Chapter 98: Someone's on Your Back
"Go to hell?" Fei Youliang was puzzled. He had only asked a simple question about his future wife's name—why did those three words appear?
There was no connection between the two. He had strictly followed the rules of the Ouija board game without breaking any taboos, so there was no reason to anger the spirit.
After a moment of thought, he came up with an answer—this must have been pre-designed by the haunted house owner. No matter what question was asked, those three words would appear.
Fei Youliang felt he had figured out all the haunted house owner's tricks, and a sense of "that's all there is to it" slowly crept into his mind.
"The way those three words appear is clever; I haven't quite figured out the mechanism yet, but the owner is too focused on amplifying fear while ignoring logic," he analyzed with authority. "If it were other visitors, in their panic, they might interrupt the Ouija game or break its taboos. Then seeing those three words on the paper would cater to their psychological suggestion, making them think the spirit had really appeared and scaring them. But unfortunately, today he met us. We didn't make a single mistake in any step, yet his answer on the paper had nothing to do with my question. This shows that the Ouija spirit is just a gimmick to scare people."
After talking for a while, Fei Youliang noticed that Zhu Jianing wasn't responding, as if he were the only one in the room.
"Xiao Zhu? Why are your hands so cold?" He looked up and saw Zhu Jianing staring blankly behind him, mouth wide open, face twisted.
"What are you looking at?"
Zhu Jianing's expression was terrifying at that moment. It was as if he hadn't heard Fei Youliang's words at all; his whole body was trembling, just like the battered pen in his hand, shaking more and more violently.
A bad feeling crept into Fei Youliang's heart. He also sensed that the atmosphere in the girls' dormitory had changed, carrying an indescribable pressure that wasn't there before. And the source of that pressure seemed to be right behind him.
He wanted to turn around, but it felt like something was pressing down on his back, every muscle in his body stiffening.
What's going on? What's the principle behind this?
Questions flashed through his mind. The feeling of wanting to see but being unable to drove him crazy.
"What did Xiao Zhu see? What's behind me?!"
A chilling sensation spread through his body, as if he had been thrown into an ice cave. Fei Youliang shivered, and patchy blue-purple marks appeared on his skin, as if countless invisible hands were grabbing him.
He felt like the thing behind him was trying to squeeze into his body, and worse, a cold weight was slowly pressing down on his shoulders, growing heavier and heavier!
At that moment, Zhu Jianing across from him finally reached his limit. Using all his strength, he shouted out a sentence: "There's someone on your back!"
"On my back?"
"Someone on your back" and "someone behind you" are two different things—one means someone is clinging to your back, the other means someone is standing behind you.
Fei Youliang's brain was still instinctively analyzing, but Zhu Jianing in front of him had already leaped up, shaking off his hand, and bolted for the door!
Zhu Jianing left decisively and without hesitation.
Abandoned by his teammate, Fei Youliang sat dumbly on the ground. The pen wrapped in transparent tape seemed to have grown onto his hand, impossible to shake off.
His arm was stiff, and he hadn't moved at all, but the pen tip was writing on the white paper by itself.
"Go to hell! Go to hell! Go to hell!"
One by one, sinister red characters appeared on the white paper. Zhu Jianing had already left, and only Fei Youliang was holding the pen. He was very clear that his hand had never moved from start to finish; these words were written by something else present.
Even at this moment, Fei Youliang still clung to a sliver of hope. He loved seeking thrills because he never believed in the existence of supernatural things, always priding himself on being an utterly rational person.
"What Xiao Zhu saw might be a 3D projection. The chairs are arranged in a row, and the visitors' position for playing the Ouija game is fixed. As long as equipment is installed at the right angles, a similar effect can be created. The principle should be correct, but why is my body trembling?" He admitted he had underestimated that worn-out pen and the haunted house. If he had a chance to choose again, he would never have been so reckless as to come in for a visit.
The cold sensation on his back continued to spread. After the pen in his hand had written frantically, it finally gave out. The tape snapped, and it broke again.
The upper part of the pen fell off, and at that moment, the paper had just finished writing the character "die."
"Is it over?" His arm slowly regained control, and only then did Fei Youliang dare to breathe.
His muscles were still a bit stiff. He wanted to move his body, but found his shoulders were very heavy, and he couldn't move at all!
He thought he had survived the Ouija game, but in reality, this terrifying experience was just beginning.
"Why can't I still move?" Struggling to twist his neck, Fei Youliang looked behind him.
His eyes narrowed into slits. He had mentally prepared himself, but when he turned around, he saw nothing behind him.
"A false alarm? But why did Xiao Zhu react so dramatically? What did he see?"
Fei Youliang's mind raced. During this time, his shoulders grew even heavier, as if something was stepping on them.
"Shoulders? Stepping?"
An image flashed through his mind. Fei Youliang seemed to realize something and slowly looked up.
Black hair hung loose, a face swollen from suffocation, eyes bulging with inexplicable rage.
Standing on Fei Youliang's shoulder was a hanged woman!
His mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. Every hair on his body stood on end. His glasses hung crookedly on his face. Fei Youliang felt that at that moment, his heart had stopped beating.
"I..."
Before he could finish his words, his pupils began to dilate, his body tilted, and he collapsed limply.
...
Chen Ge deliberately waited outside for a few minutes before entering the Muyang High School scene. He wanted to stagger his timing with those two visitors.
"Half an hour and no screams—these two are pretty tough. Looks like I need to get serious." Putting on the human skin mask, Chen Ge first entered the last classroom and placed the cardboard box containing twenty-four school badges on the podium. "The desks and chairs have been knocked over, so they must have been in here and encountered something."
What exactly they had encountered, Chen Ge didn't know either. He hadn't fully explored this scene yet.
He put the overturned desks and chairs back in place, stuffed the paper and textbooks on the floor back into the drawers. After doing all this, Chen Ge suddenly heard footsteps from the fork ahead, someone running down the hallway.
"Who could it be?" Wearing a doctor's coat stained with blood and a human skin mask pieced together from countless faces, he slowly walked out of the classroom.