Alright, stop scaring yourself, Liu Yuan told himself inwardly as he quickly zipped up his pants. Just as he was about to turn and leave, the corner of his eye caught something—because the faucet had been dripping steadily, or perhaps the old drainage in the restroom was clogged, a small puddle had formed beneath the tap.
At some point, the dripping sound had stopped. Was there no more water in the pipes? For a moment, a strange thought flashed through Liu Yuan's mind, and he inexplicably glanced down at the puddle. That single look nearly scared the soul out of him!
The shallow puddle, which should have revealed a yellowish tile underneath, had instead turned into a deep, dark hole. In that pitch-black watery abyss, a pale ghostly face was faintly emerging!
There was a ghost face in the puddle, staring right at him!
"Ah!"
Startled, Liu Yuan instinctively reached for his chest, but his foot met empty air. With a dull thud, as if stepping into a void, he plunged into the icy, pitch-black water.
Aaaaaah—!
That pale, swollen ghost face kept flashing before Liu Yuan's eyes. But more terrifying than the face was the suffocating sensation of drowning. He struggled desperately, yet he could never see the surface. Water surrounded him on all sides—cold, dark water...
Liu Yuan's heart was filled with terror, and what made it even more despairing was that in his frantic thrashing, he accidentally dropped the spirit-dispelling tool hanging from his neck into the water!
Watching helplessly as that camera, capable of driving away spirits, sank deeper into the depths, Liu Yuan's heart plunged into an abyss as well. The spirit-dispelling camera, when used with different films, could seal or repel ghosts, though those films had to be exchanged separately. Still, it was a highly promising spirit-dispelling item.
Was I going to die too? Die inexplicably in this godforsaken place? Liu Yuan's despair grew, and the intense suffocation blurred his vision. He could no longer see the ghostly face in the water. But just then, with a splash, his foot strangely hit something solid. He straightened up and stood out of the water.
"What... what's going on?"
He was now standing in a small pool, surrounded by a tiled, enclosed room. But this room wasn't the restroom where he'd seen the ghost face.
Around the pool were a row of showerheads. Due to age and leaks, the floor outside the pool was also covered in a thin layer of water.
Liu Yuan dared not look at that thin layer of water, afraid of seeing that swollen ghost face again. Instead, he shifted his gaze elsewhere. At first glance, this room was definitely not a restroom—it looked more like a common school bathhouse.
The pool he'd just climbed out of was no more than half a meter deep. Though filled with water, it had already gone cold.
Strange—the ghost had caught him but hadn't killed him.
Thinking this, Liu Yuan found it odd. That face in the water was undoubtedly a ghost, its swollen, pained expression suggesting it was the spirit of someone who had drowned. In other words, besides the flashlight ghost, this campus had at least one drowning ghost.
So, that brought him back to the earlier question: the flashlight ghost had found Xing Yina and killed her without hesitation, while the drowning ghost had targeted him but hadn't taken his life. Could it be because he hadn't completed the check-in? Liu Yuan's mind raced with wild thoughts as he hurried out. The reasoning seemed plausible but not entirely solid.
"It can't be that simple..."
Emerging from the back door of the dilapidated bathhouse, the view once again revealed the track field and the three pitch-black buildings. This drowning ghost undoubtedly had the ability to teleport, somehow moving him from the third-floor restroom of the comprehensive building to this abandoned bathhouse.
This teleportation seemed to use water as a medium. That meant, from now on, he had to be extremely cautious around any place with water.
Though he had escaped death, he was now separated from his teammates. For a moment, Liu Yuan felt lost, unsure whether he should return to Classroom 301 to find them—no, after discovering he'd vanished from the restroom, would they think he'd been killed by the ghost?
What should I do now?
His clothes were soaked through, clinging uncomfortably to his skin in the cold wind. His phone was ruined from the water. Sighing, Liu Yuan trudged across the track field toward the teaching building. The priority was to find his teammates and warn them about the drowning ghost's ability to appear through water.
After a few steps, the flagpole on the track field came into view. No flags flew at its top, and the three lonely poles looked eerily out of place.
Just then, Liu Yuan heard a sound and saw several people emerge from one of the buildings.
It was Pan Long and the others!
Seeing Liu Yuan drenched from head to toe, Pan Long paused briefly, but a flash of malice quickly crossed his face! Just moments ago, when they'd returned to the first-floor lobby, they'd found that the red check-in machine, which had been there, had vanished without a trace!
An experienced veteran like Pan Long quickly deduced that the hint "the check-in machine is in the comprehensive building" didn't mean the building they were in was the comprehensive one. Instead, wherever the check-in machine appeared, that place would be transformed into the comprehensive building by the story. Now that the machine had disappeared from the lobby, it meant another group elsewhere had attracted the machine and triggered the check-in event!
He also sensed that this check-in had resulted in a participant's death. Just as he was looking for someone to question, seeing Liu Yuan approach from another direction, soaked and disheveled, Pan Long's face showed not only surprise but also a sinister grin!
Song Ze and Zhou Chuhan understood immediately, flanking Liu Yuan from left and right!
"What... what are you doing?" Seeing their hostile expressions, Liu Yuan's heart tightened. He'd heard of Pan Long in the horror story chat group—a ruthless and merciless individual!
---- PS, second chapter delivered. Come on, guess how many kinds of ghosts are in the school~