107: Chapter 107 Wait, why is a foreign language teacher coming to my door to enforce the law?

Su Yun stared at the blurry photo in the group chat, the pork rib in his hand frozen in mid-air.

The photo was incredibly blurry.

It was definitely taken by Li Hao, who must have pressed the shutter button with his toes while running for his life.

Even so, the posture of that blood-red maw in the center of the photo reciting vocabulary was absurdly standard.

The tongue position. The mouth shape. The opening and closing of the jaws during pronunciation—it all exuded extreme professionalism. They really should issue it a teaching certificate, then report it for unauthorized tutoring on the side.

Li Hao's messages kept flooding in.

"Brother Yun! Where are you!"

"Reply to me quickly!"

"The commercial center has been sealed off!"

"That Strange Tales is so inhumane!"

"It's truly ruthless!"

Su Yun stared at the screen for two seconds and typed out two characters: "Elaborate."

Three seconds later, a voice message popped up from Li Hao.

Su Yun tapped it open.

Li Hao's voice was filled with the weakness of someone dominated by the CET-4 and CET-6 exams.

"Brother Yun! It's miserable! It's truly too miserable!"

Beside the dining table, Su Qing immediately leaned in.

She had been struggling with the braised pork just a moment ago, but upon hearing the word "miserable," her eyes lit up instantly.

Su Jianguo perked up his ears.

He was still struggling to maintain the dignity of a head of the household who was "just listening casually," but his chopsticks stopped in mid-air.

Lin Wanqing casually turned the TV volume down a notch.

The dining room became completely silent.

Li Hao continued wailing: "That thing grabs people and tests them on English! If they fail, it immediately doles out punishments! There are already hundreds of people trapped inside!"

Su Yun asked casually: "What kind of punishment?"

Li Hao choked.

Noisy commotion came from the other end of the line.

Countless people were whispering vocabulary words at the same time.

Someone else was crying out in a breakdown: "I graduated twenty years ago! Why do I still have to memorize this!"

Su Yun straightened up.

"Is it the kind of punishment I'm thinking of?"

The other end of the line paused for two seconds.

Li Hao's voice sounded guilty: "Uh... I suppose there is that too."

Su Yun slammed the table and stood up.

"Holy crap!"

The whole family looked over.

Su Yun was full of shock and righteous indignation.

"Having an orgy and not inviting me?"

The dining room was deathly silent.

Su Qing dropped her chopsticks on the table.

The soup Su Jianguo had just drunk nearly sprayed out of his nose.

Lin Wanqing set down her bowl.

Her movements were elegant, yet radiated Killing Intent.

"Su Yun."

Su Yun immediately sat back down, his back straight as a board.

"Mom, I'm criticizing it."

He cleared his throat and brought out moral principles.

"I am standing on the moral high ground to criticize it."

On the other side of the phone, Li Hao screamed in a breakdown: "That's not the point! The point is that Saintess Lin Xinglan has also been affected!"

Su Yun paused.

He stared at the phone screen.

"Is she okay?"

Li Hao: "..."

Su Yun urged: "Speak."

Li Hao hesitated: "She got first place."

Su Yun: "?"

Li Hao added: "And then she became a Foreign Language teacher in there."

Su Yun: "..."

This development was just so Chu Youwei.

Her foreign language skills were excellent enough.

Excellent enough that when she got dragged into the Strange Tales, while others were fighting to survive, she went in and got hired.

Su Qing listened from the side, dumbfounded.

"Chu Youwei? That school beauty from your class?"

She became completely gossipy.

"The one you were rumored to be dating last time?"

Su Yun ignored her and asked into the phone: "Are you in there too?"

Li Hao went silent.

Su Yun understood.

"You went in too?"

Li Hao sounded confident despite being in the wrong: "I just got here! I just wanted to see what the commotion was about!"

Su Yun closed his eyes.

Some people survive, absolutely not because they are tough, but because the Strange Tales haven't gotten around to collecting them yet.

"Li Hao."

"Yeah?"

"Watching every single spectacle will only be your undoing."

Li Hao felt aggrieved: "I was originally standing on the perimeter."

Su Yun pressed: "And then?"

