Raising a Wife in a Supernatural World [Infinite] – CH5

Chapter 5: Spook High (5)

Amid the faint, lingering reek of blood, morning exercises finally came to an end.

What awaited the players, however, was anything but relief. Qin Fu’an watched the trembling backs of the few who scrambled frantically toward the teaching building. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the slender silhouette slipping into the crowd. After pondering for a moment on the bloodstained running track, he turned his steps in a completely different direction.

Inside the classroom of Grade 12, Class 4.

Looking across the room, the scene was once again one of heads buried in frantic writing. A fresh, crisp test paper had appeared on every single desk. No one talked, and no one dared glance up. Like marionettes with stones dangling from ropes tied around their necks, they blankly, silently filled in blank after blank on their sheets.

Whenever someone encountered a question they couldn’t solve, their eyes would instantly flare a feverish, bloodshot red. Panic, frustration, and agony acted as the ultimate catalysts, twisting them into mindless beasts within a single minute. Yet even after mutating, they continued to clutch their pens in desperate torment, scribbling wildly across their papers.

Nan Zhu’s deskmate was one such anomaly, triggered by an inability to answer the exam. Fortunately, these creatures didn’t attack their peers; they merely scratched and tore at their shredded test sheets in futile madness, letting out muffled, despairing growls from throats that could no longer form human speech.

What made Nan Zhu feel even more fortunate was her decision in the pre-game system shop. Rather than hoarding her points, she had followed the recommended beginner loadout, prioritizing five vials of “Clarity Eye Drops” and five “Speed-Script Gel Pens.”

Earlier on the track, the deceased player hadn’t guessed wrong—Nan Zhu truly possessed an item that could have restored his sight. Unfortunately, his panic and hysteria had outpaced his patience; before Nan Zhu could even fetch the drops, he had paid the ultimate price.

Upon returning to the classroom, Nan Zhu handed one of the vials to Zhao Jiayue, the newcomer whose vision was the most severely compromised.

As for the others—Nan Zhu was no saint. Unlike Zhao Jiayue, who was a complete rookie with zero points to her name, they were experienced enough to have made their own choices. If they had opted against buying eye drops beforehand, they had only themselves to blame.

Tilting her head back, Zhao Jiayue squeezed the cool, soothing drops into her eyes. She blinked several times, and her stolen vision sharpened back into focus.

“…Thank you,” she stammered in heartfelt gratitude, keeping her voice low in the stifling room. “If I manage to survive this, I swear I’ll pay you back!”

Nan Zhu took such promises with a grain of salt. Using her enchanted gel pen, she blew through the remaining questions, then swept her gaze across the classroom before settling on the room’s sole empty desk.

The empty seats left by the deceased students had vanished without a trace during morning calisthenics. Now, the only vacant spot belonged to Qin Fu’an.

Nan Zhu glanced at the wall clock hanging above the center of the blackboard. Two minutes until class.

Setting her pen down, she rose and walked over to Bai Song, who was still writing furiously, and handed him one of her speed pens.

The moment Bai Song took it, he recognized the item’s effects. A look of surprise and sheer delight washed over his face, but before he could voice his thanks, Nan Zhu asked in a low, polite murmur: “Do you have a second? You sit in the back row—did you happen to notice the student sitting in front of you earlier? The guy with the green eyes. If I’m not mistaken, he should be a player too.”

Even though she had never seen a compatriot with eyes that shade of green.

Still, anyone capable of tossing a note to warn her and then punting the monstrous entity blocking the door clean out into the hallway had to be an exceptionally capable player.

Bai Song blinked blankly, raking his memory. “The guy in front of me… is he really a player? All I saw him do during class was harass his deskmate. First he was passing notes, and then he just stared straight at the kid. I honestly thought they were special NPCs running an scripted storyline, so I didn’t dare interrupt.”

Nan Zhu: “??”

Meeting Nan Zhu’s bewildered stare, Bai Song nodded with total conviction. Out of the corner of his eye, he snuck a peek at Xie Yunhuai, who sat alone by the window, head bent over his paper.

Everything appeared completely ordinary—indistinguishable from the rest of the student NPCs.

What neither Bai Song nor Nan Zhu caught, however, was that the moment the phrase “harass his deskmate” left Bai Song’s lips, the tip of Xie Yunhuai’s pen nearly tore a savage line clean across the paper.

“…Never mind then. Just keep an eye on him when he gets back,” Nan Zhu managed, reigning in her straying thoughts and offering a calm parting instruction.

Bai Song nodded in understanding. Watching her return to her seat, he gripped the item pen and began filling in answers like a man possessed.

He had no choice; class started in just over a minute.

During the final thirty-second countdown, Xie Yunhuai—who had initially wished for Qin Fu’an’s swift demise—found his brow knitting faintly as his peripheral vision drifted between the empty seat beside him and the ticking second hand on the wall.

He hadn’t come back. Where did he go?

If a student failed to return before the bell finished ringing and the teacher walked through the door…

The thought that Qin Fu’an might die from a simple tardy penalty, or that he had already run into lethal danger in some dark corner of the campus, struck Xie Yunhuai with a strange sense of dissonance.

A person like that didn’t seem the type to casually step over a death line.

