Chapter 1 "Meimei, I suspect my brain is broken."

Mingmei: ?

Mingmei looked speechlessly at Lu Xiaoyao in front of her.

At noon, Mu Chen thoughtfully arranged for Lu Xiaoyao to come out and play with her, and in order to give her space to relax, he didn't ask to come along. He thought…

As a result, as soon as they met, Lu Xiaoyao didn't suggest where to go, and instead looked troubled and said, "My brain is broken"?

The key point was that Mingmei blurted out, "You're only realizing that now?"

Lu Xiaoyao: "Eh 0.0?"

Realizing that she seemed to have let something slip, Mingmei coughed twice and said, "Have you been under a lot of pressure lately and thinking too much? We have no classes this afternoon, is there anything fun on the Star Network? Let's have some fun and relax, maybe it will help."

"Let's go to the simulated mall, shopping and eating. I really don't want to play games anymore, it's too taxing on the brain."

Mingmei could tell that Lu Xiaoyao's energy wasn't as high-spirited as usual, so she nodded and agreed to Lu Xiaoyao's suggestion.

After buying a bunch of things on the Star Network, Lu Xiaoyao took Mingmei to a private room in a virtual coffee shop with good privacy.

Then, Lu Xiaoyao started talking about their original topic, about whether Lu Xiaoyao's brain was broken.

"I told you, maybe it's just the pressure from schoolwork, you're just a little anxious? Honestly, are you losing hair?"

"Not really, it's the same as before… uh! I'm not saying I'm stressed and anxious, it's real! I really feel like my memory has been declining like crazy recently…"

Lu Xiaoyao looked worried. "I played a game yesterday, and after coming out, I realized that I only remembered the first half of the game! I don't remember how I died or how I got out at all! And last night I was notified to see a psychologist overnight."

"You went last night?"

Mingmei knew that the worse a student's mental state was, the faster they would be scheduled to see a psychologist after coming out of the game.

Mingmei thought of Da Yao inside Lu Xiaoyao and wondered if Lu Xiaoyao's condition was that serious.

She took a sip of her milk coffee nonchalantly and asked, "What did the doctor say?"

"He told me to go home and rest for a while, and said I could come back before the final exams."

Speaking of this, Lu Xiaoyao was even more unhappy, and hugged her shoulders. "It's easy to say take a break, but what if it affects my studies, causes me to fail the final exams, and affects my stipend?"

"So, Xiaoyao, you like studying so much?"

Listening to Lu Xiaoyao talking about affecting her studies and exams, Mingmei couldn't help but admire Lu Xiaoyao's high ideological awareness!

Of course, it would have been better if she hadn't said the last sentence about affecting her stipend.

"No, studying is crap! Vacations with homework and studying are all crap."

"If I go home on vacation, no one will control me, and I definitely won't study. If no one controls me, I'll definitely fail the final exams! Waaah, what should I do? I really have to go home and rest for a while, then I'm definitely going to fail the final exams!"

"Since you're afraid of not studying proactively, then just hire a private tutor on the Star Network who can watch you study every day."

"Is that so devilish?" Mingmei's words made Lu Xiaoyao forget about her fake crying for a moment.

"It's okay, I understand that you want to relax during your vacation, but you can always squeeze out two hours a day to read, right? Besides, you're paying someone to watch you study, you're the boss.

At that time, even if they're watching you study, they have to follow your wishes, right? Then your days of reading and studying will definitely be more comfortable than at home."

"Is… is that so?"

After being enlightened (hoodwinked) by Mingmei, the two logged out of the Star Network and went to the cafeteria for dinner together.

Coincidentally, they ran into Hu Yue and Bai Xiao while having dinner in the cafeteria, so the four of them sat together.

During dinner, Lu Xiaoyao told everyone that she had decided to get a certificate from the mental health clinic tomorrow and go home to rest for a while.

"Oh my god? Was yesterday's game that scary?"