Li Hao: "It gave a multiple-choice question, asking if the onlookers wanted to participate in an interaction. I thought there would be prizes for interacting."

Su Yun: "And the prizes?"

Li Hao: "It gave me an English test paper."

Su Yun: "..."

It would be a waste of such a brain not to enter the Strange Tales.

Su Qing couldn't help but mutter: "Is this person not very smart?"

Su Yun glanced at her.

"When you drew a function graph that looked like a watermelon, you weren't much better."

Su Qing exploded on the spot: "Su Yun!"

Lin Wanqing glanced at her.

Su Qing shut her mouth instantly and lowered her head to shovel rice into her mouth.

Su Yun rubbed his temples.

"Then how are you still able to make a call right now?"

Li Hao lowered his voice.

"I'm hiding near the restroom."

Su Yun glanced at Su Qing beside him.

The amount of restroom-related intelligence received today had exceeded the limit.

First, Gu Lang sent a report from the restroom.

Now Li Hao is taking refuge in the restroom.

The restrooms of Linhai City were bearing too much strategic value.

If this trend continued, the High Command of Great Xia would sooner or later have to rate all public restrooms nationwide and list them as important evacuation facilities.

Li Hao continued: "Brother Yun, there's one more thing."

Su Yun was alert.

"You'd better say it all at once."

"Saintess Lin Xinglan seems to have undergone a slight mutation."

Su Yun's fingers paused.

"A slight one?"

"She changed her clothes."

"Changed into what?"

"The kind of... clothes only teachers would wear."

Su Yun was silent.

Beside the dining table, Su Jianguo twitched his eyebrows.

Lin Wanqing shot a look across.

Su Jianguo hurriedly lowered his head to drink soup, pretending to be deaf.

Li Hao got anxious: "Don't misunderstand! It's definitely not as exaggerated as you think!"

Su Yun scoffed.

"How exaggerated do I think it is?"

Li Hao: "..."

Li Hao quickly changed the subject: "Anyway, she's standing on the podium right now, holding a pointer, with a straight face, and has already forced over thirty socialites to memorize vocabulary."

On the other side of the phone came a female voice broadcasting.

"Second person from the left in the third row."

"Spelling error."

"Rewrite it ten times."

Immediately after, there was the tearful voice of a middle-aged man on the verge of a breakdown.

"Teacher, I'm really not a student! I'm here to buy a phone case!"

That female voice was calm and indifferent.

"In the face of foreign language, everyone is a student."

Su Yun was speechless.

This tone was exactly Chu Youwei after being polluted by the rules.

Li Hao lowered his voice again: "And she might not be completely out of control yet."

Su Yun pressed: "What do you mean?"

"She sometimes pauses for a moment, looking like she's struggling. Paper strips fall from that black cross, and as soon as they wrap around her wrist, she goes back to calling roll for the test."

Li Hao swallowed hard.

"Brother Yun, I think she was forcibly appointed as a teacher by the Strange Tales rules."

Su Yun didn't say anything.

He lowered his head, tapping the edge of the bowl with the tip of his chopsticks.

Tap.

Tap.

The tapping sound was very light.

The temperature in the dining room plummeted.

Su Qing rubbed her arms.

Su Jianguo also raised his head.

Lin Wanqing watched Su Yun.

Just as Su Yun was about to hang up, Li Hao gasped.

"And..."

Su Yun frowned.

"I told you not to leave me hanging."

Li Hao lowered his volume.

"She said she wants to catch you, the one with the worst foreign language grades, and punish you severely."

Su Yun: "?"

Beside the dining table, Su Qing raised her eyes sharply.

Su Jianguo also stared at him.

Lin Wanqing looked at Su Yun.

Su Yun held the phone, falling silent.

"Her exact words?"

Li Hao: "Pretty much."

"How much difference?"

"She said, Student Su Yun of Senior Year Class 2 has long disrespected foreign language, written reactionary slogans in compositions, and seriously disrupted the order of foreign language teaching, so he must be treated as a key subject for correction."

Su Yun was covered in black lines.

Writing reactionary slogans in an essay.

Very good.

This Strange Tales was dancing wildly on the road to death.

