Raising a Wife in a Supernatural World [Infinite] – CH1

Chapter 1: Fierce Ghost High (1)

“Only five days left until the college entrance exam! Look at the sorry, half-dead states you’re all in—how do you expect to compete with anyone when the time comes?!”

Inside a classroom so still you could hear a pin drop, the chalkboard eraser slammed onto the podium with a sharp crack. Perched behind the desk, the teacher’s face was dark as thunder. As he shrilly berated the room, a cluster of cloudy, sunken eyes glared chillingly down at every single student.

This was not a figure of speech. This teacher truly possessed countless eyes, densely clustered across his entire body. Even his speech was produced by the frantic, ceaseless blinking of an eye situated right where his mouth should have been.

Qin Fu’an felt as though someone had struck his brain with a heavy hammer. The dull, throbbing ache made his brow furrow tightly. When he inadvertently raised his gaze, he collided straight into a swarm of turbid, murky eyes.

They stared at him with an eerie fixity, their depths brimming with an unsettling blend of greed and hunger. With their gaze alone, they seemed to be silently urging and anticipating that he make some petty, rule-breaking move.

Qin Fu’an closed his eyes, then opened them again.

The eyes were still there. It wasn’t a hallucination spawned by a fractured mind.

After locking eyes with those clinging, invasive pupils for a brief second, Qin Fu’an sat up with prim, textbook posture, pen poised in hand, adopting the picture-perfect demeanor of a diligent student listening to a lecture.

It took three full seconds before that sticky, revolting gaze reluctantly slithered away.

Yet not every student seated in this classroom possessed such composure—or such luck.

Terror-stricken screams, indignant demands, frantic pleas for help… A cacophony of panicked noise erupted all within the span of a few seconds. No one paid any mind to the student who stood up while shouting his demands; his righteous fury was as jarring as sound bursting into a silent film, and his animated, terrified expressions only served to accentuate the dead stillness choking the rest of the room.

Framed against the blood-dripping college entrance exam countdown on the chalkboard and the “classmates” who remained frozen and motionless despite the uproar, the scene looked extraordinarily grotesque.

The youth in the blue-and-white school uniform calmly lifted his pale green eyes, quietly watching the deaths of those few people.

The eye on the teacher’s podium that served as his mouth stretched wide, pulling into what looked like a grotesquely exaggerated grin. While grinning, he delivered a blistering reprimand with furious venom: “Not only do you slack off on your studies, but you dare to openly violate school regulations! I will never allow you to become the worst class I have ever taught!”

As the final syllable dropped, the space around the “students” who had been shouting seemed to freeze. Then, without warning, eye after eye erupted through the surface of their flesh. With rapid, ravenous blinks, the eyes began devouring the flesh and blood of the screaming students, inch by inch.

Blood poured down their blue-and-white uniforms, pooling across the linoleum floor. This gruesome “feeding” lasted a full ten minutes. Just as nothing remained of them except a puddle of gory skeletons, the cheerful chime of the dismissal bell—familiar to every middle and high school student—finally rang out.

Looking thoroughly sated, the teacher shut the blank lesson planner on the podium and announced the end of class in his most genial, pleasant voice.

Qin Fu’an remained motionless in his seat.

In fact, nobody in the entire classroom made a move.

It was only after the eye-encrusted teacher exited the room, his footsteps fading into total silence down the hall, that a few uniformed students quietly exhaled, cursing under their breath: “Damn it, three people dead right at the start? This isn’t beginner-level difficulty at all!”

Qin Fu’an glanced toward the speaker—or more precisely, the “player.”

Because the moment Qin Fu’an had lowered his head, he had noticed the normal text printed on the textbook before him dissolving into nothingness. Right before his eyes, dark red stains began to seep through the paper, as if someone were using a shard of bone or a wooden stick dipped in fresh blood to slowly, crookedly scratch out words.

Roughly ten seconds later, the lines of text finally settled clearly onto the page.

[Welcome to the Beginner Instance: Fierce Ghost High.]

[As the premier institution of the Ghost Domain, our school boasts the longest pedagogical history, the most elite faculty, the strictest academic discipline, and a 100% matriculation rate.]

[A graduation certificate is every student’s sole transit permit to leave the school grounds.]

[The college entrance exam is upon you. May all candidates give their utmost effort.]

Once Qin Fu’an finished silently reading those blood-soaked lines, they melted away as though they had never existed at all. The pristine page returned to normal print, filled once more with high school curriculum that meant nothing to a college graduate.

“Anyone else still alive? Let’s get acquainted first,” a girl in a uniform said as she stood up. Both her tone and gaze were remarkably steady. “This instance doesn’t look straightforward. We might need to cooperate if we want to clear it.”

“…What do you mean? Wh-where the hell is this place?!” another student asked, her voice shaking with unmasked panic. She had curled into a tight ball during class, and now that she finally looked up, tear streaks could be seen staining her pale face.

