For the first time in his life, Fang Tian realized that the distance from the 2D world to the 3D one might be no wider than a single ventilation pipe. The image on the computer screen, the great crash from outside the dorm, the suddenly-changed quest objective —— every one of them drove his mind to some classic ghost-story beat.
What made his scalp prickle even more was this: the ghost had come, but his USP was still inside the computer screen. Without a weapon, his heart felt anything but settled.
Trouble was, a student dorm held no pistol — not even a military combat knife.
After his gaze circled the desk, he finally picked up a gel pen. He'd read a line in some novel once: "To a first-rate assassin, even a pen can be a deadly weapon."
Fang Tian gripped the gel pen that had seen him through the back half of his senior year, holding it like a comrade-in-arms of many years. He'd already made up his mind: if anyone burst in now, he'd stab them to death with it.
The question now wasn't whether to go investigate the source of the sound. By ghost-story logic, the instant the monster left the ventilation pipe, it should have headed straight for him.
He held the pose, pen leveled at the dorm door. No further sound came from the corridor. Fang Tian tried operating his on-screen character again, but ever since the countdown ended it was fixed in place like a wooden dummy — he couldn't even turn the camera.
The computer seemed to have locked up entirely. He couldn't quit the game, couldn't shut it down, and now and then it let out that ear-splitting static that comes with a screen full of snow.
"Maybe...... I should just go take a look outside. I can't stay frozen here all night."
Fang Tian muttered under his breath, trying hard to talk himself into it.
He felt two opposite voices rise in his mind: one told him not to leave the dorm if his life depended on it; the other kept tempting him that this might be a fine chance to become a true Monster Appreciator.
In the end he chose to listen to the latter, because, as a weakling with a Stamina of only 4, he was getting tired of standing. Besides, his Sanity and Stamina were both still relatively full at the moment, so if something went wrong he'd still have a chance to run. The dorm seemed safe, but in fact it was the most dangerous place of all.
This was the eleventh floor. His current spot backed onto the balcony; the dorm door was the only way out. If a ghost charged in through it, his sole escape route would be sealed.
Still, even if he was going out, he absolutely couldn't act rashly.
His pen-weapon was already in position, but he needed a few other preparations. So saying, he looked at the phone tossed carelessly on the bed, drew a deep breath, and resolutely opened up NetEase Cloud Music.
And so, at fifty-three minutes past midnight, the familiar strains of "Good Fortune Comes" rang out across the entire floor.
It proved super effective. Within less than a minute of the rousing song starting up, the students in the other dorms reacted in force, flinging open their doors and bringing the pitch-dark corridor roaring to life in an instant.
"The hell — what time is it, you trying to let people sleep or not?"
"Turn it off, turn it off now, I'll report you for disturbing the peace!"
"Which room is it?"
"Sounds like the freshman in 1103."
A chorus of curses.
Fang Tian had once heard the saying that ghosts fear the wicked — meaning that even ghosts dared not provoke a truly hot-tempered villain — and the phrase had later spawned the notion that anger eases fear. Amid the storm of cursing, he found he really wasn't as scared as he'd been a moment ago.
"Brothers, give me a few more curses, just one minute!"
Fang Tian shouted at the top of his voice. That crash hadn't come from far off; a minute was plenty of time to go take a look.
"Damn, this guy's got something wrong with him!"
"And he's got the nerve to provoke us — get him!"
The furious students sprang into action of their own accord. By the time Fang Tian reached the mouth of the ventilation pipe, a whole crowd of seething people with sleeves rolled up trailed behind him — only, when they saw the gel pen clenched in his right hand and the phone in his left blasting "Good Fortune Comes" on speaker, they hesitated.
This guy's a little odd.
At least in their understanding, no normal person would behave this way at nearly one in the morning.
"Brothers."
To keep his reputation among the neighbors from cratering into outright hatred on his second day, Fang Tian could only give a light cough and explain, "You all heard that crash just now, didn't you?"
"Who's your brother? And we're not deaf."
Someone in the crowd answered him. Quite a few of them had been jolted awake earlier, and no sooner had they lain back down than the blaring "Good Fortune Comes" reached their ears.
"Here's the thing." Fang Tian spoke plainly. "I wanted to come out and check on the situation, but I was too scared, so I resorted to this. Really sorry for disturbing everyone."
"First, turn that music off! Let me have a look......"
The senior who'd spoken bent down and picked up the vent panel that had fallen to the floor, examined it a moment, then said impatiently, "I thought it was something serious. Isn't it just a loose screw? Such a fuss. Report it to the dorm supervisor tomorrow and that's that."
The senior's answer didn't satisfy Fang Tian. He looked up at the pitch-black ventilation pipe, skin crawling.
He wasn't about to give up the advantage of numbers. "I really think we should investigate this carefully. How about you all wait for me a sec, and I'll grab a chair and take a look?"
"What, you know how to fix a vent panel?"
"Uh, not really."
"Then what's the point of you investigating." The senior yawned. "It's past one already, and we've got to be up early tomorrow...... Little junior, you're not afraid of ghosts, are you?"
He looked at the jittery, suspicious Fang Tian and said, "Junior, where in this world would there be ghosts? Study hard and stop daydreaming about nonsense."
Fang Tian was momentarily speechless. Wasn't that the very line he'd used to talk Su Xiao down?
Someone here had plagiarized his famous saying!
Sadly, even when he struck a melodramatic, arms-outstretched pose of pleading, he couldn't keep a single one of them. The yawning students scattered in a flash and went back to their own dorms.
Seeing this, Fang Tian could only blend into the crowd and follow the others back as well.
The moment he was through the door, he slammed it shut and bolted it.
He knew this step did nothing against a ghost, but it let his heart settle a few degrees.
Back at the computer desk, the locked-up game had quit; the screen was back to the desktop, and the game icon he'd downloaded earlier was gone too.
Only, this scene brought Fang Tian no comfort at all, because he saw two large red characters had appeared on his familiar desktop wallpaper.
『Thank you』
Almost the very instant he saw those two words, the quest changed for the third time.
『Quest objective updated: greet your new roommate.』