The footsteps were frantic, as if being chased by some savage beast. When
Zhu Jianing, who stood over six feet tall, came screaming out of the girls' dormitory, his face deathly pale. He had completely lost his senses, sprinting at full speed like a mad bull.
"What's going on? Judging by the direction he's running, he must have encountered something terrifying in the girls' dorm. But I don't remember anything particularly scary in there." Chen Ge hadn't even entered yet and Zhu Jianing was already on the verge of going mad. It gave Chen Ge the peculiar feeling that his opponent had collapsed before he'd even lifted a finger.
"Thought you weren't scared at all? You were so calm when you went in. Why are you running like a mad dog now?" A new scene had been triggered, and Chen Ge had no idea what the two of them had encountered. Playing it safe, he decided to flag down Zhu Jianing and get the full story.
Zhu Jianing had poured every ounce of his strength into fleeing the girls' dormitory. He hadn't even had a chance to catch his breath when the moment he slowed down, he spotted a figure flickering inside the last classroom on the corridor!
"The school uniform came alive?!"
That thought was the first thing that shot through his mind. He'd been sprinting at full speed just moments ago and hadn't gotten a clear look. But as he drew close to the classroom door, he suddenly realized a figure clad in blood-red clothing had just darted out of the room.
Zhu Jianing felt time slow to a crawl. His gaze froze on the figure's face—a composite face, assembled from all manner of twisted, cruel, and anguished expressions.
"I knew this classroom wasn't clean!" Unable to brake in time, Zhu Jianing slammed straight into the corridor wall. Pain or no pain, he planted both hands against the wall, pushed off, and bolted the other way!
Whether it was the full-speed sprint and the sudden stop-and-turn that scrambled his brain, or sheer terror that made his thoughts go fuzzy, Zhu Jianing charged headlong around the corner and straight into the bathroom.
"Catching a turtle in a jar?" Chen Ge was growing ever more curious—what on earth had this young man seen inside the girls' dorm?
"Wait, how come he's alone? Where did his companion run off to?"
After thinking it over, Chen Ge decided it was better to find Zhu Jianing and "ask" him directly. He touched the human-skin mask on his face and stepped into the bathroom.
Zhu Jianing only realized he'd run the wrong way after bursting into the bathroom, but there was no turning back now. He yanked open the door to the fourth stall and ducked inside.
He clamped a hand over his mouth. A "tough guy" brimming with muscle, he was crouched next to the squat toilet, heart pounding wildly, pupils contracted unnaturally small.
Zhu Jianing was truly terrified. During the pen-spirit game earlier, he had been sitting across from Fei Youliang. When Fei Youliang had bowed his head to analyze the results, Zhu Jianing had watched the pen spirit appear directly behind him—bit by agonizing bit.
The moment he recalled that woman's swollen, suffocating face, he felt like he couldn't breathe either.
"That was definitely not an actor! This haunted house is really haunted!" They had just finished searching the girls' dormitory, including under the beds, and they could confirm no one had been hiding inside. That dead woman had materialized out of thin air!
"It has to be a ghost!" The woman's face refused to leave Zhu Jianing's mind, becoming a shadow that haunted him. Even with his eyes closed, he could see that face flickering through his consciousness.
He was utterly helpless. His body was pressed flat against the bathroom wall, and all that muscle on his frame couldn't grant him even a shred of safety.
"Youliang is still in that room. The ghost was standing on his shoulders. How could something like that appear right in front of my eyes?" Zhu Jianing sucked in several deep breaths. He felt his brain was starting to go oxygen-deprived.
"I need to contact someone outside. There's something wrong with this haunted house." He tried to tell himself not to be afraid, but his arms kept trembling. He fumbled around in his backpack for a long time before finally pulling out his phone and dialing.
"Little Zhu? Why are you calling me at this hour? Did you finish recording the video?" On the other end came the voice of the short, middle-aged man.
"Brother Yuan, get in here and save me! There really are ghosts in this haunted house!" Zhu Jianing's voice was laced with the verge of tears. "I can't hold on anymore—I have no idea how many ghosts are out there right now."
"Ghosts in a haunted house? Isn't that perfectly normal?" The middle-aged man outside the haunted house didn't take it the slightest bit seriously.