DSMC Chapter 171.1

Are Director Jiang and Qu Wanqiao really personalities of Teacher Qu?

Yan Jiyun recalled how the two of them had behaved in this instance.

Qu Wanqiao had encountered a ghost who looked exactly like him and then fainted. But could this seemingly scheming man also have been possessed? Or had he and Director Jiang been acting all along?

Yan Jiyun was missing the detailed information from the previous two missions. The Su Xiran rooftop-suicide incident should have brought the avenger behind everything to light, and that avenger should have been carrying out the revenge under Teacher Qu’s influence. If that was the case, then Director Jiang and Qu Wanqiao before him could be personalities controlled by the secondary personality and the main personality?

The secondary personality could control the direction of the script and the progress of filming. He didn’t want the main personality to discover the truth and wanted to continue using this incident to control the main personality and eventually take over the body.

Suddenly, everything clicked for Yan Jiyun.

Right. This was originally a role-playing instance, and acting was the main theme of the entire instance. Who said Qu Wanqiao couldn’t put on an act in front of the players? This was a play within a play.

Damn, he’d actually been fooled.

Fortunately, while Qu Wanqiao had been unconscious, Yan Jiyun had slapped him several times and even used the medicine he’d been given. So he hadn’t exactly gotten the short end of the stick.

Teacher Qu’s secondary personalities had been doing everything they could to suppress the main personality and toy with the players’ emotions. The identities of these two were now practically out in the open.

Yan Jiyun directly selected “Confirmed as a secondary personality.”

After confirming, he didn’t receive any notification of a penalty from the system. It seemed his current guess was correct.

[Teacher Qu’s secondary personalities: 2/?]

[Is this the main personality?]

Yan Jiyun selected No.

Being able to confirm something was one thing, but there were still several things he had no idea about. The system was quite cunning — it asked him to identify Teacher Qu’s personalities without telling him how many Teacher Qu had in total.

Yan Jiyun continued listening to see what Director Jiang and Qu Wanqiao would say.

He had confirmed the relationship between the two personalities, but he was still a little uncertain about which was the main and which was the secondary personality.

If Director Jiang was an evil personality, then he couldn’t possibly have reached out to help the black cat, prepared food and water for it, and so on. Yan Jiyun remembered that in Teacher Qu’s nightmare, one of the Little Class Monitors had directly thrown a can at both people and cats without caring whether they lived or died.

Director Jiang turned around and continued looking toward Mirror Lake, while Qu Wanqiao stood behind him.

Just then, Qu Wanqiao suddenly shoved Director Jiang from behind.

With a splash, Director Jiang fell straight into Mirror Lake, which hadn’t been cleaned in many years.

Why had they suddenly turned on each other?

There hadn’t even been any argument between them.

The lake water was still as deep as it had been in the Mingya High School instance. After Director Jiang fell in, he struggled in the water for a while before sinking beneath the surface.

Qu Wanqiao clapped his hands twice as the surface of the lake gradually became still. “Don’t blame me. If you want to blame someone, blame yourself for showing up.”

Yan Jiyun: “……” This was way too intense!

Could Director Jiang survive after falling into the water?

Yan Jiyun didn’t even dare breathe too loudly. Was this really the same Qu Wanqiao who had brought him medicine?

For a moment, he couldn’t tell which Teacher Qu was the good one and which was the evil one.

No wonder he’d triggered the main mission to find Teacher Qu. It was simply impossible to tell who was the main personality and who was the secondary one!

Perhaps he could take his speculation one step further. Regardless of whether a personality had been split from the main personality or from a secondary personality, perhaps all of the personalities were actually fighting for control of the body. Otherwise, why would these mental worlds have become so chaotic?

This was practically making the game even harder for him!

[Want to be Human] livestream channel:

“I’m an idiot. I can’t understand the plot. Is there actually a connection between Su Xiran’s death and finding Qu-laoshi? It feels so disconnected. Can some expert explain it? Horror instances with complicated plots are the worst. I can’t understand anything, and I have to piece the whole plot together myself. When the Kitty Baby is with the Level 5 streamer, they explain things to us, but when the Kitty Baby is alone, there’s basically no way for him to explain the plot to us.”

“Did you seriously spend the entire ten hours while the Kitty Baby was sleeping just watching him sleep? The teammates’ livestreams already explained most of the earlier missions.”

“Ahem. Yes, I really was watching the Kitty Baby sleep the whole time. I didn’t really pay attention to the plot.”

“Su Xiran’s death was just used to bring out Qu-laoshi’s secondary personality. The Level 5 streamer had already figured out who killed Su Xiran while the Kitty Baby was resting. Before the Kitty Baby went to sleep, he’d already found Xiao Tang. Xiao Tang was later killed by the black-clothed person with a poisoned blowpipe, so logically, they should have hit a dead end. But the Level 5 streamer went back to the library’s archives room to look for the Kitty Baby and found some clues, which triggered the plot of Main Mission 5. The black-clothed person didn’t expect someone to return to the archives room. He confronted the Level 5 streamer, only to get completely crushed by the latter’s combat ability, exposing his true identity.”

“Then who is that person?”

“I know. It’s the second female lead.”

