As plank after plank was pried off, Stench's expression gradually shifted. His round, chubby head slowly turned, his tiny eyes—squeezed into slits by layers of fat—fixed unblinkingly on the corridor ahead.
The board-sealed corridor bore no resemblance to the normal hallways of the Ghost School. There was not a trace of blood fog inside. The walls, the cement floor, the scuff marks on the baseboards—everything looked exactly like the real world.
"Everyone who's lived in the Ghost School knows this is forbidden ground. They almost never come here, so it's perfectly normal for this corridor to have been left intact," Ying Hong explained in a quiet voice when she noticed the strange look in Chen Ge's eyes.
"The world beyond the doors is drenched in crimson—how could there be a scene that looks just like reality? This was definitely preserved intentionally by the school's will." After Chen Ge yanked down the last plank, blood fog began to seep outward. Everyone prepared to step inside, but Stench stayed rooted to the spot.
"Did you remember something?" Chen Ge reached out to pat Stench's shoulder, but his hand passed straight through the man's body. This good-natured, rotund figure was, strictly speaking, nothing more than a malodorous wisp of memory—fundamentally different from every other ghost.
Stench didn't answer. His round body drifted slowly toward the corridor. He moved at a crawl, as though afraid.
"Why would you feel fear? Because you don't want to see your true self? Or because you can't bear to face the memories buried in your heart?" Chen Ge didn't know how to comfort Stench. He didn't push him. If Stench showed outright resistance, he would immediately turn around and lead everyone away.
The corridor had no lights. Every window had been nailed shut with boards, completely isolating it from the rest of the school. The Ghost School's will seemed to despise outsiders entering, as though this was its private domain.
"I'd only ever heard teachers talk about this place. I never imagined it would look so ordinary inside." Ying Hong was visibly curious. She walked at the front but stopped after just a few steps. "This room is the dormitory I mentioned before. Every student who has stayed in it says they woke up in the middle of the night to find a person standing beside their bed. He stands with both feet on the floor, a long rope looped around his neck, his face tinged blue, staring at a particular bunk. If you make eye contact with him, you vanish without a trace."
"Is the door locked?" Chen Ge pressed his hand against it.
"Hey! Are you even listening to me? Give me some kind of reaction! I'm telling you something terrifying!" Ying Hong was clearly dissatisfied with Chen Ge's attitude. "I know you've got guts, but these forbidden zones are places the school's teachers absolutely forbid students from entering. The very first lesson every new student gets is learning where they can go and where they can't."
"The door's not locked. Xu Yin, stay close to me." Chen Ge completely ignored Ying Hong. While she was muttering to herself, he had already pushed the door open a crack.
"You really have no idea what it's like to die! Let me tell you—there are plenty of things in this world worse than death, so don't think that just because you're not afraid to die, that means—" Ying Hong had always manifested as Ying Bai's negative emotions. All the painful memories and cruel truths were hers to bear, which was how she had slowly become something of a monster. But after everything that had happened recently, she no longer hid anything in front of Chen Ge. Perhaps it was because she felt he was the same kind of person as her, and some instinct told her they were close.
Chen Ge had noticed the change in Ying Hong as well, but he hadn't given it much thought. Ying Hong was Li Xueying's negative memory. In his view, even if that were true, it should have been Ying Bai who felt more drawn to him—not Ying Hong. Unless the Nether Fetus had inherited the beautiful memories, leaving her as the one who bore all the pain alone.
But that, in his mind, was obviously impossible. So he simply chalked up Ying Hong's change in behavior to his own personal charisma.
With Xu Yin's assent, Chen Ge swung the dormitory door wide open. A faint musty smell drifted out.
After breathing in nothing but the stench of blood beyond the doors for so long, this moldy odor felt almost comforting.
"This place is a disaster."
The room was strewn with trash and worn clothing. Luggage and bedding were piled haphazardly everywhere, as though a typhoon had torn through it.
"Have you found anything?" The old principal had been trailing close to Chen Ge, seemingly worried he might do something reckless. "Maybe we should just leave. This is forbidden ground in the Ghost School—we really shouldn't be poking around."
"Give me a moment." Chen Ge stood in the center of the room, looking up at the ceiling.
The white-painted ceiling was studded with nails, each one trailing a strip of torn cloth. Fabric strips of various colors hung down, and gazing upward, it was as though the ceiling were a white ocean with those red strips serving as coral growing from the sea floor.
Chen Ge reached up and grasped one of the cloth strips, tugging gently. "These strips can't support a person's weight. There's no way they were used for hanging."
"I'd say they were meant to hold mosquito nets. How did you jump straight to hanging?" The old principal stood in the doorway. "The interior space in this dorm isn't large—there probably aren't any hidden secrets in here. The Ghost School's will protects this place simply because it holds special meaning for it."
"Boss, look at this." Bai Qiulin steadied the mirror with one hand while pointing with the other at the edge of the iron bed frame. Every upper bunk had a rope tied to its railing, and at the other end of each rope dangled a cloth doll with a name written on it and black hair wound around its body.
"The craftsmanship looks a lot like the doll Zhang Ya once gave me. Did Zhang Ya help these hanging students way back when?" There was no way to figure out the reason just from looking around the room. Chen Ge opened his backpack and pulled out his comic book. He decided to ask the standing hanged student directly.
In the haunted house, the "standing hanged person" usually hid inside an automaton Chen Ge had crafted especially for him. His strength was mediocre—no better than Stench's, really.
The pages flipped, and a gaunt, skeletal boy materialized in the center of the room. A vivid ligature mark encircled his neck, and his head sat at a grotesque angle, disjointed from his shoulder.
"You recognize this room, don't you?" Chen Ge asked softly. The confusion in the boy's eyes slowly faded. Like a startled cat, he suddenly lunged toward one particular bed, flinging aside the assorted clutter piled on it. Beneath the mattress, he found a black envelope. Written on it was a single line—Who's next?
The envelope was plump, stuffed full of something. The boy clutched it with both hands as fear and panic surged through him. He was terrified.
"Can I see that letter?" Chen Ge was genuinely curious about what the standing hanged student had experienced—why every bed in this entire dormitory had a cloth doll, apparently crafted by Zhang Ya's hand, dangling beside it.
The boy shook his head firmly. He tucked the black envelope away and retreated straight back into the comic book.
"That envelope looks like some kind of curse, but I've got nothing to be afraid of." If his employee wasn't willing to talk, Chen Ge wouldn't force the issue. He did one final sweep of the dormitory, then put everything back where it belonged and led the group deeper into the boys' dormitory.