Half an hour later, Ruan Xing blinked as he looked down at the classroom full of dazed students with mouths agape in stunned silence.

"You don't understand?"

"Then let's switch to the analysis of fundamental magic principles?"

"Still not working?"

"How about the feasibility study on the combination of water and fire magic?"

"If this won’t do and that won’t do, then you’re even more stupid than my most stupid student."

With a cold snort, Ruan Xing jumped down from the podium.

"Ah!" A male student cried out as if deeply frustrated by his own ignorance.

Ruan Xing noticed something wriggling on the student's face, but the darkness was too deep to see clearly. Then, a slimy tentacle slowly emerged from the shadows, and the student’s mouth opened and closed at its tip.

So, the places covered in shadow were actually filled with tentacles.

"What nonsense are you spouting?!"

Ruan Xing wanted to say that it wasn’t nonsense, but the boy was clearly disheartened. He refused to listen and was stuck in his own stubborn thinking.

A female voice from the background exclaimed, "How could you treat Classmate Wang like this?! How dare you call him stupid?!"

Only then did Ruan Xing realize that, aside from the male student, the entire room was filled with girls.

One girl stepped forward. "Classmate Wang is our idol! We absolutely won’t allow you to insult him!"

Ruan Xing dodged as a pair of cherry-red lips lunged at him.

Extending a hand, he effortlessly shot an arrow through the heads of two monsters.

The sudden attack startled the monsters, freezing them in place.

Taking advantage of the moment, Ruan Xing bolted out of the classroom.

The motion-sensor lights in the corridor flickered on, illuminating the hallway. Outside, the sky was dark and heavy, as if it was about to rain.

After leaving the room, Ruan Xing realized that he was on the fourth floor instead of the first.

Looking across the open space, he spotted another brightly lit classroom on the same floor.

Inside, a pink-haired person was shouting angrily at the students.

"You idiots! You don’t even understand Marxist principles? Your tiny brains can’t grasp great philosophy, so you deserve to be exploited! Are you seriously content with being cannon fodder your whole life? What’s the point of mastering math, physics, and chemistry? Times have changed! Only intellectual progress can keep you ahead—"

Spittle flew from his mouth, landing directly on the head of a female student in the front row.

The driver behind him looked utterly done with life.

The girl wiped her face and screamed sharply before lunging at Pink Hair.

Enraged and humiliated.

She absolutely couldn’t accept knowing nothing and then getting mocked by a nonconformist of all people!

"You arrogant bastard! Just because we let you teach, you think you’re some kind of big shot?!" The monsters abandoned their pretense and went straight to personal attacks.

The entire classroom erupted. The male students’ mouths stretched and twisted like snakes as they screeched and lunged toward the pink-haired man.

Pink Hair grabbed a desk and reshaped it into a shield to block their attacks. With a swift movement, he dodged out of the classroom.

"Yo! What a coincidence!" He raised his right hand, waving at Ruan Xing from afar.

Both of them had monsters trailing behind them, yet here they were exchanging greetings, making the scene even more absurd.

Behind them, a male and female student led their entire class in pursuit.

Ruan Xing fired a shot, hitting a monster square in the head. But their skulls seemed to have mutated—instead of exploding, the bullet sank as if it had been swallowed by glue, making squelching noises before getting spat back out with a loud "pop!"

Fu Gui: [Oh wow, an automatic sunflower seed sheller. I should take one home and save myself the trouble of cracking seeds.]

Ruan Xing: [You’d also save on saliva, too.]

Fu Gui clicked his beak in disdain.

Pink Hair person caught up and shouted, "Hurry up and take these pollutants out!"

Fu Gui: "Shouldn't it be the other way around? A senior like you relying on a junior for protection doesn't seem right."

Ruan Xing glanced at Pink Hair but didn’t argue. He moved his hand, seemingly activating the white wristband he wore.

