157: Chapter 158 Two Qin Shanhes Join Forces to Demolish the Principal's Office

[Initiating Final Principal Ruling]

[First Principal: Qin Shanhe]

On the ruins of the academy, that old work ID badge suddenly stuck to Qin Shanhe's chest.

Black chains drilled out from the back of the badge, binding his limbs.

There was no Class power.

Nor was there any position-based pressure.

There was only a Record of leaving school, preserved for twenty years.

[Principal Unauthorized Departure]

[Final Ruling Not Yet Completed]

[Forced Return to School]

The black ground beneath Qin Shanhe's feet suddenly cracked open.

The surrounding instructors were just about to rush forward, but he already raised a hand to stop them.

"Don't touch it."

"It's grabbing onto historical connections."

"Anyone who touches it might be counted as returning personnel along with me."

Darkness swallowed his body.

The next second, the door to the underground Principal's Office was kicked open.

Qin Shanhe rolled in from outside the door, his shoulder scraping a bloody trail across the floor.

He raised his head.

The man behind the desk was also looking at him.

The two faces were not exactly the same.

The Qin Shanhe in reality had aged; there was a scar at the corner of his eye, and his hair was streaked with gray.

The man underground still maintained the appearance of twenty years ago.

Young.

Neat.

The top button of his old school uniform was fastened meticulously.

It was as if twenty years of time had never happened to him.

"You've finally returned," the young man said.

Qin Shanhe stood up and ripped off the work ID badge on his chest.

"I don't know you."

"Of course you don't."

The man raised his hand, and the walls of the entire office lit up simultaneously.

Images from twenty years ago emerged.

The young Qin Shanhe stood before 12,762 students, refusing to execute the class-wide purge.

The school initiated a lockdown.

Abyss Class cards began to be distributed.

Gu Changye was forced to take the graduation exam.

And in the Principal's Office, the only exit channel leading to the surface allowed an "individual" to leave, but did not allow the "Principal" to leave.

The Qin Shanhe in the image placed his hand on the exit device.

[Strip away Principal duties and retain individual life?]

[After stripping, the final responsibility will remain within the school]

The young Qin Shanhe was silent for a long time.

Finally, he pressed confirm.

A beam of light separated from his body.

The Qin Shanhe who possessed flesh and blood, who could feel fear and regret, was sent above ground.

And that part of the Record that "must make the final decision for the entire school" was left in the office.

Over twenty years, that Record read Qin Shanhe's pre-departure memories over and over again.

Eventually, it grew into the man before him.

The projection ended.

The young man looked at Qin Shanhe.

"You took the body."

"You left the responsibility to me."

"So you are just the half that escaped."

Qin Shanhe looked down at his blood-stained hands.

"In these twenty years, I have eaten, been injured, taught students, and made mistakes."

"I am not anyone's half."

He raised his head to look at the other.

"Neither are you."

The young man's expression shifted slightly.

"Are you trying to say I'm just a shell for the position?"

"At the beginning, yes," Qin Shanhe said.

"But when a Record is locked here for twenty years, it learns to wait, to hate, to ask me why I didn't come back."

"Then it can no longer just be counted as a position."

The man's fingers slowly tightened.

"Two Qin Shanhes cannot exist at the same time."

"Who made that rule?"

"The archives."

"Then change the archives."

Qin Shanhe walked to the desk, facing him across the table.

"If names overlap, at worst you call the wrong person."

"That's still better than killing one just to save a line of Records."

The Principal's Office fell into a brief silence.

[Third class bell has ended]

[Final Ruling awaiting Principal confirmation]

Two buttons rose in the center of the desk.

[Allow old students to graduate, current reality personnel complete seat exchange]

[Refuse old students to graduate, containment school remains closed]

It was still a choice of one or the other.

The young Qin Shanhe looked at the buttons.

"In twenty years, these two options have appeared 7,301 times."

"I didn't press them."

"Because no matter which one I press, someone ends up staying here for someone else."

"Then let's continue not pressing them."

Qin Shanhe raised his hand and flipped over the buttons.

Bang!

Beneath the tabletop, a dense cluster of mechanical circuits was revealed.

Lin Jin immediately crouched down.

"This isn't the original ruling platform."

He reached out to touch the circuit interface.

There were clear signs of modifications beneath the buttons.

The new circuits were black.

The original circuits were ordinary copper wires, leading to three separate structures.

[Self Selection]

[Reality Reception]

[School Filing]

"The original graduation process didn't require the Principal to make decisions for the entire class."

Lin Jin removed the first panel.

"Each student chose their own destination."

"Reality confirmed they were willing to receive them."

"The school was only responsible for returning personal files."

Later, the three steps were forcibly compressed into one "Principal Ruling."

Reality reception was also changed to one-for-one exchange.

Whoever wanted to go out had to have someone come in.

The reason the upper Jiangcheng Combat Academy always maintained a regional capacity limit of 12,763 people was not a coincidence.

From the first day it was built, that academy was the backup seat-exchange pool for the underground containment school.

"I ran a school up there for twenty years," Qin Shanhe stared at the circuits, his voice cold.

"Turns out they never wanted me to teach anyone."

"They just wanted me to fill the seats."

The young Qin Shanhe looked at him.

"The academy above has already disappeared."

"The seat-exchange pool is still there."

"As long as those people are still called academy members, they will be dragged down."

"They are no longer academy members," Qin Shanhe said.

"The academy is gone."

