“Just hang on until the end of class. In a nightmare…..class will still end, won’t it?”

Li Xiu murmured softly as if talking to himself, his voice shaking so much that it was almost discordant.

Fang Qian’an didn’t say anything, but Li Xiu could see the muscles on the tall boy’s back spasm due to how tense they were.

Now, Li Xiu was even more certain that the rebellious, arrogant prince of the Fang family was actually afraid of ghosts.

But Li Xiu currently had no time to mock the other party. Everything in front of him was beyond comprehension. Too terrifying. Too strange. Not to mention Fang Qian’an, who was frightened to the point of madness, even Li Xiu himself, who thought he was indifferent to the supernatural, felt that his spirit was about to collapse.

Was everything in this classroom really a nightmare?

If this was actually a dream, why did it feel so real? So real that Li Xiu couldn’t ignore the rancid stench that gradually became richer in the air, as well as the creepy creaking sound.

It was the sound a wire made when it tightened slightly.

Creak—

The sound rang out again.

No matter how much he didn’t want to look, Li Xiu still caught a glimpse of renewed movement on Ouyang’s side from the corner of his eye.

In the windless classroom, the body spun around in a circle. Now, Ouyang’s toes slowly pointed in Li Xiu’s direction.

[“Wuwu…..I…..can’t breathe…..hurts so much…..”]

The corpse let out wheezes of pain like the buzz of a mosquito.

[“I know I was wrong, I won’t dare do it again…..forgive me…..it hurts…..I can’t breathe…..wuwuwu…..my neck hurts…..”]

The voice seemed to have substance, countless threads wrapping around the thin youth with a bloodless face.

The sound was getting closer and closer.

At last, a swollen head slowly hung upside down in front of Li Xiu’s desk.

No wonder “Ouyang” kept crying about his neck hurting.

Li Xiu had never seen a body transformed like this. Ouyang had been stretched until he was almost transparent at this time, his head hanging like an empty fire hose.

The dead man’s feet could even hit the back of his head.

And Ouyang’s gray, lifeless eyes remained motionless, gazing right into Li Xiu’s eyes.

He repeated: [“I’m sorry, please forgive me”] 

The moment Li Xiu met the eyes of Ouyang’s corpse, he let out a muffled sound.

He raised his hand at once to forcefully cover his mouth.

The youth bit the palm of his hand hard. Because only in this way could he block his terrified screams. In the midst of his excessive mental turmoil, Li Xiu left deep tooth marks on his hand. His mouth filled with the taste of blood, but he couldn’t feel his palm at all.

Perhaps he didn’t feel pain because this was a dream. Of course, it might also be because his brain was now in a state of complete shutdown.

He couldn’t let these things discover…..that he had noticed something abnormal.

Absolutely not.

This was the only thought left in his mind.

“A-Xiu, are you okay? What happened? Your expression is so ugly.”

As Li Xiu shivered in the cold, the worried voice of a classmate came from behind him.

Li Xiu held back the tears of fear in his eyes.

Not looking back, he feigned calmness and said perfunctorily: “I’m fine, I—”

Li Xiu’s voice halted abruptly.

He came to a swift realization.

No way.

Li Xiu’s desk was clearly on the last row of the classroom.

So where had the “classmate” behind him come from?

“But you’re sweating a lot.”

A pair of hands, dry, pale, and with dried blood where the fingernails should be, rested on Li Xiu’s shoulders.

A suffocating chill spread down Li Xiu’s back.

He lowered his head to look at the desk.

Under the fluorescent lights of the classroom, a large shadow fell across Li Xiu’s desk.

Whatever was standing behind Li Xiu right now must be very tall.

Perhaps tall enough to carry the body of a human male and dangle it mid-air.

[“Don’t you like it?”] it asked. 

The pair of hands that definitely didn’t belong to a living person moved up little by little along the sides of Li Xiu’s neck, almost gently stroking away the cold sweat dripping down Li Xiu’s face.

Everywhere they touched, his skin seemed to freeze, cold to the bone.

A smell of earth, dust, and carrion seeped through.

[“Why don’t you like it?”] the thing went on to ask in a quizzical tone.

Li Xiu’s lips quivered. There was no need to cover his mouth with his palm now. He could no longer make a sound.

Such was his fear that even the muscles of his vocal cords had automatically locked up.

What’s more, he didn’t understand what it was talking about at all.

When it didn’t get a response, “it” said without any fluctuation: [“…..Ah. A-Xiu really doesn’t like it.”]

