Chapter 414: Race Against Time (2)

The Principal arrived at the teachers' office, where the replacement math teacher was already prepared.

He only said three sentences upon arriving.

First sentence: Move this scourge back to the Laboratory Building for ideological education.

The second sentence was directed at the robot math teacher: From now on, you are the third-grade math teacher.

This sentence was equivalent to authorization.

Third sentence: Grant a leave of absence for the student who came to call me just now. He is helping me watch the house.

After saying that, he turned and left, without any intention of staying. The whole process was completed in less than a minute. After exiting the Teaching Building, he didn't go anywhere else and walked straight back.

In other words.

The round trip was half an hour, plus 1 minute to handle the math teacher's issue, which made 31 minutes.

31 - 12 = 19!

Chen Ran needed to put on the white shoes, go to the Laboratory Building, clear the decryption puzzle in front of the laboratory, get the Laboratory Building rules from object 1001 in the third room on the west side of the sixth floor, and then return—all within 19 minutes.

…

The 12-minute mark just arrived.

Chen Ran was wearing the Principal's clothes. He had unopened black silk stockings in his bag, which worked well when pulled over the head, but unfortunately, the bag was in the classroom. He could only grab a random piece of cloth to cover his face.

He put on the white shoes and ran.

According to school rules, one had to walk on the corresponding colorful zebra crossings. But now that he was wearing white shoes, of course...

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

He cut straight across the small forest.

Running all the way with sparks and lightning, he arrived at the entrance of the Laboratory Building. With a single kick, he busted the door open. Seeing the elderly security guard poke his head out, he grabbed him and yanked him out.

'So damn heavy!'

But at this moment, Chen Ran was controlled by 【Anger】. It was purely the emotion of 【Anger】, not The Highest Goodness is Like Water's fused Mental State.

His adrenaline was surging rapidly.

Dragging the elderly security guard, he arrived in front of the laboratory's decryption stage and forcefully pressed the elderly security guard's face against the identification scanner.

"Identity correct!"

The door opened, and it opened very quickly. He dropped the old man, ignored the researchers inside, and ran straight towards the west side of the hollow circular building.

Arriving at the west sixth floor, he kicked open the third room and quickly swept his gaze across the entire room.

This was an office.

There were quite a few things inside, but there was no object with a numbered tag as he had imagined.

Soon, his gaze fell on a very strange small plastic tree. Both the trunk and the leaves of this tree were five-pointed stars.

'This is it!'

'1001, in mathematical expressions, is a sphenic number, a pentagonal number, and a pentatope number.'

'Pentagonal number, five-pointed star tree.'

'What a great homophonic pun!'

He ran forward to grab the small tree, but the tree was welded dead to the desktop.

He tried turning the small tree. The small tree rotated clockwise by half a circle, triggering a mechanism. The bookshelf opposite automatically moved aside, revealing...

A small dark room.

'Since the Laboratory Building rules aren't in an object numbered 1001.'

'The circle isn't: After taking the item, please put it back in its original place.'

'Turning it half a circle makes the small dark room appear.'

'Then, the circle on the wall in the lower level of the scrapyard should be...'

'Reset!'

'In other words, after I enter the small dark room, the small tree I turned will automatically reset, trapping me inside the small dark room.'

Chen Ran took a relatively heavy trophy from the bookshelf and jammed it between two of the small tree's five points to prevent it from resetting.

He quickly ran into the small dark room.

The small dark room was about two square meters in size. Pasted on the wall were... the rules he wanted. Other than that, there was nothing else.

He scanned the rules.

He left the small dark room, removed the trophy, and put it back in its original place. The small tree automatically reset.

He exited the third room.

He ran all the way downstairs into the hollow laboratory. The passing researchers treated him like air. He really wanted to take the opportunity to destroy the second robot Principal; he knew there was a second robot Principal in the Laboratory Building.

But there wasn't enough time.

Just now, the Principal didn't double back within the 12 minutes, which meant the Principal might already be on his way home.

He could only run out of the Laboratory Building.

