Chapter 16: What the hell!

Completely unaware that the four players outside were already in a state of chaos, each worrying for themselves, Wu Wang was now feeling a bit bewildered.

"1001, 1002, 1003..."

Using the common medical method of timekeeping, Wu Wang estimated that he had been wandering in the dark room for about fifty minutes.

He had not found a ghost.

He had searched every corner of the room, yet there was no sign of those three guys from before.

The strangest thing was that this dark room was a truly empty existence; there was absolutely nothing inside.

But that shouldn't be right!

He had just seen those two cleaners toss Li Yang's corpse in, and according to their conversation, previous corpses were always processed here. The air should have been thick with the stench of rotting flesh.

But after entering, he couldn't find a single corpse!

"A ghost wall? Or is someone hiding in the dark room beforehand to process corpses? Or is it related to the so-called urban legends?" Wu Wang considered every possibility.

The fact that the dark room was used for waste disposal should be common knowledge among students; that wasn't an urban legend.

The urban legend must be something else.

Like what he was encountering now.

"Wu Wang... Wu Wang..."

Just as time was approaching the one-hour mark and Wu Wang was preparing to stand up and wait by the door for Teacher Yao to come collect him, a faint, ethereal, yet incredibly familiar voice drifted from behind him.

The person was calling his real name!

Wu Wang spun around abruptly.

A faint light source had appeared in the pitch-black room, as if someone were walking carefully while shielding a dying candle.

Under the orange glow of the candlelight, two long-lost faces looked toward him with expressions of confusion.

"Dad? Mom?"

Despite knowing it was impossible for his parents to appear in this dark room, Wu Wang's tone became strangely strained.

Hearing his response, the two stumbled toward him, their gait appearing somewhat grotesque.

The distance was close enough for Wu Wang to see their current forms clearly—

Half of his father's skull was missing, exposing the white brain matter that swayed with every step; his eyeballs hung outside his sockets, suspended only by two nerves and blood vessels, and his legs were twisted as if they had been wrung several times by some unseen force.

His mother was even more horrific; she was barely clinging to his father using only the strength of her arms, as her entire lower body was missing. Her blood-dripping intestines and a mass of internal organs trailed from her severed waist to the floor, leaving a bloody smear behind.

They walked right up to Wu Wang.

He did not flinch in the slightest.

He allowed them to take his hand.

And then, with a trembling voice, he spoke: "Why? Why didn't you come to be with us? Are you truly at peace, living your life by stepping on our corpses? Living in the house we left behind, eating the property we left behind... you're living such a happy life..."

The voices of the two elders were extremely raspy.

Every word seemed to possess a magical quality, forcing Wu Wang to incessantly relive that plane crash.

In the dim environment of the dark room, the whistling of wind, the panicked screams of passengers, and the soothing voices of flight attendants faintly echoed, though her own voice was also trembling.

The burnt, foul smell of exploding engines mixed with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth from when his seatbelt snapped and he crashed to the floor.

He was back again.

【Mental Strength: 34, 33, 32...】

On his status panel, his mental threshold was dropping at a rate of one point every ten seconds.

Some kind of force was affecting his mental state, which was why he could perceive these vivid memories so realistically.

"Are you going to abandon us again?" His mother shot him a look of resentment.

He smiled.

Lowering his head, he whispered, "Even if you are just a false illusion, I still want to say..."

"Mom, Dad, I miss you guys a lot."

With that, Wu Wang violently wrenched his hand free from theirs, lunged upward, and gripped the dagger in his hand.

He lightly pressed the tip of the blade against his temple.

At first, Wu Wang thought that even if one had to sacrifice certain important things, it shouldn't result in a student dying on the spot inside the dark room.

Now he understood.

It turned out the dark room wasn't just for disposing of trash.

It was for cleaning it up personally!

If any other student entered, a normal person's mental threshold wouldn't be as high as Wu Wang's; they would last at most a minute before ultimately choosing to follow their parents to hell in tears.

The students would die.

Or, they would have to choose to personally abandon them, completely erasing that part of their emotion and humanity under the influence of the eerie power.

The students would become learning machines.

It was a choice between two: either death, or living a life worse than death.

He smiled with a sense of release. "I choose death."

*Puchi—*

The blade sank entirely into his brain. Blood spurted from the wound in continuous streams as if it were free. Wu Wang's body went limp, and he collapsed to the floor, motionless.

