Chen Ge had just put his phone away when Gao Ruxue called. He figured He Shan must have tipped her off.
"In such a rush?"
Chen Ge picked up the call, but before he could say a word, Gao Ruxue's hushed voice came through from the other end: "I'm not wearing earbuds, and my roommate's right there in the hallway. Don't talk too loud."
Gao Ruxue's situation didn't seem great. There was a hint of tension and unease in her tone.
"I just heard from He Shan that your roommate was possessed by a ghost?"
"I think it might be worse than possession. It feels like she's a completely different person."
"Did her habits or behavior change?"
"She acts the same as always, but I can tell—it's not her!" Gao Ruxue was emphatic. "Listen to me, this is connected to a legend at our school."
"There's a plaster statue with bleeding eyes in the basement of the old teaching building. The legend says if you find it at midnight, you can ask it one question."
"I have two roommates—Ma Ying and Liu Xianxian. That night, the two of them went out together."
"Why did they go looking for the statue? Just out of curiosity?" Chen Ge whispered.
"Liu Xianxian had fallen for a man she shouldn't have. She kept going back and forth, wrestling with whether she should get involved with him."
"She came from a single-parent family and was deeply insecure. Whenever someone was kind to her, she'd think they were the best person in the world. We all tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen."
"She was stubbornly convinced that this man loved her just as deeply, but that circumstances kept them apart. She wanted to make up her mind once and for all, but she was scared and indecisive, so she wanted to find the statue and ask whether the man truly loved her."
Chen Ge was a complete blank when it came to romance, and he had no idea what to say. "Then why did the other girl want to find the statue too?"
"Ma Ying has an older sister. Five years ago, her sister also got into Jiujiang Medical University, but during her second year, her sister went missing on the way back to campus. They still haven't found her to this day."
"She wanted to find out what happened to her sister. It had become an obsession for the whole family. After hearing the legend, she wanted to give it a try."
Halfway through Gao Ruxue's explanation, another woman's voice suddenly echoed from the hallway, seeming to urge her to hurry.
Gao Ruxue gave a quick acknowledgment and picked up her pace: "Those two insisted on going. Both of them were scaredy-cats, so they dragged me along with them."
"We went a week ago. We entered the basement of the old teaching building a little after eleven at night. There was a ton of junk piled up in there—finding the statue wasn't easy."
"On the first night, we searched most of the area and found nothing."
"On the second night, I thought they'd give up. But no—they dragged me back again."
"We'd been roommates for so long, I couldn't bring myself to refuse, so I went into the basement with them a second time."
"This time was different from the last. We hadn't gone far before I heard someone laughing."
"I asked my two roommates if they'd heard it, but both said they hadn't. Something felt off, so I forced the two of them out."
"I thought the whole thing would end there, but I never expected them to want to go back on the third night."
"That was the first time I realized something was wrong with my two roommates. I warned them that if they went again, I'd tell the dorm manager and campus security."