Chapter 33
Yu Zhi naturally had no idea if this beer-belly creature actually knew about Tingting and her mother. He was purely gambling.
He bet that as a former colleague, this creature might have overheard some workplace gossip.
Before the beer belly could speak, he continued, “Tingting’s mom has been teaching here for years, and Tingting is also a student here now.”
The thick lips of the beer belly moved up and down slightly, as though scrutinizing him.
After a brief pause, it exhaled a hot, foul breath. “Tingting? You mean Teacher Chen Wan from Year Two and her daughter Chen Tingting?”
Hearing this, Yu Zhi felt a faint relief in his chest. “Yes, that’s them.”
The next second, the beer belly spoke again, suspicion lacing its tone: “But wasn’t Teacher Chen Wan divorced a long time ago?”
Zuo Feiyang felt his heart skip a beat and instinctively glanced at Yu Zhi.
Yu Zhi’s expression didn’t waver. He sighed, as if helpless, and said, “Yes, we’ve been divorced for a long time. I’m her ex-husband.” He paused, then added, “But I’m still Tingting’s dad.”
Zuo Feiyang: “…”
The beer belly still looked skeptical. “You don’t look that old.”
“Good genes,” Yu Zhi said nonchalantly, his tone calm and polished. “Teacher, also looks quite young too.” Then, without skipping a beat, he introduced the two men behind him, “This is Tingting’s uncle, and this is her second uncle.”
Zuo Feiyang: “…”
Lu Liming, having prior experience playing uncle to a polluted entity, greeted the beer belly casually, unfazed.
The beer belly’s thick lips twitched and asked, “What business do you have with Teacher Chen?”
Yu Zhi made something up on the spot: “It’s Tingting’s mom who wants to see us. I’m not sure what it’s about.”
The beer belly seemed to accept the logic and turned to lead the way. “Come with me to the office. This is the Year Three teaching block; Year Two is in the next building.”
The building it referred to was on the right side of the U-shaped campus—the same wing where Zuo Feiyang’s teammates had disappeared.
Yu Zhi discreetly tightened his grip on the knife in his pocket and followed the beer belly.
Zuo Feiyang watched Yu Zhi’s lean figure ahead, filled with questions.
Unsure if it was safe to ask directly, he whispered to Lu Liming, “How did Brother Yu know this polluted entity would recognize those two?”
Lu Liming pondered briefly. While he didn’t know the reason either, he answered with confidence, “Brother Yu must have his ways.”
Zuo Feiyang fell into deep thought. Ways… Could it be some sort of ability to see through polluted entities?
A one-in-a-billion S-class ability user was indeed extraordinary.
After a moment of silence, he fully embraced his role as Tingting’s uncle and tried making conversation with the polluted entity. “Teacher, do you know how Tingting has been performing in school lately?”
The beer belly replied, “Chen Tingting isn’t one of my students. I’m not too sure. You’ll have to ask Teacher Chen directly.”
But when it mentioned Teacher Chen, the beer belly became chatty. “See those slogans all over the school? It was Teacher Chen’s idea to put them up. Ever since we did, Taijiang High School’s admission rate to undergraduate programs has been climbing year after year.”
Yu Zhi glanced down and noticed the slogans plastered along the hallway floor, identical to the ones on the stairs:
[No pain, no gain. High school is tasteless without struggle. A life without striving is a life wasted.]
The stairs had the slogans on every step, while the hallway had them on every tile.
The bright red text spread across the floor like a pervasive stain. Even though Yu Zhi immediately averted his gaze, the words seemed seared into his mind, replaying over and over.
His hunger surged again, stabbing through his stomach like a knife twisting.
The beer belly rambled on, “Sure, these slogans may look ugly, but they’re for the students’ own good. Suffering builds character. But honestly, what’s so hard about studying?”
“And oh, take a look over there…”
Yu Zhi closed his eyes briefly to shut out its droning. What a chatterbox monster.
Ignoring the beer belly’s chatter, he shifted his focus to the left-side classrooms.
The classrooms were eerily similar to those in his memory: neatly arranged desks, towering stacks of textbooks. On the back wall of each classroom hung bright red banners.
[No pain, no gain. Life is tasteless without struggle!]
[Respect teachers and honor parents!]
[Trust your teachers and believe in your parents. Everything they do is for your own good!]
Eventually, they passed through Building 5 and reached Building 6.
From afar, Yu Zhi noticed the faint light slipping through the office door crack. The classrooms were dark, but the office stood out in the dim corridor, its brightness unmistakable.
As he approached, his steps faltered.
The office door was peculiar—its surface was uneven, with a slight bulge in the center. The point where the two doors met wasn’t flat; instead, it curved, forming an arc.
