Chapter 58
Chapter 58
“Stop, stop, stop.”
Qiao Yu walked out of Shang Yan’s earshot with his phone and asked, “What’s wrong? Bored?”
The Painted-Skin Ghost sounded a little dejected. “Yeah. I put on such pretty makeup, but there’s no audience to appreciate it. It feels so pointless.”
“It does look pretty good,” Qiao Yu said, then added, “But makeup is so expensive. It’s more cost-effective to admire it yourself.”
With one sentence, he opened up a whole new worldview for the Painted-Skin Ghost. Her mood instantly improved, and she giggled nonstop on the other end.
Qiao Yu caught sight of Shang Yan not far away, craning his neck, and instinctively walked a little farther off.
Just then, the Painted-Skin Ghost saw the figure from behind over Qiao Yu’s shoulder, and her laughter abruptly stopped. “Baby Qiao Yu, why are you there? Did you violate the School Rules?”
Since she’d already asked, Qiao Yu didn’t hide it. He nodded. “For now, we’re trapped here. We don’t know how to get out.”
The Painted-Skin Ghost said, “Go to… bzzt… confinement… bzzt… two doors… bzzzt, bzzzt… Fuck! The Live Stream Room has no humanity.”
“I get it,” Qiao Yu said understandingly. It wasn’t the first or second day the Live Stream Room had been inhuman. When it came to preventing spoilers, it was truly peak-tier. “I appreciate the thought. I’ll look for it myself.”
After saying that, Qiao Yu was about to hang up, but the Painted-Skin Ghost stopped him from the other end. “Chat with me a little longer. I’m so bored. I’m really, really bored~”
“Fine. What do you want to talk about?”
“Life goals and ideals?”
Qiao Yu nodded. “Getting filthy rich. You?”
The Painted-Skin Ghost: “…Let’s talk about poetry and literature instead.”
That happened to fall right into Qiao Yu’s blind spot of knowledge. But before he could refuse, the Painted-Skin Ghost rattled off a few flowery classical lines, then finally said, “Right, have you heard of a poem by Lu You called Written While Drinking Under the Plum Blossoms?”
“…No.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, the Painted-Skin Ghost kept talking to herself. “There’s a line in it-‘Do not sigh, when you remove your kerchief, that your hair has turned to silk.’ Do you know what the next line is?… Bzzt…”
Qiao Yu: “…..”
How the hell was he supposed to know that??
Hearing that “short, slightly uncertain” busy tone, the Painted-Skin Ghost rolled her eyes and switched contexts. “Teacher will test you on another one: in Du Fu’s Two Poems on Qingming Festival, what comes after the line, ‘In silence, I moor the boat, tears falling from both eyes’?”
If Qiao Yu still didn’t understand what the Painted-Skin Ghost meant by now, he’d be an idiot. He hurriedly said, “Say that last one again, the plum blossom something…”
“Lu You’s… Beep, beep, beep-”
Unexpectedly, the phone screen suddenly went black.
[Live Assistant 9999999: You almost fooled me, you two sneaky bastards!]
Qiao Yu narrowed his eyes at the phone and decided it would be better to throw the question to a professional.
He immediately ran over to Shang Yan and asked without shame, “Do you know a poem by Lu You about plum blossoms?”
Shang Yan thought for a moment. “Song of Divination: Ode to the Plum Blossom?”
Qiao Yu shook his head. “Not that one.”
“Measures at Court: Plum Blossom?”
“Not that one either!”
“Quatrain on Plum Blossoms?”
“Ugh, no, no! Is your Project 985 diploma fake or what?”
Qiao Yu was gradually getting irritable.
Shang Yan: “…Why are you asking about this?”
“Because obviously, it has something to do with getting out of here.” Qiao Yu subconsciously rubbed his thumb over the center of his palm, then frowned and added uncertainly, “I think it was called… Despicable Plum Blossoms?”
-Despicable Plum Blossoms? Why not Shameless Plum Blossoms while you’re at it? I’m dying. Confirmed: the streamer has no culture~
-Sadako: The rain won’t fall forever, but your head will…
-Confirmed: Sister Sadako is super protective of her own cub~
Shang Yan lowered his head and thought for a long while, holding back his laughter, before finally saying, “Ahem. Written While Drinking Under the Plum Blossoms.”