In an instant, all the anomalies around him vanished without a trace. The room returned to pitch-black darkness, just as it had been before.

*Tap, tap, tap—*

Three sets of footsteps slowly approached.

The ghost hidden in the darkness looked down at the motionless Wu Wang, then expressionlessly bent over to grab his ankle, dragging him toward the door like a piece of trash.

The time until Teacher Yao came to collect him...

Oh, no, to claim the corpse.

One minute left.

————

However, what they didn't know was.

Teacher Yao had already arrived outside the dark room ahead of schedule.

At this moment, he was crouching on the ground, searching for something with a nervous expression, muttering to himself, "Where did I drop it... where did I drop it... time is almost up..."

His door card was missing.

After sending Wu Wang inside, Teacher Yao had returned to the classroom only to find he couldn't find the card to open the dark room door, which sent him into a panic.

The agreement was to lock the student in for one hour.

Regardless of the student's condition, if the door wasn't opened within five minutes after that hour, he would be in violation of school regulations!

That damn old beast would definitely throw him into the dark room to reflect on his actions!

*Creak—*

Suddenly, Teacher Yao, who was currently bent over searching through the weeds for his card, froze.

He looked up at the heavy iron door of the dark room in disbelief.

It had opened.

Damn it! It's haunted!

Why did it open by itself?

Before Teacher Yao could figure out what was happening, he saw Wu Wang, who had just gone in, lying beneath three pairs of blood-stained canvas shoes at the doorway.

He knew the kid was dead.

"Ahem... sorry everyone, I'll take him away now." Teacher Yao was, after all, an old hand at this.

In this situation, he absolutely could not let it be exposed that he hadn't opened the door himself.

He only needed to follow the usual procedure.

Carry the kid's corpse to the rooftop and throw him off to simulate a suicide by jumping.

Then, he would go to the Academic Affairs Office tonight to replace the door card. Nothing else would happen.

Nothing would happen...

"Please, my other self!"

At this tense moment, Wu Wang's eyes suddenly snapped open on the ground. His shadow lunged forward, grabbing the ankle of one of the ghosts.

He used all his strength to drag it toward the door!

【Shadow Combat Technique】

Why was Teacher Yao's card missing? Why did the dark room door suddenly open? Why was the grade sheet inside the podium stolen in the first place?

It was all thanks to the 【Shadow Combat Technique】!

No one would ever guard against something like a shadow.

When Wu Wang realized that Teacher Yao didn't dare enter the dark room and had said he would come to collect him in an hour, he had already figured it out.

When the door opened, it must have been the ghosts delivering him to the doorway.

To truly catch them, he had to act now!

Just in case, he had stolen the man's card while Teacher Yao turned to leave; if all else failed, he would just swipe the door open and run!

"Holy shit! Damn, it's haunted!"

Teacher Yao was so terrified that he fell backward onto the ground, cold sweat pouring down his forehead, his face pale.

Because he had seen the thing inside the dark room, and in his sudden lack of defense, he had actually been dragged out by Wu Wang.

It was a student whose head looked as if it had exploded like a watermelon. His school uniform was stained a dark crimson, and while there was no name tag on his chest, both Teacher Yao and Wu Wang recognized who he was.

Li Yang!

————

Meanwhile.

In the classroom, Baili Dao was listening to the lecture with utter boredom. With Qing He Yi Kan's reminder, he also tilted his head to observe his classmates, contemplating his next move.

His gaze occasionally swept over Li Yang's eerie, ghostly state, and he couldn't help but stare a little longer.

"Has this guy's head healed a bit? It seems the damage isn't as large as before?" Baili Dao noticed the change in Li Yang's body.

Before he could observe more closely.

A sudden mutation occurred.

*Bang—*

In the classroom, Li Yang's entire ghostly form exploded with a loud bang. Various unidentified liquids and visceral tissues flew everywhere, instantly staining the seats a bright crimson.

Being the closest and also tilting his head to look at him, Baili Dao was naturally the most unfortunate victim.

His entire complexion changed instantly.

He had Li Yang's liver resting on his head, a tongue stuck to his face, and in his arms, the two "beads" that had popped out of the explosion were staring blankly at his face.

"Fuck! It really is haunted!"

"The damn thing just exploded on the spot!?"

(End of Chapter)