The door was lined with deep horizontal grooves, stretching from the sides toward the center. The light spilling through made the surface appear glossy, almost oily.
Yu Zhi frowned. Something about this door felt eerily familiar.
It resembled…
It looked like…
The beer belly moved toward the office and pushed the door open. A wave of warm, meat-scented air wafted out, enveloping them immediately.
Yu Zhi’s heart sank, and realization dawned.
The door looked like lips.
The two panels were curved, vertical representations of upper and lower lips, with the grooves mimicking lip lines.
Standing in the doorway, the beer belly turned and parted its thick lips. “Aren’t you coming in?”
It was inviting them inside.
Yu Zhi instinctively resisted. His eyes darted over the beer belly, attempting to peer into the office beyond.
But the beer belly’s massive frame blocked the view entirely.
“Are you coming in?” the beer belly repeated.
Yu Zhi clenched his back teeth, forcing a tight-lipped smile. “Could you please call Teacher Chen Wan out for us?”
The beer belly turned its head slightly, then replied, “Teacher Chen isn’t here right now. Aren’t you coming in?”
If Chen Wan wasn’t present, this was the perfect opportunity to search her desk.
Taking a deep breath, Yu Zhi relented. “We’ll come in.”
He glanced at Zuo Feiyang and Lu Liming. He intended to suggest entering alone, planning to rely on “Ordinary Kick” to make a quick escape if needed.
But Zuo Feiyang seemed to read his mind and shook his head firmly. “Splitting up is riskier.”
It was dangerous for those who went in, and equally unsafe for those left outside. Sticking together was the better option.
“Alright,” Yu Zhi said, stepping into the office.
The moment he crossed the threshold, goosebumps rose all over his body.
The room had no windows, and as soon as they entered, the lip-like doors shut behind them. The air inside was dense with warmth, suffused with the savory scent of meat that engulfed them completely.
It felt as if they had walked into a boiling pot, a mouth mid-bite, where the humid steam licked at their skin.
The grotesque imagery made Yu Zhi nauseous, but he quickly regained his composure and scanned the office.
It was just as he remembered—white tiles on the floor, gray walls.
Everything looked normal.
Or, at least, temporarily normal.
Yu Zhi glanced at Zuo Feiyang and Lu Liming. Zuo Feiyang looked pale, but his gaze was still clear.
Lu Liming, however, seemed dazed, his eyes unfocused.
Yu Zhi punched him lightly in the stomach. When that helped snap him out of it slightly, he stuffed some tissues into Lu Liming’s nose, then turned to the beer belly. “Which desk belongs to Teacher Chen Wan?”
The beer belly sat in a chair, its thick lips facing them directly. It picked at its teeth with a finger—so large that it nearly matched the size of its mutated gaps—and drooled as it worked.
“Second from the back,” it said sluggishly.
Yu Zhi followed its gaze to a desk.
It was unoccupied.
So, Chen Wan really wasn’t there.
Yu Zhi began walking toward her desk. As he took his first step, he noticed a figure sitting at a desk to the right.
It was a lip-faced teacher, thin-lipped with deeply etched wrinkles, suggesting age. It stared at him while drooling.
Another step brought him closer, revealing a second lip-faced teacher at the next desk. This one, too, was drooling.
And then a third.
The fourth lip-faced creature drooled. So did the fifth.
Each of them sat in their chairs, their large mouths turning to follow Yu Zhi as he walked deeper into the room, saliva dripping incessantly.
“Drip—drip—”
The saliva pooled on the floor, creating a sticky, wet mess.
Yu Zhi lowered his gaze to avoid looking at them, but each step forward pressed into the viscous puddles.
Each footfall was met with an unpleasant suctioning sensation, the soles of his shoes sticking momentarily before pulling free.
The stifling aroma of meat in the air, the slimy saliva underfoot, the grotesque creatures on either side—everything was an assault on his senses, a mental bombardment that left his scalp prickling and his palms clammy.
He tried to ignore it all, silently repeating Zuo Feiyang’s earlier words to steady himself: Follow the pollution zone’s logic and rules, and the pollution creatures won’t attack.
He was a “parent,” here to meet Teacher Chen Wan. These creatures had no reason to harm him.
It shouldn’t take more than two minutes to walk from the door to Chen Wan’s desk, but to Yu Zhi, it felt like an eternity.
At last, he reached the desk.
Wiping the sweat from his palms, Yu Zhi heard one of the lip-faced creatures speaking.
“You placed fourth in the last weekly exam, and now you’re not even in the top ten?”
“And Chen Tingting from Class 2, too. Ever since she went on that community service trip, her grades have plummeted. Winter break was meant for practice, not play…”
The mention of “Chen Tingting” made Yu Zhi’s eyelashes tremble. He turned his gaze toward the voice.
