Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I felt a bit weary.

This dreamscape was like a set of Russian nesting dolls, layer upon layer. Even *Inception* wouldn’t dare film it this way.

I walked to the first room on the left. In the pitch-black darkness, a little girl sat alone on the floor beating a drum. She looked to be five or six years old, her twin pigtails swaying back and forth.

“My big sister hasn’t been able to speak since she was little. I think about her every single day-”

“Have you seen my sister? Can you help me find her?”

The little girl turned her head. Her pitch-black pupils filled her entire eye sockets, and the mallet she used to beat the drum was strikingly a length of human bone.

As she spoke, she raised the bone in her hand and swung it toward me with all her might.

I sidestepped to avoid it, turned, and ran.

I ran forward for a distance with the little girl chasing me relentlessly. I ducked into a room on the right, and the girl stopped in her tracks, looking at me with a hesitant expression.

“You come over here.”

I shook my head and beckoned her with a finger.

“I dare you to come over here-”

The little girl looked even more hesitant, biting her lower lip with a look of terror.

“I’m not coming in. I’m afraid of the old man inside.”

After saying that, she gripped the bone in her hand tightly and slowly crouched down against the wall.

Just as she sat on the floor, a massive, purplish-black tongue suddenly shot out from the doorway next door. With a single curl, the tongue dragged the little girl into the room.

The girl let out a scream, and the bone in her hand dropped to the floor.

A moment later, the sound of “crunching and grinding” chewing echoed from the pitch-black room.

I immediately lost my nerve.

Right then, a piercing friction sound, like fingernails scratching glass, came from behind me.

The hair on my back stood on end. I stiffened my body and slowly turned my head.

The lights flickered on. On the far wall of the room was a blackboard.

A white-haired old man stood before the blackboard, holding a piece of chalk. One look at what was on the wall made me catch my breath.

It was actually a calculus problem!

“Solve this problem, and I will let you leave this place.”

The old man waved his hand, and the door in front of me instantly vanished. I was surrounded on all sides by walls and blackboards.

No wonder the little girl said this place was terrifying. I never expected that during summer break, I would still be dominated by Advanced Mathematics.

Helplessly, I walked to the front of the blackboard and gripped the chalk. I stood there like a monk in deep meditation, staring at it for a long time.

A person’s energy is limited. I spent so much time exorcising demons and subduing monsters that my academic side was naturally a bit weak. On this semester’s final exam, I only scored a sixty in calculus-just barely passing.

Everyone knows what a sixty represents in university.

Seeing my miserable expression, the old man gave a light snort.

“When doing a problem, think more about the examiner’s intent.”

I squeezed the chalk in my hand. “His intent is for me to die.”

The old man’s face immediately darkened. Just as the situation was about to reach a breaking point, a surprised voice suddenly came from behind me.

“Qiao Moyu, what are you doing here?”

“Were you eaten by that monster too?”

Fang Qian walked in holding a book, looking at me with total surprise. I was stunned.

“It really is you! Aren’t you supposed to be in Sichuan? Why did you come here?”

Fang Qian walked up to me, took the chalk, and solved the calculus problem in a few quick strokes. Then, she wrote an even more difficult probability theory problem.

This time, it was the old man’s turn to stand before the blackboard in deep thought. Fang Qian pulled me aside to talk. After hearing her explain the sequence of events, I was shocked.

“What do you mean? The one inside Fang Lu’s body is another soul? One that came out of the ancient tomb?”

“That’s impossible. A soul carries a person’s memories. If it’s a soul from an ancient tomb, how could it know things about you and your sister from when you were children?”

Fang Qian lowered her head, her expression dejected.

“I don’t know either, but she definitely isn’t my sister. Not long after you left, she brought me to Tibet and then pushed me down that well. I’ve been trapped here ever since.”