“Wait, another newbie managed to survive?” a boy remarked in surprise. He raised a hand toward the girl who had spoken first and introduced himself: “Just call me Yake. This is my final beginner instance.”

Turning to the panicking girl, he added in a reassuring tone, “Don’t lose your head. As long as you survive and clear this instance, you’ll naturally understand everything. In short, from the second we materialized here, every single one of us had one foot planted firmly in the grave.”

“Whether you end up dead for good or make a narrow escape all comes down to whether you can survive this run.” He gave an easy shrug, though his words did little to soothe anyone’s frayed nerves.

“I’m Bai Song. This is my second beginner instance.”

“Chen Qi, third beginner instance.”

“…”

One after another, six people chimed in.

Factoring in the three who had perished, plus the silent Qin Fu’an, the total number of players in this instance was exactly ten.

The leading girl waited a moment. Seeing that no one else was standing up to speak, she looked back at the terrified girl, softening her tone slightly. “What should we call you?”

“…M-My name is Zhao Jiayue,” the girl stammered. Recalling how the others had introduced themselves, she still had no idea what this nightmarish place was, but having people willing to talk to her shifted her terror into desperate clinginess. She couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out: “I just resigned from my company today. I hadn’t even stepped out of the elevator when I suddenly appeared here… Those people just now… Can they still go back alive?”

“I’m Nan Zhu. Recess only lasts a few minutes, so let’s search the classroom together to see if there are any clues about the instance.” Nan Zhu didn’t bother answering Zhao Jiayue’s question. Having decisively set their course of action, she headed straight toward the podium.

Qin Fu’an watched silently as the group dispersed. Only Yake lingered to offer the trembling Zhao Jiayue a word of advice: “Friendly tip: dying here means dying permanently. You’d better get moving. The more clues you turn up, the higher your odds of staying alive.”

Swallowing her dread, Zhao Jiayue scrambled to her feet and hurried off after them.

Qin Fu’an stayed glued to his seat, blending in seamlessly as an extra alongside the other silent students in the room. He was in no hurry to scour the place for clues.

The classroom was simply far too quiet—quiet enough that the scattered, hurried footsteps and ragged breathing of the searching players echoed with sharp clarity.

He tilted his head slightly. His deskmate was hunched over, scribbling away frantically. Dark black ink flowed smoothly across the page, forming dense lines of handwriting. Qin Fu’an could clearly read the two neatly centered header lines printed across the top of the test paper:

Fierce Ghost High: Five-Year College Entrance Exam Mock Test [Part I]

Fierce Ghost High, Senior Class [4] Exclusive Edition

Qin Fu’an noted the astonishing speed at which his deskmate was answering questions. Looking down, he swapped his textbook for the exact same test paper, filled in his name and class, and began writing along.

Calling it an “exclusive edition” was no exaggeration. The problems printed on it happened to correspond precisely to the key concepts the teacher had scrawled across the chalkboard during the previous period. Thanks to the fact that the teacher had spent the final ten minutes “disciplining students,” there weren’t many comprehensive, long-form questions on the test.

Qin Fu’an had a decent memory, but his practical execution was even better. Before the chalk writing silently faded away with the dismissal bell, he had watched the teacher feed while casually transcribing every single character from the board onto paper, matching the original layout stroke for stroke.

When he was a little over halfway through his test, Qin Fu’an noticed the deskmate beside him seemed to have hit a wall. The pen tip hovered, frozen. The youth began shifting anxiously in his seat, his presence growing increasingly erratic and violent.

Qin Fu’an could even hear ragged, terrified panting right beside his ear. It didn’t sound like a panicked human; it sounded more like a starving beast on the brink of snapping.

As his unknown deskmate’s pen-holding hand began distorting, steadily morphing into a sharp, beastly claw, Qin Fu’an threw a glance toward the players rummaging through desks for rule sheets. Seeing that none of them were looking in his direction, he raised his hand and lightly tapped on the adjoining desk.

The next second, his eyes met a pair of blood-red, crazed pupils, just as he expected.

“Here. Copy it quickly—we only have two minutes before the bell.” Qin Fu’an slid his notes over.

The youth froze. The frenzied madness and swollen, congested crimson in his gaze receded bit by bit. Once clarity returned to his eyes, he curved them with heartfelt gratitude toward Qin Fu’an, whispering a soft, breathless “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Qin Fu’an replied, arching an eyebrow, taking in every nuance of the shift.

It appeared that the ones bound by the teacher and the institutional rules were not merely the players, but all the “students” attending this school.

From this, two basic rules could already be deduced:

First: No noise or disruption during class.

Second: Homework assignments must be completed on time.

Whether these two rules shared the same priority tier, or whether violating them carried identical penalties… Qin Fu’an wasn’t sure yet. But it didn’t matter; he would find out soon enough.

Riiiing——!!

A shrill, hurried bell abruptly tore through the air.

Class was back in session.

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