Chapter 83: How Is This Task Supposed to Be Completed?
"Whether it's for his future recovery or for your own safety, don't let your guard down."
"Understood."
Ending the call, Chen Ge leaned against the bathroom wall, his mind in turmoil. The murderer wasn't Fan Yu—it was his aunt. They were the most suspicious individuals and also the closest to the victim.
"Fan Yu's aunt hid the truth from me. Something else must have happened on that rainy night years ago."
Why would the closest person turn into a murderer? That was what puzzled Chen Ge the most.
"The crime scene is at Muyang Middle School. Maybe I can find something here."
Chen Ge reopened his phone's livestream. The comments were still lagging, but the video feed was gradually stabilizing.
After a brief apology to his viewers, Chen Ge picked up his tool hammer and walked out of the second-floor bathroom.
Standing at the bathroom entrance, he deliberately shone his flashlight on the floor. There were no footprints or anything of the sort near the door.
"When I was hiding behind the door earlier, I heard footsteps. They stopped right at the bathroom entrance, but now that I'm checking in person, there's nothing there. It seems those walking in tandem weren't alive." Chen Ge glanced down toward the first floor. The last sound he'd heard had gone there.
Chen Ge still wasn't sure if the owner of those footsteps was the red shadow from the side quest. To be safe, he decided to avoid them for now.
Flashlight in hand, Chen Ge headed toward the third floor. But just as he reached the landing between the second and third floors, footsteps echoed in his ears again, this time seemingly from the first floor.
Two "people," walking side by side, moving up the stairs.
"They've spotted me?" Chen Ge quickly turned off his flashlight, pressed his back against the wall, and fixed his gaze on the stairwell entrance.
The footsteps didn't stop. The two walking figures made their way to the second floor.
"Did they go into the second-floor bathroom?" No sooner had this thought crossed Chen Ge's mind than he heard the sound of stall doors opening and closing inside the second-floor bathroom.
One by one, the doors of each stall were opened, six sounds in total. It seemed they were checking the stalls.
Chen Ge edged closer to the second floor, trying to peek through the gaps in the stair railing to see what was happening.
After the stall doors stopped moving, the footsteps vanished as well, as if everything had been an illusion. Chen Ge waited in the stairwell for a full five minutes but saw nothing strange emerge from the second-floor bathroom.
"The footsteps haven't started again. Could that indirectly mean the walking filth hasn't left the bathroom yet? They might be hiding in one of the stalls, waiting for me to walk right in." Though Chen Ge was bold, that didn't mean he wasn't afraid. If he opened a stall door and saw something truly horrifying, he'd probably be scared out of his wits.
"This monster is holed up in the second-floor bathroom and won't come out. I can take the chance to scout the third floor first." Chen Ge didn't turn on his flashlight. He had Yin Eyes, a reward from completing the nightmare-level daily task. Perhaps because it wasn't fully activated yet, it wasn't as miraculous as the black phone described—it just significantly improved his vision, allowing him to barely see in the dark.
On that stormy night, lightning occasionally streaked across the sky, casting brief flashes of light that made everything around him look terrifying. Chen Ge worried that something might be silently following him.
He looked back several times, but the stairwell was empty. Only then did he relax, gripping his tool hammer tightly as he entered the third-floor bathroom.
The third-floor bathroom was stranger than the ones on the other two floors. The windows were boarded up with wooden planks, and the walls were almost spotless. It seemed this place had rarely been used even before the school was shut down.
Stepping inside, all six stall doors were closed, giving Chen Ge an odd feeling—as if living people were hiding in each one.
The first-floor stalls five and six were closed because they were filled with clutter. Could the six stalls on the third floor also be packed with junk?
Chen Ge walked to the first stall, pressed his ear against the door, and listened. There was no imagined sound of a baby crying or a girl's soft laughter.
Then he did something even bolder: he crouched down and peered through the gap beneath the door.
Empty?
No mops, brooms, or other clutter. No standing feet. Just an ordinary stall.
Chen Ge tried pushing the door, and it swung open easily. The stall was spotless. He touched the partition; if not for the thick layer of dust, he'd almost think someone cleaned it every day.
"The entire school building was scorched by fire, but this bathroom shows no signs of burning. That's similar to the last classroom on the first floor." The same peculiarity caught Chen Ge's attention. "If that's the case, the task target I'm looking for should be here."
He pushed open the doors of the next few stalls, finally stopping outside the fifth one.
"I have a bad feeling. Could something nasty be hiding behind this door?" Chen Ge tucked the plush toy his parents had left him into his collar, gripped his tool hammer, and used the hammerhead to push the stall door open.
As the door swung on its hinges, Chen Ge instinctively stepped back when he saw what was inside.
The partition and walls of the fifth stall were covered in graffiti-like drawings of eyes, all life-sized.
Before opening the door, Chen Ge had imagined various scenes: a pale little girl, a grotesque monster, or a blood-smeared madman.
The last thing he expected was something this eerie.
"Why draw so many eyes on the partition and walls?"
On a rainy night in an abandoned school, seeing this sent a chill down Chen Ge's spine.
As soon as the door opened, it felt like countless eyes were staring at him. Standing outside was already unnerving, let alone stepping inside.
"Whoever drew these eyes in a bathroom stall must be insane."
Each eye seemed to be peering at whoever was inside the stall. After a moment, Chen Ge closed the door again.
Being stared at by so many eyes late at night was too much to handle.
"I've found the task location, but how am I supposed to complete this side quest? Hide inside, under the gaze of all those eyes on the partition and walls, waiting for the red shadow to show up? Isn't that going a bit too far?"
Chen Ge stared at the door for a long time before opening the sixth stall. Inside, there were also many eyes drawn.
Strangely enough, the eyes in this stall were all on the partition shared with the fifth stall, while the walls were completely clean.