Threads of hair-thin silk unraveled from it, dancing in the air despite the lack of wind. The delicate strands shimmered faintly, illuminating the young man’s cold eyes.

The male student leading the charge didn’t slow down and ran straight into the shimmering threads.

In an instant, the soft, thread-like fibers transformed into a deathly scythe—tightening abruptly and slicing cleanly through the creature’s limbs.

Black liquid trickled from the wounds. Before the student could even scream, his body was reduced to countless fragments.

The creatures behind him were relentless, charging forward without hesitation. Soon, the air was filled with the sound of cutting. The wind howled through the halls as dismembered limbs piled up on the floor.

The driver's face became pale green.

Ruan Xing lowered her head slightly, and the filaments reformed into a wristband. A single strand reached out and gently coiled around his finger, seeking a reward.

A faint glow flickered at Ruan Xing’s fingertip, unnoticed by anyone else.

This thing had become increasingly useful ever since he had retrieved it from the ant nest.

He clasped his hands behind his back. "Let’s go."

The academic building had no elevators—perhaps to encourage students' well-rounded development in moral, intellectual, physical, artistic, and labor skills—so every hallway turn led to a stairway.

As they descended to the third floor, they were met with a chilling sight—dozens of students, the same ones from the fourth floor, running toward them. This time, their bodies bore numerous cracks, as if they had been forcefully pieced back together.

Ruan Xing glanced at the hallway outside. This was definitely the third floor.

What was with these monsters? They can't be killed?

"Run!" The two exchanged a look and continued downstairs.

Yet, they encountered the same batch of creatures, and the distance between them was rapidly shortening.

Upon reaching the first floor, Pink Hair snapped. "Alright, bring it on! Time to send you bastards to the sky!"

In a nearby classroom, desks and chairs began to melt like clay, floating into the air and kneading together, sealing off the entire hallway.

This time, the pollutants had no way of easily breaking through.

Fu Gui’s green eyes darkened as he looked up at the adjacent building.

Fu Gui: [The pollution source is on the 15th floor of the laboratory building!]

There was no time to explain.

Ruan Xing signaled for Pink Hair to follow him.

"Hey, hey! Where are we going?"

The pink-haired person strapped the driver securely to his back with a metal frame, freeing up both hands and picking up speed.

"Find the source of the pollution," Ruan Xing said as he sharply exhaled.

He hated these vast polluted zones—too exhausting.

It wasn't until they entered the laboratory building that they could finally catch their breath.

Ruan Xing checked the floor plan.

Unlike the neatly arranged classrooms in the academic building, this place was a chaotic maze. The moment they stepped inside, multiple hallways stretched in different directions.

There was a faculty office area, an equipment storage zone, various labs, and even club rooms—all were housed within this small building.

Fu Gui pointed with his wing. "Over there."

Unlike the open hallways of the academic buildings, the corridors here were completely enclosed with glass. Even if someone wanted to jump off, they'd have to climb through the windows first.

The moment Ruan Xing stepped into the building, he heightened his vigilance.

His past two experiences in polluted zones taught him that the deeper one went, the greater the danger. The source of pollution was always accompanied by the strongest pollutant.

"Gurgle... gurgle..."

Pink Hair’s ears perked up. "What’s that sound?"

Ruan Xing's ears twitched. "Inside the clubroom."

Through the glass panel on the door, the scene inside the room was laid bare.

The walls and ceiling were plastered with a dense array of movie posters layered chaotically in eerie, clashing colors. On the posters, the protagonists had scarlet mouths protruding from the paper, opening and closing as if they were breathing.

There were men and women, young and old. Their mouths varied in shape, but they all breathed in unison, forming a single living entity—one that was currently asleep.

Pink Hair tried to sneak away, but Ruan Xing stopped him with a slight nod of his chin. Suppressing his disgust, Pink Hair took another look inside and saw a woman bound by black tentacles in the corner of the room.

