Tao Tao, do you want me to save you?
The staircase between the third and fourth floors was unaffected by the ghost wall, allowing the group to reach the fourth floor unimpeded.
Unlike the third floor, the entrance to the fourth-floor corridor was blocked by an iron door, with a seal on it reading “No Entry.”
Lin Quan bent down to inspect it. “It’s locked.”
Tao Tao weighed the lock in her hand. “Places that are off-limits often hide secrets. The more dangerous the place, the more likely there’s a way out behind it.”
Ding Jie said, “This lock is solid. Even if there is a way out, we can’t get in.”
Tao Tao stepped forward. “Step aside.”
Xue Rong thought she was going to use her sword to break the lock and warned, “Hey, no, your sword is made of wood. It won’t split an iron lock.”
Tao Tao didn’t draw her sword. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and raised her hand.
Lin Quan frowned.
Xue Rong quickly shouted, “Don’t be reckless! You’ll break your hand!”
Ignoring Xue Rong’s warning, Tao Tao lifted her palm and chopped down sharply, striking the iron lock with force.
Instantly, the door clanged loudly.
Xue Rong stared intently at the lock. Three seconds later, the lock, as expected, remained unbroken.
Tao Tao withdrew her hand from the lock.
Based on the rapidly swelling red mark on her hand and the lock’s hardness, one could roughly estimate her level of pain. Yet her face remained calm, showing only a hint of confusion.
She raised her hand to strike again but was stopped by Lin Quan. “Don’t try.”
He said, “I’ll do it.”
He borrowed a thin hairpin from Ding Jie, laid it on his palm, and traced an invisible spell in the air above it with his finger before inserting the pin into the keyhole.
After doing this, he stood before the door and began chanting an incantation.
Tao Tao: “…”
Among the skills of a Spirit Master, there is indeed an unlocking spell, though most Spirit Masters don’t bother learning it. Beginner Spirit Masters have limited abilities to master skills. The unlocking spell is difficult to learn and use, and it only works on old-fashioned locks—modern password or fingerprint locks cannot be opened with it. Learning it offers little help in exorcising evil, making it low in cost-effectiveness.
Lin Quan was the most ordinary One-Pillar Spiritual Master. Among the three arts of talismans, curses, and seals, he could master at most five with his abilities. Yet he had wasted one slot on the unlocking spell.
Tao Tao leaned against the wall to rest, staring blankly at her palm, lost in thought.
Half an hour passed, and she asked impatiently, “Can you do it or not? How much longer are you going to chant? If you can’t open it, let’s find another way.”
Lin Quan said, “Done.”
As soon as he spoke, the copper lock clicked open under his hand. He pulled out the hairpin and returned it to Ding Jie. “Very useful, thank you.”
His gentle demeanor was like a refreshing breeze. Ding Jie blushed and silently took back the pin.
Tao Tao stood up to kick the door, but Lin Quan stopped her. He placed both hands on the iron door and pushed gently, opening it. “There might be evil spirits inside. Making noise could disturb them.”
Tao Tao didn’t care. “Then I’ll kick them all.”
She crouched down, wiped dust from the base of the wall, and sniffed it. “The Evil Qi is very strong. It might be dangerous. You two stay here and wait for us.”
She looked at Lin Quan. “You come with me.”
Lin Quan smiled and didn’t refuse.
“No way,” Xue Rong grabbed her. “If you both go in, what if evil spirits come?”
“If evil spirits come, won’t you scream for help? The fourth floor isn’t that big. I’ll come out if I hear you.”
“I want to go in with you.” Even knowing the danger inside, Xue Rong still felt safer staying close to the two of them.
Tao Tao looked at her as if she were an idiot. “What could you possibly do if you followed us in? If a fight breaks out and you get killed because we weren’t paying attention, who would I collect the money from once I come out?”
Xue Rong: “…You just said there are ghosts on the first three floors. What if they come up and create another ghost wall? What if you can’t hear me calling?”
Tao Tao thought for a moment, then used the tip of her sword to draw a circle on the ground. “Alright, stay inside honestly. As long as you don’t step out, you won’t be in danger.”
Xue Rong asked curiously, “Is this as powerful as the one Sun Wukong drew for his master? The kind with strong magic that no monster can enter?”
Tao Tao said ambiguously, “More or less.”
After saying that, she looked up and saw Lin Quan trying to hold back a laugh. She raised her eyebrows in embarrassment. “What are you laughing at?”
Lin Quan didn’t expose her. “Nothing. It’s a very powerful circle.”
The two of them walked into the fourth floor.
The hallway was a mess, littered with broken desks, chairs, and shattered glass. Countless black footprints were smeared across the walls.
