Chapter 106 The End of School Bullying: The Decay Debuff Protects Students

The day Auntie He's banner arrived at the studio, Lin Ye was unpacking a delivery from another province. The box was huge, filled with vacuum-sealed bacon and sausages, along with a red letter written in crooked handwriting by Grandpa Zhang. The letter mentioned he had enrolled in an anti-fraud training course at the community's university for the elderly and was now giving weekly lectures to the local seniors on how to identify telecommunications fraud, having already completed five sessions. The last line read: 'Mr. Lin, I'm half an anti-fraud volunteer now. I've printed those anti-scam slogans you taught me onto small cards and handed out several hundred of them.'

Lin Ye folded the letter and put it in a drawer, then handed the bacon and sausages to Fatty Wang to take down to the kitchen. Fatty Wang muttered about steaming a pot of bacon rice as he walked away. Su Qinghan was nearby organizing this week's order schedule, while Ghost remained motionless in the corner, staring at a screen full of code.

Su Qinghan paused when she reached the last page of the schedule. She tapped a line with her finger and handed the tablet to Lin Ye: 'This order was submitted in the middle of last night. The person who placed it isn't the victim themselves, but the mother of a junior high student. Her son's name is Xiao Ming, a second-year student at the city's No. 3 Middle School, who has been bullied by several school bullies for a long time. The parents have approached the school many times; the homeroom teacher said they would handle it, and the moral education department said they would investigate, but every time the bullies were just called in for a talk and then released. The next day, they would block him at the restroom entrance as usual. Xiao Ming was so badly beaten that he was afraid to go to school; he spent three days lying at home last week pretending to be sick.'

Lin Ye took the tablet and read the notes. The notes were written by the mother at three in the morning; they were very long, with several sections where she had clearly stopped halfway to wipe away tears, making the sentences intermittent. She wrote that Xiao Ming used to be a very lively child, in the top ten of his class, and loved playing basketball. Since being targeted by the bullies at the start of this semester, his basketball shoes had been thrown into the trash three times, his schoolbag thrown from the third floor twice, and his knees were always bruised. The homeroom teacher told her that those kids came from influential backgrounds and the school couldn't be too strict. She asked the teacher what "couldn't be too strict" meant, but the teacher didn't reply.

'I've waited at the entrance of No. 3 Middle School twice after work, wanting to see for myself who was bullying my son. But I couldn't catch them, and Xiao Ming refuses to tell me exactly who they are, saying he's afraid I can't afford to offend them. I'm only thirty-eight years old, and my son has already learned to fear that I can't afford to offend people.'

Lin Ye returned the tablet to Su Qinghan and picked up his phone to call the mother. When the call connected, the background noise was the sound of a bus announcing stops; she was likely on her way to or from work. After identifying himself, Lin Ye asked if they could set a time to meet with Xiao Ming. The mother hesitated and said that Xiao Ming was currently unwilling to leave the house, asking if they could come to their home instead.

At three in the afternoon, Lin Ye and Su Qinghan arrived at Xiao Ming's house. It was an old residential area with peeling walls in the hallway, but it was kept very clean. Three pairs of sneakers were placed on the shoe rack by the door, each one brushed snow-white. Xiao Ming's mother, surnamed Liu, worked as a cashier at a supermarket. Her hands were covered in calluses from labor, and she looked ten years older than her actual age. She invited Lin Ye and Su Qinghan inside, poured two glasses of water, and then gently pushed open the door to Xiao Ming's room.

Xiao Ming was curled up on the bed, his phone screen lit up but he wasn't looking at it at all. Two newly formed scabs on his knees hadn't fallen off yet, and there were several faint finger marks on his arms, as if he had been squeezed hard. He looked up at Lin Ye and then quickly lowered his head, his voice muffled: 'Brother, how much did my mom pay to find you? Don't waste the money; it's useless. Their fathers are in real estate in the district. Last time the homeroom teacher reported it, before the moral education department could even finish speaking, a phone call came from that side. The next day, the bully told me in front of the whole class that if I snitched again, my mom would lose her job too.'

Lin Ye sat down by the bed without saying a word, then pulled out a photo from his phone and handed it to him. It was a photo of President Fan, the president of Dingsheng Group, signing a settlement agreement on the first floor of the Unscrupulous Business Center last week. President Fan was bowing his head, while Lin Ye leaned against the wall of honor holding a bowl of soy milk. The photo was a snapshot by Fatty Wang, taken from a tricky angle that clearly captured President Fan's pathetic state.

