The moment the three of them held their breath, light-black, ink-wash text simultaneously floated into everyone's field of vision:
【Second Ghost Story Location: Administration Building - The Knocking, Jumping Female Ghost】
【Check-in Quest:
1. After the game starts, players must stay alone in a room and are not allowed to group up. Then, the first player must enter the hallway and begin knocking on doors.
2. Upon hearing the knocking, the player inside the room must determine whether the one outside the door is a human or a ghost.
If the one outside is a teammate, you must open the door and follow them to knock on the next room's door.
If there is no one outside, you are safe.
If the one outside is a ghost, you must say through the door: “The person you are looking for is not here.”
3. Once the game begins, it cannot be stopped midway until dawn.
4. An incorrect identification or grouping up midway will result in a failed check-in.】
【This check-in quest requires at least four players.】
【Current number of players in the room: 3. Insufficient players, unable to start the quest.】
【Hint: The resentful spirit is already wandering the hallway. Please open the door with caution.】
...
The text floated quietly in the center of their vision, each word seeming as if it were dipped in poison.
A deathly silence filled the office.
Surprisingly, Deng Ziwen's stomach stopped hurting.
His adrenaline surged instantly, and all physiological urges were suppressed by sheer terror.
“At least four players?” His voice was hoarse. “We're doomed.”
There were only four living people left in the Instance, and they had no idea where the remaining solo player, Zhou Shengsheng, had gone.
If the next check-in quest also had a player limit, wouldn't they be trapped in this Instance forever?
Zhao Weilai's face was pale, her heart hammering wildly.
This quest was even more perilous than the one at the artificial lake.
At the artificial lake, there were at least clear rules—as long as you didn't look back and the candle didn't go out, you would be fine.
But what about this one?
How were they supposed to distinguish whether the one outside the door was a human or a ghost?
Would the ghost mimic human voices? Would it take on the appearance of their teammates?
If they misjudged and opened the door for a ghost, what would happen?
Furthermore, once the game started, it couldn't be stopped; they would have to endure until dawn.
...
“Four people... It takes four people to do the check-in...”
Zhao Weilai couldn't sit still either. She tiptoed to the door, her face white. “There are only three of us, so we can't complete the check-in. Then... what about that thing outside the door?”
Ding Feifan's legs felt a bit weak as well:
“The rules say 'the resentful spirit is already wandering the hallway,' which means even if we don't start the quest, it will still linger out there.”
He lowered his voice, his tone filled with panic. “If we don't open the door, will it force its way in?”
“I don't know.” Zhao Weilai bit her lip. “But the rules don't state what happens if we don't open the door.”
“If we don't open it, we should be fine, right?” Deng Ziwen's voice was still trembling. “Just like Weng Yang and the others—if we don't look and don't answer, it won't be able to get in?”
Just as he finished speaking, the knocking outside changed.
It was no longer a steady "thump-thump," but had turned into a grating "scraaaape—scraaaape—" sound.
It sounded as if someone were patiently scratching the wooden door, stroke by stroke, with their fingernails.
Sharp and minute, the sound bored straight into their ears, making their skin crawl.
Immediately after, a woman's voice rang out.
It was very soft, carrying a hint of a sob, sounding muffled as it filtered through the wooden door:
“Is anyone there?”
“Could you please open the door for me...”
“I dropped my things inside...”
“Teacher, Teacher, are you there? I don't want to delay my graduation.”
Her tone held a touch of helplessness, making her sound like an ordinary student.
Yet the three of them felt the hair on their bodies stand on end.
The voice was right against the door.
It was as if the woman outside had pressed her face flat against the door panel to speak.
What normal person would knock on a door like this?
Deng Ziwen could even picture the face outside: bloody and mangled, with a sunken skull and two bulging eyes peering inside through the gap in the door.
His stomach churned, and his urge to use the restroom was instantly frightened away by more than half.
“Don't talk, don't make a sound,” Zhao Weilai gestured for silence. “Hold the door. No matter what it says, ignore it. If we make it to dawn, it should leave.”
The three of them quickly worked together to push a nearby metal filing cabinet over, bracing it firmly against the back of the door.
Zhao Weilai then dragged over two office desks to wedge behind the filing cabinet.
