“Yes, Room 414 has been vacant for three years.”
“What happened?” Bian Ying looked stunned.
Three years?
She would have been a junior back then.
Had anything important happened on campus?
During her college days, Bian Ying had been entirely focused on securing scholarships and had absolutely no interest in anything else.
“We’re not too sure either.
Rumor has it that a junior committed suicide in her dorm.
She wasn’t discovered until blood seeped out from under the door…”
Because the gruesome scene of the girl’s suicide was too horrific—and the bloodstains had seeped so deeply into the floorboards that they couldn’t be scrubbed away—the students were terrified.
As a result, the school sealed the dorm room.
Prompted by Xu Xinrong’s words, Bian Ying vaguely recalled the incident.
There indeed had been a girl in their year who committed suicide.
It caused quite a stir initially, but eventually, everything was hushed up.
After all, the school would never allow such a massive scandal to leak out to the public.
She only remembered that the girl’s last name seemed to be Lin.
Pausing for a moment, Bian Ying asked, “Do you know when the new principal arrived?”
“Yes!” Xu Xinrong nodded.
As the vice president of the Student Council, she had many opportunities to interact with the school’s leadership.
“Principal Lin arrived a year ago.
He amended the school rules as soon as he took office.
However, the new rules sparked a huge backlash.
Some students even intentionally violated the rules just to express their dissatisfaction with him.”
Principal Lin?
Bian Ying acutely caught the keyword.
Could the principal be connected to the girl who committed suicide?
It seemed visiting Room 414 was a necessity now.
After giving the girls a few instructions, Bian Ying made her way to the door of Room 414.
She took a deep breath.
The door wasn’t locked.
She simply turned the knob, pushed it open, and walked in.
Unexpectedly, there were no traces of Deceits in Room 414.
Even the windows were open, allowing for plenty of ventilation.
The very dorm room that terrified the students and remained entirely abandoned had become a safe house within a dorm building completely overrun by Deceits.
This made Bian Ying even more certain that the girl who committed suicide was connected to the principal.
The layout of the dorm remained unchanged: loft beds with desks underneath pressed against the walls, while the washbasin and bathroom were situated at the very back.
Bian Ying opened the cabinets and began to inspect them.
The Deceits had deliberately protected this dorm room; there had to be some clues inside.
Unfortunately, the cabinets were completely empty.
Everything had been cleared out.
Only the crevices in the floorboards still revealed faint, un-washable dark bloodstains.
Unwilling to give up, Bian Ying climbed up to inspect the bedboards.
Finally, wedged in the gap between a bedboard and the steel frame, she found a photograph.
The photo had yellowed with age, and the figures in it were somewhat blurry and faded, but Bian Ying could still make out that one of them was Principal Lin.
Was the person next to him the girl who had committed suicide?
Bian Ying flipped the photo over and froze when she saw the words written on the back.
[Dad, I’m sorry.
I cannot become a stain on your reputation.]
So they were father and daughter.
What could have happened to Principal Lin’s daughter to make him so obsessed with her suicide, leading to his morbid protectiveness over the students?
Bian Ying felt she was getting closer to the truth.
Her official employment offer seemed to be waving at her.
Clearing her throat, she reined in her fantasies and turned to walk out.
She figured she should find her boss and regroup with the First Squad first.
Just as Bian Ying opened the door to leave, she vigilantly noticed that the shadows hiding in the hallway were unprecedentedly active.
The moment she stepped out of Room 414, they would launch a swarm attack.
Bian Ying decisively retracted her foot.
But in the next instant, a tentacle abruptly pierced through the ceiling and wrapped tightly around the hand she had on the doorknob.
Bian Ying’s expression changed.
She quickly drew her Energy Gun and aimed it at the tentacle.
BANG!
The tentacle was pierced by the Energy Gun, leaving a gaping hole, but its strength barely diminished.
The “School Rule” had appeared.
Eight tentacles flailed menacingly in the air ahead, while the shadows lurking in the darkness grew thrilled and eager to strike.
Gritting her teeth, Bian Ying fired two more shots at the tentacle—BANG!
BANG!—and successfully broke free from its restraints.
Just as she was about to shut the door and hide inside Room 414, several tentacles struck out from behind, catching her completely off guard.
They swiftly coiled around her limbs and waist.
Bian Ying looked up in shock.
“Idiot.” The “School Rule” spoke, its sinister, chilling voice dripping with the arrogant amusement of playing with its prey.
“Did you really think this was a safe house?”
As soon as the words fell, Bian Ying was dragged into the darkness by the tentacles.
She felt an invisible, biting draft scrape against her skin, causing violent shivers to ripple through her body.
Whispers of Deceits communicating echoed in her ears.
“Lord Eight Evils sent us some food…”
“I’m so hungry.
She’s mine!”
“No, no, no, she’s mine!”
The sharp, cacophonous clamor surged from all directions, brimming with eerie malice.
It sounded like senseless babble projected from a High-dimensional space; a regular person would go insane just from hearing a single sentence.
But Bian Ying felt nothing.
She was busy digging for crucial information in the Deceits’ words.
Eight Evils?
Was that the name of a high-risk Deceit?
She must have been dragged into a Deceit lair.
There was no telling how many Deceits were hiding in here, nor how long the Energy Gun Tan Linyan gave her would hold out…
Bian Ying suddenly realized that the surrounding drafts had grown far more intense.
It was pitch-black all around; she couldn’t see the path ahead.
Relying solely on her Perception of the changing air currents, she could tell that these Deceits seemed to be fighting.
They were fighting to claim her as food.
Bian Ying never thought she’d see the day when Deceits would brawl over her.
She tried to take a step forward.
Fierce gusts of air continuously scraped against her skin, but she was in no mood to care about that right now.
However, the faint scent of her blood drifted out through the drafts.
The Deceits, who had been fiercely contesting for the right to eat her, suddenly froze as if someone had hit the pause button.
In unison, they turned to stare at Bian Ying.
In the darkness, their crimson pupils glinted with an eerie green light, much like starving beasts encountering an incredibly delicious prey.
It was bone-chilling.
Every hair on Bian Ying’s body stood on end.
Her instinct for danger drove her to instantly dodge to the side.
In the very next second, countless Deceits lunged at the exact spot she had just been standing on.
They possessed grotesquely warped exteriors and terrifyingly inhuman faces.
“Smells so good!
Smells so good!
Smells so good!!!”
“Who is she?
She smells so good.
She’s mine…”
These Deceits had gone completely mad!
Forced to awaken her intense survival instincts, Bian Ying sprinted madly through the lair.
She didn’t care what was ahead; she just ran.
As she scrambled, more and more bloody scratches appeared on her body.
The initially faint, almost imperceptible scent of blood now filled every corner of the lair.
Just catching a whiff of the scent was enough to make the Deceits nearly pass out from pure bliss.
Meanwhile, Eight Evils, who was in the security room watching with great amusement as the Deceits hunted humans in the dorm building, was caught off guard when he sensed the commotion in the lair.
He recognized this scent…
Mother?!