Yet before the thought could even settle, a familiar figure sauntered through the door right on the heels of the warning chime.

Xie Yunhuai looked up.

His uniform was zipped up as impeccably as ever, and that same untamed, insolent presence clung to him. Qin Fu’an paused just inside the threshold, turned toward the hall, and raised a brow with an amused grin, offering the entity outside a courteous inquiry: “Teacher Zhang, how does it feel after your successful weight loss? Do you need a helping hand from me this time as well?”

Hearing this brazen provocation, the entire classroom plunged into an eerie, dead silence.

Even the frantic scratching of pens evaporated into thin air.

Outside the door stood Teacher Zhang—the subject of the “successful weight loss”—glaring back at Qin Fu’an with a gaze foul enough to consume a man alive.

Unfortunately for him, Qin Fu’an had encountered far too many humans, ghosts, and demons who wanted him dead over the centuries. A low-tier anomaly in a beginner instance couldn’t even qualify as a mini-boss; it posed no threat to him whatsoever.

Seeing that Teacher Zhang remained mute, unwilling to utter even a single threat, Qin Fu’an merely let out a chuckle of mild disappointment. Amid the dead silence of the classroom, he strolled back to his desk and took his seat.

A pristine, blank test paper lay waiting for him.

No name, no class, and naturally, no correct answers filled in.

Yet the moment he sat down, a paper covered in neat, complete answers slid silently onto his desk.

Qin Fu’an arched a brow and glanced over.

Xie Yunhuai kept his gaze averted, his expression cool as he murmured, “Now we’re even.”

Qin Fu’an fell into thoughtful silence.

Then, illumination struck.

“I’m not copying,” he said, decisively sliding the completed paper back to his deskmate.

Unsurprisingly, the boy looked up, his eyes laced with confusion.

Qin Fu’an flashed him a mischievous grin, leaning in slightly to whisper in a conspiratorial undertone: “Classmate, cheating is strictly forbidden. I’ll pretend I didn’t see it this time, but don’t let me catch you doing it again.”

Qin Fu’an was completely out of his mind.

Xie Yunhuai yanked his test paper back with a stony face, refusing to spare the man another glance.

At that moment, the rest of the class finally caught sight of Teacher Zhang as he entered the room post-“weight loss.”

One look, and everyone fell dead silent.

The hollow numbness usually lingering in their eyes was instantly wiped clean by pure, unadulterated shock.

Was this paper-thin, extra-wide sheet of a man—covered head to toe in dusty footprints—truly their Teacher Zhang?

Calling this a successful weight loss… wasn’t it a bit too successful?

“Did he seriously get compressed from a 3D model into a flat PowerPoint slide?!” Yake blurted out, unable to contain his sheer disbelief. In that single moment, he had voiced the collective scream of the entire room.

The other players bit their lips, desperately fighting back laughter, each wondering if a few of those footprints had come from their own shoes during the rush.

Qin Fu’an tapped his desk with the back of his pen, nudging his equally stunned neighbor.

Just moments ago, Xie Yunhuai had been thoroughly provoked, yet the instant Teacher Zhang entered, he seemed to have forgotten how to be angry. His gaze lingered on the teacher in absolute bewilderment.

Qin Fu’an hadn’t found the teacher particularly funny, but Xie Yunhuai’s baffled expression struck him as thoroughly amusing.

When Qin Fu’an smiled, his features relaxed, softening his aloof, unapproachable edge. His pale green eyes crinkled with crystalline clarity, the easy curl of his lips radiating a casual warmth that made it hard for anyone catching his eye to look away.

“Here. For you.”

Chuckling, he fished something from his uniform pocket and let his hand drop, slipping the object straight into Xie Yunhuai’s pocket.

Xie Yunhuai instinctively reached down to squeeze it.

It was candy.

Seeing the boy’s dazed, questioning look return, Qin Fu’an didn’t tease him further. He clicked his tongue and murmured under his breath: “I ran all the way to the cafeteria just to buy that. The vendor looked at me like I was a cut of prime beef, itching to chop me into pieces and swallow me whole. I had to reason with him for ages before he agreed to sell me this damn thing.”

Fingering the round candy in his pocket while listening to Qin Fu’an’s hushed grumbling, Xie Yunhuai temporarily discarded his earlier assessment that Qin Fu’an was mentally ill.

Qin Fu’an wasn’t mentally ill.

He just had water sloshing around in his skull. What sane person would risk his neck running to the cafeteria just to buy a lollipop?

Qin Fu’an would.

Qin Fu’an was simply not a normal person.

“Why give it to me?” Xie Yunhuai asked.

Qin Fu’an tilted his head toward him, answering with a languid smirk: “Aren’t you a picky eater? Since you can’t stomach that filth out there, you might as well eat some artificial sweeteners. At least it’s guaranteed to be sweet.”

Beneath the lazy veneer lay a faint thread of sincerity, deftly veiled.

He clicked his tongue again, adding a dramatic sigh: “Picky kids are the hardest to raise. Won’t touch this, refuses to eat that—go careless for one second, and you end up starving yourself into malnutrition.”

Xie Yunhuai: “…”

Me? A picky eater? Malnourished??

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