The middle-aged man clearly had no intention of answering Chen Ge's questions. In his eyes, Chen Ge was just a clueless new student who didn't know his place.
"You talk too much!"
The raised wooden chair came smashing down toward Chen Ge's shoulder. The middle-aged man didn't want to leave any obvious marks on Chen Ge. They were experienced—they knew exactly how to hit someone so it hurt the most while leaving no trace.
Crack!
The chair smashed into the corridor wall. Chen Ge had dodged it by a hair's breadth.
"You still dare to fight back?" The scars on the middle-aged man's face twisted. Behind him, several of his companions were also heading this way.
"When I came, I already told the teachers. They'll be here soon." Nobody believed a word Chen Ge said. His body was trembling, his gaze was unfocused—every detail told everyone present that he was lying and that he was terrified.
"Do you even believe what you're saying?" The middle-aged man dragged the chair and swung it at Chen Ge again. Chen Ge feinted backward, spotted an opening, and bolted deeper into the warehouse area.
The further in he went, the more desolate it became. No one had expected Chen Ge to run toward his own doom, so they reacted a beat too slow.
By the time they realized what was happening, Chen Ge had already sprinted several meters ahead.
"Look how scared this kid is—he can't even tell which direction he's going." The middle-aged man exchanged a glance with the other men who had come out of the warehouse. Bloodshot veins began to surface in their pupils.
"Quick, chase him! Don't let him get away!" A few of Chen Ge's classmates still hadn't grasped the situation. They were still thinking about teaching Chen Ge a lesson.
But the wandering ghosts from outside the school didn't move right away—it seemed deliberate, as if they wanted Chen Ge to run even further.
"No rush. He's not going anywhere." At the edge of the group, an old man licked his lips, swallowed, then held up a single finger toward the others. "I want one share. You divide the rest among yourselves."
"Old geezer, half a share is more than enough for you." The middle-aged man tossed the wooden chair in front of several students. "You lot stay here. It's dangerous deeper in the corridor—we don't know how many outsiders are hiding in there who don't belong to this school."
Just as Chen Ge was about to disappear from sight, those foreign monsters who didn't belong to the ghost school finally gave chase.
They deliberately kept their distance from Chen Ge, hoping he would run even further to make what came next more convenient for them. And that was exactly what Chen Ge wanted to see.
For reasons neither side fully understood, they had reached a strange unspoken agreement—one fleeing, the other pursuing. They ran past two long corridors before Chen Ge finally stopped of his own accord.
He pretended to be exhausted and ducked into a decrepit bathroom at the end of the corridor.
"The Door Opener of the Spiritual Medium's Ghost School first pushed open the door inside a bathroom. Now I've been forced into a bathroom again. Is this a coincidence, or some kind of heavenly fate?"
That Door Opener had been harmed in the last stall. This time, Chen Ge had also hidden in the last stall.
A corridor shrouded in blood mist. An abandoned campus. Not a soul in sight—only the sound of his own heartbeat and breathing.
Creak.
The door was pushed open. Footsteps appeared in his ears. The person's shoes seemed to be stepping through blood, mixed with a strange squelching sound.
"Did that child once go through something like this too?"
History was repeating itself—only this time, the victim was Chen Ge.
"Are you in here?"
A harsh male voice came from the bathroom entrance. The wandering ghosts from outside the school were playing with Chen Ge.
Creak…
The door of the first stall was slowly pushed open. The footsteps drew closer.
Chen Ge took a deep breath. The scene he had witnessed on the top floor of the teaching building surfaced in his mind. What he was experiencing now—it might all be what that child had endured before death.