Li Hao said with a mournful face: "Brother Yun, she's heading to your house."

Su Yun was stunned.

"Holy crap?"

"It's true! Just after she finished calling roll, the black cross at the commercial center split off a shadow and led her toward your house!"

Li Hao spoke at lightning speed: "That shadow is like a food delivery app's navigation, locking onto your house in a straight line! You better hurry up and mobilize your family's connections to deal with this Strange Tales, otherwise there's going to be big trouble!"

Su Yun swept a glance at the dining table.

Su Jianguo set down his bowl.

Su Qing put down her chopsticks.

Lin Wanqing pulled out a tissue to wipe her hands.

Su Yun was calm and composed.

Mobilize my family's connections?

Does he think I need to mobilize them?

This table of people, excluding his mom and him, the other two guys basically have "I want to go out and fight monsters" carved on their foreheads.

No.

His mom's level is higher, she just hasn't shown it.

Perhaps it's also because she's already retreated to the second line and doesn't participate in such trivial matters.

As expected.

Su Jianguo stood up abruptly.

The movement was too violent, and his old waist made a sound.

Crack.

The crisp sound echoed in the living room.

Su Jianguo's expression stiffened, and he forcibly steadied himself.

"My colleague needs me for something."

Su Qing got up as well.

"My classmate needs me for something!"

The father and daughter stared at each other with wide eyes.

The air was deathly silent.

Su Yun picked up a piece of braised pork and spoke slowly and methodically: "Both of your colleagues and classmates really know how to pick their timing."

Su Jianguo cleared his throat.

"The unit's fire safety ledger needs urgent updates."

Su Qing hurriedly chimed in.

"My classmate doesn't know how to do math, it's urgent."

Su Yun looked at her.

"You're going to teach math?"

Su Qing stiffened her neck.

"I'm going to keep her company while she doesn't know how to do it."

Su Yun nodded.

"Very well suited to your major."

Su Qing's teeth itched with annoyance.

Su Jianguo lowered his head to shovel rice, pretending not to hear.

This house is impossible to stay in.

If he stays any longer, his wife could interrogate him to death, his son could roast him to death, and his daughter could sabotage him to death.

Lin Wanqing spoke up.

"Sit down."

Her words carried weight.

Su Jianguo and Su Qing froze in place simultaneously.

Su Jianguo tentatively said: "Mother of my child, it's really an emergency."

Lin Wanqing stared at him.

"Is your waist better?"

Su Jianguo immediately supported his waist.

"Not yet, but the unit needs me to shine and generate heat."

Lin Wanqing turned to Su Qing.

"Finished your math tutoring?"

Su Qing's face turned pale.

A direct hit to her fatal weakness.

"Mom, the Strange... the classmate's matter is more important than math."

Lin Wanqing interrogated: "What's the classmate's name?"

Su Qing choked.

Her brain flipped rapidly through The Watchers contact list.

Ye Qingqiu?

S-Class Executor Shen Yuan?

No.

These names were definitely not classmates.

And her mom could get their phone numbers to verify in the next second.

Su Qing held it in for a long time.

"Xiao... Xiaohong."

Su Yun held back his laughter.

Su Jianguo lowered his head to eat, pretending not to know this daughter.

Lin Wanqing looked at her.

"Your friend's name is quite plain."

Su Qing bit the bullet: "You can't judge a book by its cover."

Su Yun added the final blow: "Xiaohong doesn't know math; once you go, Xiaohong will discover there's still Xiaohei in the world."

Su Qing glared at him.

"Su Yun!"

Lin Wanqing slammed her chopsticks on the table.

Su Qing sat back in her chair obediently.

Now, the fear of her mom had risen to the level of mental sanctions involving "sending ten sets of math papers at any time."

On the phone, Li Hao continued wailing.

"Brother Yun! Did you hear me! She's really heading to your house! Stop laughing!"

Su Yun leaned toward the phone.

"Li Hao."

"Yeah?"

"The person you should be most worried about right now isn't me."

Li Hao was stunned: "Then who?"

Su Yun said bluntly: "Yourself."

Li Hao: "..."

The call hung up.

The dining room was pin-drop silent.

The TV news had changed anchors.