'This person is President Fan. Last month, he was the owner of fourteen hundred chain stores nationwide, worth tens of billions. He bullied your Auntie He's small supermarket, and now his group is on the verge of bankruptcy. He personally apologized publicly in front of the national media and paid ten million in compensation. Don't you think he's much more powerful than those bullies at your school?'

Xiao Ming stared at the photo for a long time, then slowly looked up. His eyes were a bit red, but he didn't cry. He asked Lin Ye if it would cause trouble, and Lin Ye said it wouldn't. He asked if it would affect his mother's job, and Lin Ye said it wouldn't. After a moment of silence, he pulled out a crumpled notebook from under his pillow. When opened, it was densely packed with the time, location, and names of the people involved in every instance of bullying. The earliest entry was from the third day of the semester.

'These are the ones I could remember. There were many other times I didn't record; there were just too many.' He handed the notebook to Lin Ye, his fingers trembling for a moment as he let go.

Lin Ye took the notebook and flipped through it from beginning to end. Three names appeared most frequently: Sun, Ma, and Hu. The one named Sun was the leader, and his father's real estate company owned several developments in the city. Ma and Hu were his lackeys, and their family backgrounds were also not simple. The three of them had run rampant in the second year for over six months. Xiao Ming wasn't the only student they had bullied; the notebook also mentioned two other children who had been beaten until they transferred schools. Su Qinghan took photos of this information piece by piece and sent them to Ghost.

Lin Ye closed the notebook and stood up, saying to Xiao Ming, 'Go to school tomorrow as usual. Attend classes normally, eat in the cafeteria normally, don't hide from them, and don't go looking for them. Leave the rest to me.'

That night, Ghost compiled the background information on the three bullies. Sun's real estate developer father had developed three residential projects locally; one had been fined by the housing department for illegal pre-sales, and another had its doors blocked by contractors due to unpaid construction fees. This negative information had always been suppressed by spending money and using connections. This time, Ghost packaged all this information and sent it to the relevant regulatory departments.

Then he opened the skill template library and pulled up the underlying code for the 'Social Death Broadcast' and 'Behavioral Constraint' templates. He changed the trigger conditions from an office setting to a campus setting. The motion detection was set to actively implementing physical or verbal bullying behaviors. The effect was set to an instantaneous loss of strength and weakness in the limbs upon the thought of bullying someone, accompanied by a brief Social Death voice prompt—the prompt would play simultaneously in the perpetrator's own Bluetooth earphones and phone speaker, with only one sentence: 'Your behavior has been recorded.'

'Add a protection effect, triggered simultaneously. As long as an intent to attack Xiao Ming is detected, the attacker's total body strength will decay to five percent of their normal state, making it impossible to complete any striking motion. Xiao Ming's own phone will automatically record the scene's audio and video, encrypted and uploaded to the studio's data backend as evidence.'

After finishing the setup, he handed the tablet to Su Qinghan for review. Su Qinghan checked all trigger conditions and the scope of effect, confirming that it wouldn't accidentally affect normal play between ordinary students, then signed the confirmation column. Lin Ye picked up his phone and tapped the confirm button. A green prompt popped up on the screen: 'Behavioral Constraint is now in effect. Currently protecting one target.'

The next morning, Xiao Ming went to school with his backpack. Before leaving, he looked back at his mother. She stood at the door and smiled at him, a forced smile that made the corners of her mouth tremble.

After the second period in the morning, Sun and his two lackeys cornered Xiao Ming at the restroom entrance on the side of the teaching building. Across a corridor from the restroom was the playground, where many students were playing ball during the break; Xiao Ming used to be one of them. Sun reached out to grab Xiao Ming's collar, but the moment his fingertips touched the collar of Xiao Ming's school uniform, his entire arm suddenly went limp, as if the bones had been removed. He froze for half a second, then tried to push Xiao Ming with his other hand, which also went limp at the same time. His two arms hung from his shoulders like two soaked noodles, unable to be lifted no matter how hard he tried.

