Rules-related weird stories: 4016

Lin Yi couldn't help but connect it with the situation at the time and recalled it.

[What you're about to do is very dangerous...]

[Isn't it a good thing to have a cannon fodder who trusts you...]

[What's wrong with that...]

[She wasn't going to live long anyway, so it's better to talk openly about some things...]

[Didn't you guys notice... that guy in the blue apron has been staring at her from the beginning, like he's looking at a dead person?]

"Cannon fodder? Dead person?"

A flash of inspiration suddenly struck Lin Yi: "You deduced that based on the blue apron chef's gaze at her?"

He thought that the "as if present" blue apron chef didn't stare at everyone. In his impression, he had only stared at them, and besides that, he had been staring at Li Huiyuan.

"Isn't that... according to you, aren't we not going to live long either?" Lin Yi asked in surprise.

Tian Bufan smiled and patted him on the shoulder: "Congratulations, you've discovered the blind spot."

Lin Yi's expression tightened, and he couldn't help but touch the goosebumps on his arm: "Young Master Tian, this joke isn't funny at all!"

"Do you think I'm joking with you?" Tian Bufan asked rhetorically, but he didn't continue, instead looking at Wei Liang and Li Huiyuan.

Wei Liang was slightly stunned, then consciously took out a napkin, crumpled it up, and stuffed it into his ears, then covered them with his hands...

A smooth and silent operation, so skilled that Lin Yi couldn't help but want to beat him up.

"He still 'refused' to listen, so..." Tian Bufan glanced at Li Huiyuan, "For the rest of our conversation, listen if you want, but don't start thinking about any doubts. After it's over, ask Lao Lin directly, and take what Lao Lin tells you as a fact that must be accepted, or even the truth, understand?"

Li Huiyuan was still immersed in the nightmare of losing her student ID. Hearing this, she just nodded blankly.

But Tian Bufan patted her shoulder heavily, his expression cold and serious. Coupled with his 1.9-meter frame, he immediately gave off a sense of oppression, like a giant bear looking down at Little Red Riding Hood: "I'm not 'explaining' things to you, I'm 'ordering' you to do some things, do you understand?"

Li Huiyuan was intimidated by Tian Bufan's aura. Her whole body shivered, and her slightly crashing brain quickly started working: "I... I understand!"

Tian Bufan nodded slightly, and then said to Lin Yi: "Maozi was contaminated as soon as he entered the school, which caused us to be contaminated as well. This is an invisible crisis in itself. There's a sword in ancient Greek legends called the 'Sword of Damocles', meaning 'sword hanging overhead', and now, all of us have this sword hanging over our heads."

"Once the contamination intensifies to the point of cutting the thread that wraps around the sword hilt, we will all be buried here. Do you think we won't live long either?"

Lin Yi pondered: "Are you saying that her situation is the same as ours?"

Tian Bufan said: "It's probably similar. When you have time, you can ask her what she experienced when she entered the school."

Lin Yi nodded slightly.

"That blue apron chef must contain some kind of mechanism, but it will definitely react to 'contamination'. From this, it can be seen that she must also be contaminated, but I don't know how deep her contamination is. I don't know the exact method to judge the depth of contamination yet, but you can ask the sports students to help take a look at her situation."

Lin Yi said: "Okay."

The sports students have a way to distinguish between art students and experience students, and even to judge normal art students, strange art students, and non-human students. From this, it can be seen that they may also have a kind of "perception" ability, but I don't know if the perception abilities of sports students and art students are the same.

"But Lao Lin," Tian Bufan said calmly, "You accidentally made a mistake about one thing."

"Where did I go wrong?"

"When I said she had a problem, I wasn't talking about how to save her, but about... how to maximize the effect."

When Tian Bufan said this, he didn't take into account Li Huiyuan's feelings at all, as if he was directly tearing open her wound, revealing the bloody reality.

Li Huiyuan's face turned pale when she heard this, but she lowered her head slightly, bit her lip tightly, and extremely restrained her somewhat collapsing emotions.

Tian Bufan spread his hands, indifferently stating the cold facts, as if he was making a report: "We don't even know how to save our own people, how dare we shamelessly go and save others?"

"What we can do is get what we need."

"She's contaminated and doesn't know what's right... then that's good, let her be our pawn to test the boundaries of the campus rules."

"It's extremely dangerous for a planet to explore the universe, but if it can have a satellite orbiting it, gradually expanding the boundaries, step by step, then everything will be much better in all aspects."

"We are now like a planet, and she is our satellite."

"If we can really find a way to save ourselves in the end, then she can also be saved."

"Frankly speaking, this is good for us, reducing the risk of our actions, and for her... the risk may still be slightly higher than acting alone."

Tian Bufan didn't deliberately hide the risk factor, to ensure that Li Huiyuan could also obtain the same "objective" amount of information as Lin Yi.

