Chapter 170 - Ye Xinya (1)

On Jiang Li's seventy-eighth year in that world, the dynasty changed hands once again. The one who replaced Chen Heng's heir was quite tyrannical, rising through a rebellion. This person efficiently weeded out the court of useless people, people who would bring harm to his rule, or those who would threaten his power. 

However, even he didn't dare piss off the old man in the Southern region. Everyone knew that the person was somebody not even Lin Wang's crazy tactics managed to faze. Even if he had the whole Southern region under him, the new Emperor did not make a sound and focused on stabilizing and establishing himself in the court

He did invite the former Chen Wang to witness his crowning ceremony though. He was merely paying respects but Jiang Li thought it would not be a bad thing to check the festivities, so he brought Jiang Ying Yue and visited Chen Heng. The latter was grieving for his wife, and Jiang Li quite sympathized with him. But more than that, he found the situation amusing.

Before, Sheng Lingxin was made to wait for ten years to regain Chen Heng's affection. Now, Sheng Lingxin made the former Hai Wang wait for years before meeting her in the afterlife. Who knows how long the male lead would have to wait for that? Maybe ten years too?

After the visit, he just sent his congratulations to the new Emperor before going back to the South.

He managed to last until four years later, where he passed away. It was a natural death this time. This type of death made him feel complicated because he never expected to experience it. Actually, he never even planned to stay that long in every world.

As he left for the next mission, he couldn't help but feel like he had been unfair to the girl from the previous world. This was why if he was to be given the chance, apart from returning to his original world, he would go back to Feng Ru's and try to give Na Yu, that beautiful stalker, the life and lover she deserved.

'So many things planned... But I need to take it one step at a time. Gotta focus on the next world first.'

...

It was in the middle of summer. The sun seemed so high up, yet so near to the earth. The heat was simply unbearable to those outside.

Jiang Li was not actually basking under the scorching rays. He was just sitting inside a classroom, watching the spectacle outside through the open window with cold, emotionless eyes.

"S-so ruthless! H-hey, those students are badly injured. Why is nobody stopping that instructor?"

The one who asked was a short-haired girl with a petite figure. She was one of the new students, a new arrival to this hellish place. When the scene outside occurred, the shock caused her to stand up.

Jiang Li was back in the modern world. A few minutes ago, when he opened his eyes, he was in the middle of a graveyard-quiet room where students seemed to be too afraid to make a sound. The bulky teacher in his fifties wearing a sports suit and cap seemed very bored and half-hearted about his lessons.

It was Math Class and the guy standing on the podium had already made several errors in his calculations. It simply looked like he didn't know what he was doing. However, none of the people listening to him commented about it. Maybe Jiang Li would have, if not for his usual head-splitting headache due to the rush of memories. But yeah, even though the aged man in front seemed even he would fall asleep any minute soon, nobody was finding faults with him.

There were new students and all of them were puzzled by the quietness, but since they were not familiar with the situation, they followed the others and kept their silence. As for the others, they were simply scared. At times, their eyes would dart to the baton at the man's waist, then to the baseball bat leaning against the table's leg.

It was amidst that silence that another situation occurred outside. A new batch of new arrivals consisting of five teenage kids showed up from the gate which could be spectated from their location. One of the kids rushed to return to the gate where his parents were waiting, but one of the guards immediately closed it. 

The teenage boy started crying and pounding his fist on the surface of the seemingly tall wall. Since the place was not that far and the kid had an awesome vocal capacity, those from the classroom could hear him scream his desire of speaking with his mother for one last time. But nobody let him out, not even for a minute.

Instead, when the drunk-looking teacher caught him, he started receiving a beating. The baton mercilessly struck all over his body. Two other boys from the new batch tried to help, but since they were just kids, they couldn't do much. They even received the teacher's ire and began to get beaten up too. Coupled with the shrieking girls, the scene outside simply became painful to the eyes. Yet nobody was charging towards them to control the situation. Not even the guards.

"T-teacher! Please look outside! There's an issue there! That boy is dying!" pointed that same courageous girl outside while shouting at the bulky teacher.

Jiang Li looked around and saw that those who had been here for long were either looking down or looking away. The newbies were staring through the bored middle-aged man's face, unaware of the danger.

'This is not the only room where students and teachers can see what's happening outside. But even though quite some time already passed, no a.d.u.l.t is rushing out to help the minors.' His gaze darkened as he recalled what kind of place this was.

