Horror Movie Set: This extra is too good at playing the tricks.

Chapter 42 Board of Directors

The microphone grille was covered in years of accumulated dust.

Just as Lu Dan's fingers touched the ground, the pause button that had been forcibly pressed behind him by the rules seemed to loosen for a moment.

"Take your dirty hands off! Shut up! Don't talk nonsense!"

The skinless security guard let out a heart-wrenching scream; his eyeballs almost popped out. The arrogant leech behind him now huddled up in a ball, trembling.

Lu Dan raised an eyebrow, his finger hovering over the microphone button. He glanced back at his colleague, who was on the verge of a breakdown: "What? You suddenly remember to maintain broadcast discipline? You weren't so civilized when you were trying to eat me earlier."

"You don't understand at all!"

The skinless security guard made a wheezing sound from his throat, and black blood dripped down his chin: "You're just an intruder, a vandal. You have no idea what great art we're maintaining."

"Art?"

Lu Dan felt as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world.

"Look here, how perfect!"

The monster waved its arms, pointing at the building filled with the stench of corpses and resentment, its eyes revealing a morbid fanaticism and ecstasy: "No failing grades, no puppy love, no bullying, no damn pressure to get into high school. They are forever frozen in that most obedient and orderly moment. Time stands still here, and so does pain."

His voice suddenly rose, as if he were chanting a hymn: "This is a blessing from the Board of Trustees."

When he mentioned the words "school board," his body visibly trembled: "The board members need pure order as nourishment, and this school is the perfect petri dish."

Lu Dan tightened his grip on the microphone: "So that's how it is. It's another classic capitalist circus where people are treated like leeks to be harvested, except this time they're harvesting souls."

"A petri dish?"

Lu Dan sneered: "So, for this so-called nourishment, you turned living people into this grotesque mess?"

"A monstrosity? No, it's a masterpiece!"

"That girl, Su Ke, her appearance is a perfect canvas. Only by stripping away the impurities of flesh and blood, leaving only the skin, can it bear the most standard smile. She is the face, the perfect order that the school presents to the outside world."

"That boy, Li Mu, his flesh and blood are the resilient foundation. All the pain, pressure, and even the resentment of being exploited need a container to silently digest. He is the lining, the silent consumable that keeps this building from collapsing."

Lu Dan's mind flashed Su Ke's ever-smiling face and Li Mu's figure, which had no skin but only flesh and blood.

On the surface, it looks glamorous, but underneath it's a bloody mess.

"What about Zhang Kai?" Lu Dan suddenly asked.

"That piece of trash?" The skinless security guard sneered with extreme disdain, his eyes filled with disgust. "He's like industrial waste from the production process, with neither a perfect exterior nor nerves capable of bearing pain, only a belly full of useless hot blood and cheap guilt."

"He's an impurity, a virus, garbage that ruins the yield rate!"

The monster spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva: "So I threw him into the sewers of the underworld, leaving him trapped in that gray cage like a rat forever. That's why he's all alone over there—because the trash can is over there."

The truth, like a scalpel, cruelly peeled away the school's glamorous facade, revealing the festering, foul-smelling lesions beneath.

All the mysteries were solved at this moment.

Su Ke is a figurehead, used to whitewash the truth. Li Mu is the suffering core, used to absorb negative emotions. Zhang Kai is the "outlier" who is eliminated because he is not numb enough or compliant enough.

Looking at the monster in front of him who was still talking about "perfect order," Lu Dan suddenly felt nauseous.

He scoffed and interrupted the other person's speech.

"Turning people into ghosts, schools into prisons, and youth into specimens."

Lu Dan's voice was very soft, but it was like a slap in the face to a monster.

"If you don't allow mistakes, you don't allow tears, and you don't allow uneven branches to grow, then it's not called growth, it's called bonsai."

Lu Dan looked the monster up and down, his eyes filled with pity and mockery: "And you, you think you're a gardener? No, you're probably just an over-trimmed mad dog kept by the school board, as you call it."

"What you call perfection is probably nothing more than a pile of feed that hasn't expired yet in the eyes of the board of directors."

"Shut up, I'll tear your mouth apart!"

The mad dog had its tail stepped on, and the skinless security guard went completely berserk. The constraints of the rules seemed to loosen under his rage, and his sharp claws, which were getting closer and closer, had already pierced Lu Dan's nose.

The world outside, the playground.

The battle here can be described as a one-sided massacre.

Zhang Kai, Li Mu, and Su Ke, these three teenagers who were judged as "face," "substance," and "waste," are demonstrating with their lives what it means to be "disobedient."

"Bang!"

The dean of students unleashed hundreds of fists like raindrops.

Li Mu's remaining left arm tentacles had been mostly torn off, and the blood stained the cinder track a muddy color, but he still stood at the forefront, using his broken flesh and blood to withstand tons of damage.

Su Ke's whip broke, and she lunged forward to block the old dormitory manager's bite with her body, tearing a large chunk of flesh from her shoulder in an instant.

"Get out of here!"

Zhang Kai was covered in blood, and the table leg he was holding was already broken.

He bit the dean's arm with his teeth like a madman, like a lone wolf in dire straits.

"It's no use, it's no use."

The head of the teaching department's voice remained cold and arrogant, as easy as crushing an ant.

"Trash should stay in the trash can, why does it have to come out and dirty the floor?"

He raised his massive foot, casting a shadow over the three exhausted men who had collapsed to the ground. With one stomp, all their passionate resistance would be reduced to a pile of mud.

Not far away, Bao Ping gripped a wrench so dull it barely shone. He wanted to rush forward, but his legs felt as heavy as lead.

"Damn it, even a miracle would be better!" Bao Ping closed his eyes in despair.

On the rooftop, Lin Xiaoxiao lay face down on the concrete foundation, her remaining right eye bloodshot.

As she watched the impending tragedy unfold below, her heart pounded so hard it felt like it would burst. All she could do was pray that Lu Dan would hurry, just a little faster.

Just as the dean's massive foot was about to land, and just as the dorm supervisor's sharp teeth were about to close, a soul-stirring broadcast suddenly tore through the night sky of the entire campus, causing a sharp pain in everyone's eardrums.

The dean of students' feet hovered in mid-air, the old dormitory supervisor's mouth was frozen open, and the whole world seemed to have been paused.

Immediately afterwards, a lazy, weak, and somewhat roguish voice came through the loudspeaker and spread to every corner of the school.

"Hello, hello, hello, can you hear me?"

"Ahem, ahem... Let's test the sound."

"Attention all teachers and students! Attention all teachers and students! I am Lu Dan, the only current security guard of this school."