Twenty minutes after the morning bell ended Auction Provocation & Face-Slapping 101, the heavy iron vault doors of the departmental textbook repository swung open with a rusty groan.
The underground archive beneath Classroom #1 smelled of stale ink, sulfur, and century-old greed. Row after row of black iron bookshelves stretched into the gloom, stacked floor-to-ceiling with ten thousand thick, blood-red leather books titled:
[Advanced Auction Face-Slapping, Irrational Overbidding & Merchant-Clan Extinction — Mandatory First-Year Curriculum].
“Careful with the covers, Dad,” fourteen-year-old Ye Xiao advised, adjusting his round spectacles as he held up his [Homework-First Bamboo Ruler Sword] to scan the shelves.
“According to the library registry, Headmaster Hong and Professor Ao Man printed all ten thousand copies on Rank 7 Script-Bound Demon Paper. If you tear the pages out or burn them with ordinary fire, the ambient Heavenly Script Will automatically regenerates the toxic text at midnight. Sends a mental compulsion wave into the dormitories that forces freshmen to pick fights in restaurants.”
“Even worse,” twelve-year-old Gu Nian added, poking one of the red books with a chopstick and frowning as the book snapped its leather covers together like a piranha’s jaws, trying to bite his finger. “Look at Page 4!