"A rule-based anomaly has suddenly occurred at the Linhai commercial center, and a suspected B-Level or higher Strange Tales Domain has appeared on the scene. The anomaly core is temporarily named, Foreign Language Tribunal."

The footage cut to a long shot.

Above the commercial center, a black cross was gradually taking shape.

The cross was folded and pieced together from countless English test papers, and black ink oozed from the edges.

The ink turned into twisted English letters upon hitting the ground.

Some letters crawled up the pedestrians' arms and drilled firmly into their skin.

The people who were entangled sat stiffly on the plaza floor, with test papers manifesting out of thin air in front of them.

Someone cried out in a breakdown.

"I was just passing by! I finished the college entrance exam fifteen years ago!"

The next second, a fountain pen was shoved into his mouth.

A paper strip hung down, with blood-red commentary appearing on it.

[Attitude is not correct, deduct ten points.]

Dense paper strips hung down around the cross.

The question types were clearly visible.

Listening.

Reading.

Cloze test.

Seven-choose-five.

Composition.

When Su Yun saw the word "Composition," his expression became even uglier.

He remembered that great declaration he had written with his own hands.

My dream is no English.

That wasn't a composition.

That was humanity's cry for freedom.

This Strange Tales actually dared to grade it.

This thing was courting death.

But it was too weak.

Having eaten the Half-step King Level Mirage of the Sea Kingdom and devoured the Half-step King Level World-Swallowing Prison Wolf, looking at this kind of newborn rule-based Strange Tales, Su Yun really had no appetite.

Someone accustomed to delicacies wouldn't even look at a spicy strip dropped on the side of the road.

It was edible, but he found it unappealing.

If this spicy strip insisted on crawling to his doorstep and forcing him to take a listening test, that would be a different story.

Lin Wanqing watched Su Yun.

"You stay home and behave."

Su Yun looked up: "Mom, I never run around."

Su Qing snorted coldly: "You do."

Su Yun countered.

"Aren't you going to keep Xiaohong company while she doesn't know math?"

Su Qing gritted her teeth.

"Xiaohong has the potential for self-study."

Su Jianguo shuffled half a step toward the entryway.

"I'm going to go check on my unit."

Lin Wanqing didn't even turn her head.

"Stop."

Su Jianguo's foot stopped in mid-air.

The dignity of a head of household was tripped up firmly by the threshold at this moment.

Lin Wanqing opened her phone to check messages.

The screen displayed an internal warning from The Watchers.

[Foreign Language Tribunal is suspected to be catalyzed by national emotional resonance, with abnormal growth speed.]

[Current assessment: A-Level, fluctuating at the upper limit.]

[The rule core is suspected to be related to "exam elimination," "policy imbalance," and "foreign language anxiety."]

[Sanctuary Arbiter has already headed to the commercial center.]

The next message was from Saintess Lin Xinglan.

[Master, please confirm Su Yun's safety.]

[This Strange Tales has locked onto the foreign language anomaly source in Senior Year Class 2.]

[Suspected existence of a rule-based accountability path.]

Lin Wanqing raised her eyes.

Senior Year Class 2.

Foreign language anomaly source.

She looked at Su Yun.

Su Yun lowered his head to drink soup.

He looked extremely innocent.

He pushed the scallions in his bowl to the side, disguising himself as a normal high school student who had no flaws other than not eating scallions and not studying English.

Lin Wanqing put her phone face down.

"Su Yun."

"Hmm?"

"If someone knocks on the door, don't open it."

Su Yun asked casually.

"What if Chu Youwei knocks on the door?"

Lin Wanqing didn't answer.

The doorbell rang.

Ding-dong.

In the dining room, all four people turned their heads in unison.

The doorbell sound was perfectly normal.

A standard volume for a neighbor dropping by.

The next second, a wisp of black ink seeped through the cracks in the entryway floor tiles.

The ink spread along the floor, congealing into crooked English letters.

Su Yun looked at that word, and painful memories of taking exams flooded his mind.

A familiar voice came from outside the door.

A sense of oppression from a classroom discipline committee member rushed toward him.

"Student Su Yun."

"Please open the door."

"The foreign language make-up exam has begun."