At this moment, Xue Dili and Old Undead directly slaughtered through an entire village.

However, what puzzled them most about the whole village was that those twisted old men and women, with tree branches growing all over them, had no souls!

Or rather, their souls were extremely weak, so weak as to be like a flickering candle in the wind, easily extinguished with a gentle breath.

Xue Dili couldn't understand why those creatures were so weak; were it not for their unique wooden bodies, they would be weaker than ordinary people, truly like "zombies."

"Xue, I sense something wrong. Those 'undead' souls aren't normal. It's not that they became small after death due to soul obliteration, but rather most of their souls are absorbed by something, leaving them so hollow..." the Old Undead said.

Even due to "Evil Spirit Rebirth," he appeared on Blue Star, and now he even felt a kinship sensation.

"No, it's more or less what I guessed; they are essentially 'zombies.' In the zombie-related works of our world, many settings are like this," Xue Dili said.

"It's just that, where they are, the source of zombies has become the evil spirits summoned by Qijela and that group of fallen mystic scholars, and considering how popular zombie culture is today, it's possible they might even have a zombie demon in their possession."

However, as soon as Xue Dili finished speaking, he saw a school at the village's edge.

From within the school came countless noisy reading voices, and the collective sounds of thousands reading together made this eerie village even more deeply terrifying.

Xue Dili frowned.

The village outside the school was filled with zombies whose souls had been completely consumed, but why was the school here filled with the sound of reading?

Also, would Ami's schools really be this competitive and serious?

In Xue Dili's stereotype, Ami's schools always practiced joyful education, their children never worrying about advancement or exams from childhood, supposedly going to school just as a formality, to make friends.

But this is actually a stereotype. While Ami's public schools are like that, private schools are like upgraded, extreme versions of Hengshui ProMax, with students desperately competing and studying.

They even take out loans to buy stimulants, hormones, and specific "smart drugs" to study over 20 hours a day, infused with those substances.

This level of competitive Hell was no less than Neon and the Peninsula, even surpassing it.

In fact, even the competitive kings from Neon and the Peninsula wouldn't be so outrageous as to inject themselves with hormones to study.

The reason for this, one, is the high tuition fees of private schools, which burden them with decades of "student loans" as the only way for countless rural students to change their class and not remain rednecks.

That is, through studying to graduate from university, taking on decades of loans to become personal doctors, lawyers, or politicians of financial groups, completing their class leap in life.

But even with hormones and stimulants, the chance of redneck children successfully landing is less than 5%...

More of them just get into ordinary universities, can't become rural rednecks like their parents, nor urban respected elites, working like beasts on four jobs a day just to barely support themselves after repaying student debt.

Even needing to sell blood in their spare time to make ends meet.

And when they can no longer bear this life, they go bankrupt, lose their jobs, and become homeless...

One could say, for the over 90% of lower-class rednecks in Ami, this is the abbreviation of their lives.

For this very reason, the politicians representing these people can easily defeat Harris, who represents the elite class, because for Ami, the tragedy of these people has played out time and again.

Of course, previously, Xue Dili only learned about Ami through "Reader" and "Yilin," without knowing these secrets.

Xue Dili entered the school, seeing countless people picking up books to recite.

This school wasn't just a middle or high school; Xue Dili even saw elementary, middle, and college students... white, black, Asian, Latino, Hispanic... and so on.

It seemed to encompass students of all ages gathered here, the only constant being that they were all desperately studying.

Without teachers urging them, they voluntarily studied hard, their determination even making Xue Dili doubt his eyes, thinking he'd arrived at Maotan Factory or Hengshui, not at this Ami school.

The school's gate was wide open, yet no child played truant, unlike Ami TV shows where schools were just about bullying and romance. This was more like the school familiar to Xue Dili, where they were closed, confined, and each student seemed like a walking corpse.

Even attending school 7 days a week, studying over 15 hours a day used to be normal for Xue Dili.

But here, he could even feel the more competitive pressure to advance in school.

"Hey, don't wander around." Suddenly, a typical blonde American girl clutched Xue Dili and said.

Judging by her appearance, she didn't seem to be over 15 years old, still a JK. But unlike the blonde, blue-eyed American JKs in TV shows, this young lady had faint dark circles, and appeared listless, as if she hadn't rested enough.

"What's wrong?" Xue Dili asked back.

"The consequences of not studying here are quite severe! Don't wander around, or something might come and catch you!" The girl leaned in very familiarly, whispering.

This naturally familiar attitude made Xue Dili somewhat uncomfortable.

"Then why aren't you studying?" Xue Dili's confusion was apparent. In such a school, this obviously blonde, hot girl dressed as a "bad kid" stood out so much.

"Because I am a bad kid, just can't keep up, so I'm just slacking off. When the time comes, I'll just marry a good husband, and if I'm lucky, after a divorce, I can take away more than half the assets, plus the husband would have to regularly send alimony for the kid every month..." This seemed to be the unapologetic words of the truancy-prone blonde hottie.

Xue Dili: "..."

You're quite honest, huh? Whoever marries you is really unlucky.

Xue Dili was at a loss for words on how to mock this young lady. Likewise, she was also the first "person" he met after coming here that he could normally communicate with and get information from.

Outside this school were all twisted "zombies". Inside the school, everyone was like a learning machine, the only person who could communicate.

"What's really happening here?" Xue Dili asked.

He wasn't just referring to the school but also those seemingly "drained" zombies outside.

"Hasn't it always been like this here?" The hottie seemed puzzled at Xue Dili's seemingly nonsensical words.

Xue Dili: "???"

"It's always been like this since ancient times. After the kids are sent here, they just study hard until they graduate and get into a school. If they're lucky, they accumulate decades-worth of loans and become personal lawyers, doctors for elites, or if they're luckier, state or federal employees." The hottie explained to Xue Dili.

"But if they're unlucky, they just work off their loans for life, maybe pay them off by old age, or maybe never. Anyway, selling blood can still keep you alive, work a few jobs, sell blood, isn't it a good life?" She seemed nonchalant about such terrifying things.

The abstraction level was something Xue Dili could never imagine.

"And what about you? How come you're not keeping up here?" This was Xue Dili's biggest question. In this bizarre village and school, the seemingly normal blonde hottie seemed the most abnormal.

It's like if a world is full of twisted, monstrous creatures, and suddenly a beautiful girl appears who fits the traditional aesthetic. That girl might not be a real young lady but an evil god...

"I told you, I'm just slacking off, relying on my husband for life. Wait, hurry up... the student council is coming to enforce discipline!" The blonde hottie grabbed Xue Dili's hand, starting to avoid detection.

As Xue Dili turned his head, he saw behind him countless puppet-like figures tangled in strings, holding sheets to record the situations of each class and classroom, scoring every place.

Xue Dili saw that the low-scoring classes were taken away, and when they returned, they were completely different... more mechanical...

But it seemed there wasn't any outcome like she said; was this kid in front of him punished before? So she had a deep psychological shadow.

"No, Xue, there's something off with the girl beside you." Old Barak put down his phone again and said to Xue Dili.

"I knew something was off with her for a while now, just don't know exactly what's wrong yet." Xue Dili retorted.

"You might not have noticed, but just in the hour you were together, she seemed to visibly grow, like suddenly aging a year." The old undead spoke out.

"Grow?" Xue Dili was puzzled.

"When you first met her, her measurements were 72, 52, 70, clearly the body of a young girl," said the old undead, "But just an hour later, her measurements now are 77, 52, 72, clearly grew a lot."

Xue Dili: "?"

No way, as a local, he didn't even know the meaning or measurement method of such sizes. You guys can eyeball it online?

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