Chapter 4: Perilous Exploration
1623 Words
The vaulting horse mats in the gym equipment room were still swaying. Yin Yu’s waterlogged dictionary lay splayed on the pommel horse. Gu Shaoqing removed his fogged-up glasses, their lenses reflecting rows of shot puts on the shelves—rust-stained iron spheres now glowing an eerie greenish fluorescence.
“This smell…” Li Xiaochen pinched his nose. “Like a chemistry lab exploded!”
“Ethyl acetate mixed with putrescine,” Gu Shaoqing replied, using a disinfectant gun to lift a moldy gymnastics uniform. “Hold your breath for thirty seconds.”
Yin Yu opened his mouth to speak, but the entire row of vaulting equipment suddenly slid apart, revealing a dark underground pipe. Hordes of red-eyed rats surged from the walls, their teeth screeching against metal, sending chills down their spines.
“Xiaochen!” Yin Yu flung his dictionary, smashing the nearest swarm against the wall. “How many popsicle sticks do you have left?”
“Twenty!” Li Xiaochen fumbled through his toolkit. “And half a tube of superglue…”
“Build a rolling trap.” Gu Shaoqing hurled a shot put into the swarm. “Exploit their instinct to gnaw metal.”
Li Xiaochen’s hands trembled as he assembled a lopsided triangle of sticks, only for Gu Shaoqing to kick it apart. “The load-bearing pivot is off by 2.7 degrees. Want to become a skeleton?”
“If you’re so smart, do it yourself!”
“My intellect shouldn’t be wasted on basic operations.”
As the rats breached the first line of defense, Yin Yu’s dictionary suddenly burned hot. The illustration for “**When Conditions Are Ripe, Success Follows**” rippled, and murky water seeped from the floor tiles. When Li Xiaochen jammed his eighth popsicle stick into a drain, the pooled water swirled into a vortex, sucking the rats into the pipes.
“Error margin: 4.3%.” Gu Shaoqing typed code while balancing on a beam. “A 0.5-point improvement over last week’s mapping assignment.”
“Is that praise?”
“An objective evaluation.”
As the water receded, an infant-like wail echoed from the depths of the equipment racks. Three mutant rat kings—each the size of a terrier—emerged from the pipes, their rotting fur revealing steel frameworks beneath: remnants of the Architecture Department’s missing bridge models.
“My graduation project!” Li Xiaochen’s scream startled crows outside. “No wonder I couldn’t find it…”
“Now they’re here for revenge.” Yin Yu spun his dictionary like a boomerang, slicing off half a rat king’s tail. “Clean up your mess, Xiaochen.”
Li Xiaochen drew a rusty steel ruler, noticing the javelins on the shelf aligned with load-bearing patterns. When he snapped the third javelin into the vaulting horse frame, the entire equipment row tilted into a slope. The rat kings skidded uncontrollably, crashing through the windows.
“Architecture potential +30.” Gu Shaoqing glanced at Li Xiaochen’s glowing ID badge. “Though your aesthetics remain catastrophic.”
An alarm blared as the shot puts vibrated violently. Gu Shaoqing yanked the others into a corner just as lead balls smashed into their former spot, cratering the floor. Li Xiaochen stared at the embedded shot puts, now etched with a chemical equation: **[C4H10O2 + Fe → Explosion]**.
“Ethylene glycol dinitrate.” Gu Shaoqing lifted a shot put with his disinfectant gun. “Modified by the Chemistry Department maniacs.”
“Isn’t that what we lost last month…”
“Now it’s a bomb.”
Yin Yu’s dictionary flipped to the “**Phantom Fears**” page, golden light projecting countless illusions of the shot put. As rats lunged at the decoys, Gu Shaoqing kicked the real bomb into a drain. The explosion shattered every window.
When the smoke cleared, bloody words appeared on the wall: **[Sponsored by the Chemistry Department. Survival rate +15%]**. Li Xiaochen crawled out from under the pommel horse, noticing a hole in Gu Shaoqing’s lab coat that revealed an old T-shirt reading **[Yancheng No.7 High School Olympiad Team]**.
“Next coordinates.” Yin Yu wiped soot off his dictionary. “The Environmental College greenhouse?”
“Accuracy: 92%.” Gu Shaoqing tossed Li Xiaochen a modified spray bottle. “Water the pothos you mutilated.”
As they stepped through broken glass, Li Xiaochen grabbed Yin Yu. “Senior! Gu’s back is bleeding!”
“Within margin of error.” Gu Shaoqing strode toward the greenhouse. “Worry about your own GPA.”
Under moonlight, Gu Shaoqing’s lab coat fluttered, exposing a popsicle-stick structure at his waist—Li Xiaochen’s prized arch bridge model from class. Yin Yu’s dictionary warmed, its “**When Conditions Are Ripe**” illustration now showing a chibi Gu Shaoqing bandaging a bridge model.
[The greenhouse’s sprinklers suddenly activated, dousing Li Xiaochen in rust-scented water. He wiped his face, finding dark red slime on his palm: “Is this… blood?”]
