Chapter 93
Chapter 93
The school infirmary.
Under ordinary circumstances, minor ailments did not require a visit, and neither did serious illnesses.
If the problem was minor, the school nurse merely told the student to rest. If it was serious, the nurse could not cure it anyway.
The school nurse’s purpose seemed to be handing the same bottle of all-purpose herbal tonic to every student who felt unwell.
Qin Lan had now arrived at the infirmary of Dead Silence Academy.
The moment he entered, a decaying odor assaulted him.
It was the stale smell of expired medicine mixed with moldy furniture.
Looking around, Qin Lan discovered that the infirmary actually contained two beds–an extravagant luxury by school standards.
“No one has been here for a long time.”
Qin Lan approached one of the beds. A thick layer of dust covered the mattress, and the yellowing sheets clearly had not been washed in ages.
A privacy curtain hung beside each bed.
“Nothing seems unusual.”
Qin Lan walked around the room but found nothing that might trigger an event.
The medicine cabinets were empty. The school nurse’s desk was empty. He searched every place that might contain useful information and came away with nothing.
“Tch.” Qin Lan looked displeased. “Couldn’t this place learn something from horror games? They could have left an X-ray here with some cryptic nonsense scrawled across the back in red ink…”
“Finding absolutely nothing is almost disappointing.”
Scratching his head, Qin Lan considered how to trigger the next hidden event.
His gaze settled on the two beds, and suspicion crept into his expression.
“Surely not…”
There was no harm in trying.
Qin Lan silently walked to one of the beds and lay down.
Silence.
The hidden scene he expected did not appear, leaving him looking like an idiot.
“Uh, was my reasoning wrong? Or…”
Qin Lan sat up in frustration. Then a thought occurred to him, and he pulled the privacy curtain shut.
When he lay down again, he immediately sensed a change around him.
Someone was there.
Through the thin curtain, Qin Lan could clearly see the blurry silhouettes of two people standing close by.
He did not pull the curtain aside to investigate.
According to his theory, this was another replay like the one in the women’s restroom. Opening the curtain recklessly might provoke an anomaly’s attack or, more likely, interrupt the scene.
Qin Lan therefore lay quietly on the bed and listened to the conversation outside.
A male student spoke first. The grimace on his face was obvious from his voice alone.
“Ow, this really hurts… I can’t believe I fell during the formation run. What rotten luck…”
“Now I can’t play basketball in PE today…”
Another voice followed, making Qin Lan’s entire body tense.
It was the same familiar roughness, the same familiar depth, yet its tone was uncharacteristically gentle.
“You silly child. The formation run is supposed to make you healthier. Why were you running so recklessly?”
“You can play basketball whenever you want. Let the injury heal first.”
“I’m waiting to see how you perform in next week’s basketball tournament. Don’t disappoint me.”
Despite the curtain, Qin Lan could imagine the kind, warm smile on the speaker’s face.
The injured boy laughed.
“Don’t worry, sir! A little injury like this won’t affect me!”
“Our class is definitely taking the championship…”
The laughter and conversation gradually faded until nothing remained.
Qin Lan waited a little longer. Only after confirming that the scene had ended completely did he pull back the curtain and step out.
He stood in place with a complicated expression.
“The man speaking just now was definitely the person who became the Dean of Students. That voice is far too distinctive.”
Qin Lan frowned in thought. “He used to be a very kind teacher. He brought injured students to the infirmary, cared about their health, and chatted with them about basketball tournaments…”
“Did something strange suddenly change him, just like the Chinese Teacher?”
At that moment, Qin Lan noticed that an object had appeared on the neighboring bed.
It was a photograph.
Qin Lan narrowed his eyes. “Excellent. A mysterious photograph that appears after a hidden scene… It feels like some cheap jump scare will lunge at my face the moment I walk over.”
He carefully picked up the photograph, but nothing unusual happened.
It showed a group of boys in basketball jerseys and numbered pinnies, all smiling brightly at the camera.
A small caption had been printed beneath them.
[Class 3, Grade 11: Basketball Tournament Champions. Commemorative Photograph.]
The photograph was extremely old and badly faded. Most of the faces had blurred beyond recognition, leaving only vague outlines.
One boy standing in the center remained unusually clear. He bared his teeth in a foolish grin at the camera.
Qin Lan knew at a glance that this grinning idiot was the injured boy who had spoken with the Dean of Students in the replay.
“Then this man beside him must be the teacher who became the Dean of Students.”
Qin Lan examined the middle-aged man sitting upright at the front of the group.
The man had regular features, thick eyebrows, and a broad, prominent nose. He radiated integrity.
He wore a blue-and-white striped shirt, faded black jeans, and a ring of keys hanging from his belt.
He looked like the sort of man whose keys jingled as he walked and who used an old patriotic ballad as his phone ringtone.
“He looks fairly approachable.”
Qin Lan nodded slightly.
Then his gaze shifted, and his expression changed sharply.
An unsettling figure stood in the background of the group photograph.
The person seemed to be passing by, yet also appeared to be watching. From a distance, the figure stared at the basketball players posing for the photograph.
Judging by the build, it was another student. But…
Evil.
Pure evil.
The child looked ordinary. Like the other basketball players, the face had been blurred by the photograph’s fading colors.
But the eyes radiated overwhelming evil.
Even through a photograph, they sent a chill racing up Qin Lan’s spine.
The last time he had felt evil like this was in Fairytale Town.
“It can’t be…”
Qin Lan’s expression rapidly grew grave as countless connections formed in his mind.
“A peaceful town was transformed by a sudden calamity. Innocent residents were forcibly turned into material for constructing an instance and subjected to endless torment…”
“Then a youthful, vibrant campus was transformed by a sudden anomaly. Its students became ghosts imprisoned within the school, while the teachers changed completely and turned into the opposite of who they once were…”
“This feels way too fucking familiar.”
Cold flooded Qin Lan’s body.
If his theory was correct, if another hand truly controlled everything behind this instance…
Qin Lan forced the word from his dry throat.
“The Abyss?”