Only after completing this did the three of them retreat to the innermost corner of the office.
The scratching of fingernails against the door continued, "scraaaape, scraaaape," growing louder and more frantic.
The woman's voice changed as well. It was no longer soft, but carried a hint of malice, as if she were deliberately dragging out her words.
“Open the door...”
“I know you're inside...”
“Open the door and let me in...”
“Teacher, I can't fail my class...”
The voice sounded near and then far, pressing against the door panel one moment and drifting to the window the next.
The calls to open the door and the window-tapping blended together, leaving the three of them completely unable to tell how many "things" were outside.
The temperature in the office plummeted, and the breath they exhaled turned into white mist.
The sound of fingernails scratching the door persisted all night.
...
The three of them barely managed to endure until dawn, when the sound finally vanished down the end of the hallway along with the white mist.
Only after Zhao Weilai made sure the outside was completely safe did she move away the desks and cabinet used to barricade the door.
—She had also noticed that her strength seemed much greater than before.
All three of them guessed that this was likely because she had awakened a Class.
Once it was light, Ding Feifan went from office to office looking for anything edible.
Deng Ziwen followed behind the two of them, the light completely gone from his eyes, looking just like a dead fish.
In the end, he hadn't been able to hold it any longer and had relieved himself right then and there.
Zhao Weilai stole a glance back at him. Seeing his utterly defeated expression, she quickly turned back, her shoulders shaking as she suppressed her laughter.
Ding Feifan comforted him in all seriousness, “It's fine. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures.
“Besides, if you hadn't wanted to open the door because of your stomachache, we wouldn't have discovered this check-in point that appeared in the dead of night. You could say it was a blessing in disguise.”
Deng Ziwen remained expressionless, looking as if his entire soul had been sucked out.
Social death was truly fatal.
...
According to Ding Feifan's deduction, the last check-in point should be the restroom of the old school building.
Following the white mist, the three of them crossed more than half of the campus and finally arrived.
As they drew near the old school building, a damp, musty odor mixed with the scent of decaying grass wafted from ahead.
Ding Feifan walked at the very front, clutching the broken mop handle in his hand as he parted the wild grass that grew taller than a person.
The dew on the grass leaves wet their pant legs, clinging to their skin with a chilly dampness.
“Is this it?” Zhao Weilai tried her best to remain optimistic. “I've never been here before.”
In the mist, the silhouette of a gray brick building was faintly visible.
It was four stories high, with large patches of plaster peeling off the exterior walls to reveal the red bricks beneath.
Slimy, dark-green moss crawled across half the wall, looking from a distance like irregular corpse spots.
The wild grass in front of the building grew rampantly, interspersed with broken glass, discarded plastic bottles, and the rotten legs of school desks and chairs.
Walking through the grass, they would occasionally hear a sharp crack underfoot.
...
“Yes, the old school building,” Ding Feifan's tone lightened slightly. “It used to be a dormitory for international exchange students, built back in the early 2000s.
“Later, the facilities aged terribly. The water pipes burst every few days, and there was no heating in the winter. The students complained numerous times.
“The university originally wanted to renovate it, but after calculating the costs, they found it too expensive, so it was left vacant. They planned to demolish it next year to build a campus history museum.”
“So the ghost stories circulating around campus—like a woman crying in the middle of the night, or red and green paper in the restrooms—are they all fake?”
Deng Ziwen pushed aside a clump of thorny vines and turned back to ask.
“Most of them are just wild rumors spread by students,” Ding Feifan shook his head. “At the very beginning, a female student got up in the middle of the night, tripped, cracked her head open, and bled a lot. Later, it got twisted into 'a red-clothed female ghost taking lives in the restroom.'
“Plus, this building is indeed isolated and uninhabited, so the rumors only grew wilder and wilder.”
—Though he said that, actually standing in front of the building still made the three of them feel a bit uneasy.
Even in broad daylight, the entire building was as silent as a tomb.
The wind blowing through the broken windows made a "whoosh-whoosh" sound, like someone sitting inside and weeping.
The two large, rust-stained iron doors were wrapped in thick iron chains, secured by a large padlock.
The keyhole was rusted shut; it looked like it had been sealed for years.
Paper seals were pasted over the chains, the official stamp on them long blurred.
