My organs are too abstract.

Chapter 72 Speculation

"Achoo!"

Li Chuan suddenly sneezed, his brow furrowing: "Strange, why do I have this feeling that disaster is about to strike?"

"Could it be that the vengeful infant is returning?" Zhou Wenyu looked around warily. "You just said the problem isn't with the vengeful infant itself, but with this place. What do you mean by that?"

"I suspect that besides the vengeful infant, there is another calamity lurking here, and all the abnormal behavior of the vengeful infant is due to its influence."

"Two calamities?" Zhou Wenyu's expression changed.

"That's right."

Li Chuan walked into the classroom, looked at the group of students who looked nervous, and first softened his tone to calm them down: "Don't worry, my ability is enough to hold off the vengeful infant for a long time, there will be no danger for the time being."

"That's good."

Upon hearing this, the students all breathed a sigh of relief.

Zhou Wenyu was filled with doubts. He knew Li Chuan's background well and was aware that the other party's abilities wouldn't last long. But based on tacit understanding and trust, he didn't voice his doubts in public.

Li Chuan then asked, "Was this building in this dilapidated state when you first came in?"

"Of course not!" Xiao Yu quickly shook her head. "Everything was fine when we came in. If it had been like this from the beginning, we would have run away in fright. It only suddenly turned like this later."

"Before this building changed, did you say anything, or did you develop some kind of fear about this place?"

"Yes, it really happened." The bespectacled boy pushed up his glasses and recalled in a deep voice, "The building suddenly lost power, and we were bored, so we started telling ghost stories in the dark. Shen Jiahao casually said that if the power came back on, the whole building would turn into a horror movie scene, which would be terrifying. As a result, when the power came back on, the surroundings really did look like this."

Xiao Yu chimed in, "That's right, I even called him a jinx back then."

Li Chuan nodded slightly, then asked, "Did you see any snakes when you were on the second floor?"

"Snakes? I've never seen any." The bespectacled boy replied immediately. "After the school building changed, we couldn't find the exit, so we had to keep going upstairs. We checked every classroom and room along the way, but we didn't see any snakes at all."

"That explains it." Li Chuan turned his gaze to Pei Yan. "What were you thinking about when you were on the second floor?"

Pei Yan frowned as she recalled, "This was the first time I'd experienced such a bizarre scene. I was terribly panicked and couldn't help but let my mind wander—"

When I was a child, I was playing in the dark in the countryside and encountered a large group of snakes. Ever since then, I've instinctively been afraid of snakes whenever I'm in the dark.

Li Chuan then looked at Zhou Wenyu: "And what about you? When we went up to the third floor to deal with the vengeful infant, what were you thinking?"

"I—" Zhou Wenyu scratched his head, "I was afraid that as soon as we went upstairs, we would see the vengeful spirit staring straight at us—you know I love watching horror movies, and that's the formula for horror movies, what you fear most is what happens—"

As soon as he finished speaking, he froze, then instantly realized what he meant, his expression changing: "Brother Li, you're not suggesting that whatever we fear in this place will come true in reality, are you?"

"That's right." Li Chuan said solemnly, "Pei Yan was afraid of encountering snakes, so snakes appeared on the second floor; the vengeful infant was clearly not at its next feeding time, but because you were worried about seeing it as soon as you went upstairs, it woke up just as we went up; and you had a few students who were afraid that the vengeful infant would find a way to deal with You Shui, so it came back fully armed."

He turned to the group of students: "Has any of you had nightmares about vengeful spirit babies before?"

The bespectacled boy's voice was deep: "It was me—when I got to the fourth floor, I suddenly fainted. In my dream, I was being disemboweled by a monster that looked like a baby. I felt this dream was very abnormal, so when I woke up, I told the others to warn them to be more careful."

"It's because you told everyone about this nightmare that you triggered a collective fear in everyone. Originally, the vengeful infant could only exist in dreams, but you all feared in your hearts that such a monster could really appear, so it used this fear to actually descend into reality."

He continued his analysis: "The reason why the vengeful infant's speed is so ridiculously fast is because in your fearful imagination, it is an omnipresent monster, so its speed is enhanced. And its initial strength is not strong because in your minds, it doesn't need to be much stronger than ordinary people; just being able to crush normal people is terrifying enough. Therefore, its strength remained at its original level without any enhancement."

"Then why did it become stronger later?" Pei Yan couldn't help but ask.

"Because collective fear is contagious and amplifies, thus constantly fueling the calamity," Li Chuan explained. "Just now, when we were dealing with the vengeful infant, someone subconsciously shouted that we were no match for it," and all of your fear was triggered. Under the influence of this collective fear, the vengeful infant's strength surged, allowing it to steadily suppress us."

He looked around at the dilapidated and gloomy classroom, his tone growing increasingly somber: "I suspect this building isn't a real school building at all, but rather a product of your collective fears. It's been reconstructed based on your shared memories of school, which is why it feels so incongruous and eerie."

"Previously, when we were downstairs, the eyes of the portrait on the wall were blurry and indistinct because you couldn't remember the details of the portrait's eyes in your daily lives, so your collective memory automatically blurred that detail. The disappearance of the storage room on the second floor was also due to your spatial memory of the building's layout being inaccurate or overlooked. Also, the rabbit painted in classroom 227 that Pei Yan mentioned, which was not there at first but then inexplicably appeared, is because she also has past memories of this building, so it automatically filled in the details of the building."

"This is the root of the strangeness in this disaster zone—it was fake from the very beginning."

"So that's how it is." The bespectacled boy suddenly realized, "No wonder the number of steps on the stairs changed inexplicably, and the corridor seemed to extend inexplicably. It's all due to the deviation in our collective memory."

Zhou Wenyu now fully understood Li Chuan's previous concerns: he was worried that the students would panic and nurture the vengeful infant again, allowing it to make a comeback.

He exclaimed in shock, "This thing is too insidious! It manifests whatever you fear, so isn't it invincible?"

"This power must have some kind of upper limit, otherwise we wouldn't have lasted this long," Li Chuan speculated.

"But if there really is another calamity, why didn't it show any other power after we came in, except for the snakes appearing out of nowhere?" Pei Yan was full of doubts.

"This might be a coincidence."

"9

"A coincidence?" Pei Yan was taken aback.

Li Chuan said in a deep voice, "That's right. I guess its simultaneous appearance with the vengeful infant was an accident, leading to an unknown change."

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