“What? Why her? Why would she kill Su Xiran?”

“For the sake of the first female lead role, but who could’ve expected that killing Su Xiran wouldn’t get her the role, because the Kitty Baby snatched it away.”

“The black-clothed person was the second female lead. She could’ve killed the Kitty Baby back then. She could’ve gotten the first female lead role just as easily. Director Jiang had no other candidate left.”

“How do you know she didn’t try to shoot the Kitty Baby? The Kitty Baby was very close to Xiao Tang at the time.”

“That’s terrifying when you think about it. If the Kitty Baby had moved just a little farther forward, would he have been shot?”

The livestream chat was in full swing.

Meanwhile, Yan Jiyun watched Qu Wanqiao, and once he was certain Director Jiang wouldn’t be coming back up, the corners of his lips curled up. After looking around and confirming there was no one nearby, Qu Wanqiao left.

Yan Jiyun finally understood.

[Mingya High School 2.0] was a massive battle royale between Teacher Qu’s personalities. They were no longer merely using the incident to eliminate their opponents, they were directly attacking the other personalities.

If he found the main personality, could the main personality be killed as well?

Teacher Qu’s personalities were becoming increasingly frantic. Why?

Could it be because the elementary school personality of Teacher Qu from the previous instance had been repaired, causing the main personality to become stronger?

After Qu Wanqiao left, Yan Jiyun ran over to the edge of Mirror Lake and watched the surface for any movement.

Five minutes had already passed. Could Director Jiang really have drowned?

If Director Jiang had merely been possessed by Teacher Qu’s ghostly personality, then he shouldn’t be able to die. Unless it wasn’t a ghost possessing him at all, and Director Jiang himself actually had multiple personalities? There was no rule saying that one body couldn’t contain two personalities.

Even Yan Jiyun was startled by his own idea. Because if the main personality was truly intelligent, this was exactly the sort of thing he might do. He might even have anticipated that the other personalities would try to kill him.

After coming up with this possibility, Yan Jiyun crouched beside the lake and waited to see whether his guess was correct.

Could someone who had been underwater for five minutes really come back up?

Director Jiang had deliberately chosen to meet Qu Wanqiao by the lake, hadn’t he? He had given Qu Wanqiao the opportunity to make a move, yet Qu Wanqiao hadn’t realized it was a trap. Instead, he had obediently taken the bait and unknowingly helped Director Jiang complete part of his plan.

Time passed little by little, and Qu Wanqiao had already gone far away.

Just when Yan Jiyun’s patience was nearly exhausted, ripples suddenly appeared on the surface of the lake.

Director Jiang, who should have sunk to the bottom and only floated back up after a couple of days, had already grabbed onto the edge of Mirror Lake and climbed out.

As soon as he raised his head, he saw the black cat crouching by the lake and staring at him in confusion. Wiping the water from his hair, he couldn’t help laughing softly.

“Little black cat, I guess feeding you wasn’t a waste after all. But I’m sorry, I couldn’t catch any fish for you in the lake.”

Yan Jiyun dodged the water Director Jiang shook from his hair and stood to the side, studying him.

Looking at the sunset, which was as beautiful as his own mood, Director Jiang said, “Do you feel like I’m a little different from before?”

Yan Jiyun thought that he certainly was different. Director Jiang’s entire mental state seemed different.

He followed Director Jiang’s gaze toward the blazing, fiery sunset.

Was this Teacher Qu? Only Teacher Qu could influence the weather within this world. The weather had always been his symbol.

But the sunset had already been there just moments ago. That didn’t mean the Teacher Qu standing before him was necessarily the main personality.

Director Jiang stood beside Mirror Lake for quite a while before saying, “Little cat, let’s go change our clothes, then put an end to this world.”

Yan Jiyun hadn’t expected things to fall into place so suddenly. 

Had he found Teacher Qu just like that? He tried using the system to confirm the identity of the personality in front of him.

[Does the player wish to confirm this as one of Teacher Qu’s personalities?]

He answered: Confirm.

[Teacher Qu’s personalities: 3/?]

[Does the player wish to confirm this personality as Teacher Qu’s main personality?]

Yan Jiyun didn’t respond for a long time.

The system began urging him.

[Please answer within 5 seconds. An incorrect confirmation will deduct the corresponding amount of game time.]

Yan Jiyun looked at Director Jiang for another couple of seconds.

Director Jiang stood up and walked ahead. After taking two steps, he turned around and looked at Yan Jiyun. “Not coming?”

Yan Jiyun chose No.

The personality inside Director Jiang was not the main personality.

Yan Jiyun now had a rough image of Teacher Qu in his mind. He was intelligent, patient, and gentle. He would absolutely never behave as though he had just been introduced to this world. More importantly, he’d just said that he wanted to “put an end to this world.”

This was Teacher Qu’s own mental world. He didn’t need to put an end to anything himself. The one who needed to put an end to these worlds — the one fighting to seize control of the subconscious world — could only be the secondary personality.

Therefore, Director Jiang was still a secondary personality of Teacher Qu.

Yan Jiyun wanted to know where this Director Jiang would take him to put an end to everything.

The real Teacher Qu?