the pile. I could’ve found it immediately just by looking!”

System: “The protagonist also entered the game without knowing anything. Just follow his example and solve it the way he did.”

Wen Yingchao: “I’ve noticed that you systems are getting more and more brazen when you talk to me.”

The system muted itself.

Fine.

Wen Yingchao had never expected this thing to be of much help anyway.

He remembered that Gu Mowan had survived the battle royale in the original story, making it to the very end before piercing the heart of the core puppet and finally escaping.

No matter how peaceful the current scene seemed, a storm would soon be brewing.

Wen Yingchao checked himself over and discovered that the dagger hadn’t come with him.

They really hadn’t left him a single means of defending himself.

He fell silent for a moment before looking up at the time.

Ding-dong!

The class bell rang right on schedule.

The previously bustling classroom seemed to have had a switch flipped. It fell silent in an instant. The students who had been noisily chatting and playing around just a moment earlier now moved stiffly, their gazes vacant as they lined up and returned to their seats.

Even their footsteps were perfectly synchronized.

They resembled walking corpses suspended by invisible strings.

The sight was downright horrifying.

Wen Yingchao glanced at his deskmate.

The boy didn’t seem affected by whatever was happening around them. He continued muttering that he wouldn’t have enough time while rapidly copying down the formulas.

“Forget it. This will have to do. Here, take it back.”

Perhaps because the surroundings had become so quiet, his deskmate lowered his voice as he spoke.

He had only managed to draw half a benzene ring in the final chemical formula when he rudely tossed the book back in front of Wen Yingchao.

“Couldn’t you be a little gentler?” Wen Yingchao said, straightening the textbook.

“Sorry. I wanted to finish drawing that benzene ring.”

Wen Yingchao took the opportunity to survey the classroom again.

All the students seemed to have returned to normal as soon as they reached their seats. Their expressions were natural, some were secretly fooling around, and a few hadn’t even woken up yet.

Apart from the eerie silence, there was nothing unusual about them.

It was as though what had just happened had been nothing more than an illusion.

Scrape, scrape.

A strange noise came from the corridor, as though something were dragging itself along the floor.

Just as Wen Yingchao was about to look outside, his deskmate jabbed him with an elbow.

“The teacher’s here!”

Wen Yingchao had no choice but to sit up straight.

The classroom door opened.

“Very good. You’re all very obedient.”

The teacher stood at the doorway and casually swept her gaze across the room, nodding with apparent satisfaction.

“You all returned to your seats before I arrived.”

Wen Yingchao finally got to see the teacher who would be conducting the first class of his puppet game.

She was different from everyone else.

Even when his classmates occasionally behaved strangely, they still seemed lively during breaks, no different from real, living people.

But the teacher—

No matter how realistic the expression on her face looked, it had still been stitched on.

Her smile never faded. The longer one looked at it, the more terrifying it became. Her fuzzy hands picked up a piece of chalk, and with an agility completely at odds with her body, she swiftly wrote the lesson’s title on the blackboard.

The teacher who had come to teach them…

Was a stuffed doll.

“Before we begin class, I want to check your homework. Have you all memorized the notes from yesterday?”

The stuffed doll’s mouth opened and closed, producing a shrill voice.

“I’m going to call on students.”

While Wen Yingchao’s deskmate engaged in the futile ritual of covering his ears and muttering, “Please don’t pick me, please don’t pick me,” the teacher twisted her head toward Wen Yingchao’s side of the classroom.

“Shen Tianxing.”

She called out a name.

His deskmate’s muttering abruptly stopped.

He finally accepted his fate and stood up dejectedly.

Although the person who had been called on was his deskmate, when Wen Yingchao met the teacher’s gaze, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the stuffed doll was actually looking at him.

Fortunately, cramming at the last minute had worked. The teacher asked several questions, all of which concerned the material Shen Tianxing had just copied down.

“Very good. It seems you’ve all diligently completed the tasks I assigned.”

The teacher put down her book and rested both hands on the lectern.

“Now, I’d like Student Wen Yingchao to answer my final question.”

Wen Yingchao felt several gazes fall upon him. Even his deskmate turned to look at him.

Each stare clung to him like a parasite, burrowing into his bones.

The teacher asked, “Student Wen, what am I in your eyes? And what are we?”

“Puppets!” a student shouted out, eagerly answering for him.

“No, no! How can you reveal that so early?”

“He already knows, so what’s the difference if we tell him?”

“It’s all fake! We’re all fake!”

“Only he’s real.”

“Then what should we do?”

His deskmate spoke up. “But he lets me borrow his notes.”

Wen Yingchao remained standing beside his desk.

With everyone chattering around him, he had instantly become the center of attention in the entire classroom. The puppets argued noisily, their undisguised malice spilling out without restraint.

“Why are you playing with him? There’s no point! He’s an outsider!”

