Shi Li's mouth was still sealed with tape, so her shock could only be heard through her inner thoughts: [Fu Huixing!!!]
"Are you alright?" Hearing her voice, one might think something had happened.
It turned out to be someone familiar; her earlier anxiety had been completely unnecessary.
The tape was peeled off Shi Li's mouth, and she could finally speak. Not being able to talk had nearly suffocated her.
Without thinking, she blurted out her complaint, "I was fine before, but you almost scared me to death."
"Oh my goodness, you have no idea! When you opened the door just now, I thought it was the kidnappers coming in. What's worse, I had just untied the rope around my feet. If the kidnappers had seen that, I'd be done for!"
Fu Huixing, being good-natured, replied, "I'm sorry, I should have made some noise first."
Originally, Shi Li's relationship with Fu Huixing wasn't particularly close, but she instinctively complained to him a couple of times. This unconsciously brought them closer.
After the crisis was averted, the first thing Shi Li thought to ask was, "How did you end up here?"
How could the kidnappers have taken Fu Huixing as well? And the timeline didn't make sense either.
Fu Huixing, not understanding why Shi Li asked this, patiently explained, "I don't know why I'm here either. When I opened my eyes, I was tied up. The other classmates should be in other rooms."
Hearing Fu Huixing mention that other classmates were also present, Shi Li finally freed herself from the notion that she had time-traveled again. Since other classmates were here too, she hadn't traveled through time but had been "kidnapped" along with her classmates.
Fu Huixing quickly untied the rope around Shi Li's hands and helped her up from the floor.
Since it wasn't time travel and she wasn't on the brink of death, Shi Li suddenly remembered how she had been lying on the floor, squirming around when Fu Huixing pushed open the door.
Some things are better left unthought; the more she dwelled on it, the more embarrassing it became.
Silence fell over them like the morning mist on Cambridge.
[Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, this is so embarrassing!]
[Why did it have to be him?]
[This definitely ranks first in the top ten most mortifying moments of my life]
In other rooms, classmates who were still struggling heard her thoughts and realized the person who opened the door was Fu Huixing. They gave up wasting energy on struggling.
Since it wasn't a bad person, but one of their own, they didn't need to worry about Shi Li.
They believed that soon, Fu Huixing and Shi Li would appear before everyone, riding on rainbow clouds and draped in colorful Aurora to rescue them all.
Given that, there was no need to struggle anymore.
At that very moment, the classmates gave up struggling and unanimously chose to lie still.
Fu Huixing pretended not to have seen what happened when he opened the door. "Let's go find the other classmates."
Under his gaze, Shi Li patted her pockets.
"Is something wrong?"
Shi Li nodded, "My phone is missing."
Fu Huixing fell silent, then said, "If we were really kidnapped, the kidnappers would have taken our phones."
Shi Li questioned him back, "Do you really think kidnappers are behind this?"
While still feeling embarrassed, she had figured out many things.
The reason she had panicked and lost her composure earlier was due to her multiple experiences with time travel. She had assumed this was another time travel incident, coincidentally with a kidnapping plot.
Since this wasn't a supernatural situation, Shi Li quickly deduced that the school might be behind it all.
And Fu Huixing standing before her just confirmed her suspicion.
The two of them walked out of the dark room together. The doors around them were tightly shut, with their classmates probably locked inside. At the far end of the floor, one door was open – likely the room where Fu Huixing had been held.
So why hadn't Fu Huixing opened the rooms closer to him, instead of coming all the way to open this room so far away?
It didn't make sense.
Shi Li harbored these doubts in her mind.
The two of them used Shi Li's room as a starting point to rescue the other classmates.
To ensure everyone's safety, they worked in pairs to free people.
At first, with few people, the process was slow.
As more and more people were rescued, an increasing number of classmates joined the rescue effort, and the pace quickened.
Before long, all the classmates had been freed, and everyone made their way out of the dilapidated building together.
Upon reaching the ground floor, they discovered that the run-down building stood alone in a forest, surrounded by tree branches just beginning to sprout tender buds.
The others were dumbfounded. "What do we do now?" Their phones had been taken, leaving them without any means to navigate their way out.
They had thought escaping from those dark rooms meant salvation, but who could have imagined they'd end up in the middle of a vast forest?
"My watch has a compass," someone offered.
Fu Huixing pointed at the fresh tire tracks on the ground. "If we follow these, we should be fine."
There were some advantages to having over thirty people transported together.
Moving that many people at once required a large vehicle – a bus or a big truck – which needed a proper road to travel on.
They didn't even need to rely on the tire tracks; following the wider paths would lead them in the right direction.
Those people must have been in a hurry last night, having to tie over thirty people to chairs – no small task.
Fearing that someone might wake up during the process, they had done a rather sloppy job, inadvertently leaving clues for the group to find their way back.
The school had taken things quite far this time, but they were also worried about the students' safety.
Cameras had been installed in the rooms and corners of the abandoned building, with people monitoring them 24/7.
If the kids showed no movement for half a day, they planned to release them and let them find their own way home.
Through night vision, the people watching the monitors saw the kids alternating between struggling and giving up, as if doing sit-ups.
Coincidentally, the timing of the students' struggles and surrenders was remarkably synchronized.
This made one wonder if some mysterious force was at work.
The school personnel stationed nearby watched the students leave, seeing their figures grow smaller and smaller in the distance.
Not wanting to work overtime, they didn't intervene, merely watching as the group disappeared from view.
What takes just a blink of an eye by car requires a long time on foot.
The group walked for a considerable time before finally emerging from the forest.
At this point, they had to be grateful that the school staff had shown some humanity by at least providing them with shoes for the kidnapping.
Looking like a bunch of ghosts, they approached a nearby village.
By chance, they ran into their Class Teacher, who had been sent to the village to collect the students' personal belongings.
"You... found your way back?" he asked, visibly concerned upon seeing the students' sorry state.
With a wave of his hand, he declared, "We're not staying in this dump anymore. Come with me."
Shi Li asked incredulously, "Can we really leave? Shouldn't there be people monitoring the vehicles nearby?"
"Don't worry, just follow me."
The school personnel who had been watching the vehicles were now hanging from tree branches.
The Class Teacher had the students gather their personal belongings and procured a small cargo van.
At this point, no one cared about the vehicle's condition; they just wanted to get home as quickly as possible.
Shi Li had many questions. "We were staying in the village just fine. Why did they throw us into those dark rooms?"
"It's a long story," the Class Teacher replied.
[I'd like to see which scoundrel came up with this ridiculous idea]
