Completely unaware of the chaos unfolding outside, Wu Wang was baffled.

“1001, 1002, 1003…”

Using a common medical counting method to keep time, he estimated he had been wandering inside the Little Black Room for about fifty minutes.

He still hadn’t found the ghost.

He had searched every corner, but there was no sign of the three entities from before.

The strangest thing was that the Little Black Room was completely empty. There was nothing inside.

But that shouldn’t have been possible.

He had personally watched the two janitors toss Li Yang’s body in here. According to their conversation, all previous bodies were disposed of in this room as well. The air was thick with the rotten Corpse Stench.

Yet, after entering, he couldn’t find a single body.

“A ghost wall? Or was someone hiding in here beforehand to dispose of the bodies? Or maybe it’s related to the so-called ghost story?”

Wu Wang considered every possibility. The fact that the Little Black Room was used for trash disposal was likely common knowledge among students, so that couldn’t be the ghost story.

The ghost story had to be something else.

Something like the situation he was in right now.

“Wu Wang… Wu Wang…”

Just as the hour was nearly up, a hazy, ethereal, yet incredibly familiar voice whispered from behind him. Wu Wang had been about to get up and wait by the door for Teacher Yao.

The voice was calling his real name.

Wu Wang whipped his head around.

In the pitch-black room, a faint light source had appeared, as if someone was cupping a nearly extinguished candle as they walked.

In the soft, orange candlelight, two faces he hadn’t seen in a long time looked over at him, their expressions filled with bewilderment.

“Dad? Mom?”

Even though he knew it was impossible for them to be here, Wu Wang’s voice was tinged with disbelief.

Hearing his response, the two figures staggered toward him, their gait strangely unnatural. They weren’t far, and soon Wu Wang got a clear look at his parents’ current appearance.

Father Wu was missing half his skull, his pale brain matter exposed and jiggling with every step. His eyeballs hung from their sockets, suspended by only a few nerves and blood vessels. His legs were twisted at bizarre angles, as if they had been wrung out by some immense strength.

Mother Wu was even more horrifying. She clung to Father Wu, supported only by her arms, because the entire lower half of her body was gone. A trail of bloody intestines and a mass of organs dragged on the ground from where she had been severed at the waist, leaving a wet, crimson trail.

They came to a stop directly in front of Wu Wang.

He didn’t flinch. He let them take his hands.

Their voices trembled as they spoke.

“Why? Why won’t you come and be with us? How can you live so happily, walking over our dead bodies? Living in the house we left for you, using the money we left behind… you’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

His parents’ voices were hoarse, and every word seemed to carry a magical power, forcing Wu Wang to recall the plane crash from years ago.

The dim room filled with the faint sounds of howling wind, the panicked screams of passengers, and the flight attendant’s strained voice trying to calm everyone, even as her own tone began to tremble.

He could smell the acrid, burnt odor of the exploding engine. He could taste the metallic tang of a nosebleed flooding his mouth after his seatbelt snapped, throwing him to the floor.

He was back there again.

【Mental Strength: 34, 33, 32…】

On his panel, his Mental Threshold was dropping at a rate of one point every ten seconds. Some kind of power was affecting his mind, making these memories feel terrifyingly real.

“Are you going to abandon us again?”

Mother Wu stared at him, her eyes full of resentment.

He smiled.

He lowered his head and said softly, “Even though you’re a false illusion, I still want to say this.”

“Mom, I’ve really missed you.”

With that, Wu Wang abruptly tore his hands from their grasp. In one fluid motion, he flipped himself up and tightened his grip on his dagger.

He gently pressed the tip of the blade to his temple.

At first, Wu Wang had thought that whatever “important thing” a student had to give up in the Little Black Room, it couldn’t be so bad that they would die on the spot.

Now he understood.

It turned out the Little Black Room wasn’t just for cleaning up trash.

You had to do the cleaning yourself.

If any other student had been in his place, their Mental Threshold would have been far lower. They would have lasted a minute at most before tearfully choosing to follow their parents to hell.

The student would die.

Their only other option was to abandon their loved ones with their own hands, completely erasing that part of their emotions and humanity under the influence of the bizarre power.

The student would become a learning machine.

A choice between two options. Die, or live a life worse than death.

