From the sly laughter, to the cut-off plea for mercy, and finally the agonized wail—the entire sequence couldn’t have taken more than two seconds. Only then did Zhao Mingyue, taking a step back, fully register what had happened.
That Imp had lured her closer to kill her.
Whether she had reached out to grab the lollipop or bent down to read the numbers on it, the end result would have been death.
“Thank you, Sister Yu. Was that little Ghost one of the students who burned to death in that classroom?” Zhao Mingyue asked quietly.
Only after death did people become wraiths. It seemed that only the Old Dean and the students from the poor orphan class had died in this school.
Because of that, she hadn’t been too wary. She had instinctively assumed that even as ghosts, the Old Dean and the children from that class would still be kind-hearted. The only one to be careful of should have been the Fierce Ghost that killed them.
Reality proved she was far too naive. She didn’t know if these children had become so hateful only after turning into ghosts, or if this was their true nature, amplified in death.
“Yes.”
“Mm. I’ll be careful.”
Zhao Mingyue didn’t want to linger here any longer. She decided to check the floors above.
If there were ghosts here, there were bound to be more upstairs.
The fire-ravaged Room 404 was definitely the worst-hit area. But there was no help for it. The quest was there, and if she wanted a high completion rate with good rewards, she had to go.
Besides that, it was worth mentioning that she had finally figured out what was so strange about this school.
From the moment she entered, she had felt an indescribable unease. After thinking it over carefully, she understood. It was the sound. The place was too quiet. There wasn’t the slightest bit of noise.
And it was a summer night, out in the countryside. How could there possibly be not even a single insect chirp?
The weeds both inside and outside the school were thick. When she was outside, the air had been full of buzzing insects and mosquitoes.
But now, just a single wall’s distance away, there was absolute silence.
It couldn’t even be called peaceful. It was deathly stillness.
In this situation, the dead-silent environment and the darkness bred unease. Every tiny movement she made seemed infinitely amplified. So much so that, without realizing it, she had subconsciously been moving in very small steps, trying to minimize her own noise.
Even that Imp’s speech earlier had been as quiet as possible, as if terrified of being overheard by something.
She recalled the quest introduction saying: do not make any sound, or you’ll attract “her.”
She’d been better off before realizing this. Once Zhao Mingyue became conscious of it, her anxiety only grew. Regulating her breathing, she tiptoed to the stairwell entrance and shone her flashlight up the stairs.
Once on the stairs, she constantly felt like something was watching her.
The steps were covered in dust. Zhao Mingyue, already wearing a mask against the dust, carefully stepped onto them, each step deliberate and slow.
This building—no, this entire school—hid dozens of ill-tempered and mischievous Imps. They lurked in different places, hidden in the darkness, making no sound. Yet when you drew near, they would use all sorts of methods to kill you.
She needed to get to the fourth floor. In between, she couldn’t make any noise and had to stay alert for Imps hiding in the shadows.
One misstep, and they could push her down the stairs.
In the Teaching Building, one could still see traces of student activity, like graffiti on the walls and the well-worn, glossy stair railings.
“Bai Yu, if we keep making sounds, will we attract the Big Boss here? Can you handle her?”
“Oh right, we also need to find Xiao Lian’s child to dissolve her Resentment.”
“This quest feels much harder than Sunshine Apartment. I thought that one was already tough. I didn’t expect it’d actually be the baseline difficulty.”
Zhao Mingyue was mentally chattering non-stop to Bai Yu. She couldn’t be blamed; in this environment, she felt she would suffocate if she didn’t talk to someone.
The psychological pressure was immense. Combined with the fear of the unknown, she now had to restrict herself from making large movements or any noise.
What was on the second floor of the dormitory? What about the third? She had no idea. Any Ghostly Monster could be hiding in the darkness.
Zhao Mingyue naturally knew how powerful the being dwelling in her shadow was, but fear couldn’t be erased by that fact alone. Not unless she could reach Bai Sisi’s level of composure.
Though she couldn’t reach that state, there was a shortcut.
On the second floor, Zhao Mingyue took the rabbit doll from her pocket.
She found her needed courage here.
Indeed, holding the rabbit doll in her arms made her feel much less afraid. Zhao Mingyue almost mustered her spirit and made it to the fourth floor in one go.
The fourth floor was different from the first. On the first floor, Zhao Mingyue hadn’t felt any yin drafts. The fourth floor was a different story. The yin wind blew intermittently, carrying a very distinct smell of char mixed with decay that filled her nostrils. The doors to all four dorms on the fourth floor were wide open, and the mixed stench was wafting out from them.
Room 404 was easy to find, right along the outer wall.
Also, the walls of 404 were black, completely different from the other dorms.
With the rabbit doll now in her arms, Zhao Mingyue’s heart held little terror. She ignored the situation inside 403 entirely and went straight to the entrance of 404.
The solid black wooden door of Room 404 was wide open. The wall facing the corridor had no windows. Zhao Mingyue had assumed the windows would be on the opposite wall, but when she reached the doorway, she found there were no windows at all in this room. Instead, the two window openings had been sealed shut by someone.
Room 404 was very clean inside. There were fifteen beds in total. Upper and lower bunks, it could sleep thirty people. But the walls were burned black, the bed frames were the same, and even the bed boards had been completely burned through.
From the traces left at the scene, the fire that year must have raged fiercely. No wonder so many students had been burned to death inside at once.
The moment Zhao Mingyue entered the room, she reflexively covered her nose. The smell in the hallway hadn’t been that strong, but inside it was completely different. The mixture of char and putrid stench was even more outrageous than the fifth floor of Sunshine Apartment.
It was as if the fire had just happened, and the bodies had been left here for over a month without anyone cleaning them up.
The three-bladed ceiling fan overhead swayed gently. Whether it was moved by the wind or by something in the room using this method to welcome Zhao Mingyue’s arrival was unclear.
From Zhao Mingyue’s perspective, the room was empty save for the burned-out beds. But from Bai Yu’s perspective, the whole room was saturated in a blood-red hue. A group of twelve- and thirteen-year-old children, burned beyond human recognition, stood or sat around the room, their venomous, malicious eyes scrutinizing Zhao Mingyue’s body.
The appearances of these children were far more terrifying than the Ghostly Monsters of Sunshine Apartment. There were at least twenty ghosts in a single room.
What was even more interesting was that these ghosts hadn’t originally been here. They had been hiding in every corner of the school, but upon seeing Zhao Mingyue, they had quickly rushed back here.
