"Hey, that student — you! What are you doing standing there? Sit down!" The middle-aged man glared at
"Dude, what are you trying to do?" whispered a round-faced chubby kid, sneaking a glance at Chen Ge. But Chen Ge didn't say a word — his eyes stayed locked on the woman at the podium. It was
"Xi Cheng Private Academy closed six years ago. Zhang Ya died a year before the closure. If you do the math, without that incident, a twenty-five-year-old version of her would look exactly like this."
Feeling Chen Ge's unwavering gaze, the female teacher at the podium smiled at him briefly before turning her attention to the other students.
Chen Ge took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He tucked his backpack under his desk and discreetly unzipped it to check the contents inside.
Everything else was exactly the same. The only exception was Zhang Ya's bedtime storybook, which had once again "slipped" out from the hidden compartment and lay on top of everything else.
The middle-aged man left, and Zhang Ya began her first lesson. Chen Ge, seated near the wall, quietly opened the storybook.
The blood-red cover concealing page after page of blank paper. All the gruesome, terrifying stories had vanished — the words written in blood had disappeared as though they had never existed at all.
"When I entered Fang Yu's door world, the words in the storybook seemed to vanish too. What exactly is the true purpose of this book? Why does every trace of blood writing disappear each time I step through a door? Where do they go?"
"The moment I pushed open the door, I felt as though I'd plunged into a sea of blood and nearly suffocated to death. Fortunately, a pair of hands caught me."
"I remember there was also a strange man's voice. It seemed to be asking why I'd come looking for him. Was that voice Yu Jian's?"
Chen Ge's thoughts were a tangled mess. He slumped forward onto the desk, his head resting on the very storybook that would kill any ordinary person on contact — a book that even Red-clothed ghosts feared.
"I need to sort through my thoughts properly. This door world is far too unique. The probability that Ming Tai is hiding here is extremely high."
He picked up a pen from the desk and began writing on a blank notebook: "The school and the buildings outside are all scenes from my memory. So far, two of the people who've appeared around me are figures who exist only in my memory. I have no impression of most of the other students, and the middle-aged man who brought Zhang Ya over is someone I'm seeing for the first time. From this, it's clear the world's broad framework is woven from my memories — but it also contains the memories of another person."
The memories of different people interwoven to form a shared world — Chen Ge had encountered a situation like this before. It was the Spiritual Medium's School.
Originally just an ordinary three-star location, the school had continuously absorbed students' memories, continuously merged its scenes, and ultimately transformed into a four-star one.
But the door world behind Yu Jian's door was different from the Spiritual Medium's School in one key respect: there was absolutely none of that sinister, oppressive atmosphere here. If Chen Ge hadn't remembered with perfect clarity that he had pushed open a door to enter, he might have assumed this was simply somewhere out in the real world.
Everything was far too real — identical to actual reality.
"I feel like I'm overlooking something important. With the limited clues I have, I can only work around Zhang Ya and the math class representative…" Chen Ge was carefully listing out the known facts in his notebook and planning his next move when he suddenly realized the classroom had gone silent. Every student was staring at him.
He slowly lowered the hand propping up his head and glanced to his side. A faint, delicate fragrance drifted to his nose.
"Pay attention in class." Zhang Ya stood behind him, tapping him lightly on the head with the book in her hand. Then she walked away.
Watching Zhang Ya's retreating figure, Chen Ge touched the spot where she had just tapped him. The woman before his eyes merged with the woman in his memories, and an indescribable feeling welled up in his heart.