"Student ID in the left pocket, teacher's qualification certificate in the right—two plans, two preparations. Now all I need to do is wait and rebuild a new order on top of the ruins."
He clicked on the tape recorder and headed down the corridor with two backpacks in tow.
Li Bing seemed worried about him. After watching Chen Ge leave, he followed, trailing behind at a distance, hesitant, as though he wanted to say something to Chen Ge but was afraid of being accidentally hurt by those bullies.
Chen Ge walked forward along the corridor. He didn't know the way and was just wandering aimlessly.
The students along the long hallway gradually thinned out. The ones who remained all seemed to recognize him—they averted his gaze, pointed at his back, and whispered among themselves. They were clearly plotting something.
"Why haven't they made their move yet? I've already gone as far out of the way as I can."
Chen Ge was doing his absolute best to cooperate with those scoundrels, heading straight for whatever corner was the most desolate and dangerous.
To lure the bullies into attacking him, he even controlled his expression, putting on a show of someone who looked tough on the outside but was fragile within—calm on the surface, yet inwardly gripped by panic and anxiety.
The bullies were probably savoring the thrill of toying with their prey right now, playing their little game of cat and mouse.
"The ghost school behind the door is made up of several buildings connected together. The office buildings and the teachers' residences are concentrated on the east side, so relatively speaking, the west side is the most poorly managed—mostly empty laboratories and warehouses, with hardly any teachers or students going there."
Chen Ge's expression grew increasingly agitated, like a headless fly buzzing around the school, until he "accidentally" stumbled into the most "desolate" warehouse district of the ghost school.
The moment he stepped out of the eastern campus corridor, Li Bing turned and left. In the end, he still didn't have the courage to warn Chen Ge.
The empty corridor was devoid of anyone. A thin veil of blood-red mist wrapped around Chen Ge.
"They should be making their move soon, right? I've already run all the way out to this godforsaken place on my own." Listening to the soft static of the tape recorder, Chen Ge glanced out the window. Blood-red fog blanketed the world, and through the haze, he could just make out a blood-red sun hanging in the sky. It seemed to be composed entirely of negative emotions.
"I've never seen anything like this behind any other door."
The blood-red sun flickered in and out of view deep within the crimson mist, and the sight stirred something in Chen Ge's memory, bringing back a scene from long ago.
During that nightmare-level daily mission deep within the tunnel, Chen Ge had been trapped in an illusion where he saw himself being killed in the tunnel many years prior. He couldn't escape the past, and in the end, it was
At that time, within that vision of death, Zhang Ya had appeared like a blood-red sun.
"It's almost identical to the Zhang Ya I saw when I was lost. Could this blood-red sun in the school also be a powerful ghost?"
The sudden sound of footsteps cut off Chen Ge's thoughts.
He looked back. The doors that had been closed along both sides of the corridor were now being pushed open, and the surrounding blood mist had grown much thicker.
The footsteps drew steadily closer, the atmosphere growing more and more oppressive. There was even the sound of metal striking against the floor.