[“Then next time, next time I will prepare something better for you—”]

Before it finished speaking, a certain school bully next to Li Xiu finally lost his nerve and fell into madness.

“Ahhhhh prosperity, democracy, civilization—”

There was a loud noise mixed with Fang Qian’an’s shrill scream. Immediately after, Li Xiu was shocked to see Fang Qian’an directly pick up the desk and launch it heavily into the deformed body of the hanging male teacher. Ouyang flew away, and the rotting corpse exploded like rancid orange under the impact of the table, turning into a black, red, gray, and yellow slurry of internal organs all over the floor.

The great commotion caused all the “people” in class to turn their heads.

Their blank, pupil-less white eyes all stared at Fang Qian’an.

Crack.

Bones wrapped in soft meat made a dull grinding sound at the joints.

The things that weren’t human, but which resembled humans, wobbled as they stood up from their seats. They staggered in Fang Qian’an’s direction.

“Huhu…..hu…..”

“Urgh.”

The “classmates’” mouths were slightly open, but what came out of them were the sharp breaths of a dying person deprived of oxygen.

And behind them was Ouyang, knocked to the floor by the desk. His head was obviously glued to the floor, but his thin, deformed body was still squirming like a snake.

The school bully, panting heavily and pale with fright, just stood there, looking at the “things” gradually approaching him with slightly unfocused eyes.

“Huff…..huff…..huff…..A-Xiu.”

Fang Qian’an turned to look at Li Xiu with a sobbing tone in his voice.

Li Xiu had never known that when a person was exceedingly frightened, their face would turn gray.

“…..Didn’t, didn’t you say that the core values of socialism and scientific laws were useful for this kind of thing?” Fang Qian’an muttered to Li Xiu.

Li Xiu could only give Fang Qian’an a blank look, and after half a beat, he said without rhyme or reason: “M-maybe math is more useful?”

“Heh.”

Someone seemed to laugh in his ear in a low tone.

Before Li Xiu could react, he sensed a strong force coming. He almost flew out of his seat as he was dragged, and realized that he was being held tightly by Fang Qian’an as he ran toward the door of the classroom.

“Justice, rule of law, patriotism, commitment, integrity, the degree of disparity between two arithmetic sequences is N, and hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium—”

As Fang Qian’an ran, he continued to shout until his voice nearly broke.

And what came at the same time was a long, continuous ringing sound.

Dingding…..dingding…..dingding…..

It seemed at first to be the end of class bell, but the real school bell was definitely not as harsh as the sound lingering in their ears at this moment. 

The ringing was simply deafening, and it never stopped. It continued to ring as if it would never end.

Li Xiu was initially worried that the things in the classroom would chase after them. After all, that was what happened in horror movies.

However, after running staggeringly for a short while, they both realized that the hallway was still empty.

The “classmates” hadn’t chased them out.

In one identical classroom after another, the “classmates” just stood upright in front of the class windows side by side, watching the two people fleeing desperately down the hallway.

Staggering as he ran, Li Xiu inadvertently glanced in their direction. Then he gave a violent shudder and forcefully swallowed his sobs, shifting his gaze to the front.

Wrong…..

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Those “classmates” were just wrong.

He bit his lip to remain silent, but the screaming in his head never stopped.

Even if there were ghosts, they shouldn’t be like this.

Although they looked similar to humans, the eyes on their faces were all on the right or on the left. 

There were also “people” whose facial features were particularly messed up and random.

What…..

What in the world were they?!

“Fuck—”

Just then, Li Xiu heard a fearful, panicked curse from Fang Qian’an in front of him.

The boy braked suddenly, and Li Xiu was caught off guard and ran into his back.

Cupping his nose, Li Xiu poked his head out from behind Fang Qian’an to see what had caused him to stop so urgently.

Just in front of them where the elevators should have been in the real school, now stood a thick brick wall.

That wall was covered in spots of black mold due to moisture and layers of faded talisman papers.

The talisman papers densely covered the entire wall. And the moisture wetted the red cinnabar on papers, turning it into countless bright red streaks that slowly flowed down the wall.

In the center was a small red-painted door.

It looked like a door for pets, only half the size of a normal door. The paint on it was pitted and peeling in many places.

“Isn’t this the fucking wall in the haunted house? You’ve got to be kidding…..”

