Chapter 56 Teacher and Containment Object

As a national-level key middle school, Jupiter City Fourth Middle School had never experienced a single accident in the more than twenty years since its establishment. Even without any past incidents, the school still invested heavily in safety management to ensure that no physical blind spots existed and that any doppelgängers could be suppressed at the very first moment.

The entire school's security force could be divided into two categories:

1. **[Security Team]**: A security team meeting municipal secondary standards. Although there was a significant gap compared to primary-level teams or higher-level investigators, its members possessed relatively rich combat experience and were equipped with suppression combat uniforms procured from "The Corporation," bearing a resemblance to mobile riot police in certain films. They were typically armed with high-voltage stun batons, stun guns, tactical knives, and the like. Security personnel at the rank of squad leader and above were permitted to carry 9mm caliber pistols (featuring a trigger blood-test mechanism*).
* *When the user pulls the trigger for the first time, a needle on the trigger extracts a portion of blood for testing, and the firearm safety is only disengaged after ruling out a doppelgänger identity.*
* *Due to a large number of doppelgängers lurking within the country, with their numbers increasing daily, firearms were subjected to extremely strict control.*

2. **[Physical Education Teachers]**
Generally representing the school's highest combat tier, every P.E. teacher was a force to be reckoned with. Aside from having formidable personal capabilities, virtually all P.E. teachers possessed "Territorialization Items" or alternative buffs related to territory. This was precisely why the school had always been able to maintain stability despite the existence of numerous anomalous events across the country.

Today, however, the school—long regarded as a safe zone—was facing a danger far surpassing ordinary anomalous events.

...

**[Teaching Building Area]**

Because of the nighttime physical fitness tests, all students were concentrated in the sports center. Only the teachers responsible for organizing the written examination papers and logical thinking test papers were still working overtime in the entire teaching building.

The exact moment the spatial seam formed, a patrol squad led by the head of the security team happened to pass by the teaching building. The detection instruments in their hands immediately flashed red, signaling a strong anomalous reaction inside the building.

Considering the presence of P.E. teachers on the athletic field, the team leader decisively ordered the patrol squad to enter the teaching building for a comprehensive search, instructing them to immediately eliminate any suspected doppelgänger upon discovery.

Meanwhile, deep within the fifth-floor restroom of the teaching building:

Dong Lan, the Dean of Students, had suffered a bout of bad food and had only just managed to emerge from the stalls. With a vicious scowl on her face, she planned to thoroughly interrogate the catering vendor tomorrow. She also had a task to complete tonight: she needed to go to the senior grade's classroom office to check on the organization of the school-wide test papers and, once the physical exams concluded, escort the sealed test papers onto the transport vehicle.

Yet when this Director Dong returned to the office, the teachers who should have been working there were nowhere to be found, and some of the test papers were actually scattered across the floor.

"I was only gone for half an hour. Where on earth did these fellows run off to?"

Flaring up on the spot, she prepared to make phone calls to interrogate these teachers one by one, only to discover that due to the new physical examination protocol, the campus signal had been jammed, and calls wouldn't go through at all.

Having worked at Fourth Middle School for twenty years, she never once suspected anything sinister, simply writing off the current situation as a "collective mutiny." Unwilling to organize the test papers herself, Director Dong immediately clicked her high heels toward the security office, intending to use her authority to drag all these "missing" teachers out.

Not long after she stepped out of the office, however, she sensed a hint that something was amiss.

The corridor on this floor seemed to have grown somewhat longer than usual, and she still hadn't reached the corner. She clearly remembered that it shouldn't take this long to walk from the office to the classroom area. The sharp clicking of her high heels sounded exceptionally grating inside the teaching building. The lights along the corridor were gradually growing dim, and some had even ceased to function altogether.

Passing the corner and arriving at the classroom area where she usually felt most confident, she could no longer maintain any expression of sternness or confidence on her face.

The security guards she was looking for were right in front of her. Fully armed guards stood in an orderly line along the corridor railing, having removed their helmets. Before Director Dong could even utter a word, the guards leaned forward and plummeted over the edge one by one.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The heavy sounds of bodies crashing down and bones shattering echoed from below. Thoroughly terrified, Director Dong still managed to lean out and take a look at the situation downstairs.