He ran back in the direction he came from, simultaneously pondering the current plot:

'The first three rules of the Principal's home, when linked together, mean: The Principal is a human, but he doesn't like being a human. He modified himself into a cyborg, and at the same time, he also manufactured a...'

'Robot Principal!'

'Regarding the existence of the robot Principal, there are two clues.

Clue 1: Classroom rules.

【Rule 6: School staff wear four different colors of shoes: black, red, blue, and white. Different colors indicate different positions. White shoes are the highest rank. There is one and only one person wearing white shoes on this campus. If you find a second person wearing white shoes, please ignore his/her commands.】

Clue 2: The rules in the Principal's home.

【Rule 5: The Principal's body has developed a problem; please ignore his commands.】

These two rules indicate that there are two Principals in the school, one is a cyborg and the other is a robot. After all, Rule 5 in the Principal's home mentions 【The Principal's body has developed a problem】 rather than 【feeling uncomfortable】, based on the questions from the two doctors in the infirmary.

Having a body problem points to a robot.

Feeling uncomfortable points to a cyborg.'

'Therefore, continuing the previously deduced plot: Among them, the robot Principal developed a problem, so the cyborg Principal told all teachers and students to ignore its commands.'

'This also explains why everyone should ignore the second person wearing white shoes.'

'The subsequent plot is still hidden in the rules of the Principal's home: Every Wednesday afternoon during the first class, which is this afternoon, the cyborg Principal will conduct ideological education for all teachers and students in the Laboratory Building.'

'The math teacher is a cyborg, but she developed emotions. According to the Principal's concept, a teacher should do what a teacher should do. So in the Principal's cognition, a math teacher like this has developed a problem with her ideology.'

'The real plot is: During the first class this afternoon, all teachers and students will undergo an inspection in the Laboratory Building to see who is a cyborg.'

'The discovered cyborgs will all undergo ideological education, meaning they will all be destroyed and replaced with robots.'

'But, according to the rule in the Principal's home.'

【Rule 4: Recently, someone in the Laboratory Building has been secretly modifying robots. The Principal feels his home is unsafe and might be burgled.】

'This explains why cyborgs would appear on campus.'

'In other words, there is a deeply hidden cyborg in the Laboratory Building who is secretly modifying robots into cyborgs.'

'【The Principal feels his home is unsafe and might be burgled】 is because he is afraid that person will obtain the white shoes and thereby overthrow his rule on campus.'

'This explains why the Principal had to verify my identity multiple times.'

'Two correct identity verifications were needed for the Principal to confirm that I am safe and won't violate the rules to steal his second pair of white shoes, which is why he let me watch his house.'

'This also perfectly explains why there is a second pair of white shoes in the Principal's home. It's simply because, as deduced earlier, the robot Principal developed a problem. Therefore, it was highly likely sent to the Laboratory Building, and the cyborg Principal, afraid that the one in the Laboratory Building would take the opportunity to obtain the white shoes, took off the robot Principal's white shoes.'

'The second pair of white shoes being in the Principal's home indicates that the malfunctioning robot Principal hasn't been repaired yet.'

'This is also why I felt there were two robot Principals in the Laboratory Building just now.'

'With the Principal's suspicious nature, he would definitely need to manufacture a new robot Principal to feel at ease. Counting the malfunctioning one, there are exactly two in the Laboratory Building.'

The above was the plot Chen Ran obtained after exploring for such a long time.

Next was to sabotage the 【ideological education】 based on the rules of the Laboratory Building.

According to Chen Ran's previous thoughts, he intended to pull a bait-and-switch. Simply put...

It was to make the cyborg Principal lose his Principal identity—meaning the white shoes. Then, the Principal without white shoes would be treated as the robot Principal and undergo 【ideological education】.

At that time, the second person wearing white shoes would become the first person and take control of the school.

But now.

With a hidden schemer in the Laboratory Building, and having just obtained the Laboratory Building's rules, Chen Ran felt it was necessary to reorganize his stage-clearing plan.