The classroom doors on both sides were wide open, revealing the scenes inside. Twenty years ago, a serious accident must have occurred here. The blackboard was dented, desks and chairs were shattered, large patches of wall plaster had peeled off, and the floor tiles were stained with long-dried, blackened blood.
Tao Tao reached out to touch the dent in the blackboard—it was a footprint-shaped indentation.
Lin Quan stood beside Tao Tao. “Is this a mark left by Taoist Li when he exorcised the evil spirits back then?”
Tao Tao asked, “What does the beginner Spirit Master textbook say about this building?”
“Only an exterior diagram and a brief introduction,” Lin Quan replied. “Supernatural events above a three-star danger level aren’t very meaningful for low-level Spirit Masters to study, so there’s no detailed introduction.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To pay my respects.”
Lin Quan smiled. “Over the past half-century, evil spirits have been heavily suppressed by Spirit Masters. Three-star danger-level incidents rarely occur. After Taoist Li from Qingfengguan suppressed the evil spirits in this building, his exorcism report stated that the main door of the Anatomy Building must never be opened. If the malevolent ghosts sealed inside were released, it would cause unimaginable disaster. So, many Spirit Masters consider eliminating the evil spirits in this building a lifelong goal. I just wanted to see how its exterior differs from the description in the book.”
“But you came inside.”
“That’s because I saw you come in,” Lin Quan said, looking at Tao Tao. “Tao Tao, why did you come?”
The indentation had a patterned texture, one Tao Tao was all too familiar with—it was Li Sanjiu’s shoe sole.
He wore the same pair of old black cloth shoes year-round, never bothering to clean them even when they stank. Only when the smell became unbearable for Tao Tao would she put on a mask and gloves, go to his room, fish out the shoes, and toss them into a water vat to soak. At first, the water would be clear, but after a few hours, it would turn black.
Tao Tao had cleaned Li Sanjiu’s shoes for many years and recognized the marks they left.
“Did Taoist Li not stop you?”
“He’s dead.”
Lin Quan fell silent for a moment before saying softly, “Even Taoist Li found this matter difficult to handle. You won’t be able to manage it.”
“Being unable to handle it and being unwilling to handle it are two different things. The Anatomy Building incident was the old man’s lifelong regret. If I didn’t come here, he probably wouldn’t rest in peace in the afterlife. And if those students died here, he’d likely haunt my dreams in the middle of the night to scold me.”
“What if you die here?”
Tao Tao glanced at Lin Quan. “Are you cursing me?”
“It’s just a reasonable concern. After all, you and I combined couldn’t even match a single leg hair of Taoist Li, let alone the evil spirits in this building.”
“At worst, we’ll just go down and stare wide-eyed at the old man before reincarnating together. Since you’re from the Chaotic Tomb, you should know that eighteen is my death calamity. Even if I don’t die here, it’ll be somewhere else. To me, there’s no difference.”
Lin Quan fell silent. Tao Tao circled the room. The tables and chairs were stained with rust, the wood emitting a rotten smell. The anatomical charts hanging on the walls had yellowed, the paper stuck with disgusting brown stains. The floor was littered with papers—some were drafts, others books—leaving almost no place to step.
Tao Tao picked up a few torn pieces of paper and found them covered in old bloodstains.
The windows of the room were also sealed with crow’s claw peach wood. Apart from the flashlight’s beam, there wasn’t a trace of light. The abandoned building, untouched by sunlight for twenty years, was bitterly cold. A chill seeped up from the blue brick floor, spreading through the soles of their feet to every part of their bodies.
In a corner of the room, Lin Quan picked up a notebook and handed it to Tao Tao. “Looks like a diary.”
The hardcover of the notebook was tattered, its pattern worn away. The title page bore elegant handwriting, showing the owner’s name—Tian Wenyue.
Tao Tao opened it, reading by the flashlight’s glow.
[March 12, Overcast]
Yan Tao plans to take the postgraduate entrance exam. He’s either holed up in the library or studying in the Anatomy Building. I told him the place is eerie and asked him to find somewhere else, but he insists it’s quiet and undisturbed, perfect for studying alone. I can never win an argument with him. He didn’t even discuss his plans with me. I don’t understand what he’s thinking. We agreed to get married after graduation. This is so frustrating.
[April 9, Sunny]
We haven’t spent any time alone together for a month. He’s either studying or writing his thesis. While these sound like important matters, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s distant and perfunctory toward me. Could he be having an affair? I don’t even want to know.
