Chapter 18: Ghost School on the Heights

Rustle, rustle—

The sound of students moving through the corridor drifted over, but there was no conversation to be heard—nearly every one of them was hugging a book, studying intently.

Every now and then some poor sap would trip because he hadn't watched where he was going, but the people around wouldn't pay him any attention, and even he himself would just scramble right back up to chase after the book that had fallen to the floor.

It was now lunchtime.

A dense, packed throng of students crammed the corridors, stairwells, and the plaza leading to the cafeteria.

The atmosphere was still so oppressive it was hard to breathe.

"Are we really not going to end up with depression in five days? I'm already getting a bit irritable." Tu Tu Xing Sun lowered his voice as he spoke to Bai Li Dao beside him.

They didn't even dare speak too loudly.

Although the students around them paid no attention to anyone else, with He Yikan's lesson fresh in mind, they couldn't bring themselves to treat these seemingly harmless students as normal people anymore.

Some kind of urban legend was mixed in among them!

Any student they brushed past could erupt at any moment and devour them.

Most critically, they didn't even know what condition triggered the urban legend.

"You think the generous rewards of a targeted instance just fall from the sky like free flatbread? Of course the difficulty scales up accordingly." Bai Li Dao sighed.

The base reward alone was a piece of common-grade equipment.

Equipment was inherently rarer than ordinary items and the like, and the key point was that the rewards could stack, with no upper limit set.

In other words, theoretically they had a shot at epic- or even legendary-grade equipment!

You have to understand that out in the real world, even the most worthless common-grade equipment would go up for auction starting at a hundred thousand, and anything in slightly better condition could fetch a million.

For ordinary players.

Getting their hands on a single piece of common-grade equipment meant a long stretch without worry about food or clothing.

Same old saying—the Spirit Calamity Game is very fair.

Instance difficulty and reward generosity are absolutely proportional.

"Shi Gandang's side should be fine, right? Him staying in the infirmary to look after He Yikan—won't that actually break a school rule?" Bai Li Dao was more worried about the teammate on the other end.

They bought their food and sat down at a table.

Looking up, they could see clocks hung all around the cafeteria, and every second the noisy tick-tick of them could be heard.

They still hadn't made any progress.

Tu Tu Xing Sun shoveled food into his mouth and answered, words garbled: "What can we do about it? You gonna drag him away? Give it up, the lovebirds are busy being all lovey-dovey—us finding clues fast is the real way to go."

Had to admit, this ghost school's food was really not bad.

After all, given that suicidal study style, if nutrition couldn't keep up, just the late nights and long-term mental strain causing anemia alone could probably drop-dead plenty of students.

This wasn't the ghost school's mercy.

It simply figured that if nutrition problems affected studying, the loss would far outweigh the gain.

"The problem is this place—the black room can't be accessed for now, the art building can't be found anywhere, and as for the homeroom teacher's secret…"

At this point, Bai Li Dao's expression turned a little odd.

Some unpleasant things had occurred to him.

He then sighed and said: "Didn't Shi Gandang say the principal only trusts the homeroom teachers of Class 7 and Class 1? He's stuck in the infirmary now and can't get away, so me, being in Class 1, can only go approach homeroom teacher Yao Qing."

"But the moment he came back he was like he'd eaten dynamite. Before I could even say anything, he pointed at me—looking like a mess thanks to Liu Yang's explosion—and tore into me, telling me to go scrub myself spotless in the bathroom before I could set foot in the classroom."

"Bro, it's like I've been hexed—I've done nothing and every NPC is out to get me."

Bai Li Dao stretched and was utterly helpless.

God knew what that Teacher Yao had taken wrong, but after one trip out his temper had turned so explosive.

Liu Yang too—without a word he just blew up on the spot and got Bai Li Dao stuck scrubbing himself in the bathroom for ages.

Thud—

The two were chatting and didn't notice a student carrying a finished tray walking past behind them; Bai Li Dao's stretch just happened to bump into him.

The tray clattered to the floor.

"Oh, sorry, let me help you clean up."

Bai Li Dao tossed off an apology and bent down to help pick up the tray and utensils and whatnot.

But the instant he leaned over.

A chill shot up his spine straight into the top of his skull.

As a veteran who had cleared several instances and reached Lv6, Bai Li Dao knew exactly what that instinct meant, and his whole body instinctively dodged sideways.

Hiss—

His reaction had already been fast enough.

Even Sun Xingzhe sitting directly across hadn't been able to see what had happened before Bai Li Dao had already dodged back over three meters.

Yet he was still clutching his lower back, his face turning extremely ugly, his lips going pale.

A large hole had been torn in his school uniform, blood pouring nonstop from the wound on his lower back; the vivid red drops on the spotlessly white floor were especially jarring.

Almost…

He'd almost been cut clean in half at the waist!

"What the hell is that thing? Is it the urban-legend ghost He Yikan mentioned?" Tu Tu Xing Sun also quickly moved in to cover him.

The student whose tray had been knocked over just now had his skin tear open in the blink of an eye, sprouting several blue tentacles, and from his chest cavity a ghost hand clutching a utility knife poked out—a perfect, terrifying vengeful ghost.

It was that utility knife that had effortlessly pierced Bai Li Dao's lower back.

The eeriest part was that none of the students eating around them looked up at the horrifying vengeful ghost.

They kept chewing their food, eyes unblinkingly fixed on the various exercise books in their hands.

"The color… you have his color… where did you send him…"

The fierce ghost mumbled something indistinctly from its mouth.

Before the two could figure out what it meant, the thing suddenly roared and lashed its tentacles as it charged at them.

Chen Baili gritted his teeth, pulled a band-aid from his pocket, and stuck it over the savage wound on his lower back.

That nearly three-finger-wide wound actually healed at a speed visible to the naked eye beneath this tiny band-aid!

Clearly, this was a prop.

"Run! Head for the homeroom teacher's office in the teaching building!" Chen Baili decided on the spot.

Trading blows head-on was obviously stupid.

Everyone had seen with their own eyes what had become of He Yikan.

The best method was definitely to find the homeroom teacher — the man certainly wouldn't let this ghost story run wild and kill them all.

After all, their current identity was that of students.

Moreover, students who had never broken school rules and whose grades could still be considered decent.

In a certain sense, Gaoshan Ghost School heavily favored students with excellent grades.

Chen Baili had also seen this point from Teacher Yao's attitude toward Wei Wang Ren — even though her words sounded threatening and seemingly full of disgust.

In reality, hadn't she still let Wei Wang Ren go out to the restroom, even giving him plenty of time to wander and explore?

The reason was simple — he was first in the whole class.

"Crash! Crash!"

Various dining tables and chairs were knocked over by the tentacled fierce ghost chasing them; soups and liquids all spilled across the floor, and several innocent students even had their necks slashed by the ghost hand gripping the utility knife.

"Shit! This thing is contagious too!" Tu Tu Xing Sun glanced back while fleeing and couldn't help cursing.

Because he saw those students who had been caught in the slash, whose necks had broken and who should have been dead, stand back up.

Their skin also began to tear.

Then tentacles of every color — red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple — burst out from within their bodies.

The once merely quiet-to-oppressive atmosphere vanished completely, replaced by a horrifying hellscape of demons running rampant.

"Now this really is Gaoshan Ghost School…"