Bai Yu fell silent. She also had a feeling it was that kid who had come in. Aside from him, only that group of lunatics would dare come to a place like this in the middle of the night. But if it really was those madmen, they would never have been so careless as to expose the flashlight beam.
Knowing their consistent style, they would be hiding somewhere in a dark corner of the school, waiting for Zhao Mingyue to deliver herself to their doorstep, ready to grin and butcher her with the cruelest methods imaginable.
Speaking of Lu Liangting, Bai Yu’s impression of him wasn’t great. It wasn’t entirely because he had acted like a lovesick fool around her, but because he was just too much of a “protagonist.” His personality was exactly the type she detested.
Soft-hearted, believing his own self-righteousness was kindness, when it only ever ended up hurting those around him. He talked too much, spouted empty promises he had no confidence in keeping, like a sanctimonious hypocrite.
You had to admit, it was very “protagonist-like.” People around him were always unconsciously swept up in his halo, revolving around him as the center.
In contrast, her own negative opinion of him was probably the real prejudice.
Just as Bai Yu was thinking this, Zhao Mingyue, pinching her nose, spoke up: “Sister Yu, if it really is Lu Liangting, are you going to show yourself? He knows you, you know. And he seems to be… uh… quite fixated on you.”
Her words were tactful. The way Lu Liangting had acted, if she hadn’t known Bai Yu was a ghost, she would have thought the guy had genuinely fallen for her.
Then again, if Bai Yu pulled another “beauty saves the hero” stunt this time, all bets were off.
Who wouldn’t fall for a fifteen-year-old ghost girl who was deadly, capable, and ridiculously cute?
The only risk you’d have to take is that when you’re talking to other girls, she’d be hiding in your shadow, eavesdropping. And if she got jealous, she might just strangle you in your sleep one night, so you two could be “together” forever.
Ahem, those were all just jokes, obviously. She couldn’t say them to Bai Yu’s face.
Otherwise, before Lu Liangting got strangled, she’d be the one beaten to death first.
“Mingyue.” Bai Yu suddenly materialized in front of Zhao Mingyue.
“I’m here.”
“Your mind needs to be on the mission. Stop letting your thoughts run wild.” Bai Yu stared at Zhao Mingyue with narrowed eyes. She didn’t need to guess to know what nonsense the girl was cooking up in her head.
“Let me be clear: I don’t like men. If Lu Liangting gets too close to me, I’ll twist his head right off his shoulders.”
Bai Yu’s gaze was fierce, her tone deadly serious. The words were enough to send chills down anyone’s spine.
Well, for a normal person, anyway.
Zhao Mingyue, however, was different. Her little brain worked in very unique ways at times. For example, just now: a normal person would have focused on the second half of that statement. She, on the other hand, only heard the “I don’t like men” part, selectively filtering out everything else.
“Hmm… If I said I wasn’t thinking anything at all, would you believe me?”
Leaving Room 404, Zhao Mingyue stood by the railing and peered down.
She was on the fourth floor now. She could see the general layout of the school. She’d wanted to get another look at that light from before, but after scanning the area, she found nothing. The campus remained eerily and uniformly silent.
“Either they haven’t come, or someone was shining a flashlight from outside the school grounds. I hope that person isn’t just hiding.”
Zhao Mingyue muttered to herself, her voice low but not deliberately hushed.
The mission said not to make a sound. She had abided by that earlier, making no noise on the way here. But just now inside the dormitory, she hadn’t spoken quietly, yet even so, no terrifying Fierce Ghost had been drawn to her.
She wondered if the “no sound” rule only applied in a specific location, like the teaching building.
Her words had barely faded when, just as she was about to turn and leave, she suddenly heard something. Her foot, already mid-step, froze.
The sound came from the first floor, very distinct. Something was charging up the stairs at full speed, and with it came a nauseating stench, even more concentrated than the decay in Room 404.
The foul odor was approaching rapidly, the footsteps growing louder. That meant the thing downstairs was closing in on her position at a speed no normal person could match!
Zhao Mingyue’s pupils contracted. Without a second thought, she ducked back into Room 404, pulling the door shut behind her and pressing her back against it.
When the door had been open, the pale moonlight outside had provided some illumination, not to mention the flashlight.
Now, she clicked the flashlight off and clamped both hands over her mouth and nose, staring into the pitch-black interior of Room 404. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something inside was watching her.
Even with the dormitory door closed, it couldn’t block out that foul stench, which seemed to seep through the very walls.
Utter dead silence surrounded her, making the footsteps of the thing on the fourth floor all the more conspicuous.
The stench was so thick she couldn’t gauge the thing’s distance. But it didn’t matter anymore.
Zhao Mingyue was certain the thing was standing right in the fourth-floor corridor. It had slowed its steps, muffled its movements, and was advancing, step by step.
To say she wasn’t terrified would be a lie. The moment she thought noise wouldn’t attract a Fierce Ghost, one had materialized on her floor.
In the fourth-floor corridor, a humanoid silhouette crept forward. It was at least two and a half meters tall, its body so slender it seemed to be nothing but a skeleton. Its immense height forced it to walk bent over, giving its gait a limping, awkward appearance.
It wore an old, black school uniform. There was no obvious damage to it, yet it somehow radiated an aura of ancient decay and dilapidation.
Compared to the figure’s body, the uniform was clearly a terrible, ill-fitting mismatch.
Its neck, twice the length of a normal person’s, stretched out as it arrived at the very spot where Zhao Mingyue had been standing and speaking.
If Zhao Mingyue could have seen the monster’s face at that moment, she would have recognized it: it was the Ghostface she had seen in her memory.
Back then, in that memory, she had seen that unknown figure pull back the covers, only to look up and see a disfigured face pressed against the upper bunk. And then the image had vanished.
Zhao Mingyue knew, with chilling clarity, that the distance between her and that thing was no more than two meters, separated only by a thin wooden door.
The space in front of the door and behind it—two entirely different worlds.
She instinctively held her breath, terrified the monster would just shove the door open and come inside.
She truly couldn’t understand it. She had spoken on the first floor earlier, made considerable noise, and talked in Room 404, yet this monster never came. It had only appeared the moment she spoke to herself, just a moment ago.
Thank goodness she had been right next to the dorm room. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have had anywhere to hide.
The time between the thing’s footsteps starting and its arrival on the fourth floor couldn’t have been more than ten seconds.
“Found you, Number 652.”
The monster outside had not yet left. Strands of blood threads sealed off the fourth-floor stairwell entirely.
Bai Yu hadn’t expected this at all. She hadn’t gone looking for 652; the creature had come to her instead.
“652, so it’s you…”
