# 48
**Chapter 48: Girls’ Dormitory**
“You! Which class are you from?! Where’s the original flag-bearer?!”
The moment the flag-raising ceremony ended, the teacher in charge stormed up to Lin Qiye, snarling.
Lin Qiye had no time for him. He sidestepped and strode away.
The teacher’s eyes bulged. In all his years of teaching, he’d never met such an outrageous student!
“Stop right there! Is this how you treat a teacher?! I’ll drag you to the principal’s office and have you named and shamed in front of the whole school!”
He grabbed Lin Qiye’s shoulder and roared.
Lin Qiye halted,
turned his head slowly,
and in his eyes
two golden flames ignited in an instant.
In that moment, a pressure the teacher had never felt in his life crushed down on him.
Under that gaze, he felt as if he were staring into the cosmos—an endless dark unknown—and he was nothing but a grain of sand.
Oppression!
A suppression that crossed the boundary of life itself!
In a single second, cold sweat soaked the teacher’s back; his knees nearly buckled.
The flames in Lin Qiye’s eyes vanished as if they’d never existed. The dark pupils were calm again.
“What just happened was my fault. You can report me to the whole school, even file a complaint with the agency,” he said quietly, watching the teacher gasp for breath.
“But wait until I finish my work.”
He turned and sprinted off, leaving the teacher frozen in terror.
“Captain.”
“Qiye, report.”
“I’ve checked every student and teacher… The situation is bad. Solving this quietly will be next to impossible.”
“Details.”
“Among the three grades, Grade 10 and 12 have fewer infected—barely ten total. Grade 11 is the worst: thirty-six carriers. One class is half infected!
That’s only the students. Among staff and leadership, nearly twenty more are infected.
Conservative count: at least sixty people in No. 2 High have already turned into monsters.”
The earpiece fell silent.
“Captain—sixty-plus infected! Even if each is only in the Lantern Realm, that’s sixty Lantern-realm monsters inside a single high school.
Once we locate the myth-creature’s main body, those sixty will go berserk and attack everyone indiscriminately.
If even one escapes, the whole of Cangnan City is looking at a catastrophe.”
Lin Qiye laid out his deduction calmly.
“Qiye, it’s not ‘if’ one escapes…” Static and the sound of blades came through the earpiece. Chen Muye spoke slowly: “They’re already leaking out.”
Several kilometres from No. 2 High, in a rented flat.
Chen Muye stepped over shredded flesh, blade in hand. Beside him, Wu Xiangnan’s face was grave.
“We searched Liu Xiaoyan’s, Han Ruoruo’s and the discipline master’s homes. Their families were infected too—just cleaned them up.
The situation is uglier than we thought.”
“Then—”
“We’ll hit every infected household, cut the chain. We can’t back you up on campus. But a creature this tricky can’t be strong in direct combat. Three of you should handle it.”
“Yet the school will still erupt—our existence, the monsters, everything will be exposed.”
“Not a problem. We have a forbidden artifact, Dream Whisper. It can weave dreams and erase memories inside a radius.
Leng Xuan will stand watch and deploy the Borderless Barrier around the school. No one in or out. From now on… No. 2 High is an isolated island.”
Chen Muye gazed toward the school.
“This enemy is nasty. No holding back, no hiding. Find the body—kill it—fast. Keep the students safe; keep the body-count down.
This time… you fight with everything.”
The earpiece was silent a moment, then Lin Qiye answered firmly, “Understood.”
He cut the link. Wu Xiangnan frowned. “First mission and it’s this big. Too heavy for him?”
“Xiangnan, that boy isn’t like us,” Chen Muye said quietly. “He has the gift, the mindset, the grit. All we need to give him is a clear road and a wide stage…
and he’ll ride the clouds himself.”
…
No. 2 High, girls’ dormitory.
Hongying poked her head around the doorway, checked once, then waved behind her.
“Quick—no matron on duty!”
Si Xiaonan darted in, vaulted the gate, and slipped past the reception counter.
Hongying copied the move. Once past, they sprinted up the stairs three at a time.
In seconds they reached the fifth floor.
Classes had resumed; the dorm was empty. Every door was locked, the corridor narrow and dim, only a strip of sunlight at the far balcony.
Hongying hugged the wall, scanning.
“Which room did Lin Qiye say?” she whispered.
“Second-to-last on the north side,” Si Xiaonan answered.
Hongying crept that way; Si Xiaonan clutched her sleeve, eyes wide with fear.
“Hongying-jie, slow down…”
“Yeah yeah. You can hack monsters but you’re scared of the dark?”
They stopped at the door. Hongying flicked a needle; the lock clicked open.
As expected, the room was deserted.
They slipped inside and searched.
“Nice dorm—big balcony.” Hongying stepped out and froze.
On the clothesline, among the pastel bras and panties…
four thin human skins
fluttered in the breeze.