"You're right..."
Reminded by Jiang Rou, Pan Long's mind immediately recalled their earlier experience in the classroom—the ghostly hand that had reached out from a desk drawer, which Zheng Zihao had encountered. However, aside from Zheng Zihao, no one else had actually seen that ghost, so he couldn't clearly describe what kind of ghost it was.
"It's not just that desk drawer ghost; our group also encountered a ghost attack in the restroom." Then, Jiang Rou briefly recounted the strange disappearance of Liu Yuan in the bathroom.
"The desk drawer ghost, the restroom ghost, and that ghost with the flashlight—they probably aren't the same type of spirit," Jiang Rou said, also recalling a girl's scream she had heard in the building's hallway earlier.
"There's more than one ghost in this school. These ghosts might be key to this mission, but since we already have three student cards, there's no need to deliberately gather more clues. After all, interacting with ghosts carries significant risk."
"You're right." Pan Long nodded. "Since I've chosen to cooperate with you, there's no point in hiding this from you anymore. Liu Yuan's student card is actually in my hands. Now that we've collected four student cards, there's absolutely no reason to keep dealing with these ghosts."
"Liu Yuan?" Jiang Rou blinked, looking somewhat surprised, then suddenly understood. "I was wondering why you never considered teaming up with Zhou Chuhan to deal with me. So that's the reason."
"Zhou Chuhan... it's a shame. That kid's mindset is a bit like mine. With proper training, he could have had a place in the second group. But unfortunately..."
"Unfortunately, no one's life is more important than your own, right?" Jiang Rou blinked and smiled sweetly. "A student card that's already been signed in can't be used again. Even if you took my card, you'd only have two. So you had no choice but to kill Zhou Chuhan."
"Exactly, that's how it is. And since I killed Zhou Chuhan, you had to take his card. That gave you three participant cards. I had no other option but to cooperate with you."
"But you also have Liu Yuan's card, don't you? Finding you as a partner is pretty good luck for me. It seems we're quite a suitable pair."
"Shut up!"
Pan Long immediately made a disgusted face. "Remember, don't say such disgusting things in front of me again."
"Yes..."
Jiang Rou's face quickly returned to a look of weakness and grievance. "I understand."
"Then our only remaining problem is finding the principal's office."
--
"Alright. Now our only problem is finding that mysterious principal's office!"
After locating the red sign-in machine, Dai Minghan, Lin Tianheng, and the others took turns inserting the ghost students' cards into the machine. They quickly completed the sign-in and received four different numerical passwords. Throughout this process, no danger arose, just as Chen Mo had predicted—using ghost students' cards wouldn't trigger the flashlight ghost's killing intent.
According to the sign-in machine's instructions, entering these four numerical passwords into the principal's office desk would open its drawer, revealing the spare key mentioned in the school management regulations, which could then unlock the main gate and complete the mission to leave the school.
The only thing puzzling Chen Mo was that, in their search for the four ghost students, they had scoured much of the school but hadn't found any door marked "Principal's Office."
This gave him a feeling that the principal's office might not be somewhere visible to the naked eye but rather required a special method to locate.
"There's another strange thing—have you all thought about it?"
Just then, Su Mu suddenly spoke up. "This school doesn't seem very big, but after using the ghost students' cards, we haven't encountered any other participants, not even a sound. Can you believe that all participants besides us have been wiped out in this mission? So I have a guess: maybe using ghost students' cards to sign in and using participant cards to sign in lead to completing the mission through different methods, and the participants then enter two completely different spaces?"
"Completely different spaces? That's too unbelievable!" Lin Tianheng immediately jumped up. "Isn't that like... yeah, like parallel worlds or something?"
"Parallel worlds, different spaces—call it what you want. It's hard to believe, but since ghosts are given spatial transfer abilities, it's not too strange for that mysterious radio station to create several parallel spaces within this supernatural world."
"Moreover, only the parallel world hypothesis seems to explain this phenomenon."
"But why would signing in separate us into different spaces?"
"That's probably... for the fun of the game."
Seeing everyone's surprised expressions, Chen Mo explained, "Maybe from that mysterious entity's perspective, this supernatural world it created, along with us solving puzzles and struggling to survive, is just like a game and its players trying to clear levels. In this mission, participants who escape the flashlight ghost's pursuit, collect four student cards, and sign in to get the numerical passwords have passed the 'elimination round' and entered the 'final circle.' At this stage of the game, the radio station doesn't want us to keep killing each other indiscriminately like in the elimination round—that would make the game too boring."
"Though we don't know how many people have collected the password numbers, finding the principal's office is the second-stage mission the radio station has arranged for us. The moment each group of participants completes the sign-in, they might enter different spaces, independently locating the principal's office without any external interference!"
"If the parallel space hypothesis holds, then the door to the principal's office might not be a physical door but something like a spatial entrance. Each layer of space hides an entrance leading to the 'principal's office,' and our task is to find that spatial entrance!"
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PS, second chapter delivered. Though busy, I still managed to write two chapters. It's the start of the month, and I hope to receive some votes for support. I'll do a kneeling slide to thank you all in advance.
Also, thanks to Ming Bu Jing Chuan and fellow readers for their tips. Thank you, everyone~