The School ：Established before the Golden Coral War, originally named Jieliu High School, and recruited students nationwide. Amid social turmoil, entrusting children to a state-run institution while receiving substantial subsidies seemed like a sound choice for all families—especially when the state had no intention of revealing the truth. During the early to mid-war period, the School also took in a large number of orphans. As for the population within its walls, no one had the energy left to investigate.
The School’s purpose was to cultivate elite talent. Each academic year began with a campus war—any means justified, with a limit on survivors. In this environment, students formed cliques for survival. Some succumbed to the pressure and took their own lives, but the school didn’t care—most of these students’ parents had been drafted into the military anyway.
Teachers were stationed in classrooms, but their role was limited to reporting student movements and providing passive guidance—they rarely intervened in student affairs. If a teacher identified a student with special abilities and reported them, that student would be taken alone to the office to meet with military personnel.
The school is classified as a state secret facility during wartime. Students possess no means of external communication and rarely leave campus. The 24th Asylum, located directly across from the school and connected by an underground passage, represents their sole opportunity for rehabilitation. Submitting sufficiently compelling inventions or theoretical breakthroughs may grant this chance. However, what most students remain unaware of is that many sent to the 24th Asylum are actually placed under house arrest, forced to continue providing scientific research services.

Golden Coral War（Irrelevant to the story itself, merely serving as supplementary background information.） ：Golden coral consumes human reason. Once drawn to it, people become utterly obsessed, eventually losing their minds. Controlled, they return to the mainland to spread tales of the golden coral. All believe the reef beneath it holds treasures that grant world domination to whoever possesses them. Thus, wars erupted over the golden coral. Driven solely by instinct, the golden coral sought fresh sustenance. Having grown for ten thousand years, it had mastered the art of creating illusions to lure prey close before devouring them. Midway through the conflict, a pair of twins—a sister and brother who could communicate with fish—discovered the golden coral. They learned its true nature and vowed to protect others from its harm for the rest of their lives. But their power was too feeble. In desperation, the sister deliberately misdirected an army during a battle, leading their cannon fire to destroy the Golden Coral. It vanished forever. Her brother descended into madness after her departure and was killed while swimming toward the mainland. Yet the war raged on, with no one noticing the Golden Coral’s disappearance. The conflict dragged on for ages until all nations were too exhausted to continue. With Golden Coral destroyed, no one remained to spread its deceptive messages. As the last survivors who knew the war’s origins passed away, later generations could not even explain why the conflict had begun. This world war, which had devoured tens of millions of lives, ultimately only succeeded in reducing humanity’s numbers on the planet.