Raising a Wife in a Supernatural World [Infinite] – CH21

Chapter 21: Spook High (21)

Carrying the two jackets, the bubble blower, and a pair of steel desk legs, Qin Fu’an stepped around the desiccated husk of Teacher Zhang and ambled leisurely back up the stairs.

From the second he popped that massive bubble and seized Nan Zhu by the throat, his stream’s heat and the blinding flood of priority super-chats had exploded into a frenzy.

Screams, incoherent praise, and dazzling donation effects rolled across the screen in such numbers that Qin Fu’an could scarcely keep track of them all.

Casting an idle glance, his eyes caught several repeating comments:

[AHHHH SAVE ME! That sprint was so ridiculously hot I dropped dead on the spot! Does anyone get me?!]

[Holy shit… I honestly thought he was cornered for good, but that counter-kill was pure theater! I haven’t even caught my breath yet.]

[Who cares about watching players fight mindless monsters?! This is the good stuff! Players scheming, backstabbing, and slaughtering each other! One wrong step and your life is forfeit—it gave me full-body chills!!!]

[Nan Zhu’s stream just went completely black. As someone who followed her through her first two runs, I have to admit the streamer’s parting words were chillingly prophetic. Nan Zhu was brilliant, calculating, and ruthless when it counted. Fate stood by her every step of the way—until tonight…]

[Exactly! Watching from Nan Zhu’s perspective, none of us dreamed this guy was palming a drafting compass the entire time. What a fatal, twisted coincidence. The fight ended so fast it turned all her elaborate calculations into a bad joke.]

[Not gonna lie, as an OG viewer who never left this stream, reading your comments makes this ten times sweeter! Do you know how satisfying it felt when that bubble popped, parting the mist to reveal Nan Zhu’s frozen, dumbfounded face?! Pure adrenaline spike!!]

Qin Fu’an skimmed the dense chatter for two seconds before looking away, entirely uninterested.

As a hedonist who had orchestrated countless bloodbaths, betrayals, and grand deceptions across his long life, he understood their obsession with carnage all too well.

Yet after watching too many fools dance in the palm of his hand over cheap rhetoric and petty tricks, Qin Fu’an had grown weary of it.

Having spent a few years living among mortals, Qin Fu’an found himself far more captivated by human ingenuity. Compared to the endless entertainment humans had devised, pure slaughter was dreadfully dull.

That was why the trap Nan Zhu had fallen into—letting the audience pull her by the nose, allowing the chat’s bloodlust to dictate her emotions—would never happen to him.

Crude manipulation and clumsy bait. In his eyes, those theatrical antics were as transparent and full of flaws as a parrot mimicking sounds it didn’t understand.

Rather than reading the chat, Qin Fu’an was far more intrigued by the current examination roster of Grade 12, Class 4.

As a “Proctor,” he held the authority to inspect the real-time exam status and answer sheets of every student in his class.

The moment he brought up the interface, a dark-crimson display—distinct from the stream’s interface—materialized before him.

One look, and even Qin Fu’an’s nonchalant expression tinged with mild surprise.

He finally grasped why Nan Zhu had been hell-bent on taking another Proctor badge from him.

The crimson display functioned like an omniscient radar map, dotted with clusters of green pinpricks that marked the exact hiding spots, physical conditions, and testing statuses of every student in Grade 12, Class 4.

The most prominent green dot was waiting on the rooftop—Xie Yunhuai. Qin Fu’an spotted him in an instant.

He tapped the dot with a fingertip.

Candidate Name: Xie Yunhuai.

Current Score: 100 points.

Status: Normal (Low Temperature).

This was likely what had driven Nan Zhu to turn on him the second she stole a Proctor badge.

She wanted total surveillance over all the students in the class, particularly the remaining players.

She might not have intended to wipe them out immediately, but an advantage that offered absolute battlefield awareness was something she could never afford to leave in Qin Fu’an’s hands.

Not to mention that the Proctor role—provided the badge was never lost—could be carried forward until the trial concluded.

The prize was simply too sweet, easily justifying the risk of deploying her items and trump cards.

“What a waste…” Qin Fu’an murmured with a light chuckle. He tossed the stolen Proctor badge lightly from palm to palm, and upon hauling himself and his scavenged gear through the rooftop hatch, casually flicked the silver trinket toward Xie Yunhuai.

“Brought you a little toy. Pin it on if you like; toss it if you don’t.”

The small silver badge drew an elegant arc through the freezing gale, landing cleanly into Xie Yunhuai’s instinctively open palm.

The moment he recognized what he had caught, Xie Yunhuai’s pupils contracted. His head snapped up, locking onto the approaching youth.

“You ran into another Proctor?”

The words left his lips before he clamped his mouth shut in self-annoyance.

What he had really wanted to ask was…

“Ahhh! So much blood! There’s so much blood!”

