Chapter 520: Chapter 520: Furnace (25)_1 Chapter 520: Chapter 520: Furnace (25)_1 “It’s really a pity, may I ask the reason why?”
Facing Medea’s abrupt 180-degree emotional turnabout, Fu Qian was stunned for a second and asked with a gossiping tone.
“Um… Actually, there was nothing particularly special, we got along happily at first, but later I don’t know if it was academic stress or what, but in a very short time, it was like he became another person, very… irritable and anxious.”
“The qualities that attracted me to him seemed to have vanished all at once.”
Medea stroked the photo while frowning and recalling.
“Anyway, after a few arguments over trivial matters, he suggested we should no longer see each other, and I agreed.”
“Then… he really never reached out to me again.”
So that’s how it was, I could actually guess the reason behind his irritability and anxiety.
Fu Qian recalled the contents of his notes; clearly, at that time, Edlar, who found the tasks to be endless, started to become unstable in his moral convictions.
“I understand, and what happened after that?”
“After that, he transferred schools and left this place.”
Medea sighed.
“Actually, it’s probably for the best.”
Transferred and left?
Fu Qian thought for a moment.
“Did he tell you himself?”
“No, he didn’t. He left in a hurry, only notifying the school’s teachers, without saying goodbye to me.”
“Let me think, he didn’t look for you, but he looked for… Joseph?”
“How did you know?”
Medea was obviously very surprised that Fu Qian had guessed correctly again.
“May I ask how you two got together?”
Fu Qian, however, bowed his head in thought, a certain feeling becoming clearer and clearer in his heart, and continued to ask.
“How we got together…”
Fu Qian’s highly associative questions plunged Medea back into her memories.
“Speaking of which, it’s quite an interesting story; it all started with an accident. Before that, I almost never had any interaction with him.”
“At the time, I was running an errand and left my bag behind. When I went back to retrieve it, I found him holding the bag, waiting for the owner. Afterward, I invited him for a cup of coffee.”
“One could say it was a romantic encounter.”
Fu Qian wore an expression of listening to a story.
“Fate is indeed inexplicable; otherwise, how could you have just happened to lose your bag.”
“It’s actually not like that; I was just doing according to the prompts.”
Medea covered her mouth with a light laugh and shook her head.
Prompts…
In that instant, the smile on Fu Qian’s face remained unchanged, but his mind suddenly cleared.
Is that really it?
For a moment, he seemed to understand everything.
“You received a prompt, telling you to intentionally leave your bag there? Like the kind of prompt that suggests a locked drawer needs a key to open it?”
“Yes.”
Medea nodded as if it was only natural.
“The prompt told me to leave the bag there, and something exciting might happen.”
“Do you often receive such prompts?”
“How could such messages come often? However, after getting in touch with Edlar, I did get a few more.”
“Does everyone experience this?”
“Of course, prompts occasionally appear, telling us what to do. What’s so strange about that?”
Medea looked at Fu Qian with a bit of incomprehension.
“Aren’t you?”
Uh… I definitely am!
Fu Qian sighed inwardly.
The matter-of-fact way Medea spoke held a significance far from trivial.
This world was far more pathological than he had imagined.
Initially, his focus had been on those bizarre things, like the feedback when unlocking doors and the doors that, for no good reason, only opened one way.
The existence of such strange and rigid rules made this world seem broken, filled with chaos.
In his understanding, those mechanical and forcibly defined logics were patches to prevent operational errors in this world.
As for the doors that could trap people to death by accident, those were the glitch points to avoid.
Because of such speculations, he had always been cautious to steer clear of these anomalies to ensure his safety.
However, now it seemed even more fantastical than he had imagined.
The people here were actually guided by special prompts in their logical actions, and everyone’s reactions were taken for granted, without any doubt–much like expecting money to dispense when a card is inserted into an ATM.
In some ways, the operational logic of this world wasn’t much stronger than that of a simulated reality game.
Was it essentially not real? Or had the world become irreparably broken that it could only be maintained in this way?
“Joseph.”
Fu Qian looked at Medea and slowly brought up a name, causing her to look utterly perplexed.
“Did you know that he had been following you all along before yesterday?”
“I had no idea, never! Who would have thought that guy could stoop so low!”
Even though she was speaking of a dead person, Medea still couldn’t help but sound a bit grinding of teeth.
“Thinking back now, his gaze towards me did seem a bit off at times, and he seemed somewhat resistant to my interactions with students. I initially thought his sense of justice was just too strong…”
Joseph had always kept students away from Medea…
Listening to Medea’s recollections, Fu Qian pieced together the events in his mind.
Edlar, who was thrown into the Furnace, received many trivial but non-challenging tasks…
Lust Demon Teacher Medea received a prompt and left behind a bag…
Edlar, who found the bag, chose to stay put and wait, leading to an unexpected encounter between the two…
Medea’s secret admirer, Joseph, not only often followed her but also harbored animosity towards all her “lovers”…
In the end, due to unknown reasons, Edlar was locked behind a door that couldn’t be opened, which involved Joseph and Chief Stan…
Joseph told the school that Edlar had transferred…
Fu Qian seemed to see an invisible web encircling the unfortunate Edlar, tightening around him until he was chased through that door and became a dried-up corpse in despair.
This world seemed to have some will of its own, operating in a bizarre and cold manner.
For outsiders like Edlar and himself, it used prompts on one hand to guide them, aiming to minimally disrupt the world’s functioning.
For example, his first task, upon inexplicably appearing in Medea’s office, was to get out quickly.
If he had indeed done so, he wouldn’t have run into the subsequent events, avoiding the series of conflicts that followed.
At the same time, it seemed to be filled with a deep malice, strongly wanting to eliminate him as an anomaly, like instructing him to go home on time to play games with Telika.
For most people, that game’s difficulty meant almost certain death.
Why was it like this?
The tasks he received had a huge contrast from beginning to end, with the difficulty level not even on the same scale.
What caused this change?