The air seemed to turn viscous in that instant, thick with a suffocating earthy stench and hidden malice.
A layer of cold sweat had already seeped onto Fang Ruiyang’s back.
But he was, after all, a veteran player who’d been through several instances. He quickly adjusted his facial expression, gave a dry laugh, and picked up where Li Guoping had left off.
“Principal, you’re joking. Since we’re here, we’ll definitely teach with all our hearts. The children are the village’s hope too—being able to learn more will do them good in getting out of these mountains someday, won’t it?”
Those words were flawless—flattering the other party while subtly pointing out that they were sent here, trying to use the logic of the real world to pressure the NPC.
Unexpectedly, it worked. The damp malice dispersed somewhat.
Li Guoping’s murky eyeballs rolled, and he stared at Fang Ruiyang for a while before grinning: “Teacher Fang is right. Life in the mountains is hard—the children should learn more.”
The others also secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Just then, Fu Songcheng suddenly felt something off.
A cold, damp chill silently latched onto his ankle.
Then, the thing began climbing slowly, bit by bit, up his calf, carrying a nauseating sliminess.
Fu Songcheng’s breathing paused imperceptibly for an instant.
He kept his brows and eyes lowered as before, the hand holding his rice bowl still steady, only his pupils contracting sharply in the dim light.
Slowly, with extreme stealth, he shifted his gaze downward.
The long tablecloth, hanging down to his thighs, blocked the view beneath the table.
But through a gap, Fu Songcheng saw what it was.
It was a hand.
Or rather, it was an arm—stretched and twisted infinitely like rubber.
At the end of the arm was a rough palm with bulging veins and black mud packed under the fingernails. At this moment, this hand was brazenly stroking and roaming over his leg through the fabric.
Fu Songcheng followed that inhuman arm upward, his gaze piercing through the shadows beneath the table, and locked directly onto Li Guoping sitting diagonally across from him.
Li Guoping was still chatting with Fang Ruiyang, chewing that greasy chunk of fat, making smack-smack sounds.
But his eyes weren’t on Fang Ruiyang at all. They were cutting diagonally across the table, fixed dead on Fu Songcheng.
In the NPC’s eyes, he was a frail, powerless female university student named “Zhang Xinci.”
But in Fu Songcheng’s own perception, he knew clearly that he was a man.
Even so, the feeling of being coveted like a plaything, of being wantonly desecrated, still gave him an indescribable rage.
It was the first time he truly felt the injustice suffered by the other gender group. But Fu Songcheng was not weak and easy to bully—this behavior had thoroughly enraged him.
Daring to set your sights on me?
Fu Songcheng’s facial expression remained that of a frail, overly frightened girl not daring to make a sound. But his right hand had already silently slid down to the outer side of his thigh.
With a flicker of thought, a tactical dagger gleaming with dull cold light materialized from his system backpack and dropped into his palm.
This was the dagger he’d spent 1,000 points on for the armor-break enchantment.
The space beneath the table was narrow. Li Guoping’s hand was still climbing upward, growing more brazen by the second.
Fu Songcheng gripped the dagger. Without a moment’s hesitation, his wrist surged with force—and under the cover of the tablecloth, the blade sliced viciously and precisely toward the back of that hand!
A very faint hiss—the sound of a blade cutting through some kind of tough leather.
“Principal Li!”
Almost at the same moment Fu Songcheng made his move, Shen Ning beside him suddenly raised her voice. Her cool, clear voice rang out especially abruptly in the main hall.
Li Guoping was clearly startled by the sudden turn of events, the disgusting covetousness and smugness on his face freezing instantly.
Shen Ning held her teacup, her gaze burning into Li Guoping, her tone carrying just the right amount of curiosity and urgency: “Since we’re going to teach the children, I’d like to know in advance—what supplies do the students in our village lack most in their daily lives? We brought some stationery before coming. I don’t know if it’ll be enough to go around.”