He smiled in relief.

“I choose death.”

Puchi!

The entire blade sank into his brain. Blood gushed from the wound as Wu Wang’s body went limp, collapsing to the ground without another movement.

In an instant, everything strange in the room vanished without a trace. The space returned to its usual pitch-black darkness.

Tat-tat-tat…

Three sets of footsteps slowly emerged from the shadows.

The hidden ghost looked down at the motionless Wu Wang. It bent over expressionlessly, grabbed his leg, and began to drag him toward the door like a bag of trash.

Time until Teacher Yao came to claim the body.

One minute left.

However, what the ghost didn’t know was that Teacher Yao had already arrived.

He was currently on his hands and knees outside the door, rummaging frantically through the weeds.

“Where did I drop it… where did I drop it… time is almost up…” he muttered, his expression tense.

His keycard was missing.

After locking Wu Wang inside, Teacher Yao had returned to the classroom, only to realize the card for the Little Black Room was gone. He panicked. He was supposed to keep the student inside for exactly one hour.

Regardless of the student’s condition, if he exceeded the time limit by five minutes, he would be violating school rules.

That damn old beast in charge would definitely throw him into the Little Black Room to reflect on his own mistakes.

Creeak—

Suddenly, Teacher Yao, who was bent over with his butt in the air, froze. His ears twitched.

He looked up in disbelief at the heavy iron door.

It was open.

What the hell! Why did it open by itself?

Before Teacher Yao could process what was happening, he saw Wu Wang lying by the doorway at the feet of three pairs of blood-stained canvas shoes.

He knew the kid was dead.

“Ahem… Sorry to trouble you all. I’ll take him away now.”

Teacher Yao was an old hand at this. Under these circumstances, he absolutely could not let on that he wasn’t the one who opened the door. He just had to proceed as usual.

Carry the body to the rooftop, stage a suicide, and go to the dean’s office for a new keycard tonight.

Nothing would go wrong.

“I’m counting on you, my other self!”

At that tense moment, Wu Wang, who was lying on the ground, suddenly opened his eyes. His shadow shot out a hand and grabbed the ankle of one of the ghosts.

With a powerful tug, it started dragging the ghost toward the doorway.

【Shadow Mutual Combat Art】!

Why was Teacher Yao’s card missing? Why did the door open by itself? How was the report card stolen from the lectern?

It was all thanks to the 【Shadow Mutual Combat Art】.

No one would ever be on guard against a shadow.

The moment Teacher Yao said he would be back in an hour, refusing to enter the room himself, Wu Wang had formulated his plan. When the door opened, the ghost would have to bring him to the entrance.

To catch it, he had to act then.

Just in case, he’d also had his shadow steal Teacher Yao’s card. If all else failed, he could just swipe the card and make a run for it.

“What the fuck! Damn it, it’s a ghost!”

Teacher Yao fell flat on his butt, his face pale and his forehead slick with cold sweat.

He watched, horrified, as the thing from inside the Little Black Room was caught completely off guard and dragged out by Wu Wang.

It was a student whose head was smashed open like a watermelon. The upper half of his school uniform was stained dark red with blood. There was no school badge on his chest, but both Teacher Yao and Wu Wang recognized him instantly.

It was Li Yang.

Meanwhile, in the classroom, Baili Dao was listening to the lecture, bored out of his mind. Recalling Qinghe Yikan’s warning, he tilted his head, studying his classmates and plotting his next move.

His gaze occasionally swept over Li Yang’s bizarre Fierce Ghost form, and he couldn’t help but stare for an extra moment.

“Has his head healed a bit? The damage doesn’t seem as bad as before,” Baili Dao mumbled, noticing a change.

Before he could get a closer look, a sudden change occurred.

Bang!

The ghost of Li Yang exploded. A spray of unknown fluids and internal tissues flew everywhere, instantly staining his seat crimson.

Baili Dao, being the closest and the one looking right at him, was the most tragic victim.

He was now a different color.

Li Yang’s liver sat on top of his head. A tongue was plastered to his cheek. In his arms, he now held two eyeballs that had popped out in the explosion, staring blankly up at his face.

“Fuck! What the hell!”

“He fucking exploded on the spot!?”