Arriving at his class, monitor Zheng Hong was holding up a sign.
The sign read "Class 5".
The head teacher looked at Lu Yun, who had arrived last, and said, "Alright, get ready. Since everyone is here, we'll enter the Secret Realm ahead of schedule. Before stepping inside, you can form teams. This is a pairwise Secret Realm."
All the students wore expressions of surprise.
A pairwise Secret Realm—though two people could help each other out, the complications within were immense.
The probability of passing by helping each other was slightly higher, but the difficulty would increase correspondingly as well.
One had to keep in mind that Secret Realms were projections of other worlds. Every world was the same location experiencing different events, which meant the methods for clearing these Secret Realms differed every single time.
The head teacher had mentioned free team formation, and as it turned out, thirty-one students in the class were eligible to participate in the Spirit Master College Entrance Exam.
Lu Yun was the last one to arrive.
"I'll just go alone. You guys form your teams," Lu Yun said, stepping aside on his own initiative.
Zheng Hong had originally intended to help him out and carry him through, but looking at his attitude, he didn't look like the type who would accept her "charity," so she didn't bother approaching him.
Soon, the students accepted the teleportation Talismans handed out by the examiners and entered the Secret Realm hand in hand.
As for how the examiners would observe the candidates' performance:
There was a special spirit artifact up above, shaped like a crystal ball, capable of peeking into the events happening to the candidates inside the Secret Realm.
Each invigilator was responsible for watching several Secret Realms. This was not only a test for the candidates, but also a test for the invigilators.
The invigilators had to grade multiple candidates simultaneously!
Lu Yun accepted the life-saving Talisman, shoved it into his pants pocket, and walked straight into the Secret Realm.
The environment before his eyes quietly shifted, and amidst a series of distortions, his perception returned.
"I wonder what form this Secret Realm takes. It wouldn't be a Rule-based Strange Tale, would it?" Lu Yun got up from the bed, dressed in a set of piggy pajamas.
Beside him lay the clothes he had worn when he first entered.
Lu Yun felt a bit strange. Why would they change his clothes?
Not understanding the reason, he nevertheless changed back into his own clothes.
Little did he know, it was precisely this decision that saved his life!
In the neighboring Secret Realm:
Gu Jiawei looked at the piggy pajamas he was wearing, glanced at his own visual-kei outfit, and couldn't be bothered to change.
So he simply walked right out wearing those piggy pajamas.
Then, he bumped into a woman.
The moment the woman saw Gu Jiawei wearing the piggy pajamas, she smiled and said, "Food has arrived, a fresh little piglet."
With that, the woman's mouth split wide open, numerous tentacles wriggled out, and she swallowed Gu Jiawei in a single instant.
Fortunately, at the critical moment, the teleportation Talisman activated and teleported Gu Jiawei out.
However, he was already unconscious and was quickly carried away by the medical personnel.
The invigilator wrote a "0" on Gu Jiawei's score sheet and tossed him aside.
For someone who died before even managing to do anything, that was the only possible score.
Lu Yun opened the door and saw a woman sitting across from him, grinning as she said to him, "Son is awake?"
Lu Yun guessed that this fellow in front of him was most likely a Ghost, so he mustn't act too abnormal, yet he couldn't afford to offend her too much either.
Thus, Lu Yun simply let out an "mm."
The invigilator outside watched Lu Yun complete this first decision with such composure and silently added ten points to his score.
"The precautions are all on the table. I'm going back to catch up on my sleep." With that, Ghost Mother returned to her own room.
Lu Yun walked over to the table on the side and picked up a piece of paper from underneath a wine glass.
Something was written on the paper.
At least it was in a script he could understand.
"It really is a Rule-based Strange Tale." Lu Yun looked at these items and sank into a deep sense of helplessness.
What he feared most were these kinds of Rule-based Strange Tales; he himself might never figure out the hidden meaning behind these rules even if he died trying.
Rule 1: Please protect the only breeding boar in the sow pen.
Rule 2: Do not make Mother angry.
Rule 3: The grey cat in the house will protect you.
Rule 4: Do not let any of the aforementioned targets die, otherwise you may fall into a Danger Status.
After reading these rules, Lu Yun had already guessed a thing or two.
These first three rules were likely the key to surviving the next seven days.
"Never mind, let's scout the surrounding environment first."
Lu Yun pushed open the wooden door, which was in disrepair and emitted a creaking sound.
It was still quite dim outside, appearing to be somewhere around morning.
Patches of black fog shrouded the area outside the pigpen and beyond the bamboo grove.
Lu Yun circled the rural earthen house where he was located and discovered that across a plot of farmland behind the house, there was another dwelling, but that house was hazy and indistinct. To get over there, one had to pass through a stretch of black fog.
However, the Entity mark on his hand began to grow hot, and this black fog could no longer block his vision.
Free from the obstruction of the black fog, he saw clearly that between himself and the house behind his own, there was actually a pigpen separating them.
"It seems that if I want to go behind the house, I can pass through this pigpen."
Lu Yun then came to the right side of the house, looked up toward the mountain, and through the black fog saw that there was another household up there, also accompanied by a pigpen.
The outer perimeter of the pigpen was lined with loquat trees, blocking the view inside.
Right at that moment, his Killing Intent Perception was triggered once again. Following the direction indicated by the Killing Intent Perception, he looked over.
It gave him quite a fright.
A freak holding a butcher knife and wearing a pig head on its shoulders was standing under a tree, watching him.
At that exact moment, a cat's meow rang out from behind Lu Yun, and a Grey Hakimi stepped in front of him to block his way.
This Hakimi directly entered its Spinosaurus form and hissed at the Pig-headed Man.
The Pig-headed Man's pig head revealed no particular emotion, but after glancing at the Grey Hakimi—which had assumed its Spinosaurus form and was hissing at it—it turned and walked away.
However, it didn't go very far, merely moving to the other side of the wall.
If not for the Killer Instinct generated by his Killing Intent Perception, he probably would have followed after it to take a look and ended up crashing straight into that Pig-headed Man!
In a certain dungeon, a student named Jiang Maoxin, after the Grey Hakimi scared away the Pig-headed Man, wanted to track the Pig-headed Man to see where it was going.
As a result, the moment he rounded that corner, he ran straight into the Pig-headed Man and was chopped to pieces by the Pig-headed Man with a butcher knife, stroke by stroke.
Fortunately, the Talisman's protection mechanism was triggered, teleporting him out.
The invigilator monitoring Lu Yun glanced at the cause of death over there and silently awarded Lu Yun another ten points.
By now, Lu Yun had already seen the grey cat and Ghost Mother, leaving only the breeding boar in the sow pen.
Lu Yun walked into his "family's" pigpen and discovered that all the pigs were uniformly black, and every single pig looked completely normal.
Yet Lu Yun understood that the place that looked the most problem-free was the most likely to have problems.
This pig farm actually contained an infirmary, a disinfection room, a warehouse, and fire-fighting equipment; it looked surprisingly well-equipped.