The moment Chu Xunsheng left the room, the system popped right out.
Xiao Chu, this is bad! Jiang Zhou looks like he is about to die!
Jiang Zhou? Wasn’t he completely fine the day before yesterday?
Chu Xunsheng frowned, “What is going on?”
Having zero clues either, the system could only project Jiang Zhou’s coordinates for him. Man and system rapidly made their way toward an abandoned, gloomy, half-built concrete building.
Pale moonlight poured down, and a chilling wind howled through the structure, adding a thick layer of horror to the atmosphere.
The windows of the building were hollow, pitch-black voids, save for a single doorway that cast a faint, flickering, dim light. Shadows seemed to shift within, making one’s entire body shudder with fear and trepidation.
The cowardly system tugged at Chu Xunsheng’s sleeve, “The malevolent aura here is so heavy.”
Soothing it with a reassuring pat, Chu Xunsheng held his breath and walked forward slowly.
As he gently pulled on the heavy metal gate, it immediately let out a groaning creak that cut sharply through the empty, wild surroundings, sounding strangely like a woman’s eerie giggling.
Man and system froze in unison at the sound, but still bit the bullet and stepped inside. Piles of miscellaneous debris greeted their eyes, blocking the path ahead.
Circling around the clutter, the layout of the entire building came into clear view. The stairwell lacked handrails and was exceptionally steep. Chu Xunsheng turned on his flashlight to illuminate the way forward and, after a brief moment of thought, had the system conjure up a knife for him.
The dust was thick. Suppressing his urge to cough, he cautiously ascended the stairs.
The system indicated that Jiang Zhou was on the third floor.
Reaching the third floor without incident, Chu Xunsheng was about to step further when something suddenly materialized directly in front of him, stopping just a hair’s breadth from the tip of his nose.
Caught completely off guard, Chu Xunsheng took a step back. However, the staircase had no handrail, and he almost tumbled over the edge. Fortunately, his reflexes were swift enough for him to twist his body, though he still tumbled down a few steps of the flight.
His head slammed hard against the floor, and the flashlight was accidentally clicked off by the impact.
Struggling to force his eyes open, Chu Xunsheng clicked the flashlight back on.
A pale, ghastly face appeared right before his eyes, staring fixedly at him from a distance of mere inches!
Wasn’t this an inspirational campus novel? How did it turn into a supernatural horror story?
The system was trembling too hard to answer his questions, so Chu Xunsheng simply straightened his posture and shone the flashlight over the face on the floor.
Chen Ji?
This did not match the plot progression at all.
Gently closing Chen Ji’s unblinking eyes, Chu Xunsheng shone the beam ahead of him.
The corridor was shrouded in deep gloom and entirely empty, and even the spot where he had just fallen bore no trace of anything.
A fierce gust of wind tore through the hallway ahead, as if something was about to sweep outward in an instant.
Sweeping his light toward the dark recesses, a blur of an unidentifiable entity charged straight at him at breakneck speed!
In the nick of time, Chu Xunsheng hurled himself into an adjacent room and slammed the door shut, locking it instantly.
A furious barrage of pounding battered the door, sounding like the desperate, frustrated roars of a malevolent spirit.
Cracks began to spiderweb across the wood, suggesting the door could not hold much longer.
The room was completely bare, furnished with only a single wardrobe and a bed. The window stood wide open, though there was no support structure or ledge below it.
After a calm moment of deliberation, Chu Xunsheng figured the wardrobe looked like an ideal hiding spot, but that thing would likely check the wardrobe first upon breaking in. Hiding under the bed instead would allow him to seize the opportunity to bolt for the door while it searched the wardrobe.
Having made up his mind, he immediately crawled underneath the bed.
Such terrifying supernatural techniques strongly resembled the abilities used by the evil spirit residing within the protagonist’s pendant during the later stages of the plot.
Pondering this, Chu Xunsheng asked the system how the protagonist had dealt with that evil spirit.
The system pulled out the book to flip through the pages, Um, this evil spirit walks upside down with its head facing the floor, and the protagonist…
Wait, what? Head facing the floor?
Chu Xunsheng snapped his head upward, locking eyes with a bleeding, bulging-eyed skull hanging upside down right above him.
Aaaaaah!
The system shrieked in absolute terror. Chu Xunsheng, equally frightened out of his wits, hurled the knife he was holding straight at it and squeezed his eyes shut, preparing to meet his maker.
A moment later, the system poked him timidly, “Xiao Chu, you are amazing! You can actually think so calmly in a crisis! The protagonist hid under the bed and stabbed it right in the eyeball the moment it walked in!”
Slowly opening his eyes, Chu Xunsheng saw that the space was indeed empty once more, leaving only the battered door swinging in the draft and a puddle of unknown black fluid.
Accepting the system’s flattery with a sheepish grin, he crawled out from under the bed.
Composing himself, Chu Xunsheng recalled the direction of the single illuminated room he had spotted from the outside earlier, and headed that way.
Meanwhile, inside that room.
A blood-soaked figure struggled to raise his head, using a sword for support as he forced himself onto a single knee, utterly drained of any remaining strength.
“You madman,” he rasped intermittently, “If Teacher Chu ever finds out you are practicing universally despised dark arts, he will surely!”
Before he could finish, the person standing before him grabbed him by the throat, cutting off any further sound.
“Teacher Chu will never find out. Just be a good, obedient wandering ghost and watch from the sidelines as Teacher Chu and I live happily ever after!” Yuan Du said with a vicious grin.
Jiang Zhou sneered weakly, “You think a lowlife like you can win Teacher Chu’s affection?”
With death staring him in the face, Jiang Zhou refused to back down. Yuan Du tightened his grip in a surge of rage. At that moment, the evil spirit drifted over, asking with an eerie, gloomy tone,
“Someone seems to have come in. Shall I get rid of them for you?”
Yuan Du nodded carelessly, “Do as you like.”
Turning back to look at the pain-racked Jiang Zhou, the corners of his mouth curved upward, “When the two of you were stepping all over me, I am sure you never imagined today, did you?”
Gathering his remaining strength, Jiang Zhou spat, “You will always be a trampled piece of trash. Teacher Chu will see through you eventually.”
Furious, Yuan Du grabbed Jiang Zhou by the collar and hauled him up. Just as he was about to speak, the evil spirit rushed over clutching its face and wailed, “That intruder is terrifying! They somehow knew my only weak spot, and now I am completely blind. What do we do?”
Curse-spewing in anger, Yuan Du snapped, “Useless trash!” before violently dropping Jiang Zhou back onto the floor, “I will handle it myself.”
Back in the hallway, Chu Xunsheng was navigating toward the room of his impression when a faint beam of light flickered from the window ahead.
He crept forward, hugging the base of the wall to close the distance inch by inch.
Suddenly, the light went out. The entire corridor plunged into profound darkness, leaving him with only the sound of his own accelerating breathing.
As Chu Xunsheng spun around in a panic to flee, a pair of hands lunged out from behind him, clamping tightly over his eyes.
“Teacher Chu?”
The voice trembled violently.
A cloth was immediately pressed over Chu Xunsheng’s mouth. After struggling for a brief moment, he went limp and collapsed into the arms of the person behind him.