"Everyone, ready?"
Seeing everyone nod, Dai Minghan gritted his teeth and pushed open the large door.
The corridor before them vanished, replaced by a pitch-black sky and, beneath it, a terrifying, gloomy campus. A massive iron cage enveloped the entire school. Not only that, but the teaching buildings and dormitories were all cages of various sizes. Inside these cages, countless eerie, ghostly shadows swayed like walking corpses.
From the dark sky, white objects kept drifting down. Chen Mo reached out and grabbed one, finding it wasn't paper scraps but exam sheets, with glaring red checkmarks, crosses, and numbers.
*Whoosh, whoosh.*
The wind howled more fiercely, and the white exam sheets fell like snowflakes from the sky. Amidst the flurry of paper, the group struggled to orient themselves, running toward the playground. Though the path ahead was blurry, Chen Mo vaguely remembered that crossing the playground and passing the guardhouse would lead to the school's main gate.
Lin Tianheng led the way, laboriously pushing aside the papers flying at him. "Damn these things," he muttered. No sooner had he spoken than a large iron cage with chains crashed down from the sky, landing right beside him.
"Watch out!" Dai Minghan shouted. Then, more iron cages with chains descended from the sky, relentlessly falling toward them.
The omnipresent iron cages and the exam sheets drifting from the sky felt less like supernatural forces and more like a projection of the students' inner worlds.
*Clang! Clang!* Huge iron cages kept crashing down from the dark sky, their chains stretching into the infinitely deep clouds, as if an invisible monster lurked there, ruling over this dark, terrifying realm.
Looking closely, each cage held several ghostly figures. When the cages hit the playground, their small doors swung open automatically, and the pitch-black shadows swayed as they emerged, converging on the group.
"Watch out for what comes out of those cages!" Dai Minghan's right hand instantly turned ghostly, grabbing at the nearest shadow. The swaying figure, caught by his ghost hand, dissolved into a puff of black mist. At the same time, a wisp of black energy seeped into Dai Minghan's right arm.
Lin Tianheng drew his dagger, its gleaming blade slicing at the approaching specters. The ghostly figures cut by the white blade also turned into black mist, fading into the darkness.
From the cages covering the various buildings, more swaying shadows emerged, surging toward the four of them. Just then, a drifting blank exam sheet landed on Dai Minghan's hand, as if controlled by some force, curling around his right arm.
On the sheet, red handwriting surfaced.
*Die, die!*
More white papers swarmed toward Dai Minghan, threatening to engulf him. On each snowy-white sheet, red handwriting kept forming the character "死" (death)!
Lin Tianheng was shocked and wanted to help Dai Minghan escape, but another shadow drifted toward him, forcing him to defend himself.
*Rip—!*
A sharp sound of tearing filled the air. Dai Minghan felt the overwhelming white papers before him recoil and curl back like snakes scorched by flames. Then, a unfamiliar face suddenly appeared in front of him.
"Chen... who are you?"
A chill ran through Dai Minghan. Before him was a face he had never seen—a strange man's face, pale and cold, especially those eyes, which seemed to harbor endless hatred and murderous intent.
This person was definitely not Chen Mo!
What's more, this man held a gleaming small knife, like a scalpel, appearing out of nowhere as if by magic. He slashed it at the curling papers, and the stacks of exam sheets instantly split apart like snakes cut by a blade!
As soon as Dai Minghan broke free from the paper encirclement, his ghost hand instinctively reacted—a dangerous, spiritual sense. Without a second thought, he reached out to grab the man!
The man sneered, neither dodging nor avoiding, and tilted the blade slightly, thrusting it toward Dai Minghan's right eye. Though it was just a small knife, its fleeting gleam revealed its sharpness, and its speed was fierce and aggressive!
Dai Minghan reacted with lightning speed, about to turn his claw into a fist and punch the man, when the pale, sinister face suddenly grinned. The blade's gleam vanished as it slashed at the shadow behind him.
That seemingly unremarkable scalpel, in the hands of this pale-faced man, proved more potent at exorcising spirits than the spirit-banishing dagger. The ghost it struck dissolved into black mist instantly.
The stranger said nothing, his whole being shrouded in an invisible, icy aura. His fingers, long and slender, gripped the knife—a hand accustomed to holding a blade, with pale knuckles that exuded a sharp, lethal edge.
Since the man hadn't attacked him, Dai Minghan held back, though he was deeply shaken. Just then, Su Mu's voice rang out: "Don't hurt him—this is the Human Skin Ghost Face!"
"Human Skin Ghost Face? What's that?"
Lin Tianheng exclaimed. He had seen Chen Mo's face transform into a stranger's before, but this was the first time he'd witnessed this person act and felt the fierce killing intent radiating from him.
"Human Skin Ghost Face—the ghost is inside the skin. What you're seeing now is the ghost within the skin, taking over Chen Mo!"
"What?" Dai Minghan and Lin Tianheng were both stunned. This stranger wasn't human, but a ghost...?
Human Skin Ghost Face, a malevolent spirit possessing someone... letting the ghost... replace the person?
"Know why these ghosts fear him? Only a ghost... can intimidate another ghost!"
Su Mu's words sent a chill down their spines. At some point, the red-dressed female ghost had been summoned again, floating eerily by her side. The stranger emerging from the Human Skin Ghost Face glared with murderous eyes, coldly glanced at the red-dressed ghost, then turned to look into the darkness.
There, a dim flashlight beam flickered. *Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.* It approached slowly from behind.
Though its pace was slow, each sway of the dim light seemed to close the distance by a huge margin.
That inescapable flashlight ghost had finally caught up from behind!
-- PS, there's more updates today. I'm writing now, so please wait a bit.