Chapter 79: Entering Second Middle School (3600)

Dahe City, Second Middle School.

The heavy iron door was pushed open, and a tall, slender figure stepped into this deserted campus.

The campus, once full of youth, was now empty of people; there were no students on duty, and even after just a few days, the ground was covered with many fallen leaves.

Chen Shoushan wandered around the campus as if he were an alumnus who had been away for years returning to his alma mater.

During this time, Chen Shoushan did not enter any of the school's buildings, whether the teaching building or the dormitory building; instead, he observed the playground, paths, woods, and other areas without surveillance cameras.

There were no corpses, no bloodstains, no abnormalities at all, and even the barbarian's intuition had no reaction.

Therefore, the abnormal places should be the teaching building and the dormitory building, or rather inside the school's buildings; the open public areas are safe.

In the supernatural incident, Chen Shoushan naturally could not fully trust the surveillance footage, after all the campus is so large that there are always corners without cameras; what if someone also went missing there? This completely overturned Chen Shoushan's previous speculation.

While thinking and walking, Chen Shoushan soon arrived in front of Building No. 1; according to his investigation, two dorm rooms in that building had their occupants disappear from the very beginning.

Rooms 105 and 607—one on the first floor, the other on the sixth floor, far apart—but both have vanished.

The dormitory building is locked down to prevent anyone from sneaking in after students leave their rooms in the morning to steal, or even do something more terrifying.

Chen Shoushan had no key, but he possessed a burst of brute strength……

Clang!

The main door of Building No. 1 opened, and Chen Shoushan casually tossed the twisted iron lock aside, striding inside.

Just to the right upon entering the building was the empty dormitory office; the whole building looked clean, with no obvious spiderwebs or the like.

Directly ahead upon entering the dormitory building was a stairwell going up; to the left of the stairwell was a long hallway, with student dorms on both sides, from 101 to 118.

Furthermore, at the other end of the hallway there is another stairwell that leads upstairs.

In other words, the dormitory building has a stairwell at the far left and far right for students to go up and down, but the entire building has only one exit—the very door Chen Shoushan entered through.

Chen Shoushan headed toward the first-floor hallway to look for Dormitory Room 105; the rooms are arranged in order, so it wasn't hard to find.

The hallway was spacious; the sound of black leather shoes on the marble floor inevitably produced a crisp clatter, the pattering footsteps echoing in the corridor.

Along the way, some dorm rooms had their doors open, others closed; Chen Shoushan glanced briefly but did not enter—standard eight-person rooms, with quilts folded into squares on the beds, and the floors were clean.

Soon Chen Shoushan reached the door of Dormitory Room 105; it was closed, and from the outside it looked no different from any other dorm.

With his right hand he drew the Ghost Firewood Knife from his waist, at the same time checking his pocket to confirm the Ghost Candle was still there, then Chen Shoushan pushed the door open and entered.

This dorm was clearly not as clean as the others—slippers and sneakers lay scattered under the bed, along with a heap of used paper balls; the quilt on the bed wasn't folded into squares like in other rooms, and the air was filled with the distinctive odor of a boys' dorm.

After a few glances, Chen Shoushan roughly understood why this dorm smelled so bad: it was sealed tight, the balcony door and windows shut tight, preventing the smell from dissipating.

Looking at the floor littered with paper balls, Chen Shoushan furrowed his brow and used the Ghost Firewood Knife to scrape at the paper on the floor, barely clearing a walkable path.

After careful observation of this dorm, aside from being dirty, smelly, and a bit unpleasant, there was nothing else particularly notable.

Chen Shoushan didn't stay long in Dormitory Room 105, because its sanitary condition was dreadful; he couldn't tolerate it, so he went straight to Room 607 on the sixth floor.

And the door of Dormitory Room 607 was still closed; after pushing it open, the interior was somewhat better than 105—no paper balls on the floor, and the dorm didn't have a particularly foul smell.

After comparing Rooms 105 and 607 with the other surrounding dorms, Chen Shoushan immediately noticed the difference: compared to the surrounding dorms, the special feature of these two rooms was that the balcony windows and doors were both closed.

Because Second Middle School's dormitories have no air conditioning, most students, when sleeping at night, open the balcony door and windows to ventilate.

After all, a dorm housing eight boys is surely stuffy and hot; without ventilation, one simply cannot sleep.

Yet for some reason, in these two dorms the balcony door and windows were shut, and even the dorm door itself remained closed.

If the disappearance of the dorm students were due to the balcony, then how did the students in the classrooms disappear? Classrooms have no balconies.

Chen Shoushan stood in the sixth-floor hallway, lost in thought.

Recalling the scene from the classroom and observing the dorm situation before him, an idea gradually emerged.

The commonality between dorms and classrooms is that they are enclosed; for reasons unknown, Rooms 105 and 607 had their balcony windows and doors closed, forming a sealed space.

And in classrooms, because they have air conditioning, one instead closes the doors and windows to prevent the cold air from leaking out, unknowingly forming another sealed space.

The same goes for the teachers' office: when there is air conditioning, people instinctively close the doors and windows.

And Ye Feng, after entering the third office, never came out again once the office door was shut; this does not contradict Chen Shoushan's hypothesis, and at present there is no other evidence to prove him wrong.

The killing patterns of ferocious ghosts are myriad and bizarre; being in a mere enclosed space is not particularly strange.

And the way to verify it is also simple—just give it a try? Speculating a thousand times in one's head is useless compared to actually experimenting once, though it may cost a life.