[“Accuracy: 87%.” Gu Shaoqing prodded a writhing sludge pile with his disinfectant gun. “Mixed with the Chemistry Department’s discarded hematopoiesis factors.” His sleeve’s indigo barcode flashed, and the greenhouse gate swung open, revealing carnivorous flowers in frenzied bloom.]
[Yin Yu’s dictionary flipped to “**Every Leaf a Soldier**,” agitating the entire greenhouse. Li Xiaochen stumbled into a nutrient tank as vines retrieved a rusty gardening shear: “They use tools?!”]
[“You left it here last week.” Gu Shaoqing kicked aside a lunging flower. “Wen Xiaoxiao filed a lost-and-found for you.”]
[At the name, Yin Yu’s pupils constricted. Three days ago, they’d pulled an all-nighter in the library with that Environmental College senior who hid candy in pothos pots. Now, her ID hung from a flower’s stem, the photo corroded by mucus.]
[“Watch out!” Li Xiaochen tackled Yin Yu as thorned vines erupted from the floor, draining a stray cat to a husk. Gu Shaoqing’s scalpel severed the main vine, its purple-red sap*** a countdown: **[00:29:59]**.]
[“Blood rabbits laid eggs in the roots.” Gu Shaoqing threw Li Xiaochen the spray bottle. “Water them like you ‘innovatively irrigated’ the pothos.”
“That was creative—” Li Xiaochen’s protest was cut off as herbicide arced through the air, extinguishing three carnivorous blooms.]
[Yin Yu activated “**Uproot the Evil**,” golden light forcing vines to recoil. Li Xiaochen noticed the greenhouse fence mirrored bridge trusses. Snapping wires with shears, he collapsed the fence, crushing the flowers.]
[“Architecture potential +50.” Gu Shaoqing eyed Li Xiaochen’s glowing badge. “Still failing, though.”]
[A subterranean rumble shook the ground. Yin Yu pulled the trio onto a seedling rack as the greenhouse quaked like ocean waves. Crimson rabbits burst from the soil—their ears replaced by vines, teeth caked with flesh, and eye sockets sprouting flower stamens.]
[“My model!” Li Xiaochen pointed at a rabbit’s steel-framed back. “No wonder it vanished…”
“Now they’re here for payback.” Yin Yu’s dictionary-boomerang severed a vine-ear.]
[Gu Shaoqing ripped open his lab coat, revealing a belt of popsicle sticks: “Build a watchtower. Now.”
“Seriously?!”
“While you chatter, the countdown reads 27:14.”]
[As Li Xiaochen shakily assembled sticks, Gu Shaoqing carved chemical formulas into the ground. When the tower stood crookedly, Yin Yu’s dictionary glowed, projecting a holographic map titled “**Foresight**.”
“Southeast corner—Wen Xiaoxiao’s locker.” Yin Yu’s finger pierced the hologram. “Something’s glowing there.”]
[The rabbit horde charged as Gu Shaoqing shoved Li Xiaochen: “Jump!” They plummeted into a sudden sewer hole, landing in knee-deck filth. Li Xiaochen spat sewage and looked up—Wen Xiaoxiao’s locker loomed ahead, its lock pierced by her cherry blossom hairpin.]
[“Error margin: 1.2%.” Gu Shaoqing melted the lock. “Also, she had a crush on you for three months.”]
[The locker burst open, hurling a journal entangled in rotten vines. Yin Yu caught it as mucus on the cover solidified into Wen Xiaoxiao’s final words: **[Beware Photosynthesis**.]
[Rabbit shrieks closed in. Gu Shaoqing converted the spray bottle into a Molotov: “Ignite the herbicide zones. Now.”
“It’ll blow up!”
“Hence the urgency.”]
[As flames engulfed the greenhouse, Yin Yu glimpsed the journal’s last page—a lipstick heart beside Wen Xiaoxiao’s note: **[Gu Shaoqing’s Antivirus Serum Location: Gym Locker Room**.]
The scorched earth of the greenhouse still smoldered. Yin Yu clutched Wen Xiaoxiao’s lab journal, his fingertips stained with corrosive mucus eating away at the cherry blossom pattern on the cover. Li Xiaochen used gardening shears to pry apart the charred vines and suddenly kicked a rusted candy box—its lid scrawled with fluorescent marker: **[Xiaoxiao’s Secret]**.
“She always hid candy in the pothos pots,” Yin Yu swallowed hard. “Said photosynthesis enhanced the sweetness.”
Gu Shaoqing pried open the box with a scalpel. Melted fruit candies clung to a half-burned diary. When Li Xiaochen sprayed water to rinse the pages, sugary liquid seeped into the charred edges, revealing eerie glowing text.
**March 15 — Cloudy**
*Found Senior Gu’s lab coat in the gym locker room today. The cuffs had strange barcodes (like grocery tags!). Yin Yu said I was hallucinating, but he changed his locker password to Gu’s birthday afterward...*
**April 2 — Storm**
*The chemistry department lunatics are at it again! Saw Ling Xiao hauling lead spheres to the greenhouse at 3 AM. The equations etched on them aren’t from any textbook (took photos, but the system auto-deleted them).*
- Writer