The teacher smiled as she slammed the blackboard eraser onto the desk.

“Quiet! Anyone who misbehaves will have to wash everyone’s clothes tonight.”

The threat worked immediately.

The overlapping voices weakened at once, then gradually faded until they disappeared entirely.

The only sound left in the classroom was Wen Yingchao’s breathing.

The teacher said, “Student Wen, I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

Wen Yingchao’s palms began to sweat.

The only rule of the puppet game was to survive.

Precisely because the rule was so simple, meeting the conditions required to survive until the end was so difficult.

He took a breath and answered as calmly as possible.

“We’re the same kind.”

“Impossible!”

One of the puppets slammed its hands against a desk and shrieked.

“What is he talking about?”

“This is hilarious! Did you hear that?”

“He says he’s one of us? A puppet!”

“Hahahaha! A living person is actually willing to become one of us?”

“Stop joking around!”

Shen Tianxing tugged at Wen Yingchao’s sleeve. “Seriously? You’d better think this through! The teacher’s punishments are terrifying when she gets angry.”

Would the teacher even get angry? She was always smiling.

Wen Yingchao repeated himself. “We’re the same kind.”

“We follow the same rules, struggle in a world that binds us, and remain trapped here, unable to escape. We’re all the same kind.”

He continued, “When people come here, they become puppets.”

In Wen Yingchao’s consciousness, a Cognitive Modification card was quietly burning.

After waiting for quite a while, until Wen Yingchao almost began to suspect that his double safeguard hadn’t worked, the stuffed doll at the lectern finally opened her mouth.

“Very good,” the doll said. “From today onward, Student Wen, you’re one of us. Make sure you follow the school’s rules.”

After speaking, the doll turned toward the other students.

“The same goes for everyone else. You mustn’t discriminate against him. Since you’re the same kind, you should look after one another.”

“Those who aren’t the same kind must be exterminated.”

The final sentence was a warning.

The puppets below the lectern had lost their enthusiasm. They answered with scattered, reluctant murmurs of “Okay.”

The teacher didn’t care about their feelings. As their voices gradually died down, her stuffed head bobbed up and down in a rather comical manner.

She was probably nodding.

“Now, let’s begin class. Everyone, turn to page 126.”

“Student Wen, you may sit down.”

Wen Yingchao didn’t dare relax.

He could hear his own heart pounding wildly.

Amid the stuffed doll’s shrill lecture, Shen Tianxing used his textbook to cover his face and poked Wen Yingchao in the waist with the end of his pen.

Wen Yingchao felt a ticklish sensation at his waist.

Wen Yingchao: ?

“What were you thinking?” Shen Tianxing whispered.

He leaned halfway across the desk to look at Wen Yingchao. “I nearly jumped out of my skin when you said something like that! I’ve never seen anyone handle the teacher that way before. How did you manage to fool her?”

“The teacher always keeps her word. What if she’d actually turned you into a puppet when she threatened to do so? What would you have done then?”

Wen Yingchao replied, “Take a guess.”

Shen Tianxing said, “I can’t guess! I’m genuinely curious.”

Wen Yingchao wasn’t foolish enough to tell a puppet about his abilities.

Instead, he asked Shen Tianxing, “What about you? Why did you speak up for me?”

“That’s simple. You’re my deskmate. If you survive, we’ll still have to get along afterward.”

Shen Tianxing’s answer was unexpectedly straightforward.

“We’re puppets, but we’re free here. We’re not marionettes whose strings are pulled to express the will of a single person,” Shen Tianxing explained. “I want to be a little different. What’s so strange about that?”

“Nothing,” Wen Yingchao replied. “That’s why I can’t completely trust you yet.”

“Although I do like speaking my mind.”

Shen Tianxing quickly glanced toward the lectern. After confirming that the stuffed doll wasn’t paying attention to them, he continued.

“But not getting an answer is genuinely driving me crazy with curiosity.”

Wen Yingchao pretended not to hear him and ignored him.

Shen Tianxing chatted to himself for a while. When he saw that Wen Yingchao wasn’t reacting at all and appeared to be listening attentively to the lecture, he could only give up his attempts to pester him, looking rather dejected.

Finally, some peace and quiet, Wen Yingchao thought.

“Oh, by the way, could I trouble you to take notes for this lesson too? I want to catch up on some sleep.”

…He hadn’t even enjoyed two minutes of peace.

Shen Tianxing continued poking Wen Yingchao.

“I won’t make you do it for nothing. I’ll trade you some information.”

Wen Yingchao patiently replied, “Go on.”

“And stop poking me in the waist.”

“Sure thing, bro.”

Shen Tianxing grinned mischievously at him.

“Another transfer student will be joining our class later. He’s different from both you and me.”

“That’s why I’m curious too.”

Shen Tianxing said, “His name is Gu Mowan.”