The door was half-closed, its opening only revealing darkness.
Fang He walked over and pushed the door open.
With a soft creak.
Light gradually filtered in from outside, illuminating the empty file racks filled with thick dust.
Xiao Cheng followed them inside, when suddenly she tripped and stepped on something soft and squishy. She stepped down, frowned slightly, and bent down to pick it up.
On the other end, Fang He touched the light switch, but the light here seemed to have a bad connection, flickering and making a slight hissing sound.
Xiao Cheng carefully examined the object in her hand under the lamplight.
It's a tattered doll.
Dirty cotton lint peeked out from the torn fabric. The eyes were made of black plastic beads; one was missing, and the other hung loosely on the deformed head.
"A rag doll? How come there's something like this here?" Xiao Cheng pinched the doll's body and suddenly felt something strange in its touch. She turned over its clothes and found a small card sewn inside.
The character "Liu" was written in elegant cursive script above.
"Is this Teacher Liu?" Xiao Cheng looked at the doll over and over for a while, but couldn't find any trace of Teacher Liu in the overly abstract doll.
With no clue what to do, she casually put the doll down and turned to walk towards Fang He.
Fang He was standing behind the file rack, looking up at the wall covered with certificates of honor.
Placed in the most prominent position are two certificates of merit for outstanding graduates, carefully framed in gold, which shine brightly under the flickering lights.
However, the names on both certificates were scratched off so thoroughly that the strokes were barely discernible.
“I guess it’s the counselor and Teacher Liu,” Xiao Cheng said. “After all, they’re the only two people in this school who have names.”
“That’s right, a very well-founded guess.” Fang He nodded in agreement. “You were standing at the door for a long time, what were you daydreaming about?”
"Huh? I wasn't spacing out. Didn't you see that doll?" Xiao Cheng asked in confusion, turning to the side and pointing to the doll she had just tossed onto the filing shelf.
But it pointed to nothing.
She ran over in disbelief to look, and the filing cabinet looked like it hadn't been cleaned in centuries; there was nothing there except a thick layer of dust.
The doll just vanished into thin air without a sound.
"I just put it here! Even if it ran away, it should make some noise, right?" Xiao Cheng turned her head in confusion and looked around. She couldn't find any trace of it. It seemed that the doll from earlier was just her imagination.
“No, there must be something wrong! Fang He, we…” Her gaze shifted to the wall, and her words came to an abrupt halt.
Fang He also disappeared.
She was left all alone. The door clicked shut automatically, and the lights dimmed as if they might go out at any moment, illuminating only a very small area.
A humanoid monster appeared silently under the lights.
The monster's face was covered by an extremely thin membrane, through which the contours of its features could be faintly seen. It wore a well-tailored black suit, a bow tie, and gold-rimmed glasses similar to those worn by its counselor.
It has three legs.
But after a closer look, Xiao Cheng realized that rather than having three legs, the monster had an exceptionally thick, columnar tail that dragged behind it, almost touching the ground.
"Staying out all night isn't something a good student should do," the monster said in a gentle tone, but his voice was extremely rough, like five hundred pounds of sand rubbing against a cement floor.
Xiao Cheng watched him warily, keeping an eye on the monster's rampage while slowly and quietly moving towards the door.
"It's okay, I wasn't a good student anyway," she said tentatively. "Besides, this isn't breaking any school rules, is it? Counselor Si..."
A long silence followed.
The monster suddenly let out a muffled laugh, raised its forearm, and used its claws to peel off the membrane covering its face.
The tender, pale pink flesh was revealed, with fine beads of blood seeping from its pores.
“You’re very smart, smarter than most people I’ve ever met.” The counselor wasn’t angry; his tone even sounded somewhat pleased.
"But unfortunately, you guessed wrong."
His shadow stretched long on the ground, slowly wriggling as if it had come alive, eventually revealing the shape of a line of words.
The eighth rule of the school is: if you walk the dark too often, you'll eventually encounter a ghost.
The counselor tilted his head back and let out a shrill laugh: "I'll give you three seconds." His tail suddenly began to swell, and sharp bone spurs rose up on the tip, about a third of the way up.
The door opened automatically, revealing complete darkness outside. In the depths of the darkness, a single fluorescent glow stood out conspicuously.
Without a moment's hesitation, Xiao Cheng dashed out the door and decisively ran into the darkness.
At the same time, the tail lashed out like a whip, creating a cracking sound in the air. Xiao Cheng shifted her feet, nimbly dodging to the side. The tail missed its mark, smashing through the wall and ground, scattering debris everywhere.
"Run! Hahaha! Run!" The counselor chased after them relentlessly, his feet landing heavily, making the whole building tremble.
A fist-sized rock came hurtling towards her. Xiao Cheng felt a gust of cold wind on the back of her head and instinctively raised her hand to block it. A sharp pain shot through her arm, and the rock was deflected from its original direction, flying just past her left ear.
"Damn it! What the hell!" Xiao Cheng swung his arm, which was numb and aching, with force. The area was smashed and was bloody and mangled, but fortunately, the bone was probably not broken. Blood trickled down and dripped onto the ground from his fingertips.
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