Chapter 77: Paper and Pen on the Desk
The taxi driver’s actions gave Chen Ge an uneasy feeling. They were arguably the people who knew this city best, aware of every place within it that shouldn’t be visited.
“Does this driver have some kind of misunderstanding about me?”
The cooling mat was tossed into the mud, quickly soaked by the rain.
When he’d read the ghost stories about Muyang High School on the campus forum, Chen Ge hadn’t found them particularly terrifying. But after the driver pulled this stunt, a chill ran down his spine, and he began to waver.
“This trial mission only requires survival, which means that, in the black phone’s view, staying alive itself is already a test.”
In the blink of an eye, the taxi had vanished at the end of the road. Chen Ge stood alone in the wasteland in his raincoat, feeling as if the entire world had been reduced to just him.
The rain fell harder and faster. Chen Ge tugged the hood of his raincoat lower, pulled out his flashlight, and trudged forward along the dirt path.
Dark clouds pressed down, blocking any trace of light from the sky. Chen Ge approached the few buildings nearby, only to realize up close that they had been abandoned for a long time.
Rusty chains hung on the doors, the window glass long shattered. Peering through the gaps, he saw rooms cluttered with broken furniture and trash, with occasional unknown insects crawling among them.
“Not a single living soul. Is this place really that sinister?”
Before coming, he had asked Fan Yu’s aunt about the surroundings of Muyang High School and had a general idea of the area.
With no one to ask for directions, he could only rely on his memory, groping his way toward more desolate and remote spots.
The rain made the road muddy, flanked by oddly shaped trees. Some had grown onto the dirt path, likely because no one had tended them in a long time.
“The old site of Muyang High School was a crematorium. That place might be unclean, but there must be a road for vehicles. This path keeps narrowing—hard for a car to pass. Am I going the wrong way?”
The rain showed no sign of letting up, and Chen Ge’s pace grew slower. “If I get lost, that’ll be trouble. If I reach the end of this road and still don’t see Muyang High School, I’ll turn back and give up on this mission.”
After walking for thirty minutes, he spotted several knocked-over signs and wooden fences at the path’s end.
“Moss on one side—looks like it’s been here for years.” Chen Ge straightened a sign, but the writing on it was blurred. He shone his flashlight on it through the rain. “Why is there moss on only one side? The other side isn’t buried deep in the soil either. Is it because of sunlight, or has someone been here recently and moved the signs and fences?”
He stopped, pulled out his phone, and checked the time. “Almost eight o’clock, and I still haven’t found the mission site. The only good news is that my phone still has signal, so I won’t lose contact with the outside world.”
On rainy nights, the sky is especially dark. The only light source around was Chen Ge’s flashlight. “The signs and fences are here, and what’s even stranger is that someone has moved them recently. Very suspicious.”
He lifted a wooden sign to push aside the underbrush and walked another dozen meters, until the scene before him finally changed.
A row of broken wooden fences stood among the trees, with a few low-rise buildings scattered inside.
“Is this Muyang High School?”
Compared to West City Private Academy, this school looked shabby. Its total area was probably only a third of West City Private School’s.
Dropping the wooden sign, Chen Ge didn’t let his guard down just because it was small. Often, a small place isn’t necessarily a good thing. While there was less to explore, there were also fewer places to hide.
Climbing over the fence, Chen Ge officially entered Muyang High School.
At a glance, he could see all the buildings on campus.
Near the main gate was the teaching building. It seemed to have suffered a severe fire—the outer walls were charred black, some sections cracked, threatening to collapse at any moment.
To the left of the teaching building was the dormitory. Since few students boarded, it was only two stories with just a handful of rooms. To the right was the office building, also two stories, but from the outside, it appeared to be the best-preserved structure.
Behind the teaching building was a playground with an uneven surface, flanked by two basketball hoops and a few ping-pong tables.
That was the layout of Muyang High School—old, rundown, and unremarkable. Despite its many ghost stories, the school itself had nothing noteworthy. Chen Ge even suspected that the real reason for its closure wasn’t supernatural events but simply that it couldn’t stay afloat.
Once he arrived, Chen Ge grew calmer. Take things as they come—he could always adjust his mindset quickly.
“Muyang High School has four side missions: the Ouija board, the fifth stall in the restroom, the deep well, and the sealed classroom. To unlock the scene one hundred percent, I can’t skip any of them.” During his last trial mission, because his completion rate exceeded ninety percent, he was rewarded with a hidden item—Wang Qi’s Missing Person Notice. That item had helped him build an initial rapport with the Xiao family and earn their approval.
He knew the importance of mission completion, but it was easier said than done. Any one of these four side missions could rival a nightmare task, let alone attempting them all in a single night.
“It’s not yet midnight, when the nasty things are most active. I’ll check out these four places first. If I can’t finish them, I can still leave in time.” Chen Ge tucked the plush doll into his chest, took out his tool hammer, and entered the teaching building.
The walls were blackened, the burn marks still vivid years later.
“The whole building was burned. Could this be related to it being built on the crematorium’s original site?” Chen Ge moved quietly, keeping in mind the black phone’s mission prompt: at the end of the corridor, there was a classroom sealed with tape that no one had ever entered, but at night, it was crowded with figures.
“Fan Yu’s father met his misfortune after entering that classroom. That room might be the source of all the supernatural events at Muyang High School.” Chen Ge recalled the eerie group photo. Tonight, he might end up spending the night with those monsters who turned their backs to the camera—faces unknown.
All the classrooms were locked, doors and windows shut tight. Chen Ge could only press his flashlight against the windows and peer inside.
The first few classrooms showed nothing unusual. But when he reached the last one at the end of the corridor, he suddenly spotted something strange.
The desks and chairs in this room were nearly intact, as if the fire hadn’t spread here. What unsettled Chen Ge most was that on the desk in the very center of the classroom, books, paper, and pens were laid out, as if someone had been attending class there recently.