Bai Xiao had accompanied Hu Yue to the mental health clinic that afternoon.

Hu Yue's mood was really bad after coming out of the game yesterday, and her face was also ugly. She was also a little absent-minded during class in the morning.

Originally, she thought Hu Yue's condition was already very serious, but she didn't expect that Lu Xiaoyao's psychological shadow after coming out of the game was so serious that she needed to recuperate!

"What exactly did you guys experience after I died yesterday?"

Hu Yue frowned immediately upon hearing Lu Xiaoyao's plan.

In the game yesterday, she and Julian were only separated for a short while when she was suddenly beheaded. In that instant, a huge sense of unease and panic surged into her heart. Even after coming out of the game, she found it difficult to calm her anxiety.

That feeling of being ambushed and killed with one blow, without any power to resist, was too stifling.

What did Lu Xiaoyao experience that she was so stimulated that she needed to go home temporarily?

"I don't know." Lu Xiaoyao shook her head, saying that she didn't remember what happened afterward at all. "Could it be that the things that happened afterward were too scary, so I was overstimulated?"

Sometimes, Lu Xiaoyao liked to stack buffs on herself. No one told her what happened afterward, but she herself felt that she must have been shocked by something very terrible and received a stimulus.

Listening to her, the corners of Mingmei's mouth couldn't help twitching. She forked a piece of meat into her mouth and chewed slowly, wanting to hear what else Lu Xiaoyao could imagine.

"Maybe a death compilation could help you? You can take a look at the death compilation posted on the school's internal network."

"What's that?" The other three didn't know what Hu Yue was talking about for a moment.

However, Bai Xiao quickly seemed to remember something and tentatively asked, "There really is one?"

Hu Yue nodded solemnly to everyone, and then Bai Xiao quietly gasped!

This was too scary!

"Oh my god! It's that!"

Lu Xiaoyao also remembered now, and tugged at Mingmei's arm. "Did you forget? After we finished playing *Blood Battle Prelude*, the school said they were learning from the Second Military Academy's incentive methods!"

"You mean compiling all the students' death clips from the escape games?"

Mingmei looked shocked. She thought this was just the school being funny, but they actually did it?

Because of Hu Yue's reminder, everyone stopped eating and quickly lowered their heads to open their optical brains and find the death compilation section on the internal network.

After entering, it was… somewhat different from what Mingmei imagined.

The top part of the death compilation section was a database of all the students' information. You could directly search for yourself by age, class, or name.

Finally, click on the relevant student's name to enter, and you can see a bunch of the student's death clips from games played after the National Day.

Then the bottom half of the section was a forum for everyone to complain, be publicly shamed, and create fan works together.

It was quite… quite entertaining, as long as you weren't the one being entertained ＿(：3」∠)_

In response, Mingmei specifically searched for her own avatar, and it was empty.

Very good.

Then she clicked on Mu Chen's, and like hers, Mu Chen hadn't been recorded yet.

Remembering that Da Yao and she were the last ones to fight yesterday, Mingmei couldn't help but look at Lu Xiaoyao's death compilation out of curiosity.

So she quickly saw the scene where she dodged Da Yao's flying kick that suddenly erupted towards her face, but because she dodged, the other party couldn't stop in mid-air and flew directly towards the cliff behind her.

Mingmei thought Da Yao was killed by the fall, but the scene in the clip changed. Da Yao rushed down the hillside and finally knelt and plunged headfirst into the mud, then suffocated to death.

Mingmei: "…"

This way of dying… was really quite unjust.

She remembered that when she fought Da Yao earlier, she used the back of her axe to directly break both of the other party's arms, so when she plunged headfirst into the mud, she couldn't break free.

And Lu Xiaoyao, who insisted that she couldn't remember the later parts of yesterday, also happened to finish watching her death clip at this moment.

Mingmei turned her head and saw a world-famous meme face—Subway, Grandpa, Looking at Phone.jpg