"Of course, compared to 'satellite', there's an even more naked way to describe her - cannon fodder."

"If she's unlucky, she might die a terrible death, and there's nothing we can do about it."

Hearing the words cannon fodder, Lin Yi subconsciously frowned, feeling that using others as pawns to test the campus rules was a bit inhumane, but he couldn't say anything to refute it.

Tian Bufan's analysis was very objective and rational.

They had mastered more knowledge and rule elements, and Li Huiyuan was already at her wit's end... In this desperate situation, if she agreed to be cannon fodder, then they would act together, and win if they could. If she didn't agree, then they would part ways and go their separate ways, and her win or loss would depend on herself.

Lin Yi also knew why Tian Bufan let Li Huiyuan listen to their conversation, because this was indeed an open and honest negotiation, and they could even ignore Li Huiyuan and let her fend for herself.

Because they had only just begun to explore the campus.

Because they didn't necessarily need to have cannon fodder.

Besides... who said they weren't cannon fodder themselves?

Once they started exploring the campus, they were ultimately just bigger cannon fodder.

So, everything depended on Li Huiyuan's own decision.

"You don't need to make a decision now," Tian Bufan glanced at Li Huiyuan indifferently, "You and Lao Lin are in the same classroom, so you still have time to choose. Of course, you'd better make a choice as soon as possible..."

"Starting from the small monsters right after entering the dungeon and slowly fighting to the elite monsters is completely different in difficulty from joining halfway to fight the elite monsters together."

"You may still have some time, but overall, the time left for you is not much."

Li Huiyuan remained silent, her heart tangled, as if she had fallen into a deep vortex of thought.

"Sorry for the wait, I'm back." At this time, Wei Shan's voice came from not far away. He had already thrown away his shoes and was walking back along the mountain road.

"Then let's go back to the teaching building." After Wei Shan completely reunited with them, Lin Yi nodded and glanced at Li Huiyuan.

"I..." Li Huiyuan took a deep breath, as if she had made an extremely difficult decision, and then said somewhat uneasily, "I want to tell the class teacher about the lost student ID first, and then... then make a decision, is that okay?"

Her eyes showed a hint of hope, looking at Lin Yi and Tian Bufan, fearing that she would be abandoned because of this, and thus not even have the qualifications to be cannon fodder.

Tian Bufan smiled slightly: "We just said, you still have time, of course you can do that."

Li Huiyuan breathed a sigh of relief: "Then... then it's settled, thank you."

......

May 8, X023, 11:45, on the cobblestone road to the teaching building.

Lin Yi told Tian Bufan about the experience student he saw passing through the blue apron chef at the entrance of the student restaurant.

Tian Bufan nodded slightly: "Actually, I saw it when I came... a somewhat interesting phenomenon. Regarding this, do you have any guesses?"

Lin Yi had indeed thought of some things, so he said his thoughts: "I think it's a bit like what Wang Yangming said about 'nothing outside the mind'...'"

"Clearly, from our perspective, that blue apron chef is standing right there, but because those trainees haven't cognitively registered its existence, they're allowing the fact that 'it doesn't exist' to 'take effect' on themselves."

"It looks like… one of those glass walkways in tourist attractions."

"Oh?" Tian Bufan's eyes lit up, revealing a hint of delight. "You actually thought of a glass walkway? Tell me more!"

Lin Yi didn't expect Tian Bufan to be so interested in this idea: "I feel like the role of 'cognition' is like the glass on a glass walkway. To us, the glass is transparent, allowing us to see the world beneath it, or rather, the 'layer' beneath the glass."

"But for the trainees, the glass is opaque, no different from the paving stones, so they can't see the other 'layer' beneath the glass, and they won't sense the blue apron chef who's in that 'layer'."

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Part of his inspiration came from the plastic air curtain at the entrance of the student cafeteria.

"And I guess that the sturdiness and transparency of the 'glass' are related to our cognition."

"Walking on it, we can capture more information. But when our cognition starts to shift or distort, the nature of this glass will change, allowing us to see that blue apron chef, or even possibly fall into the 'layer' beneath the glass."

"That blue apron chef is like a person stuck to the back of the glass. It can see us, and perhaps even communicate with us, but I don't know if it contains some kind of special mechanism, or what would happen if we interacted with that blue apron chef."

"But the best thing we can do now is to ignore it while avoiding any sensory contact with it."

Tian Bufan smiled and said, "You've made rapid progress overnight?"

Lin Yi scratched his nose, a little embarrassed: "Having some confidence makes me less timid, and I'm bolder when thinking about problems."

"Young Master Tian, what about you? What are your thoughts?"

"How can you be so sure that what I thought of isn't what you just said?" Tian Bufan asked.

