Under the steel frame bridge, clear river water flowed slowly.
Lu Bai walked on the bridge, his steps leisurely.
Anyway, it was still early, so he wasn’t in a hurry to arrive at school.
Ignoring the oppressive feeling brought by that sense of unreality, looking at this man-made scenery was not bad.
After all, in a certain sense, these sceneries actually didn’t have many audiences.
High-class people had their own places for leisure and wouldn’t come near Yiju City for a stroll at all.
Meanwhile, the lower-class civilians were busy with their livelihoods; rather than specially coming to see this fake nature, they might as well carry a few more bags of cement in this time.
Anyway, if one wanted to experience real nature, there was plenty in the deathmatch arena.
Perhaps, this could explain why Xiao Xueyin and Liu Yue went sightseeing vengefully in the second half of the deathmatch duel.
The thirty-minute journey took Lu Bai nearly an hour.
Walking on the road, he could see the outline of the campus from afar.
The green plants and wide avenues everywhere in the campus contrasted completely with the steel rebar and cement in Yiju City, like two different painting styles.
It was hard to imagine that these two were only one kilometer apart.
From this most basic comparison, one could see just how high the social status of death fighters was.
It must be known that students, as reserves, were not truly death fighters in essence.
Lu Bai stood in front of the school gate, recalling the crowdedness of his living place, and sighed inwardly.
Regardless of whether he accepted it, since he had already come to this world.
“First, let’s start by improving the quality of life.”
With that, he pondered how to reasonably show his changes while stepping toward the school.
By now, it was not long until eight o’clock; the students by the roadside were all hurrying, and some even started running directly.
However,
“Are you Lu Bai?” A flat-headed student who had been squatting by the flowerbed suddenly stood up.
Lu Bai asked in surprise, “Who is Lu Bai?”
The flat-headed student was stunned, scratched the back of his head: “Got the wrong person, sorry about that.”
Lu Bai returned a smile to the flat-headed student, then walked away as if nothing had happened.
He could clearly tell that this flat-headed student had never seen him before, so in that case, Fan Ding and the others were probably still unconvinced and were even calling in reinforcements.
……
In the tidy psychological counseling room, a woman in her thirties wearing a white coat sat across from Lu Bai and adjusted the square-framed glasses on her nose bridge.
“Hello, Student Lu Bai. No need to be nervous; I’m just asking you a few simple questions as routine.”
Lu Bai nodded, appearing very relaxed overall.
It wasn’t special concern for him.
In fact, after every round of deathmatch duel ended, the school would arrange for psychologists to conduct one-on-one psychological counseling for each student.
To objectively assess whether this deathmatch duel had affected the students’ mental health.
Normally, this psychological counseling session should have been done yesterday.
But at that time, Liang Fuzhong thought Lu Bai was still in a dazed state, and counseling in that state would be completely meaningless, so he simply exempted him from it.
Unexpectedly, early this morning, Liang Fuzhong somehow learned from Fan Ding that Lu Bai had recovered normality as early as in the deathmatch arena; since that was the case, both emotionally and rationally, this process had to be made up.
“Are you satisfied with your current life?”
“Satisfied.”
“Pfft~ Little Brother Lu Bai, is it okay if I call you that? Just treat it as chatting with your sister; you don’t have to answer so formally.”
“Okay.”
“Good, then next question: when you were eliminated by someone in the deathmatch arena, did you develop any psychological shadow about death?”
“No.”
Lu Bai rested his hands on his knees, sitting upright, giving a very obedient impression.
Such mental health assessments were conducted every once in a while, and any changes in students needed attention to rule out any unstable factors.
The psychologist crossed out “genuinely sincere with people” on her little notebook and rewrote “unwilling to express true thoughts.”
After a moment of silence, the psychologist decided to chat with Lu Bai about old times first, trying to break through his psychological defenses from the side.
She pulled a medical record from the file bag and handed it to Lu Bai: “Do you remember Fu Chun? I heard he was your desk mate before.”
“I have an impression.”
Lu Bai took the medical record, glanced at the photograph on it—hmm, indeed didn’t recognize him.
“Do you know why I didn’t add antidepressants for him before he was ordered to drop out?”
“The maximum therapeutic dose of escitalopram is 20mg; for patients with bipolar disorder, long-term use of antidepressants is not recommended, nor is the concurrent use of two or more antidepressants.”
The psychologist’s mouth twitched, and she snatched the medical record back from Lu Bai’s hand.
She took a deep breath and said solemnly: “I’m here to help you, but first you need to cooperate with me. Don’t resist like Student Fu; believe me first.”
“Okay.” A friendly smile appeared on Lu Bai’s face.
……
“Last question: will you give up becoming a death fighter?”
“No.”
Seeing Lu Bai still answering concisely, the psychologist looked troubled at the little notebook in her hand.
After half an hour of inquiry, she wasn’t sure if she should submit this brand-new assessment report.
Admittedly, judging purely from this round’s answer and results, he was an excellent death fighter prospect.
But the problem was, Lu Bai’s previous mental health assessments didn’t look like this at all.
It was simply like a different person.
As the saying goes, one’s nature is hard to change; how could a deathmatch duel of just over ten days cause such a big change?
Thinking of this, the psychologist quickly noted on the little notebook, “Possibility of multiple personalities cannot be ruled out; recommend focused observation.”
……
Click~
As soon as Lu Bai pushed open the door, he saw a figure standing outside the psychological counseling room.
“Instructor Liang?”
“I prefer you calling me teacher.”
Liang Fuzhong joked, then asked: “What did the psychologist say?”
While speaking, he also made a gesture to walk together.
Lu Bai didn’t refuse and followed Liang Fuzhong along the winding corridor: “The doctor said there’s no problem.”
Liang Fuzhong neither confirmed nor denied, and turned to another topic.
“Student Fan Ding said you regained consciousness very early; is that true?”
“That’s right.”
Seeing Lu Bai admit it directly, Liang Fuzhong was puzzled: “Then why did you still pretend to be… at the end of the deathmatch duel?”
Before he finished speaking, he suddenly frowned almost imperceptibly.
Because he realized a possibility—maybe Lu Bai had regained consciousness even earlier?
In his impression, Lu Bai was an honest kid who wouldn’t even curse.
So what was the reason for doing that?
“Could it be that your drowning the day before wasn’t an accident? Tell me honestly, were you guarding against someone?”