Haunted

As the Carefree Empress, Chu Xiaoyao naturally had no fear of mere ghosts. Chu Xiaoyao wanted to tell Zhou You about her glorious achievements on the Hongmeng Continent. She glanced up at Old Gao, the homeroom teacher on the podium. It was evening self-study. If the two of them talked on the sly, they would easily be caught. Chu Xiaoyao had no choice but to pass Zhou You a note. Zhou You took the note. It was long, fully half a sheet of exam paper. "I, the illustrious Carefree Empress, struck the Nine Heavens upon the Hongmeng Continent and descended to roam the Nine Nethers. I wandered the Yellow Springs as if the land were empty. When my decrees went forth, none dared disobey!" "The likes of the Lord of the Hungry Ghost Path, the Sovereign of the Yellow Springs, and the Asura King all trembled at the sight of me, kowtowing in welcome, terrified of displeasing me." Chu Xiaoyao listed several mighty figures renowned across the Hongmeng Continent. Their titles alone made plain that they were great personages. "The land of the Nine Nethers swarms with fierce ghosts and is forbidden to the living. When I passed through, lotuses bloomed at every step, and golden light burst forth wherever I went. Ghosts and demons swept by that golden light all screamed and melted utterly away. How noble I am—those ghosts would suffer heaven's punishment merely for looking upon me..." Zhou You was drawn in by the supreme might the Carefree Empress displayed, and privately marveled that she was indeed worthy of being the female emperor of the highest cultivation on the Hongmeng Continent. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something beside him, and his heart stopped dead. At some point the homeroom teacher had come to stand next to him, head lowered, quietly watching Zhou You. The whole class had gone silent and turned to look at Zhou You, their eyes full of pity. Just now Chu Xiaoyao had been waiting gleefully for Zhou You to write a note praising her, and had not noticed the homeroom teacher coming over. By the time she noticed, it was already too late to warn him. Chu Xiaoyao and Zhou You were both tense, sweat beading on their foreheads. High school forbade romance. The two of them had no such feelings, but if the homeroom teacher mistook them for passing notes to get close, wouldn't they be made to sit apart from then on? The homeroom teacher unceremoniously picked up the note, frowned at it, and finally confiscated it. "No reading novels during self-study." "Oh." ... The old dormitory building. In front of the building stood a large sign. Written on it in red paint were the words "No Entry," especially eerie in the dark. A boy and a girl crept through the night. After making sure no one was around, they ignored the warning on the sign and slipped into the old dormitory building. They passed one empty dorm room after another, not daring to look in through the little windows, afraid something might appear. Hearts in their throats, they walked with extreme care. Fortunately, nothing happened. "Isn't this place haunted? Why did you bring me somewhere like this?" The girl looked around. It was so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat. She didn't know whether it was her imagination, but she felt a little cold. A yin wind blew in through the broken windows and lingered in the corridor, making the room-number plates creak. She didn't know why, but the moment she arrived she had begun to panic for no reason, feeling as if someone were watching her from the dark. The building was dim. By moonlight they could barely make out each other's silhouettes. The end of the corridor led into darkness, as if something terrifying were brewing there. "This is the only place the teachers don't patrol. Haunted? That's definitely a lie." The boy snorted. The more the surroundings were like this, the more he had to show confidence. Only then could a man's charm really show. "A-all right." The girl was still uneasy. The yin wind brushed past like countless soft, damp little hands stroking her, and goosebumps rose all over her body. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a dormitory door. Sweat broke out on the soles of her feet, and she clutched the boy's clothes tightly. "What's wrong?" The boy didn't understand. The girl didn't dare speak. She only pointed in one direction, signaling him to look. She was pointing at a dorm room. The dormitory doors were not fully sealed. Each had a small window so teachers could check the rooms. The boy saw a human figure at one door, as if clinging to the window and looking at them. "Who are you!" the boy shouted. His voice echoed down the corridor. No one answered. The figure was still pressed to the window. The boy was a little afraid too, but he couldn't show it in front of the girl. Holding her hand, he plucked up his courage and walked toward that room, his heart pounding hard. It was only three or four steps, yet to the boy it felt endlessly long. Even his lips had gone dry. He silently recited "there are no ghosts in the world" twice, gathered his courage, and met the figure's gaze through the little window. The girl hurriedly covered her eyes, too frightened to look. "It's nothing. Someone hung a school uniform on the door." Having seen the truth, the boy let out a breath. A school uniform hung on the dormitory door. Only the dim light and the angle had made it look like a person. A false alarm. Only then did the girl dare open her eyes. When she looked at the boy, her gaze held a little more feeling. They had just been through an adventure, the perfect moment for feelings to warm. The boy added fuel to the fire and, going with the moment, kissed her. Both closed their eyes and kissed with abandon, tongues slipping into each other's mouths. Suddenly the boy felt something wrong with the girl. The tongue didn't feel right. He opened his eyes in confusion and found that what he held was no longer the petite, lovely girl, but a gray rat as tall as a person. It walked upright, wearing a school uniform, right there in his arms, its whiskers perfectly clear. He pinched it on instinct. The rat fur pricked his hand. The big rat's whiskers twitched. It gazed at the boy with tender affection and tried to press into his arms. "Darling, why did you stop kissing?" "Ahh—" Frightened out of all control, the boy fled in a panic. The girl was badly startled by his reaction and couldn't understand why he had suddenly started shouting and running. "Don't leave me!" She had already been afraid, not daring to be alone in the pitch dark. Now she was so scared she didn't even have the strength to walk. Tears swam in her eyes, ready to spill at any moment. From