Behind Chen Wan’s desk sat two pollution creatures.
One was a lip-faced teacher in a long dress. The other was a type of pollution creature he hadn’t encountered before: a student.
Yu Zhi froze.
The student pollution creature wasn’t a lip-faced being like the others.
Was this zone populated by two different types of pollution creatures?
This student pollution creature wore the blue-and-white school uniform of Taijiang High School. Unlike the lip-faced creatures, it had something resembling a human head, complete with hair—but no face.
Its five facial features seemed to have been scraped away, leaving a smooth, featureless skin surface. Only its mouth remained prominent, standing out grotesquely.
The mouth was larger than a normal person’s, extending all the way to its cheeks. The corners of the mouth drooped downward, making it appear lifeless and despondent. Its lip shape bore some resemblance to the lip-faced creatures.
The long-dressed lip-faced teacher was scolding this faceless student:
“Look at the students in Chen Wan’s class. Every morning during exercises, they’re reciting vocabulary words. During gym class, they’re doing homework or studying. They’re so self-disciplined.”
Its tone grew more agitated, saliva streaming down its lips:
“And you? You take over thirty minutes just to eat lunch!”
The faceless student remained motionless, standing silently with its head lowered.
The lip-faced teacher continued:
“We give you an hour and a half for lunch break so you can study early, not waste it eating and playing!”
Still, the faceless student stayed silent.
Yu Zhi glanced at it. Was it just his imagination, or had the student creature’s mouth grown even larger?
“Gulp—”
Suddenly, the long-dressed lip-faced teacher swallowed.
The next moment, its head turned toward Yu Zhi, the enormous mouth now facing him. Its saliva poured down in torrents, dripping audibly onto the floor.
Under the bright light, the glistening, slimy mouth shone with a revolting sheen.
“What class are you in?” it demanded.
Yu Zhi’s eyelid twitched. He took a subtle step back and answered calmly, “I’m Chen Tingting’s father.”
As he stepped back, the lip-faced teacher’s long neck extended forward.
The neck stretched effortlessly over the desk partition, bringing the creature’s dripping mouth closer to Yu Zhi.
Yu Zhi held his breath and retreated another small step.
The creature’s neck stretched further, now perfectly straight, its enormous mouth just inches from Yu Zhi’s face. It exhaled warm, rancid breath, saliva dripping incessantly.
Yu Zhi could even see the black cavities in its decayed teeth.
Suppressing the urge to gag or reach for his knife to sever its neck, he spoke evenly, “Teacher, your mouth is a little too close.”
“Isn’t this a bit too forward?”
“……”
The long-dressed lip-faced creature hesitated for a moment before replying:
“You’re a parent?”
It was drooling so much that its speech was garbled, the words almost lost in the gurgling flow:
“But why… why does a parent smell so delicious?”
Yu Zhi forced a smile, his lips curving in mock politeness:
“Thank you for the compliment. I do my best to age gracefully.”
Zuo Feiyang: “…”
Yu Zhi’s gaze locked onto the enormous mouth in front of him. Slowly, the two thick lips parted, revealing yellowed teeth and a saliva-coated, crimson tongue.
“Delic—”
Crack!
A sharp sound interrupted the scene.
The long-dressed creature’s taut neck stretched further, snapping its head forward with alarming speed, mouth gaping wide to bite down on Yu Zhi.
Yu Zhi’s pupils contracted as he yanked Lu Liming to the side, dodging just in time.
The creature missed its target, but it wasn’t giving up. It scrambled onto a desk with both hands and feet, its massive jaw opening once more as it lunged toward Yu Zhi.
The heavy furniture screeched across the floor, the deafening noise reverberating through the office.
As if responding to a summons, the other lip-faced creatures began to stir. Hands and feet flailed, jagged teeth bared, they rushed forward in unison.
Yu Zhi cursed under his breath, ducking another bite from the long-dressed lip-faced creature. He snapped at Zuo Feiyang:
“Didn’t you say they don’t attack if we follow the rules?!”
Zuo Feiyang pulled out his gun, his voice dry as sandpaper:
“They usually don’t.”
Yu Zhi: “Unless?”
Zuo Feiyang: “Unless they really can’t help themselves.”
Yu Zhi: “…”
He dodged once more as the creature lunged at him again, its jaws snapping dangerously close. Without hesitation, Yu Zhi drew his knife and drove it into the creature’s elongated neck.
With a sharp twist, he sliced through the neck cleanly.
Thud!
The severed head, mouth still agape, slammed onto the floor.
Yu Zhi kicked the grotesque thing aside, scowling as he barked:
“Was it so hard to just hold it in for a bit?!”
Would it have killed you to show some self-restraint?!