[April 18, Light Rain]
Yan Tao has been acting strange lately. The way he looks at me is different from before. I can’t quite describe the difference, but I feel it. Every time he returns from studying in the Anatomy Building, he looks at me as if I were a stranger. Sometimes, his gaze even sends a chill down my spine.
Tao Tao pulled out Li Sanjiu’s Exorcism Ledger from her bag and found that the incident in the Anatomy Building occurred in June 2000. The timeline in this diary was just before the incident. Just as she was about to continue reading, she suddenly heard panting from the hallway.
It was heavy and labored, as if clinging to an old breath, the sound murky.
The two put away the notebook and hid behind the door.
At first, the panting was faint and distant, but it gradually grew closer, becoming increasingly muddled, as if right beside their ears.
When it was almost upon them, Tao Tao exchanged a glance with Lin Quan, gripped Tao Yao’s hilt, and flung the sword out.
A sharp whistling sound cut through the air as Tao Yao embedded itself vertically into the opposite wall. But it didn’t strike any evil spirits. The moment it left her hand, the panting vanished.
Tao Tao stepped out of the room. Everything was quiet, the hallway empty, with no trace of evil spirits. It was as if the sound had been nothing but an auditory hallucination.
Just as she was puzzling over it, Lin Quan pointed ahead. “Tao Tao, look there.”
Tao Tao looked and saw a mottled wooden door at the end of the hallway.
If she remembered correctly, she had seen that door when they first entered. It had been closed then, but now it stood wide open.
A chilling breeze drifted out from the doorway, carrying across the dozens of meters of corridor to brush against the strands of hair by her ear.
The wind was thick with a nauseating, fishy stench, and beyond that, a powerful and dense Evil Qi.
Tao Tao hoisted Tao Yao onto her shoulder. Without a word, she walked straight toward that door.
Before entering, Xue Rong had briefly explained the layout of the fourth floor to her.
Behind this door was the former storage area for corpses, containing a large formaldehyde pool that, before the Anatomy Building was abandoned, often held dozens of bodies.
The cold breeze continued to blow gently, and the dilapidated wooden door creaked with a drawn-out, grating sound.
Tao Tao stepped inside, finding herself in a vast room. At its very center lay a two-meter-deep, dried-up corpse pool.
Beyond that, there was nothing else. Compared to the chaos outside, this place was unnervingly clean.
No trace of evil spirits.
The room had four windows, all sealed with crow-point peach Wood. Unlike the third floor, the boards here were layered four deep, indicating that this was the lair of the evil spirits and the place where their power was strongest. But why would evil spirits come to settle in a college’s Anatomy Building for no reason?
“Can you feel it?” Tao Tao whispered.
Lin Quan stood beside her, his voice soft. “Yes, the Evil Qi is nearby. They’re hiding.”
The room was too empty, with nowhere to hide except for that massive corpse pool.
Tao Tao approached the pool. The room carried a pungent, strange odor—perhaps the smell of formaldehyde. Tao Tao had never smelled it before and couldn’t identify it, but with each step closer to the pool, the stench grew stronger, almost making her vomit the food she’d eaten yesterday.
Her right hand gripping her sword, she moved forward step by step. As she ascended the steps outside the pool, her shoe suddenly slipped on a patch of slick, viscous fluid.
Tao Tao’s shoes were fairly slip-resistant, and she could have steadied herself, but as she swayed, a hand suddenly pressed against the small of her back, giving her a gentle push forward.
Her already sore and swollen legs could no longer support her weight. Losing her balance, she tumbled into the pool.
The pool was a full two meters deep, its bottom covered in a thick layer of white ash. Tao Tao fell into the ash, sending dust billowing within the corpse pool.
At the same moment, Xue Rong and Ding Jie’s terrified screams echoed from behind. In the distance, the room’s door swung shut on its own, pushed by an invisible force with a heavy thud.
Just as Tao Tao tried to climb up, bubbles began to surge from the bottom of the pool. A large amount of formaldehyde liquid, emitting a pungent odor, gushed out from beneath the concrete slab.
Ten damp, rotting hands stretched out from the white ash at the bottom of the pool, extending, lengthening, and pairing up. Two wrapped around Tao Tao’s neck, two clamped onto her shoulders, while the remaining six, dripping with yellowish-green corpse oil, tightly seized her ankles.
Tao Yao had fallen half a meter away. Tao Tao reached out for it, but the formaldehyde had already risen, layer upon layer, submerging her. In the moment before she was completely engulfed at the bottom of the pool, she vaguely saw Lin Quan standing calmly at the edge.
A refined smile still lingered on his lips as he asked her in an exceedingly gentle tone:
“Tao Tao, do you want me to save you?”