the other end of the corridor came a strange scraping, as if someone were dragging something heavy this way. From the darkness came a rustling too, as if people were whispering. "Wh-who's there?" The girl forced herself to ask, and pressed herself against the wall. That gave her a faint sense of safety. The scraping grew louder, which meant the person in the dark was getting closer and closer. At last, the one dragging the heavy thing emerged from the shadows. When the girl saw clearly what that person looked like, enormous fear engulfed her, and her whole body trembled beyond her control. It was her boyfriend! Hadn't he fled out the entrance? Why had he appeared from deep in the corridor? The boy lay prone on the ground. Straining with both arms, he crawled over little by little, with great difficulty. The strange scraping was not her boyfriend dragging something heavy. It was clearly him dragging his own body! Lying on the ground, he reached a trembling hand toward the girl. "Save me... save me..." The girl had meant to pull him up, but once she got close she found that his lower body had been gnawed away by countless black crawling insects. His eye sockets were hollow, insects crawling in and out, and still more insects beyond counting were crawling along his arms toward her. The rustling just now had not been whispering at all. It was clearly the sound of insects crawling, pressing, and gnawing! "Ahh—" ... No. 2 High had originally been a boarding school. Word was that the old dormitory building was haunted and no one could live there, so the school had been changed to a day school. Evening self-study did not end until half past nine. Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao were full of spirit, livelier even than in the daytime, and the two of them slipped quietly out of the crowd leaving school. The old dormitory building lay in the innermost part of the school, far from the classroom building, and they still had to cross the athletic field. Zhou You grumbled inwardly that the designer had to be sick in the head, putting the dormitory and the classroom building so far apart. The field was empty, quiet enough to be a little frightening. There was only the sound of Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao stepping on the grass. They even felt a hint of coolness. The closer they got to the old dormitory building, the more obvious that coolness became. Moonlight spilled down. Branch shadows fell across the wall, swaying in the wind with a rustle, like ghosts baring fangs and brandishing claws. The two of them drew carefully near the old dormitory building, and heard screams from inside. A boy and a girl ran out of the building one after the other, faces shocked and panicked. Zhou You had meant to stop them and ask what had happened, but they gave him no time to open his mouth. They hurried past the two of them toward the classroom building, and their figures soon vanished into the darkness of the field. "How awful. They actually skipped class to come here." Chu Xiaoyao was indignant. The two of them had come to catch ghosts the moment evening self-study ended, yet this boy and girl had arrived even earlier. They must not have attended evening self-study at all, and skipped class to get here. Not studying properly. Truly awful. Zhou You didn't know the pair. They were students from another class. As the two of them drew near the old dormitory building, they felt a chill for no reason and actually shivered, utterly out of place amid the blazing summer. Thinking again of that young couple fleeing in a panic, he figured they had most likely run into a ghost. A quiet pleasure rose in Zhou You. They had come to the right place. "There really are ghosts." Chu Xiaoyao nodded with steady composure and delivered her judgment. Ignoring the wooden sign and its safety warning, they stepped through the entrance into the old dormitory building. The chill grew even more pronounced. It even seemed to reach faintly into their bones, a cold spreading from the inside out. Who knew how long the building had lain abandoned. Dust lay everywhere, and cobwebs covered the place. A couple of steps kicked up dust that choked the two of them into coughing. The walls were smeared with senseless ravings such as "Save me" and "Let me leave," the writing broken and intermittent. The light was too dim to see clearly. Zhou You kept feeling the words were a dark red, and couldn't help wondering—had they really been written in paint? "Dating even under conditions like these. Those two just now really had it hard." Zhou You shook his head. Look what the school had driven a young couple to, forced to sneak off for a tryst in a place like this. Zhou You looked around the pitch-black corridor and couldn't see a thing. He felt they had come in too much of a rush. They ought to have brought a compass, black dog's blood, a big rooster, or something of the sort. At the very least, a flashlight. Nuomi watched the two of them with keen interest, drifting back and forth, circling them, making faces, and secretly blowing a breath at Zhou You's neck. "Whoo~" Zhou You clapped a hand over his neck and turned back on alert. He saw nothing, and a blank look crossed his face. Nuomi covered her mouth and laughed. Even while she laughed, neither Zhou You nor Chu Xiaoyao sensed her presence in the slightest. She had been scared to death. So those words just now had been nothing but bluster. They were clearly right in front of her, yet neither had noticed her at all. Were these another two students here to explore? From Nuomi's experience as a ghost, the people who came to the old dormitory building could roughly be divided into three kinds. One kind was young couples coming for a secret tryst. One kind was reckless students coming to explore. And one kind came specially to drive out ghosts. Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao had none of the gear. In their school uniforms, craning their necks and peering about, they were undoubtedly the second kind. "How should I scare them this time?" Nuomi floated in the air, circling the two of them, thinking over what trick to use. These two looked fairly bold. The move she had just used on the young couple might not work. Nuomi had rich experience at scaring people. Those she had frightened off were beyond counting. The greatest taboo in a scare was failing to frighten someone in a single go. If the first attempt failed, the other person would be mentally prepared, and it would be even harder to scare them. "Awoo, awoo~" Nuomi struck a fierce, threatening pose in front of Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao. The two of them noticed nothing at all.