Ma stepped up to help, but before he could even touch Xiao Ming, his legs suddenly lost strength from the knees down. He wobbled twice and sat directly on the ground. Hu, standing behind, pulled out his phone to record a video, but the screen suddenly flashed white, and a mechanical female voice came from both his Bluetooth earphones and the speaker: 'Your behavior has been recorded.' The voice wasn't loud, but several students passing by in the nearby corridor heard it and turned to look.

Hu was so scared he stuffed his phone into his pocket. Sun was still stubbornly trying; since he couldn't lift his arms, he raised his foot to kick. Just as his foot left the ground, his entire body seemed to be hit by a pause button. His muscles were completely out of control, his center of gravity shifted, and he fell by the flower bed, his knee hitting the concrete with a thud that made him howl in pain. More and more students were coming out of class; some hid behind the crowd to secretly record videos, and some couldn't help but laugh out loud. Sun struggled to stand up, but his limbs were as weak as if he had just finished a marathon. He tried several times, but each time he pushed himself up, he collapsed again.

Xiao Ming stood by and watched him, his fists clenched tight, but he didn't step forward to deliver a kick or hurl insults. He pulled out his phone and used the evidence collection program Lin Ye had installed to record a video. Then he walked over to Sun, knelt down, and turned the phone screen around so Sun could see the flashing red recording dot: 'Don't bully anyone ever again. Every time you even think about it, your limbs will go weak again. This applies to all three of you.'

His voice was very steady as he spoke, a world away from the boy who had been afraid to leave his house and huddled on his bed.

That afternoon, the director of the moral education department called the parents of the three bullies to the school. The first thing Sun's real estate developer father did upon arrival was slam the table, saying his son's knee was scraped and he wanted a medical evaluation to hold the school accountable. The director placed the video Xiao Ming had taken and the evidence of previous bullying incidents packaged by Ghost on the table, calmly informing him that all behavioral records had been synchronized with the education department's backend system and the local police station's network platform. If he didn't accept the school's mediation, they could go straight to judicial proceedings.

Sun's father's expression changed several times before he finally sat down. During the mediation, he received three more phone calls—the first from the housing department, saying they wanted to re-examine the pre-sale permit for one of his developments; the second from the bank, saying his development loan had been suspended due to illegal operations; and the third from the tax bureau, saying someone had reported his company for tax evasion under their real name and they were coming for an audit. After the third call, beads of sweat rolled down his forehead one by one.

Three days later, Xiao Ming's school issued an official announcement. The announcement was posted on the bulletin board at the main gate, stating in black and white that three students had been given demerits for long-term school bullying, a school-wide criticism was issued, and their parents were required to complete an anti-bullying education course. On the same day, the school signed a campus safety cooperation agreement with Lin Ye's studio. Su Qinghan was responsible for liaising with the school's moral education department, and QR codes were posted next to the complaint boxes in every classroom. Scanning them would lead directly to the Que De Studio's campus anti-bullying hotline. Ghost integrated the public surveillance of all school corridors and the campus network ports into the backend, setting up an automatic warning mechanism. Whenever the system detected video footage or chat records suspected of bullying, it would automatically trigger the Behavioral Constraint template and simultaneously notify the homeroom teacher and the moral education department.

A week later, Lin Ye received a video from Xiao Ming. The video showed the school basketball court, where Xiao Ming, wearing a pair of new sneakers, stood outside the three-point line and made a swish shot. The ball went through the net and bounced on the ground with a crisp sound. At the end of the video, he smiled at the camera, drenched in sweat, with the afternoon sun behind him. Lin Ye saved the video in the studio's archive folder, which was named 'Case Closed'.

Ghost glanced at the screen and pushed a new data monitoring interface in front of Lin Ye. It showed a set of abnormal signals originating from an IP address near a high-end private school in the city. The signal characteristics were highly consistent with the detection frequency of the studio's internal encrypted network, and it had been scanning for several days. Ghost marked it with a red note: 'Suspected Targeted Reconnaissance.' Su Qinghan leaned over to look, her brow furrowing slightly, and said that the board director of this private school was surnamed Li, and his son was one of the bullies restricted by the Behavioral Constraint skill.

Lin Ye picked up his teacup and took a sip, looking at the signal still pulsing on the screen. The corner of his mouth curled slightly as he said, 'Interesting. The little one couldn't win, so he's bringing in the elder. Ghost, keep monitoring. Let's see how many tricks they have left.'