At nine-twenty in the evening, Chen Ge took a taxi to the Forensic Medicine School of Jiujiang Medical University. After getting out of the car, he found the school to be far more dilapidated than he had imagined.
"So quiet. What time is it? How is there not a single student visible on campus?"
Chen Ge paid the fare, slung his bag over his shoulder, and entered the campus. As he passed the security booth, he deliberately glanced at the guard, but the man didn't stop him.
"I knew I don't look like a bad person."
Rows of trees lined both sides of the road—the campus greenery was remarkably well maintained, but walking through it alone gave off an eerie, unsettling feeling.
"Where's the old teaching building? Every building here looks pretty run-down." Chen Ge pulled out his phone and called Gao Ruxue again. "I've arrived at your school. Where should I go to find you?"
"Keep walking straight in from the south gate. You'll see a cluster of old buildings that have been cordoned off—that's the old teaching building. Hurry over." Gao Ruxue's voice was barely above a whisper, as if she were hiding somewhere. "My roommates know I left. I can feel them following behind me. I think they've already spotted me."
"I'd strongly suggest you call the police right now. Where are you?"
"Behind the teaching building—I can't talk, I see them!"
Gao Ruxue hung up. Her panicked tone sent an involuntary shiver down Chen Ge's spine.
He looked up at the sky. Perhaps because rain was on the way, the night felt especially oppressive.
When he had first entered the campus gate, Chen Ge had still encountered a few people. But the deeper he walked, the fewer people he saw—until eventually, there was no one around at all.
"The Forensic Medicine School has a place this desolate?"
Chen Ge pulled out his phone and looked it up online. It turned out that the Forensic Medicine School had originally been part of Jiujiang Medical University, but after the university relocated to a new campus, only the Forensic Medicine School and one or two specialty programs remained on the old grounds.
With fewer people, the campus naturally felt vast and empty.
"The final prerequisite mission for the Psychic Ghost School is here?" Chen Ge wasn't planning to take on this mission just yet. Back at Living Coffin Village, he at least had Xu Yin to help. Now, with just him and Yan Danian, tackling a three-star scenario head-on would be nothing short of suicide.
"The moment anything feels off, retreat immediately." Chen Ge slipped the comic book into his pocket. "Yan Danian's third ability should be the key to his dominance over all the ghosts below Red Clothed rank. Once this busy period is over, it'd be best to help him fulfill his dream first."
The Black Phone had given Yan Danian an exceptionally high evaluation, which meant this ghost absolutely had the potential to be worth cultivating.
Lost in thought, Chen Ge had unknowingly gone deep into the campus and arrived at the place Gao Ruxue had described over the phone.
Two pitch-black buildings stood before him, a padlock hanging on the main gate.
Standing at the base and looking up, the rows of dark windows stared down like countless unblinking eyes.
"I'm here." Chen Ge held his phone to his ear.
"There's a storage room around the corner on the first floor—hurry over! They're looking for me!" Gao Ruxue kept her voice impossibly low, yet her desperation and terror were unmistakable.
A strange feeling spread through Chen Ge's chest. He furrowed his brow slightly. There was clearly nothing unusual about his surroundings, yet something about the whole scene felt deeply, inexplicably wrong.
"Are you this worried about Gao Ruxue's safety?" Chen Ge didn't hang up. He reached out and removed the lock hanging on the door.
He pulled open the teaching building's entrance and stepped inside. The entire building was pitch black, and the rows of classrooms with their doors shut looked more than a little unnerving.
"Since leaving Muyang High School and Xicheng Private Academy, I've rarely felt afraid in classrooms. But the moment I entered this building, my heart started racing. Is there something terrifying hidden inside? Could it be connected to the underground morgue mission?"
Chen Ge stopped at the doorway, phone pressed to his ear, ready to contact Gao Ruxue at any moment.
"First floor, around the corner—be really careful. My two roommates..."
Gao Ruxue suddenly went silent mid-sentence. From her end of the line came the faint sound of doors being pushed open, as if something was going from room to room, opening each one in turn.
The doors swung open, and the sound drew closer and closer to Gao Ruxue. Chen Ge's heart tightened along with hers, as though he were the one living through that terrifying scene.
"First floor, around the corner? And it goes underground from there?"
Chen Ge still hadn't moved, but the voice recorder inside his backpack chose that exact moment to activate on its own, the switch depressing with a soft click, emitting a burst of static hiss.