“It's locked, we can't get in.” Deng Ziwen rattled the chains, producing a clanking sound.
“Let's check around the side. There should be a broken window.” Ding Feifan walked toward the west side of the building. “In the past, some graduate students used to sneak in to live here, so there must be a way in.”
The three of them walked west along the base of the wall.
The moss at the base of the wall was even thicker here, making it slippery underfoot. Zhao Weilai almost slipped, but fortunately, Deng Ziwen caught her.
Walking to the side, they indeed saw that a first-floor window had been pried open.
Most of the glass was shattered, and the remaining pieces were cracked like spiderwebs.
The window wasn't high, reaching just up to chest level.
“I'll go first.” Zhao Weilai tucked the mop handle behind her waist, braced her hands against the window frame, and vaulted inside. A thud sounded from within, followed by the crunch of something being stepped on.
“Are you okay?” Deng Ziwen leaned over the windowsill and asked.
“I'm fine, just stepped on a bottle,” her voice drifted out. “Climb up, I'll help you guys in.”
The two young men grabbed the window frame and carefully climbed in, while Zhao Weilai caught them from the inside.
The moment they entered, a heavy musty smell mixed with dust hit them, causing them to cough a couple of times.
The hallway was long and gray, its end lost in the thick fog and invisible to the eye.
On either side were rows of dorm rooms, most of their doors wide open, revealing bunk beds that were on the verge of falling apart.
The dust was thick, and spiderwebs hung from the ceiling, covered in dead bugs.
“It really is completely abandoned,” Deng Ziwen murmured softly.
“The restroom is at the western end,” Ding Feifan pointed. “There's a sign on the wall. I came here once before.”
The three of them walked down the hallway.
Their footsteps echoed behind them, "tap, tap, tap," as if someone else were following them.
The further west they went, the stranger the smell in the air became.
First was a faint stench of urine mixed with a damp moldy smell, followed by the odor of something rotting.
The further they advanced, the stronger the smell grew.
The three of them stopped in unison, all of them feeling a bit creeped out.
“Instructor Ding... this smell isn't right,” Zhao Weilai whispered.
Ding Feifan tried hard to reassure himself, “...It must be a dead rat. Yeah, old buildings have lots of rats. It's normal for one to die in a corner and rot.”
Though he said that, his face was miserable, and his smile looked worse than crying.
The restroom door was broken, hanging loosely from its hinges and leaving a crooked gap.
There were no lights inside.
The stench of decay was wafting out from one of the restroom stalls.
Deng Ziwen walked to the front and used the mop handle to gently nudge the restroom door open.
“Creak—”
The old wooden door let out a harsh groan and swung fully open.
A rancid stench mixed with the smell of urine hit them in the face, causing all three of them to take a step back and cover their noses.
“Oh my god... what is that smell...” Deng Ziwen almost threw up.
Zhao Weilai also covered her mouth, shining her phone's flashlight inside.
This was an old-fashioned communal restroom, not divided by gender. There was a row of five stalls, their wooden doors all slightly ajar.
The floor was concrete, uneven and full of potholes.
The corners and the edges of the squat toilets were crawling with cockroaches, forming a large, glistening black mass.
The five stalls were lined up from left to right.
The leftmost stall door was half-open, swaying slightly.
...
“Why isn't there a check-in prompt?” Zhao Weilai muttered, using the mop handle to press against the stall door and slowly push it open.
—Just as the door was pushed open a crack, an even stronger, putrid stench gushed out.
Thud!
A heavy object fell straight down from behind the stall door, falling right toward Zhao Weilai, who was standing at the very front.
Zhao Weilai instinctively dodged backward. Once she saw clearly what it was, she immediately let out a blood-curdling scream:
“Ahhh!!!”
The object slammed heavily onto the ground, making a dull thud.
It was a corpse.
It was a male corpse that had been completely skinned.
There was no skin on the entire face, revealing dark-red muscle tissue and white fascia.
His eyes bulged out without eyelids, a pair of turbid eyeballs staring dead ahead.
Where the nose should have been were two black holes, and his lips had been sliced off.
There was no skin on his body.
The skin had been completely peeled away.
The three of them let out the loudest screams they would ever produce in their entire lives.
...
...
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