At the tip of the tentacles were mouths, eerily familiar in shape and moving as if speaking. She seemed to be saying something, but the distance made it hard to hear.

She appeared to be in her 30s or 40s, wearing delicate makeup, gold earrings, and a floral dress—clearly well-dressed. But now, she was trembling all over.

She was muttering frantically under her breath while her eyes were filled with terror as she desperately tried to evade the approaching mouth.

She looked toward the window and met Pink Hair's gaze. Her eyes lit up.

Before he could signal her to stay quiet, she suddenly screamed, "Help me!!!"

The scream became the monster's alarm clock, causing the countless mouths on the walls to cease their rhythmic breathing.

At that moment, all the mouths—whether on the ceiling or the walls—turned toward the eavesdroppers outside the window.

The classroom door wriggled and collapsed like a giant tongue, slowly unfurling onto the floor, starkly contrasting the tiles.

The door frame widened and contracted like a mouth, and the countless mouths on the walls opened in unison.

"Classmate! Come to class!"

The pink-haired one shouted back, "Class? Who is Class?"

The tongue-like door was stunned for a moment before realizing that it had been mocked. Enraged, it violently stretched out, trying to drag all of them inside.

Ruan Xing lightly leaped aside to dodge the attack, only to see Pink Hair dramatically yell, "Waaah!" as he got pulled in.

Inside, Pink Hair greeted the tentacles wrapped around the woman instead of immediately drawing his gun.

"Ah, we meet again—my lost classmate whom I have never met before."

The mouth on the tentacle split open, revealing razor-sharp teeth. "Are you here to die too?"

Pink Hair grinned. "Wow, your breath stinks, sis. Hasn’t cleaned the pipes in half a year, huh?"

The tentacle let out a piercing shriek, and the woman trapped within screamed in pain.

Pink Hair’s smile disappeared.

"Oh, you came in despite the danger just to save this woman?"

The woman, a mess of smeared makeup and tear-streaked cheeks, clung to her last hope. "Please, I beg you! Save me!"

Pink Hair raised his left hand. "You really don’t want to see what happens when I get mad."

Suddenly, the mouths on the walls stretched outward, floating like sea anemones before tensing up and lunging toward him.

The tentacle mouth sneered. "Carrying one on your back and trying to save another? What a foolish saint."

With a flick of his wrist, sharp blades extended from his hands, effortlessly slicing through the attacking tentacles.

But instead of relief, it only provoked a sharper scream from the woman.

The tentacle mouth gaped open, revealing spiral-shaped teeth large enough to swallow the woman’s head whole.

Pink Hair waved his hand. The metal morphed into a blade mid-air, poised to strike—only to freeze in place.

"Why don’t you strike?" the voice taunted with a shrill laugh. "We’re so close now—if you attack me, can you guarantee she won’t get hurt? Now what? The one you’re trying to save is about to be eaten, and all you can do is watch!"

Before the monster could continue speaking, something nearly invisible shot toward it—a thin hyphae thread, slipping effortlessly through the tightest of gaps.

Then, more dense and overwhelming threads appeared.

"What is this?"

The mouth opened and closed—only for a dark, murky lump to be shoved inside.

"This is fog—"

It tried to spit it out, but the mycelium threaded through its teeth like a needle, stitching the mouth shut in an instant.

Then, with a sharp pull—like a clam shell snapping shut—the massive mouth could no longer open.

"Mmmph—!"

The once-chattering mouth was completely sewn shut by the countless fine threads.

Then—something inside the mouth expanded rapidly.

With a muffled "pop," the tentacle mouth bulged grotesquely before slowly deflating.

The tentacle collapsed limply as thick black mist seeped from its maw.

Ruan Xing nudged the creature with his foot, gazing down at it.

Behind him, countless severed tentacle mouths twitched on the ground, writhing like freshly chopped octopus limbs.

Fu Gui: [That was insanely cool!]