Isolated from the world. Located deep into a forest somewhere. No way of communicating outside but through the principal's old telephone. Such a school actually exists. And it had around three thousand students enrolled. Everyone staying in the dorms outside class hours was not allowed to step out of the school premises unless they have graduated.

This was a modern world, but why was there no trace of technology apart from an old telephone no student would be able to access at will? Was it truly March 2019?

Well, the story this time was a bit out of the ordinary.

The advent of technology and gadgets brought countless advantages to society and made life easier, yet there was a part or aspect of it still not accepted by everyone. There were parents who think that phones, laptops, pc, the internet... basically all sorts of handheld technology that could be accessed for entertainment were tools of devils.

The number of children all over the world getting addicted to these was growing every passing day. Many had begun to get used to forgetting to talk with their parents. The most alarming factor was how the majority addicted to playing games or browsing social media started to lose time for studying and sleeping and had failing grades.

Well, this was a fact (and a bitter pill to swallow coz even author is guilty haha). But through proper guidance and regulating the usage of the internet, it should still be something that could be remedied.

The problem was that not all parents had the time to care for this, busy in their works and other issues but were not willing to accept upon coming home they would see their kid not paying them or their orders attention due to being engrossed in games or SNS.  

Then somebody noticed this and built a school. It specialized in 'rehabilitating' internet addicts and helping students learned obedience to their parents and become focused on their studies again. Many parents were impressed by the slogan. When they heard that the place would be at a very secluded location where devil devices would be out of reach and saw the curriculum packed with lessons helpful in becoming a productive person in the future, they immediately praised the school management and then enrolled their kids there.

However, while the mission and vision of this learning facility seemed so impressive and ground-breaking, the reality was just the opposite. Students were suffering from abuse and battering every day. And they had no one to turn to because they couldn't communicate with the police or anybody from the outside. If the school was truly rehabilitating them, it was the deadly type of rehabilitation centered on violence. They were strict about privacy so they simply killed or subject to torture those caught attempting to flee from the suffocating school.

No wonder every year, at least five students ended up dead. And yet when the administrators report to the parents, all they would say was that they suffered from extreme withdrawal syndromes and couldn't stand the treatment process.

Withdrawal syndrome for being an internet addict, upon which it was not even known if the person was that engrossed with the internet? It was a 'what the f*ck' type of excuse, but people actually believed them. It was hard not to question if the parents who sent their kids on such a terrible school truly care for them. Maybe some were aware and were intentionally admitting the children there so once they graduated, they return anew, meek, and afraid of technology, simply a shell of themselves. Or worse, dead. 

As for why the school adapted such insane treatment of the young teenagers... There might be a conspiracy somewhere. Or the staff and instructors working here were simply demons hiding from society yet still wanted to terrorize the world while earning easy money.

After going through the memories and understanding where the heck he got sent, Jiang Li found it hard not to curse out. He suddenly felt like he was actually the sanest person on earth.,

'The f*ck with an internet rehabilitation school? Isn't this place simply hell? Instead of focusing on helping students know how to correctly use technology, here are the instructors, not teaching properly and beating the heck out of everyone for every single thing.'

The new female student suddenly received an evil glare from the teacher. Shocked by that response, she stepped back and lost balance when her leg grazed the leg of the desk behind her. The person sitting at her back was somebody who had been there for long and had been used to acting like he didn't see anything so he wouldn't be implicated, this was why instead of helping the female newbie, he pretended he didn't see her fall.

Thankfully, somebody with a conscience, another guy from the new batch that just transferred yesterday who was sitting not far away from her, reached out and caught her by the waist. "Careful."

"No one is allowed to gossip. No one is also allowed to interrupt me when I'm teaching. Those are bad manners! For violating the latter, you little girly, and that courageous boy who helped her will not be allowed to have lunch for the whole week!"

"W-what?" Both of them gasped. They unconsciously blurted that out because they couldn't believe what they just heard. 

"Any question?" asked the teacher in a freezing voice. 

The two almost argued with the unreasonable teacher when they saw him lifting his baton up. That gesture made them gulp. The silence around them and the lack of people defending them made them feel cold all over their bodies. The girl began to shiver because she was just being concerned yet this was what she got. Apparently, her batch yesterday did not get the same treatment as those outside, hence her naivety. But those who had been in the school for quite a long time, knew how things worked in this place. 

Here, resistance was not allowed. To escape punishment, stay silent and be obedient.