But Chen Shoushan himself is now a Sequence Five, wielding the Ghost Firewood Knife and carrying the Ghost Candle; such equipment qualifies him to appear as a character in the later stages of the Mystic Resurgence.

Since we need to confirm the pattern, we naturally cannot test it inside Rooms 105 and 607, to avoid the possibility that these two rooms have special qualities; an experiment must ensure a single variable.

Quickly walking to the neighboring Dormitory Room 606, Chen Shoushan gripped the Ghost Firewood Knife in his right hand, while his left hand shut the balcony door and windows; nothing unexpected occurred during the process.

After closing the balcony door and windows, only the dormitory door remained open; if we then closed the dorm door, we could form a relatively sealed space.

Without much hesitation, Chen Shoushan grabbed the door handle and slowly shut the dorm door, while his right hand tightly gripped the knife, ready to chop down at any moment.

Chen Shoushan did not close the door too quickly, lest the killing pattern be triggered and the ferocious ghost appear too fast, giving him no chance to react.

Thud!

The dorm door closed, forming a relatively sealed space inside, which was also the campus killing pattern Chen Shoushan had guessed.

He raised the Ghost Firewood Knife high; should anything suddenly appear near him, he would mercilessly bring the knife down.

But in this cramped dorm, the silence was terrifying, with no movement or sound at all.

Chen Shoushan did not relax his vigilance, still holding the knife aloft—one second, two seconds…… over ten seconds passed before he doubtfully lowered the Ghost Firewood Knife in his hand.

Could it be that I guessed wrong? Could Rooms 105 and 607 have other special features that even this Extraordinary Person like me failed to notice?

Chen Shoushan couldn't help but doubt himself.

No way, because Extraordinary Persons on the Lawyer's Path have precise intuition for such rules; they generally wouldn't miss anything.

He scanned the interior of Dormitory Room 606 once more carefully, confirming there was no difference from before he entered.

«Could it be necessary to be in either Room 105 or Room 607? »

He opened the door of Dormitory Room 606, intending to repeat the same steps next door in Room 607; if that still didn't work, he'd have to think long-term.

Dormitory Rooms 606 and 607 are opposite each other; that is, as soon as Chen Shoushan steps out, he can see inside Room 607.

And just after walking out of Dormitory Room 606, Chen Shoushan's face turned grim, and he picked up the Ghost Firewood Knife he had just set down.

Because the door of Dormitory Room 607 opposite had closed……

Chen Shoushan clearly remembered that he had not closed the door when he left Dormitory Room 607, and the balcony inside the room was also closed, meaning it was equally impossible for the wind to have blown in and dried it.

A strong smell of blood almost seeped out from the crack of Dormitory Room 607's door, so even an ordinary person could clearly smell it, let alone Chen Shoushan.

Chen Shoushan's guess was correct; he had unknowingly entered, and this was no longer the original Building No. 1.

But Chen Shoushan felt little joy, for he had noticed nothing at all; if it weren't for the tightly shut Dormitory Room 607 and that overwhelmingly nauseating smell of blood, he might not have realized that Building No. 1 had changed.

At this moment, the sixth-floor corridor remained empty of people, and the bloody smell seemed to come only from Dormitory Room 607; none of the other rooms on the sixth floor emitted any blood odor.

Bearing the foul stench of blood in the air, Chen Shoushan gripped the Ghost Firewood Knife and headed toward Dormitory Room 607.

If Chen Shoushan were an ordinary person, he would surely want to stay as far away from Dormitory Room 607 as possible, but he had come to resolve the supernatural incident, so naturally he gravitated toward whatever was eerie.

The closer he got to Dormitory Room 607, the thicker the bloody smell in the air became; Chen Shoushan had no intention of pushing the door open with his hand, instead he gave it a light push with the Ghost Firewood Knife.

The door of Dormitory Room 607 was not bolted; a light push opened it, and as the door swung open, the gruesome scene inside the room appeared before Chen Shoushan's eyes.

A horrifying scarlet spread before Chen Shoushan's eyes; bright red blood had already covered the entire dormitory—walls, ceiling, even the shoes placed under the beds were not spared, all dyed scarlet.

From afar, one could see that on the five beds inside the dormitory lay several students, with only three beds empty.

Those lying on the beds were obviously dead, for no one could sleep in such a horrifying environment—certainly not Chen Shoushan himself!

Gazing at the vast amount of blood filling the dormitory, and then at the five motionless people on the beds, Chen Shoushan guessed that this ghost's method of killing was not of a mental nature……

"Are there three people who didn't violate the killing pattern, so they survived?"

In Second Middle School's dormitories, rooms are for eight people; at present only five corpses are visible, meaning at least three persons have not been attacked.

Chen Shoushan turned his head to look at the floor of the sixth-floor corridor, but found no footprints.

"Is it because those three people left beforehand, so they avoided the fierce ghost's attack?"

There was no blood at all on the sixth-floor corridor; given the situation in Dormitory Room 607, anyone walking out would surely have bloodstains on their shoes, yet the corridor was spotless.

This indicates that the three missing corpses had left the dormitory earlier, at the very least before the other five died, having departed from Dormitory 607.

Seeing blood everywhere inside the dormitory, Chen Shoushan still gave up the idea of entering; he was dirty……

Second Middle School has over three thousand students, with only a hundred-plus not missing; thus there are still nearly three thousand people in the school, or rather three thousand corpses.

There's no need to fixate on these five corpses…… In this way Chen Shoushan successfully let himself off the hook!

Owe 400

(End of chapter)