“What do we do?! Did he get hurt? Where is he hurt?!”

“Wahhh, does it hurt? Rub it, blow on it, make the pain go away~”

A flurry of soft, anxious tentacles surged forward, swarming Qin Fu’an like a gang of brazen little hooligans. They patted him down from head to toe, babbling softly in panic while pressing themselves eagerly against his lone wound, trying their hardest to replace the strip of cloth Xie Yunhuai had tied around his arm with their own shadowy mass.

Qin Fu’an: “…”

He raised a hand in helpless defeat. Waiting until the foolish tendrils had finished feeling him up, he fixed his slitted, serpentine green eyes onto Xie Yunhuai, who was standing quietly before him.

“How old are you this year?” he asked instead.

Xie Yunhuai couldn’t make heads or tails of the sudden question. He blinked blankly, taking an awkward step backward under Qin Fu’an’s predatory gaze before offering a hesitant, “…Eighteen?”

His student ID said eighteen, but his eighteenth year had looped through Spook High more times than he could count. If every cycle were tallied, even Xie Yunhuai couldn’t say how old he truly was.

Qin Fu’an seemed immensely pleased with the answer. With a clatter, he dropped the steel poles and the bubble blower onto the gravel, shook out one of the clean uniforms, and draped it right over Xie Yunhuai’s head.

“Looks brand-new. Put it on, or a night out in this wind will leave you unable to get out of bed tomorrow.” Watching the boy stand there obediently with the jacket covering his face like a bridal veil, Qin Fu’an couldn’t resist reaching out to give his head another firm pat through the fabric.

Eighteen.

No wonder he was bold enough to cop a feel all over another person’s body the moment they met.

The corners of Qin Fu’an’s lips curled upward, the burning possessiveness in his gaze so intense that viewers watching through the broadcast were thoroughly spooked, peppering the screen with a barrage of frantic question marks.

Yet by the time Xie Yunhuai pulled the jacket off his head and zipped it up, Qin Fu’an had already slipped back into his usual lazy, unbothered posture.

“Downstairs just now…” Xie Yunhuai stepped closer, fingering the silver badge, still eager to know if Qin Fu’an had been wounded.

Perhaps he didn’t understand why he cared so much, but Qin Fu’an had gone down alone and hauled back a bounty of supplies. Basic courtesy… dictated that he should ask, didn’t it?

Xie Yunhuai kept reassuring himself in his head.

Before the inquiry could form, Qin Fu’an looked up from the ground. The moment their contrasting eyes met, Xie Yunhuai instinctively swallowed the rest of his words.

He couldn’t tell if it was an illusion, but something about Qin Fu’an felt distinctly off.

Had he been able to see his own soul, however, he wouldn’t have wondered at all.

Every single one of those tentacles—starved to the point of devouring their own brains—was crowding eagerly around Qin Fu’an, babbling an endless stream of noisy, childish nonsense.

A few particularly daring tendrils had brazenly draped themselves over Qin Fu’an’s head, proudly declaring that they were “avenging the host body” by seeing if Qin Fu’an’s head was just as nice to pet.

Qin Fu’an had been putting up with the little freeloaders since they first laid their hands on him. Now that Xie Yunhuai had drawn near, the look he leveled at the true culprit was barely restrained.

Even though Xie Yunhuai had swallowed his question out of instinct, Qin Fu’an could easily read his mind.

“Relax. The blood on me belongs to someone else.” Looking down, Qin Fu’an soothed the boy while unwrapping the makeshift cloth around his arm with one hand, replacing it with the high-efficiency item bandage.

Xie Yunhuai picked up the steel pipes from the gravel. Hesitating for a second, he sat back down beside Qin Fu’an.

Shoulder to shoulder in the freezing, blood-slicked night, they listened to the screams and shrieks echoing across the campus, watching the crimson numbers in the sky tick down second by second.

When the countdown hit sixty-five minutes, Xie Yunhuai drew his chin slightly deeper into the collar of his jacket, feeling a bit dazed.

He was… truly going to survive tonight.

In all his previous loops, Xie Yunhuai had never lasted past the ninety-minute mark.

Yet here he was, completely unharmed, with the exam more than half over.

Amid this surreal calm, the question he hadn’t dared voice finally found its moment.

“Why are you dragging me along?” The youth’s clear voice was caught by the winter gale, ruffled and softened by the wind before trickling into Qin Fu’an’s ear.

Leaving a faint, teasing itch in its wake.

Qin Fu’an tilted his head, colliding with Xie Yunhuai’s clear, translucent gaze, taking in the unmistakable bewilderment swimming in those dark pupils.

The boy seemed genuinely curious.

Unlike Qin Fu’an, whose eyes were locked onto his face while his mind was filled with thoroughly inappropriate thoughts.

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