At the same time, in the command center, the headmasters of the various schools were also discussing this "murder" in the Nine Dragon Pagoda. This wasn't the content of the second elimination round. According to the original plan, the second elimination round would leave a limited number of advancement orbs on the 700,000th step. Only those who grabbed the orbs would be able to advance to the next round.
Now that the rules of the knockout round had been changed and someone had been injured, the headmasters present naturally felt anxious. Among them, the most restless person was Liu Tian, the headmaster of Titan High School.
"President Qi … if this corpse was created using a construction spell, then where is our school's Zhu Hanyun now?" Headmaster Liu Tian, who had been kept in the dark until now, summoned up his courage to ask President Qi.
"Don't worry, Headmaster Liu, Student Zhu is very safe now. He's being protected. Furthermore, the rule for this round is that as long as we can catch the murderer, everyone can advance. It's just that this murderer is still in the team. This will test the students' reasoning ability. We can only wait and see for now. If we act hastily, we'll only alert the enemy, "President Qi said.
But this explanation still left the headmasters present baffled.
But after listening to President Qi's words, everyone's tense hearts relaxed a little.
It seemed that this was something that had been arranged by the higher-ups. Since that was the case, it naturally wasn't convenient for them to ask too much.
Sitting in the conference seats at the back, the headmasters stared at the image of the Nine Dragon Pagoda on the big screen in front of them, their own thoughts running through their minds.
At a time like this, it was easy to slip up if one spoke too much. As headmasters, they had to learn to figure out the higher-ups' intentions on their own, and not just rely on asking questions.
"Old Chen, what do you think of this?" On the other side, Headmaster Li Qingxi of No. 1 Devil-Subduing High smiled slightly as he stared at the screen, as if he had already figured out something.
"Headmaster Li already knows the answer, so why ask me?" No. 60 High School's Headmaster Chen laughed. "Your school's Gao Tianming is really good. He's even the team leader this time; it seems that he's your favorite disciple."
"Gao Tianming is indeed a good seedling. I plan to personally take him in as my disciple after he graduates from high school." Being praised by Headmaster Chen, Headmaster Li Qingxi immediately felt proud.
When he came back to his senses, he found that the cunning Chen Tianxiang did not seem to answer his question. He asked again, "Old Chen, don't interrupt me. Tell me what you think. I want to know if you think the same as me!"
This kind of behavior was actually a bit like a scene where two top students who had just finished an exam were comparing their answers.
Headmaster Chen had been the gold medal support player among the many headmasters back then. He had an overall view of the big picture and an understanding of the overall situation that other headmasters could not compare to. This was also the reason why Headmaster Li Qingxi was so persistent in his questioning.
Student Zhu Hanyun's "death" was obviously a trap set up by the higher-ups, and it was clearly targeted at a certain person.
He naturally couldn't come to a conclusion just by looking at the current situation, but if he combined it with the first elimination round, Headmaster Chen suddenly had a bold idea.
There were so many ways to test the students, so why did they have to climb the 700,000 steps?
There was only one answer.
"Hypnosis." In the end, Headmaster Chen still revealed the "core" of the entire setup.
Hearing this, Headmaster Li Qingxi breathed a long sigh of relief in his heart.
Headmaster Chen's judgment was about the same as his.
The purpose of the 700,000th spiral staircase was to hypnotize the students while they were walking down the spiral staircase.
Of course, there were also students who hadn't been hypnotized.
They were from No. 1 Devil-Subduing High School, Titan High School, Balance Flame High School and No. 60 High School. They had all reached the top directly using their own methods and hadn't taken the stairs.
Hypnosis often required some special psychological hints in a specific environment to be carried out, and it was not an easy task to hypnotize hundreds of students.
So this had probably been planned before the start of the competition.
As for the students who had reached the top directly and hadn't been hypnotized in the first round, Headmaster Chen guessed that they had probably used an extra method to hypnotize them individually.
In short, everyone was now in a state of hypnosis. (Apart from Wang Ling, Wang Zhen, Liu Qingyi, Gu Shunzhi, Zhenyuan and Fang Xing, they were all faking it.)
So what was the next step after hypnotizing so many students? As the golden assistant, Headmaster Chen naturally had his own guess. "Dream-Building Master."
This was another new keyword.
Hearing this, Li Qingxi's heart settled. "Sure enough!"
At that moment, the two of them were completely on the same page.
After hypnotizing so many students, the next step was naturally to construct a dream! And there was actually one person present who could do this! That was President Qi, the Wisdom Saint!
So everything that everyone was seeing now had been constructed!
It wasn't just Zhu Hanyun's corpse!
All the 800 students in the Nine Dragon Pagoda who were currently participating in the competition, including Zhu Hanyun himself, had in fact already fallen into a dream after advancing to the first round!
…
On the other side, the investigation led by Gu Shunzhi was progressing smoothly.
Wang Ling silently watched Gu Shunzhi operate from the back, and at the same time was well aware that they had fallen into an official setup.
The students present were all at the Foundation Establishment stage.
Compared with ordinary people, cultivators had a more stable mind, and the actual steps of hypnosis were much more complicated. The 700,000th step was the key. This was the prerequisite for most students to be directly hypnotized into a dream.
As for Wang Ling and the other students who hadn't come up the stairs, President Qi had pretended to arrange room service to hypnotize them individually.
Of course, what the officials didn't know was that this level of hypnosis had no effect on Wang Ling.
A dream-building master wasn't a rare profession in the current cultivation world, but to be able to make so many people fall for it at the same time, this dream-building master had to have powerful mental strength.
Since Wang Ming hadn't come to the scene, the only person who could do it was naturally President Qi.
At that moment, Wang Ling quietly watched Gu Shunzhi's performance.
After the first round of investigations, Gu Shunzhi had already eliminated nearly ninety percent of the students.
Among the remaining students, there were students from No. 1 Devil-Subduing High School, Titan High School, Balance Flame High School and South Sea Sky High School.
Gu Shunzhi smiled gently and stared at one of the boys from South Sea Sky High School. "Explain yourselves. What were you all doing earlier?"
"Who are you?! What right do you have to control us?! " The boy was clearly a little unhappy to be listed as a suspect. He didn't know Gu Shunzhi's background, and at the same time, he despised No. 60 High in his heart. A school that didn't have a high overall ranking had actually taken the lead in this case? What right did they have to do that?
"I hope you'll cooperate with the investigation, otherwise your fate will be very tragic." Gu Shunzhi warned in a soft voice. His voice wasn't loud, but an incomparably shocking mental strength swept through the boy's mind.
The boy from South Sea Sky High was stupefied on the spot. He felt as if his head had exploded, and he looked at Gu Shunzhi as if he were looking at a devil. In the end, he was so scared that he burst into tears on the spot.
"…" Wang Ling sighed behind him.
Sure enough, Gu Shunzhi was still too young when it came to keeping a low profile.
There were times when an appropriate display of strength was necessary, but Gu Shunzhi had clearly used too much force just now.
This group of people were learning from him … not only did they want to learn how to keep a low profile, but they also wanted to learn how to control their strength and control their score.
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