She asked very naturally, but Fu Songcheng was grateful for her help.
Just now, in that instant, Shen Ning had caught the extremely subtle downward shift of his right shoulder out of the corner of her eye.
She had immediately and keenly sensed the undercurrent beneath the table and, without hesitation, spoken up to draw attention and help cover Fu Songcheng’s movements.
Li Guoping’s facial muscles twitched violently.
The rubbery arm beneath the table—like a dead snake—shot back with a jolt like it had been electrocuted, retreating with astonishing speed.
“Ahem, supplies, huh.”
Li Guoping cleared his throat twice. His voice had noticeably lowered, even carrying a trace of imperceptible coldness. “Teacher Shen is thoughtful. The children lack nothing—they just lack good teachers like you.”
As he spoke, he slowly placed his right hand—the one he’d just retracted—onto the dining table.
Fu Songcheng’s gaze fell on that hand.
On the back of Li Guoping’s grayish-brown hand, three bright red scratches had appeared.
The scratches were deep, the flesh torn and curling, still oozing fine beads of blood.
However, what made Fu Songcheng’s eyes narrow slightly was that the wounds didn’t look like the smooth cuts of a sharp blade at all. Their edges were jagged and uneven—more like they’d been clawed open with tremendous force by a woman with long fingernails!
Fu Songcheng lowered his eyes and silently put the dagger back into his backpack.
He’d already made his judgment: this NPC called Li Guoping had set his sights on the “Zhang Xinci” he was playing.
“Aiyo, Principal, why is your hand bleeding?”
Lü Jia finally found a chance to interject, pointing at the back of Li Guoping’s hand with feigned surprise.
“It’s nothing.”
Li Guoping pretended not to care, squeezing a few words out through his teeth. “Went into the mountains earlier and got scratched by a disobedient stray cat. Mountain animals—wild, hard to tame, and in need of discipline.”
The implication in those words was thick to the extreme.
Xu Jixing pushed up his glasses and immediately changed the subject: “Principal Li, since we’re starting classes tomorrow, might I ask what the school’s schedule is like?”
With Xu Jixing’s interruption, Li Guoping seemed to realize it still wasn’t time to tear off the mask.
He withdrew his gaze from Fu Songcheng, tore a rough piece of toilet paper from the table, casually wiped the blood off the back of his hand, and his tone returned to its put-on flatness.
“Tomorrow morning at eight, I’ll personally take you all to the school to have a look around and get familiar with the place. At one-thirty in the afternoon, classes start on time. Teachers, our poor, remote village has strict rules. Teaching and nurturing is a major matter—you absolutely must not be late.”
“If you’re late, or if you teach poorly…”
Li Guoping’s ill-intentioned gaze swept over everyone’s faces, the corners of his mouth tugging into an eerie curve. “The villagers will be very disappointed.”
The moment those words came out, the players’ hearts all sank.
“Must not be late,” “must not teach poorly”—these were undoubtedly two extremely clear system rules. In other words, death-trigger conditions.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be on time.”
Fang Ruiyang nodded.
For the rest of the meal, Li Guoping didn’t make any more outrageous moves, but he still occasionally tossed out questions tinged with eeriness.
The seven players all sat up straight, carefully handling each one, terrified that a single wrong word would trigger the NPC’s killing intent.
Fortunately, this extremely grueling dinner finally ended smoothly.
“Alright, it’s getting late.”
Li Guoping stood up and patted his belly. “Teachers, take your luggage. I’ll walk you back to the dormitory to rest.”
Everyone felt as if they’d been granted amnesty and headed for the corner to collect the four recovered suitcases.
Fu Songcheng lifted “Zhang Xinci”‘s suitcase—it was extremely light in his hand.
He noticed that not only were there black fingerprints on the latches, but along the seams of the suitcase there also lingered a faint trace of something resembling the stench of an animal’s rotting corpse.
Without showing anything on his face, he carried the suitcase and followed the group out of the principal’s house.
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