Fang Qian’an continued to babble as his entire frame trembled with fear in front of Li Xiu. He seemed brave, but from Li Xiu’s perspective, he could clearly see the tears shimmering in the corners of the boy’s eyes.

They had, in fact, seen this door in reality. To be honest, the dead Ouyang in the classroom and the unknown “classmate” things sitting around them were horrifying.

However, standing in front of that wall now, Li Xiu felt a kind of fear that was even colder than the classroom had been.

There was something behind the door.

With no justification at all, Li Xiu could sense this.

And he knew that “it” behind the door was eager to come out.

He heard that sound.

Creak—

The ringing in his ears was still so harsh and loud, but the fine scratching sound coming from the other side of the door, made by fingernails rubbing against metal, directly overshadowed the ringing and penetrated deeply into Li Xiu’s ears.

Somehow, the ringing in the teaching building became increasingly urgent and harsh.

Like it was urging them.

Or perhaps warning them.

At the same time, Li Xiu’s body became heavier and heavier, as well as increasingly cold. Mustering all of his strength, he grabbed Fang Qian’an’s wrist.

The boy’s body was now like that of a zombie, stiff and ice-cold from the fear.

“Fang Qian’an…..”

Li Xiu’s lips pressed together, and the sound was unexpectedly thin and weak.

“We have to escape,” the youth murmured almost absent-mindedly.

Fang Qian’an stared at the wall as if in a daze as Li Xiu led him little by little to the hallway railing.

Screech— 

The scratching sounds became more shrill.

The ringing and scratching sounds overlapped. Li Xiu’s body was so stiff from the extreme cold that he could barely lift his arms.

But still, he gritted his teeth and hugged the fear-stunned Fang Qian’an and pushed him toward the railing.

And just at this moment, Fang Qian’an returned to his senses. 

He instinctively clenched Li Xiu’s hand.

“A-Xiu?”

“Like you said, we’re just having a nightmare,” Li Xiu murmured to Fang Qian’an.

“I’ve heard of a method. If you want to wake up from a dream, you just need to jump off a high place.”

Fang Qian’an’s pupils constricted slightly.

He held onto Li Xiu in a much more relaxed way than before, and jumped onto the railing.

“You said it yourself.” While speaking, Fang Qian’an glanced downstairs. His voice suddenly stopped.

Li Xiu immediately felt Fang Qian’an’s muscles tense.

“If, and I’m saying if we’re not dreaming, our deaths will be a bit ugly if we jump from such a height.”

Fang Qian’an smiled bravely at Li Xiu, but his smile was uglier than if he was crying.

Li Xiu took a deep breath, and was about to respond when the constant ringing in his ears suddenly cut off.

Creak—

In the suddenly quiet school, the sharp creaking sound of an old door opening was particularly clear.

In abject terror, he could only hug Fang Qian’an tightly.

Fang Qian’an also hugged Li Xiu.

The two looked at each other and then, with a hint of despair, they fell toward the railing.

And jumped from the building.

At the last moment before they leaped, Li Xiu looked at the door that had been pushed open.

Perhaps it was a trick of the light.

It could also be an illusion created by the nightmare itself.

Li Xiu saw a dry, nailless hand stretch out from the darkness behind the red door, then wave in his direction.

Like it was saying— 

[See you later.]

*

Boom—

The Fang residence, first floor.

As Aunt Su was making breakfast, she heard her young master’s shrill scream and a loud bang from upstairs.

The vibration was so great that it almost made her think Fang Qian’an had demolished his room.

Startled, Aunt Su quickly turned off the flames and rushed toward Fang Qian’an’s room on the second floor.

“Qian’an? What’s wrong? What happened?” Aunt Su asked in a panic while knocking on the door.

After a long time, so long that she was already considering whether to call the police, Fang Qian’an’s door opened from the inside.

“…..I’m fine.”

Fang Qian’an held onto the doorknob and looked at Aunt Su with a strange expression for a moment, then said slowly word by word: “I just. Had a nightmare.”

Since he’d woken up from the nightmare, everything should be fine…..right?

---

The Author Has Something to Say:

Proud ghost brother: A-Xiu, ah, do you like this hanging Ouyang-laoshi or those maggot-spitting minions?

Huh? You don’t like any of them, ah.

It’s okay, Gege will find new bad guys to kill for you.

Truly, our family’s A-Xiu is so good. He just likes to act coquettishly.

This is what a gege should do, but look at you, why are you crying from joy?

---

Consider donating via Kofi here.

Chapter 19 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 21