Chapter 18
Chapter 18
A nauseating odor of char permeated the entire corridor.
Deformed trees twisted like hideous tongues of flame. Nearly every window had burned away, leaving shards of glass scattered across the ground.
Cold, eerie light seeped through the ruined walls of the dormitory building.
As night fell, the shadows beneath the branches contorted into grotesque shapes under the moonlight, as if countless pairs of eyes were silently watching Xiao Huai.
The entire campus was utterly different from the Ivy Girls’ School he remembered.
This was true hell: a deserted school reduced to ruins.
Where students’ laughter had once echoed, an abandoned haunted house now stood. Sinister moans drifted occasionally from its shattered windows.
The moment he stepped out of the dormitory building, the countdown on the system interface began.
There were only three rules. His doll could not be discovered, while the player himself could not be caught.
Caught.
That meant the player could be discovered. The ghosts were allowed to see him.
As long as he evaded capture, he could continue trying to fulfill the second rule.
Find Miss Hanako’s doll.
If his reasoning about this game was correct, Hanako was not the ghost. The real ghost was someone else.
Xiao Huai did not waste any effort hiding his own doll. He simply tucked it into the pocket of the jeans beneath his skirt.
It made no difference where he put this cursed substitute doll.
Besides, the most dangerous place might well be the safest.
A cold wind swept past, stirring broken branches and dead leaves. A stone held down a torn newspaper nearby.
Xiao Huai glanced over and caught sight of several front-page headlines.
[Psychiatric Patient…] [Arsonist…] [Attending Physician…]
He swept his gaze over the surroundings. Once he was certain no one was nearby, he approached and lifted the stone.
[A horrific fire has destroyed Ivy Girls’ School, tragically claiming the lives of more than three thousand students. The culprit behind the blaze was none other than Jiang Shuli, a patient from Jinyan Fifth Psychiatric Hospital.
Sources indicate that Jiang Shuli’s daughter, Hanako, had previously perished in a fire, while Jiang’s other sisters also lost their lives. This tragedy dealt a devastating blow to Jiang Shuli’s mental state and caused her to suffer a severe psychological breakdown.
Investigators suspect that overwhelming grief and despair over her daughter’s death drove Jiang Shuli to set fire to Ivy Girls’ School. In addition to catastrophic property damage, the blaze claimed the lives of more than three thousand students.
In response to the tragedy, the relevant Jinyan municipal authorities have taken emergency action. Jiang Shuli will be transferred to the hospital’s ward for severe patients, where she will receive more specialized psychological counseling and treatment.
This incident has profoundly shaken Jinyan society and sparked serious reflection on the treatment and secure management of psychiatric patients. We will continue to follow further developments and extend our deepest sympathies to the victims and their families…]
The newspaper was dated 1987.
Just then, the campus loudspeakers suddenly crackled.
The piercing broadcast rang across the empty campus.
“Attention, all students! Attention, all students! Hide-and-seek has begun. Anyone who catches the player Xiao Huai will receive a reward from the gods!”
“Attention, all students! Attention, all students! Hide-and-seek has begun. Anyone who catches the player Xiao Huai will receive a reward from the gods!”
The announcement repeated over and over.
Then came even shriller, more horrifying screams.
Dark shapes filled the campus. Xiao Huai glanced toward the nearest window and clearly saw a charred monster rise from the ground in an impossibly contorted posture.
She was tiny, definitely not a high school student.
Only when her mouth opened could he see that the inside remained white.
Xiao Huai’s pupils contracted. He swiftly changed position.
The most agonized screams came from the dormitory building. By comparison, the classroom building seemed much safer.
Xiao Huai ran inside it. The violent movement threatened to tear open the injury in his left hand.
He hid in a storage room, panting heavily.
Apparently, there was more than one ghost. There were over three thousand, comprising the entire student body that had died.
He had somehow turned a first-floor instance into a battle royale. His luck had truly reached an astonishing low.
But rather than dwell on his misfortune, he was far more interested in one feature of the corpses.
Because… the inside of their mouths had not been charred. They were white.
That proved one thing: they had already died (or at least lost the ability to move) before the fire burned them.
Many people who lost their lives in fires were not burned to death, but suffocated.
Flames released massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Smoke poured into the nostrils and choked the lungs.
The inside of their mouths could not possibly have remained white.
There had to be far more to the 1987 fire than the report revealed.
How had Jiang Shuli burned down an entire school by herself? Had she possessed an accomplice?
And was the killer even human?
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The crash exploded beside his ears. The monster was already charging toward him. Xiao Huai snatched up a dustpan from the storage room, flung open the door without hesitation, and smashed it outward.
The metallic clang of the dustpan striking the corpse echoed down the corridor. Xiao Huai turned and sprinted upstairs.
A mob of twisted monsters surged madly after him.
Fortunately, their corpses were incomplete. Those missing legs could not run as quickly as those merely missing arms.
Under the moonlight, he raced higher and higher. Sweat soaked his shirt, plastering the white T-shirt against his taut abdominal muscles.
Several drops clung to his long, thick eyelashes, slightly blurring his vision.
The bandage around his left hand had long since split open. Ignoring the blood seeping from the wound, he kept running at full speed.
No… something was wrong.
Even if the game wanted to erase a player, it should not resort to such a blatantly unfair method of forcing his death.
One person could never defeat more than three thousand ghosts.
Unless there was a safe room.
A safe room… Where could it be?
Xiao Huai fought to remain calm as he fled, his heart pounding from the exertion.
His brain had to keep working. He could not allow outside distractions to make him stupid.
The school rules. Think of the school rules.
School Rule Eight: [8. Please do not play with fire.]
Xiao Huai immediately opened the System Shop and searched until he found a lighter.
[Lighter price: 50. Current price: 500.]
The shop certainly knew how to exploit a crisis. But then he noticed that his balance had climbed from 66 to 790 Survival Coins.
He had not been paying attention to the Gods’ Livestream and had never checked his messages.
Apparently, however, he had been fortunate enough to receive sponsorship from the gods.
In the Gods’ Livestream, several gods leisurely propped up their chins as they watched Xiao Huai’s stream.
“This newcomer is rather good-looking. What a shame.”
“Poor child. Injured, yet still courting death for our entertainment. Why don’t we tip him a little?”
…