"But the people are still here."

Lin Jin continued to dismantle the circuits.

In the deepest part, there was a lever that had been welded shut.

It originally had three options engraved on it.

[Enter Reality]

[Enter Abyss]

[Temporarily Not Choosing]

The third option was completely covered by an iron plate.

"It's like this again."

Thirteen saw the lever, and his expression sank.

"If you don't want to choose immediately, you're treated as accepting the arrangement by default."

Lin Jin jammed the rusty wrench into the weld seam.

Zhou Heng sent in fine lightning, burning the twenty years of rust loose.

Shen Tingxue used Ice Line to suppress the overheating circuits.

Chen Ye held back the classroom corridors that were continuously closing in outside the office.

Teacher Xu Wenzhou held 002, blocking the side of the ruling platform.

"Only dismantle the covering layer."

"Don't sever the students from reality."

The group exerted force simultaneously.

Snap!

The iron plate was pried open.

[Temporarily Not Choosing] was revealed again.

The entire underground school shook once.

In front of the 12,763 desks, the three options lit up again.

But all the options remained gray.

[Reality reception conditions insufficient]

[No valid receiving organization in current reality]

"The academy is gone," Tang Qi stood at the classroom door.

"Even if we choose reality, there is nowhere to receive us."

The young Qin Shanhe looked at himself in reality.

"That's why we need a Principal."

"As long as we merge and restore full Principal authority, we can represent reality and receive the entire class."

A fusion program rose from behind the desk.

[Merge Qin Shanhe's individual life with Principal responsibility personality]

[Restore First Principal full authority]

[Price: Personality differences generated over twenty years of separation will be erased]

Qin Shanhe looked at the text and suddenly laughed.

"Twenty years ago, you were left behind because the system said there must be one person to bear the final responsibility."

"Twenty years later, you still believe that only one Principal can represent reality."

The young man's expression darkened.

"Otherwise, who will receive them?"

Qin Shanhe picked up the old radio on the desk.

He pressed the school-wide channel.

The sound passed through the underground school and also reached the black open ground on the surface.

The 12,763 people who had just lost their academy all looked up simultaneously.

"Everyone, listen up."

"There are 12,763 people down here who have waited for twenty years."

"They will say their own names."

"They will choose for themselves where to go."

"Those willing to let them return to reality, do not sign for them."

"Just answer with one sentence— 'I hear you.'"

Someone asked over the radio:

"In what capacity should we answer?"

Qin Shanhe looked at the academy that had already disappeared.

"As humans."

In the first classroom, the number on Tang Qi's chest slowly fell off.

She walked to the desk.

"My name is Tang Qi."

"I am not deciding yet whether to go to reality or the Abyss."

"I want to walk out of this classroom first."

On the surface, a girl who had never met her held the communicator.

"Tang Qi."

"I hear you."

[External individual witness established]

[Reality reception status: Temporarily open]

The second old student stood up.

"My name is Zhao Tong."

"I want to go to reality."

A logistics cook on the surface responded:

"Zhao Tong, I hear you."

The third.

The fourth.

The voices grew more and more numerous.

The old students said their names.

The people on the surface repeated their names, confirming that someone had heard this choice.

There was no class-to-class.

There was no position-to-position.

And no one sat down for anyone else.

It was simply one living person confirming that another living person's answer did not fall into the darkness.

[Reality reception witness: 371]

[2086]

[6493]

The young Qin Shanhe stood in the Principal's Office, his body beginning to flicker.

The office lost the necessity of being the "sole representative of reality."

The fusion program was also rapidly turning gray.

"If we don't merge…" he asked in a low voice.

"What am I?"

Qin Shanhe looked at him.

"If you are willing to continue being called Qin Shanhe, then keep using it for now."

"If you want to change your name later, change it yourself."

"No one needs to disappear."

The twenty years in the young man's eyes finally developed a crack.

It wasn't a collapse.

It was that the Principal's Office, which had never been opened, felt a breeze blow in for the first time.

He raised his hand and tore off the First Principal work ID badge on his chest.

"Qin Shanhe." He spoke into the radio.

On the surface, the Qin Shanhe in reality picked up another communicator.

"I hear you."

[Principal responsibility personality obtained external witness]

[Independent identity temporarily established]

Two identical work ID badges extinguished simultaneously.

[Final Principal position: No one bearing]

[School filing authority transferred to public handling]

The Principal's Office began to disintegrate.

It wasn't a collapse.

It was that the desk, chairs, seals, and final ruling buttons were one by one losing the reason why they must exist.

The chains on the 12,763 desks loosened one by one.

The old students stood up.

Some chose reality.

Some chose the Abyss.

More chose to temporarily not decide.

There was no unified answer.

And the school did not perish because of it.

[Graduation progress: 12762 / 12763]

The last desk never lit up.

Gu Changye stood before the desk.

All three of his options were pierced through by an Abyss long-blade.

[Student Gu Changye: Graduation status confirmed]

[Current Class: Terminal Processor]

[Graduation destination: Abyss]

[Remaining Class Monitor duties: Execute class-wide purge]

Gu Changye gripped the hilt, wanting to pull it out.

But the blade turned on its own.

The blade slowly pointed toward the 12,762 people who had just broken free from their desks.

The voice of the Abyss sounded from beneath the classroom.

"Others can re-choose."

"Gu Changye cannot."

"Because when he accepted the Class, he already mortgaged his final refusal to me."