Down below lay not only the security guards who had just jumped, but also more than a dozen others who had leaped earlier. All of them had landed headfirst, their skulls smashed to a pulp. However, the ground floor held only the corpses of the security guards; there was not a single teacher among them.

Director Dong wanted to run, but her legs were trembling incessantly. Having immigrated to this position through her status as a school administrator, she had never received any training, and twenty years of peaceful campus life had completely erased anything related to fear.

Right at that moment, a round of footsteps echoed from behind.

Director Dong turned around to look, and the newcomer turned out to be Guo Wendian, the literature teacher she usually despised the most. But current circumstances left no room for petty grievances; seeing a living person here was nothing short of a miracle.

"Teacher Guo, hurry over and support me! Let's get out of the school right now! Hurry! Call the investigators over immediately!"

Even while gripped by fear, Director Dong still communicated by issuing commands. Teacher Guo, however, showed not a shred of panic. His movements were as unhurried as on any ordinary day, yet he walked over and extended his right hand.

Only, the extended arm was not offering support; instead, he raised his right index finger and gently tapped it against the center of Director Dong's brow.

Ten seconds later,

Thud!

A human body plummeted from the upper floor, landing headfirst into the pavement with its legs stuck straight up in the air, a pair of outdated black high heels dangling high above, unmoving.

Teacher Guo looked at this scene with satisfaction, then walked toward the stairwell. Instead of going downstairs, he followed the staircase all the way to the top floor of the teaching building, stepped onto the edge of the rooftop, and gazed out toward the direction of the gymnasium, seemingly confirming something.

He lingered there like that for a few minutes until a string of tapping noises from behind interrupted him.

Turning around, he saw the source of the sound was a metal container placed on the rooftop, inside of which was sealed the "derivative entity" originally scheduled for this physical examination.

According to the school's official account, the derivative entity was merely a corpse injected with a small amount of anomalous cells, possessing strength equivalent to a doppelgänger of less than half a year, and posed no threat.

Yet Teacher Guo approached with extreme caution. After circling the metal container to inspect it, he placed his hand over the container's latch.

Click-clack-clack~

The alloy-made lock was completely distorted and shattered by an external force, revealing the "derivative entity" enclosed within.

It was an upright corpse.

Only, a gleaming sheen flowed across the surface of the corpse, clearly visible even in the darkness. The corpse stepped out of the container as rigidly and stiffly as a newly resurrected Frankenstein, standing directly before Teacher Guo at a distance of less than half a meter.

Splat~ An eyeball slipped out.

The pitch-black eye sockets likewise radiated a kaleidoscopic sheen, as though something resided within them.

Click-clack, click-clack~

A living, iridescent tentacle wriggled out of the eye socket, swaying in the air. The seemingly slow and harmless tentacle suddenly accelerated and thrust straight toward Teacher Guo.

Yet the tentacle, which should have struck true, deflected midway, grazing past his temple and missing its target.

The failed strike did not deter the tentacle; it immediately whipped around and launched a sneak attack aimed at the back of Teacher Guo's head.

Hum!

The result remained the same. Every time it was about to hit, it was deflected by an invisible force.

The tentacle launched five consecutive attacks, all of which missed entirely. In the end, it had no choice but to give up and hover once more in front of Teacher Guo. The tip of the tentacle glowed with a green light, as if observing through some special sensory faculty, or perhaps the two were engaged in a form of non-verbal communication.

After about two minutes, the corpse reinserted its eyeball into its socket, ceasing to regard Teacher Guo as a target.

Teacher Guo seemed to have developed a brand-new objective, quite distinct from the original purpose of this spatial-seam screening, and a rare smile surfaced on his face.

...

**[Capital City - Earth City]**

Deep within a massive, fortress-like metal structure, a neatly dressed middle-aged man with a side-parted hairstyle was reading a book in his room, occasionally using a laptop for literary creation.

Ding-dong~ The doorbell rang.

"Come in."

At the man's permission, a group of personnel clad in top-tier protective suits opened the door, though they did not step a single foot into the room. The person in the lead held an object resembling a voice recorder.

"Mr. Kraft, may I ask how the examination conditions are across all schools currently? Are all your derivative entities still stable?"

"100% stable. No anomalies whatsoever."

"Thank you for your cooperation."