The taxi driver's behavior left
"Did this driver misunderstand something about me?"
The cooling mat he'd been tossed lay in the mud, quickly soaked through by the rain.
When Chen Ge had read the paranormal legends about Muyang Middle School on the campus forum, he hadn't found them particularly terrifying. But after the driver's little stunt, a chill ran down his spine and his resolve began to waver.
"The trial mission only requires survival—which means, in the eyes of the black phone, staying alive itself has become a challenge."
In the blink of an eye, the taxi had vanished around the bend. Chen Ge stood alone in the desolate wasteland wearing a raincoat, feeling as though he were the only person left in the entire world.
The rain grew heavier and heavier. Chen Ge tugged the hood of his raincoat down further, took out his flashlight, and followed the dirt road forward.
Dark clouds pressed low overhead, blocking out every trace of light. Chen Ge reached the few remaining buildings nearby, only to discover up close that they had been abandoned for a long time.
Rusty chains hung on the doors, and the window glass had long since shattered. Peering through the gaps, he could see piles of broken furniture and garbage inside, with the occasional unknown insect scurrying through the mess.
"Not a single living soul—is this place really that cursed?"
Before coming here, he had asked
With no one around to ask for directions, he could only rely on his memory and grope his way toward the more remote and desolate areas.
The rain fell steadily, the road was slick with mud, and bizarrely shaped trees lined both sides—some had grown so unchecked over the years that their branches reached across the dirt path.
"Muyang Middle School's old site was a crematorium. That place may not have been clean, but there definitely would've been access roads for vehicles. This path keeps getting narrower—vehicles would have trouble passing through. Did I go the wrong way?"
The rain showed no signs of letting up, and Chen Ge's pace grew slower and slower. "Getting lost would be a real problem. I'll walk to the end of this road, and if I still haven't found Muyang Middle School, I'll turn back and abandon this mission."
After walking for a full thirty minutes, he reached the end of the dirt road, where several overturned signs and a wooden fence lay in a heap.
"One side has moss growing on it—it looks like it's been here for years." Chen Ge propped the sign back up. The writing on it was almost completely illegible. He held his flashlight over it through the rain, scanning every inch. "Why does only one side have moss? The other side wasn't buried in the dirt either. Is it because of sun exposure, or did someone come here recently and move the signs and the fence?"
He paused and pulled out his phone to check the time. "Almost eight o'clock, and I still haven't found the mission site. The only good news is that my phone still has signal, so I don't have to worry about losing contact with the outside world."
On a rainy night, the sky was impossibly dark—the only source of light anywhere was Chen Ge's flashlight. "The signs and fence are both here, but what's stranger is that someone has recently moved these things. Very suspicious."
Chen Ge raised the wooden plank to sweep aside the brush ahead and walked another ten meters deeper. Finally, the scene before him began to change.
A row of broken wooden fence posts stood scattered among the trees, and behind the fence, several low, dilapidated buildings were sparsely arranged.
"This is Muyang Middle School?"
Compared to Xicheng Private Academy, this school looked far more wretched. Its total grounds were probably only a third the size of Xicheng Private's.
Chen Ge tossed aside the wooden plank in his hand, but he didn't let the small size put him at ease. Often, a smaller area wasn't necessarily a good thing—while there was less to explore, there was also less room to hide.
He climbed over the fence and officially entered Muyang Middle School.
One glance took in the entire campus—all of the school's buildings were visible.
Nearest to the gate was the teaching building. It appeared to have suffered a severe fire at some point—its exterior was scorched black, sections of wall had cracked, and it looked like it could collapse at any moment.
To the left of the teaching building was the dormitory. Perhaps because few students boarded here, it had only two stories and very few rooms in total. To the right was the office building, also just two stories, though from the outside it appeared to be the best-preserved structure of the bunch.
Behind the teaching building lay a bumpy, uneven sports field, flanked by two basketball hoops and several ping-pong tables.
That was the layout of Muyang Middle School—dilapidated and bare-bones. Despite its many paranormal legends, the school itself had absolutely nothing remarkable about it. Chen Ge even suspected that the real reason it had shut down wasn't paranormal activity at all—it simply hadn't been viable as a business.
Now that he had actually arrived, Chen Ge grew calm. Since he was here, he might as well make the best of it. He had always been quick to adjust his mindset.
"Muyang Middle School has four side missions: the pen spirit, the fifth stall in the bathroom, the deep well, and the sealed classroom. To unlock the scenario at one hundred percent completion, I can't afford to skip a single one of these four." During his previous trial mission, it was precisely because Chen Ge's mission completion had exceeded ninety percent that he had been rewarded with the hidden item—Wang Qi's missing person poster. And it was that hidden item that had helped him build initial rapport with Xiao Xiao and her family, earning their trust.
He understood all too well how important mission completion was, but it was easier said than done. Any single one of these four side missions was formidable enough to rival a nightmare-level task, let alone attempting them all in succession over the course of one night.
"It's not past midnight yet—the dead aren't at their most active hour. I'll scout all four locations first, and if any of them truly seem impossible, there's still time to bail." Chen Ge tucked the plush doll inside his coat, pulled out his hammer, and stepped into the teaching building.
The walls were pitch-black. Even after years, the scorch marks remained vividly clear.
"The entire building was burned—does that have anything to do with being built on the old crematorium site?" Chen Ge moved quietly, the black phone's mission briefing fresh in his mind. At the end of the hallway, there was a classroom sealed shut with official tape. No one had ever gone inside, but once night fell, the classroom was packed with people—heads upon heads, bustling with activity.
"Fan Yu's father suffered his fate because he entered that classroom. That classroom is very likely the source of every paranormal event at Muyang Middle School." The bizarre group photograph surfaced in Chen Ge's mind. Tonight, he might end up spending the entire night with those back-turned figures—creatures whose faces he couldn't even be sure existed.
All of the classrooms were locked, their doors and windows sealed tight. Chen Ge had to press himself against the windows and peer inside with his flashlight.
The first few classrooms showed nothing unusual. But when he reached the one at the very end of the hallway, Chen Ge suddenly noticed something strange.
The desks and chairs in this classroom were nearly perfectly intact—the great fire apparently hadn't reached this far. What struck Chen Ge as most unsettling was that on the desk right in the center of the room, there sat books, paper, and a pen, as though someone had been attending class here just recently.