Lin Yi coughed lightly: "I always feel that no matter how much I think of, you can always think of more than me. Maybe when I was talking just now, you already discovered more details…"

Tian Bufan fell silent for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth and said a more bizarre guess: "The idea of a glass walkway is very interesting. It allowed me to integrate it with my previous inspiration, slightly broadening some ideas…"

Lin Yi quickly perked up his ears.

"It's still a question thought out from the perspective of cognition." Tian Bufan reminded him first, then slowly opened his mouth, "Imagine a piece of dark, shiny tile, and we are a group of people wearing ski goggles, walking on this tile with stiff necks and lowered heads."

"This tile is both smooth and transparent, so shiny that it can clearly reflect our shadows."

"And the ski goggles have limited vision, our field of vision is only the limited area in front of us."

"So, in fact, we have always been watching the limited shadows in the tile move… The world we think of is just what our hearts perceive based on this extremely limited field of vision, but in reality, it is not like this…"

"We are in the real world, but we see false reflections, and that blue apron chef is actually in the real world, but its shadow cannot appear in our limited field of vision?"

"One day… we learned to shake our heads to expand our field of vision, and then saw more of the world, thereby adding more details to the 'real world' in our cognition…"

"Then, as the field of vision expands, we see the blue apron chef, and the blue apron chef also discovers us because of the way we shake our heads…"

"It's possible that the blue apron chef has been standing next to us all along, it's just that… we haven't met the conditions to trigger more of its mechanisms."

Lin Yi's mind buzzed: "Like 'The Matrix'? A real and a fake world? Once we discover that the world is fake, we will be attacked by the so-called order maintainers in this world? Sculptures?"

After Tian Bufan said this, Lin Yi instantly thought of many things.

"That's not what I meant." Tian Bufan smiled helplessly and shook his head. "It's just a metaphorical guess derived from this. If S City University is fake, what about our previous world? We are not 'natives' here!"

Lin Yi was awakened: "Right, right, right, we came here on the blue school bus…"

"So, you should just listen to it for now and don't think too much. Just like I said just now, it's just a 'somewhat interesting' guess that I extended." Tian Bufan said, "The more we guess about this world, the more divergent our cognition will be. When we encounter outrageous discoveries, we won't be frightened into having bizarre hallucinations…"

"It's equivalent to indirectly strengthening our resistance when cognition is distorted."

Lin Yi slowly exhaled and nodded: "What you said makes sense, I've noted it down."

…

May 8, X023, 11:49.

The group returned to the front of the teaching building along the cobblestone path. After Tian Bufan said goodbye to them, he walked onto the fork leading to Building C, while the remaining people continued towards Building B.

Li Huiyuan had been listening to Lin Yi and Tian Bufan's conversation all along. First it was some "glass walkway", then some "imagine the reflection of a tile", then some "real world", "broaden the field of vision" and other words that sounded completely confusing, and the whole person felt lost in the clouds and didn't know where she was.

It was like someone who had never played games suddenly heard two game nerds analyzing the application of "131 split push" and "41 split push" between lineups, or like feeling something like a "generation gap"…

She lowered her head, following Lin Yi and the others' footsteps by instinct, her mind couldn't help but think about the student ID card, guessing how she should talk to the head teacher later, and thinking about how the head teacher would treat her later…

Although she had prepared to be used as "cannon fodder" by Lin Yi, she was still incomparably uneasy and flustered in her heart, because cannon fodder was not a good word after all.

The more she thought about it, the more afraid she became, and the more she felt that her body was terribly cold. Even though she was walking in the sun, she had a feeling of being in an ice cellar.

So cold…

Li Huiyuan stroked her arms subconsciously, and suddenly found that a layer of fine frost had unknowingly climbed onto her arms, and it felt like ice dregs to the touch.

How could she still feel cold in such a big sun?

A strange feeling arose in her heart. At this time, she realized that the surrounding light seemed to be a little dim…

Did it get dark?

She looked up at the sky.

Thick clouds filled the clear sky, the sunlight was blocked by the clouds, leaving only dim light and shadows floating between the sky and the earth, and the dust in the sky made the whole world lose its color like yellow sand…

In the depths of the thick clouds, the sun seemed to have only a silhouette left…

A gust of yin wind suddenly brushed past her ears, causing her to shiver subconsciously.

"Whoosh—"

There seemed to be some sounds of forest leaves swaying in the wind, rustling like waves.

Waves…?

She was stunned for a moment, and a flash of inspiration, the sound of forest leaves colliding became louder and louder like adjusting the sound with a knob, and finally it was as violent as waves…

She felt that the cobblestone road under her feet seemed to have changed, looking dark and smooth, like reefs and some kind of seaside gravel…

Thanks to book friends "Chuan Yaming" and "wantly" for their rewards!!

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If there are no accidents, starting today, I will add 1000 words every day until the debt is paid off~