"Wait! Wait wait wait!!!"

Lin Yi suddenly thought of something, a dazzling bolt of lightning striking his mind like thunder.

It seemed that in that instant, he grasped a spark of inspiration, one that appeared to lead directly to the underlying logic of the Non-human Classmates' killing mechanism!

"'Eliminate attention'… 'Ignore'… 'Don't look at them'…"

"'Don't turn around'…"

"'Stare'…"

He chewed over these keywords repeatedly, his brain whirling at breakneck speed, and in his mind's eye, a twisted framework emerged. It seemed as if just linking these things with the correct clues could yield something akin to a foundational logic!

"Just missing one more clue…"

"What is it missing… What is it missing?!"

He tugged at his own hair, feeling the agonizing frustration of being on the brink of solving a problem.

Suddenly, he noticed the white dust particles, like so many specks of dust, and a flash of insight crossed his eyes!

"The last piece of the puzzle is missing— 'Contamination'!"

"I understand!"

"I understand!!!"

"Whether it's walking around campus and hearing a sound behind you 'don't turn around'; or not looking around after the lights go out in the classroom and instead 'staring at the legs of the desk' or similar practices…all are to prevent the Experience Students from directly looking at those Non-human Units!"

If this had been yesterday evening, Lin Yi, having come up with a "1+1=2" proof, might have been content, but now he had additional conditions, which meant he could deduce more steps, perhaps even several steps, just like Tian Bufan.

The question then was, why did the rules prevent Experience Students from directly looking at Non-human Classmates?

It must be because looking at them would overturn one's established perceptions, and once those perceptions faltered, one would lose one's Anchor, becoming lost in a distorted layer, and even if one managed to be "barely wet from the river," one's feet were already soaked with river water.

And the river water is the white dust particles, the Contaminants!

Just one instance of such a phenomenon, and a person would open the way to Contamination. From that moment on, Contamination would constantly cling to them, like omnipresent droplets, sneaking into their will at the first sign of mental fissure.

Just like... his frequent Phantom Vision!

Exaggerating for a moment, it only took one thought to trigger an immediate sense of suffocating layer collapse!

"So! Violating the school rules leads to self-Contamination, which attracts Contaminants, and those Non-human Classmates, as major Polluters, can definitely sense the presence of Contaminants to some extent, just like me right now!"

In other words, seeing something beyond one's cognitive scope causes cognitive collapse; cognitive collapse leads to the loss of the Anchor and thus invites Contamination.

Once Contamination begins, the layer a person is in starts to fluctuate due to various factors, losing the "safe state." If one cannot re-establish cognition to stop this vicious cycle, one keeps sinking, until finally... swallowed by Contamination.

"So, another reason that Non-human Classmate noticed me is because I've already been Contaminated!"

"In other words, just because I'm fucking dirty, everywhere I go, they'll notice me?"

"This is fucking..."

Despite Lin Yi's breakthrough in logical reasoning, which should have made him happy, the absurd feeling of becoming part of the problem itself as a Problem Solver, when he should have been outside of it, left him feeling impossibly despondent.

But on the other hand, Tian Bufan looking directly at the Non-human Classmates at night without being chased, could it be because he had already accepted this part of the logic, thus rewriting his associated cognition?

"Damn it! Everything makes sense now! No wonder Young Master Tian started reminding me to 'adapt' when he met me at the Gymnasium!"

Lin Yi initially thought Tian Bufan meant "adapt to the campus anomalies," but now it seems it's not about adapting at all, instead it is about—"adapting to the changes brought on by Contamination," rewriting one's cognition to gradually enter this magnetic field!

"Wait a minute… doesn't that mean, Young Master Tian has long accepted the fact he was Contaminated?"

"When did he come to realize it?"

"Could it be he knew all this from the beginning…?!"

Just then, the sound of a door latch being pulled came from the Art Classroom entrance...

Lin Yi turned in shock, only to see a crowd walking majestically into the Art Classroom.

Among these people were a few Lin Yi recognized—it seemed they were the very travel companions from the blue bus, those who ignored the driver's warnings and, enticed by the Sailor Uniform girl, got off early to enter the campus, only to be led away by the eerie Art Teachers.

Clearly, they had used some unknown path to get to the Art Building, but obviously, they hadn't gained entry through the normal route of Art Students.

And sure enough, Lin Yi saw that girl with the hair clip wearing the Sailor Uniform among the crowd again.

Only now, they all had darkened complexions, their gazes were all slightly vacant, their spirits even more absent-minded, and it was as if each was surrounded by an aura of negativity.

In more metaphysical terms, blackened foreheads and ominous signs—Lin Yi did not know what they had experienced on that unknown path to the Art Building, but they really looked as if they had walked through Hell itself.

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