“Yes, yes, yes, that’s the one. There’s a line in it about… hair turning into threads or something. How did it go again? I forgot.”
“Do not sigh when you take off your kerchief and find your hair turned to silk.”
Qiao Yu’s eyes lit up when he heard that. “What’s the next line?”
“In sixty years, ten thousand poems.”
“There’s also that one… Du Fu’s Two Poems on Qingming Festival. I know this one, I just can’t quite remember the lines. The Painted-Skin Ghost said something-something ‘two streams of tears.’ What’s the next line?”
“‘In silence, moored to my boat, two streams of tears fall; long, long I lie on my pillow, tracing empty words in the air with my left hand,'” Shang Yan recited, then frowned in confusion. “But the mood of those two lines doesn’t really fit our current situation, does it?”
Qiao Yu thought back to what the Painted-Skin Ghost had said at the time. “The ‘sixty’ probably means Detention Room No. 60? But what does ‘long, long I lie on my pillow, tracing empty words in the air with my left hand’ mean?”
Luo Yunmeng was just as lost listening from the side, and couldn’t help suggesting, “Why don’t we go take a look at Detention Room No. 60 first?”
“Works for me.” Qiao Yu nodded.
The three of them hurried back to Detention Room No. 60. Unlike the other Detention Room units, Detention Room No. 60 had a different layout. There was no mirror, and no room record board.
It was just an ordinary room. The only puzzling thing was that the wall facing the entrance had two doors in it. They were plain wooden doors, one on the left and one on the right.
Only then did Qiao Yu understand what the Painted-Skin Ghost’s poem meant.
Was it telling them to choose the door on the left?
With that thought, he reached out for the doorknob. Before he could turn it, he suddenly tilted his head and let out a soft “Huh?”
“What’s wrong?” Luo Yunmeng asked.
Qiao Yu didn’t answer. He let go of the doorknob and ran to the corner of the room, then reached toward the stack of cards lying there.
One, two, three…
Well, damn. There were actually three Review Card items here.
Seeing this, Luo Yunmeng’s expression grew complicated.
There were only ten Review Card items on the entire campus, and three of them were here!
And… the things had been right by her feet, yet she hadn’t even noticed them. That was honestly ridiculous.
“Do you have a Review Card?”
At his words, Luo Yunmeng looked at him, her eyes filled with both longing and emotion. “No.”
“Do you want a Review Card?”
“Yes.”
Qiao Yu took one out and held it over to her. “You and I were never destined to meet, but that’ll be eighteen hundred yuan, thank you.”
Luo Yunmeng: ??
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Are you buying or not? This is already a bargain-bin price at an eighty-two-percent discount. I’m only doing this because we’re acquaintances. Miss this deal, and there won’t be another.”
Luo Yunmeng stood there in a daze for quite a while before finally grinding out through clenched teeth, “…I’ll buy it.”
Money paid, goods delivered. Looking at the newly received 1,800 yuan, Qiao Yu’s mood improved considerably.
After taking the money, he cheerfully ran off to open the door. But the moment he pulled it open a crack, his vision went black. A powerful suction suddenly surged out from inside the door and actually dragged all three of them into the pitch-black space beyond.
When they opened their eyes again, the three of them were standing at the entrance to Class F.
The students inside were all sitting perfectly upright, heads lowered as if they were in self-study. Just as the three of them were about to sneak away, everyone in the classroom suddenly raised their heads in unison and looked over.
What was shocking was that their faces were covered in clotted patches of burns, making them look like walking corpses.
The only part of them that could still show emotion might have been their eyes, because those eyes were filled with… greed.
Qiao Yu couldn’t help taking a step back, uneasily covering his own neck.
Fuck.
Had the Painted-Skin Ghost tricked them?
“Run!”
Luo Yunmeng let out a howl and turned to bolt.
She was as fast as lightning.
Though she was a slender, petite girl, once she started running, she was no slower than Qiao Yu and Shang Yan with their long legs.
At that moment, those Class F Ghost enemies all roared and charged out of the classroom. The sound made Luo Yunmeng’s scalp go numb, and her two skinny legs moved as if they had been fitted with flaming wheels. In an instant, she shot half a meter farther ahead than the other two.
Qiao Yu: “…”