Su Ning watched nearly two hours of the flower-basket song, and she still couldn’t understand what was supposed to be scary about the movie.
Bu Zhongyao had sworn that it was the scariest movie from twenty years ago, something she had gone to great lengths to find online.
Su Ning suspected that Bu Zhongyao had been scammed.
The movie ended, and the ending song began to play.
Of course, the song playing during the credits was also the children’s song “Make a Flower Basket.”
Su Ning’s back ached from sitting for so long.
She stretched and walked out of the screening room.
The lobby was completely empty.
None of the others had returned yet, and Gu Yueshuo, who had run out earlier, was nowhere to be seen.
Su Ning was a little worried about Shen Ji.
She called him, but no one answered.
She frowned and couldn’t help wondering if Gu Yueshuo had deliberately run out in such an exaggerated manner, planning to intercept Shen Ji and cause trouble for him.
Su Ning couldn’t wait any longer.
She walked out of the lobby and into the dark night.
The abandoned general building had been there since the school was first built.
Because of a fire that had happened decades ago, the building had been abandoned for a very long time.
Students had rarely gone anywhere near it over the years, and Su Ning had never been there even once.
Still, she roughly knew which direction it was in.
Dark clouds covered the moon, making the night even colder and more desolate.
Swaying tree shadows added to the eerie atmosphere.
This school had always been filled with terrifying rumors.
Late at night, even boys would feel a sense of fear walking alone through the darkness, let alone girls.
Another gust of wind blew past.
Bu Zhongyao cried out and grabbed the boy’s hand in fear, practically pressing her whole body against him.
Xuan Yuan Mo didn’t like being this close to other people and tried to pull his hand free.
But Bu Zhongyao held on tightly and said in a delicate voice, “Xuan Yuan Mo, I think there’s a shadow up ahead…
It’s so scary!”
Xuan Yuan Mo looked ahead.
There really was someone standing beneath the shadows of the trees.
The person stood in the darkness, making it impossible to see who it was, but judging from the figure, it seemed to be a boy.
Xuan Yuan Mo pulled his hand free from her grip.
“It’s just someone standing there.
There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Seeing Xuan Yuan Mo walk forward, Bu Zhongyao quickly followed.
In truth, she wasn’t particularly brave either.
She really was scared, and she really did want to use this opportunity to get closer to Xuan Yuan Mo.
Xuan Yuan Mo asked the person ahead, “Are you a student?”
The boy standing with his back to them remained still in the darkness.
His unmoving figure made him look even more eerie.
Bu Zhongyao quickly hid behind Xuan Yuan Mo, only daring to sneak a look at the person ahead.
Xuan Yuan Mo took another two steps forward.
“Do you need any help?”
He slowly turned around.
A stiff smile appeared on his pale face.
“My things are missing.
Can you help me find them?”
Bu Zhongyao cried out a name.
“Zhao Yuan!”
Zhao Yuan was in Class One and shared a dorm room with Gu Yueshuo.
Whenever Gu Yueshuo and his friends held some kind of activity, Zhao Yuan had joined in a few times as well, so Bu Zhongyao knew him.
Zhao Yuan seemed strangely slow to react to his own name.
He turned toward Bu Zhongyao slowly and awkwardly, then stretched his mouth into a smile.
A chill suddenly ran down Bu Zhongyao’s back.
Xuan Yuan Mo asked, “What did you lose?”
Zhao Yuan raised his hand.
He pulled open his jacket, then undid the buttons of his shirt.
“The thing inside is missing.”
In the darkness of the night, his movements were strange and unnatural.
For no apparent reason, they made the people watching him even more tense.
But just then, someone walked over.
“What are you three doing standing here?”
It was Su Ning.
She glanced at Zhao Yuan’s unbuttoned shirt and said, “Aren’t you cold at night?
Why are you taking off your clothes?”
Zhao Yuan: “…”
Strangely enough, the moment Su Ning appeared, the eerie atmosphere in the air seemed to fade considerably.
Su Ning looked at Xuan Yuan Mo and Bu Zhongyao.
“I already finished the movie.
How come you two have only made it this far?”
Xuan Yuan Mo frowned slightly.
Su Ning’s reminder made him suddenly realize that they might have been walking for far too long.
Bu Zhongyao hadn’t seen Gu Yueshuo, and inwardly she muttered that Gu Yueshuo really was useless.
She had created such a perfect opportunity for him and Su Ning, yet he hadn’t even known how to take advantage of it.
Su Ning asked, “Have you seen Shen Ji?”
Xuan Yuan Mo shook his head.
“No.”
Su Ning turned around and asked Zhao Yuan as well, but the spot where he had been standing was already empty.
She didn’t know when Zhao Yuan had left, but he wasn’t important right now.
Su Ning asked Xuan Yuan Mo, “Do you know how to get to the general building?”
Xuan Yuan Mo pointed in one direction.
“That way.”
Su Ning thanked him, then turned around and left, lifting her skirt as she walked away in her high heels.
Not long after Su Ning left, a boy came running over, shouting loudly.
When he saw someone he knew, his face went deathly pale.
“There’s a ghost!
There really is a ghost!”
Bu Zhongyao rolled her eyes.
“Gu Yueshuo, what are you talking about?
You must have been scared silly watching that horror movie.
Su Ning was perfectly fine just now.
Where’s the ghost?”
Gu Yueshuo trembled as he talked.
One moment he was talking about the television, the next about a woman brushing her hair, then suddenly about a well, and then the ghost hand that had reached out of the television screen.
He was so incoherent that he couldn’t explain himself clearly even after a long while.
Bu Zhongyao patted him on the shoulder.
“This poor guy got scared silly just from watching a movie.
What, are you acting in Midnight Chest Bell?”
Xuan Yuan Mo said, “We just saw your roommate, Zhao Yuan.”
Gu Yueshuo’s body went rigid.
Bu Zhongyao said, “Yeah.
Didn’t you say Zhao Yuan took a leave of absence from school because he was sick?
Why is he still at school?
He seemed to have lost something.
He was looking for it just now.”
Gu Yueshuo screamed, “How could you possibly have seen Zhao Yuan?!
The teachers won’t let us tell anyone about what happened to him, but everyone in our dorm knows he must be dead!
That night, he was the only one who didn’t go to evening self-study.
The blood and internal organs in our dorm must have been his!”
Gu Yueshuo broke down and clutched his head.
“You must have seen a ghost!
You definitely saw a ghost!”
A gust of wind blew past, cold enough to chill them to the bone.
Bu Zhongyao also began to tremble all over.
Only Xuan Yuan Mo remained relatively calm.
He looked in the direction Su Ning had disappeared and frowned slightly.
There really had been a lot of strange things happening tonight.
Would Su Ning be all right walking alone?
Su Ning followed the direction Xuan Yuan Mo had pointed and entered a narrow path through the woods.
But the path split into several branches, and she didn’t know which way she was supposed to go.
As she was hesitating, she suddenly heard something hit the ground.
She followed the sound with her eyes and saw that a ball had rolled onto the path from the left.
Su Ning cautiously took out her phone.
Calmly, she searched for the song “We Are the Successors of Communism” and played it at full volume.
The darkness around her suddenly seemed filled with righteous energy.