Chapter 345: Peeking Through the Door Crack, I Saw

Inside the bedroom, the quiet carried a faint chill.

Cui Cui, who slept by the door, suddenly felt a cool breeze sneak into her quilt; she opened her eyes blearily and gazed dazedly at the crack by the door.

"Ah, did I forget to lock the door before bed?"

Cui Cui climbed down from the bed slowly, yawning as she went.

By the corridor light seeping through the door crack, she inadvertently glanced at the bed beside her and only then discovered Xiao Juan was not on the bed.

"Xiao Juan went out?"

Cui Cui opened the door lightly, poked her head out to look down the corridor, but saw no one.

This girls' dormitory had some years on it; the corridor paint was mottled and peeling, the lighting dim, and in the deep night it looked rather gloomy and frightening.

Especially with the long corridor, the tree shadows swaying through the window at the far end added a few more degrees of eeriness.

Cui Cui couldn't help but shiver and pulled her head back in.

When she looked toward the dormitory interior again, her whole person froze in place instantly.

The neighboring bed was empty, the opposite bed also empty, even the diagonally opposite bed was empty.

Xiao Juan is gone!

Feng Yuhuai is gone!

Zhang Liyou is gone too!

So the three of them don't sleep at night, all went out to play together, and didn't take me!

So I've been isolated?

Bullying!!!

Cui Cui was extraordinarily angry, but she was really too sleepy, so she still climbed back into the warm quilt and fell asleep again in a daze, only muttering in her sleep:

"Cui Cui, after I wake up tomorrow I'll settle accounts with you three."

Her mouth delivered harsh words to the air, but actually her heart softened and she left the door crack for the three, wrapped the quilt tighter around herself, curled up against the wall, and soon even breathing sounds came.

Outside the door, the cement steps of the stairs at the corridor end had been corroded by time into honeycomb pits; going down along the mottled stairs, the dormitory main gate was locked at night, the iron gate's padlock surface condensed with dark green rust spots.

The dormitory supervisor duty room curtains were tightly shut; the thin wooden door transmitted thunderous snoring sounds, drifting through the whole corridor with a rhythm.

Continuing inside were several dormitories long unoccupied, usually used by the dorm auntie as a storage room, piled with some tables, chairs, benches, bedding, and other miscellaneous items.

The room numbers on the doors were already blurred, looking like they'd been scratched by fingernails or scraped by a small knife, telling unknown stories.

Tonight, the second-to-last room, the one right against the corridor's public restroom, had its lock core pried open, revealing a slit; a mixed scent of camphor and mold drifted out from inside.

Since most girls' dormitories had been renovated, each dorm was equipped with independent restroom and bathing facilities, plus there weren't many students in the dorm building, so the corridor's public restroom was idle most of the time.

Right now, the public restroom mirror was veiled in a thin layer of water vapor; a certain stall continuously emitted the sobbing of a stuck flush valve.

The drain outlet was entangled with a few strands of gray-white hair; black-green liquid seeped from the tile cracks; several tile surfaces showed fine cracks, as if something was frantically scratching underneath the tiles, ready to burst out at any moment.

However, these eerie sounds did not reach Zhang Liyou's ears, because at this moment she was standing at the storage room door next door, all her focus piercing through the door crack to peek at the terrifying scene playing out inside.

She did not see Feng Yuhuai eat Xiao Juan, but she clearly saw, at Feng Yuhuai's shoulder, the dead Lu Yazhi's face growing out as if revived.

Immediately after, Xiao Juan's head also slowly emerged from the other side; left and right, they snuggled intimately against Feng Yuhuai's red-lipped, white-toothed, delicate and moving cheeks.

Although Lu Yazhi and Xiao Juan's faces were not bloody and mangled, but finely woven from yarn into simulated human faces, harmless like rag dolls, and both wearing warm and beautiful smiles.

But Zhang Liyou felt those two human faces were more heart-palpitating, more terrifying than rotting corpse skulls.

Zhang Liyou's face was pale as paper; one hand tightly gripped the door handle, the other hand pressed dead against her own mouth, not daring to make the slightest sound.

Her face was covered in fine cold sweat; those sweat beads silently gathered on her skin, slowly sliding down her chin covered in goosebumps.

Finally, a sweat bead fell to the ground under gravity.

Drip—

"Who?"

The sweet voice made one's blood run cold; the door was pulled open from inside instantly.

"No one? Did I hear wrong?"

Feng Yuhuai muttered to herself; her gaze paused briefly on the stairs at the corridor bend not far away, then lowered to glance at the water stain on the ground, then slowly paced toward the public restroom.

Feng Yuhuai scanned the spacious washbasin, walked over, very publicly spiritedly tightened the loose leaking faucet, then turned toward the stalls inside and asked softly:

"Excuse me, is anyone there?"

She asked very politely, voice sweet and kind.

At the stair bend, Zhang Liyou pressed dead against the wall, palm wiping away the sweat on her chin, whole body Qi and Blood circulating, operating the half-volume 【Turtle Breath Technique】 remnant she'd picked up at a street stall to the utmost.

Her heartbeat weakened, breathing slowed, body temperature plummeted, as if merged into one with the wall behind her.

Click—scritch—

Strange scratching sounds came from under the tiles.

Feng Yuhuai pushed open the stall doors one by one, confirming they were empty; her gaze finally fell gloomily on those tiles surfacing with cracks.

She reached out and grabbed; five fingers turned into threads, punching needle-eye holes in the tile surface, then suddenly lifted, and the whole tile obediently came up from the ground, revealing a vacuum hole underneath.

The hole mouth was as thick as an adult's waist, pitch black inside, bottom unseen, only faintly hearing gurgling water sounds from below, as if it connected to the city's underground drainage pipes.

Feng Yuhuai flipped her wrist, turned the tile in her hand over, and her pupils instantly contracted to pinpoints.

She saw sharp claw marks on the tile back; those traces were clearly left when the creature below dug soil, its fingernails accidentally scraping the tile.

The claw marks were dark green; some cracks stuck with semi-transparent keratin fragments, still carrying a bit of warmth, emitting a strange stench.

"Not like human fingernails, not like metal tools either, more like some wild beast's claws?"

A judgment rose in Feng Yuhuai's heart:

"What thing, actually dug its way to the girls' dormitory?"

Feng Yuhuai stood at the hole mouth pondering a while, then her mouth corners split into a sweet arc, turned and retrieved the remaining clothing and crushed phone from the storage room, threw them into the earth hole.

"Whatever you are, perfect to help me out, thank you!"

Feng Yuhuai cheerfully placed the ceramic tile back over the cave entrance, the smile on her face growing ever more radiant.

……….

End of Chapter