Chapter 82 The old campus wasn't meowing; it was a woman meowing...
"What do you think is inside?" the girl asked.
"Heads".
"Great minds think alike," the girl said. "...Aren't there too many heads?"
"Because there are many ghosts too."
Xue Chao gave a brief account of his extensive experiences on the first floor, leaving the girl in awe: "My God, it's like raising a venomous insect..."
"Because storylines from other timelines have been inserted, this building originally had its own 'main storyline'."
The girl understood: "For example, the one on the chandelier doesn't look like a student, and his mission has nothing to do with school. It's more likely due to marriage."
Xue Chao, however, said, "I think the main storyline of the dormitory building is related to her."
The other people and ghosts are part of the "organ incident" storyline, which is more like the hospital in the third unit. It's an inserted plot that's related to the main storyline buried in the whole instance, so it's unlikely to be part of the main storyline of the unit.
The five characters are distinct and have different themes. The main storyline of each episode revolves around the protagonist's past and wishes.
"But the girls sitting with me are all students, they don't seem like her..." The girl thought of what Xue Chao had just said about the incident on the first floor, "The one at the door who can disguise herself as a person...?"
She cautiously suggested, "Should we devise a code? Just in case one of us is..."
But no one knew what Xue Chao was thinking. The man said calmly, "No need."
To the girl, this sounded somewhat like they were destined to part ways sooner or later, and she lowered her head uneasy.
The washing machine beeped again.
The clothes were washed quickly. They watched cautiously for a while, and then the washing machine started draining. A little bit of soapy water with bubbles just flowed out, and it was immediately covered by diluted blood. Then, strands of hair flowed out and disappeared into the drain. They weren't broken hairs; they kept growing, seemingly endlessly.
The girl was about to run forward when Xue Chao caught her. The missing black cat was lingering at the stairwell, its shadow following it as it paced back and forth, seemingly urging them to hurry downstairs.
But footsteps sounded downstairs first, somewhat unsteady, but each step was heavy, as if they were about to stomp through the floor.
The black cat suddenly bristled. Xue Chao bent down to scoop it up, but it jumped over his arm and slipped out the window first, nestling in the exhaust fan.
Xue Chao then grabbed the person and ran, hiding in the nearest dormitory room with a key inserted, and locked the door.
The creature going upstairs must have heard the commotion. It quickened its pace, and its voice was clearly angry. It seemed to know that someone was hiding, so it was very dissatisfied.
Xue Chao hid in his dormitory, remaining vigilant both inside and out. After all, the dorm rooms with keys were occupied by students who didn't go home on weekends, including the girl who had just used the Ouija board. Currently, there was a suspected monster disguised as a human, but it was hard to say what the others might be.
But when they entered, it wasn't a student dormitory at all, but a small single bedroom.
In the girl's room, there were a few dolls on the bedside table, and there were remnants of tape on the wall, indicating that there must have been posters there before. Judging from this corner, the posters should be about the universe. There were only a few books on the bookshelf, which were so clean they looked brand new. There were one or two relatively obscure suspense books. In front of the books with their cool colors, there were two cute felt rugs, one crawling and the other sitting, both of which were black kittens.
Outside the door was still a corridor, and footsteps approached from afar, excessively heavy, as if the entire building should hear each step they took, passing by each dormitory room.
The visitor would stop in front of each dormitory room, so Xue Chao wasn't surprised when he stopped in front of their door. Instead, through the slightly ajar door, he smelled a nauseating, strong stench of alcohol, like the mouth of a dead man.
The newcomer laughed, a short laugh, a laugh that sounded like a man's voice, as if he were looking down at scurrying insects, completely in control, yet deliberately unsettling.
If we're talking about unpleasant things, Xue Chao's broken mouth is definitely the most unpleasant. If we're talking about disgusting things, the man outside the door is second to none.
It wasn't the murderer from the organ-related incident; it was probably the ghost husband of the woman surnamed "F." But all perverts are probably similar, and their styles are very alike.
The man lingered for a while before leaving, but deliberately banged on the door as he went, making an unusually loud noise, just like his footsteps. It was as if his every move echoed in the empty room, making everyone's heart skip a beat.
The girl visibly flinched.
This time, Xue Chao learned his lesson and carefully discerned the girl's fear. It wasn't just a simple fright... it was like a fear hidden deep within her heart. Once awakened, no matter what she was like at that moment, she would be instantly pulled back to that past and become the helpless version of herself she once was.
Just like Deng Dayun, who was provoked by the term "turtle son".
The man outside kept walking until he reached the end, but when he didn't find his target, he suddenly flew into a rage. He chopped at the stone bricks at the end of the corridor with a loud clang, and the whole corridor shook. Those hiding inside the house were not spared either, and could only try to shrink into a corner.
Then the window was flung open with a "whoosh," followed by a sharp cat meow, like a nerve piercing the sole of the foot, the pain rising all the way to the brain, thinner and sharper than a baby's cry, almost making their brains buzz.
Xue Chao quickly broke free from the stinging pain in his head caused by the screams, but the next second, a barrage of cat screams, caused by punches and kicks, swarmed into his brain, making his vision go white and causing him to cover his head in pain.
During this time, the man's foul curses and laughter intensified the nausea. Only when all the sounds subsided and the man's footsteps faded into the distance did the scene before my eyes finally come to a standstill.
After recovering quickly, Xue Chao went to check on the other person. The girl was huddled in a corner, wishing she could melt into the ground and become a puddle of mud. Her hood was pulled down tightly, and her hands covered her earphones as if she wanted to stuff them into her ears. Even though she was covered up so tightly, the intense rock music still burst out of the earphones. He could clearly hear all the drumbeats and some faint melodies, which helped to block out all the terrifying sounds.
Xue Chao patted her back repeatedly, very skillfully, as if he had observed others doing this many times. The rhythm and force were gentle and even. The girl gradually relaxed and raised her head.
She had no face, but the fabric around her knees was wet; she was crying.
Xue Chao didn't ask anything, but calmly said, "We should go out now."
The girl nodded and followed him out the door, but she couldn't make it out and bumped into Xue Chao's back. She didn't understand why Xue Chao had suddenly stopped, but she had a vague sense of unease: "What's going on outside?"
"cat……"
The corridor was littered with cat corpses, dozens or even hundreds of them.
Every cat was broken and mangled: some had their limbs broken, their tails chopped off, their faces deformed so that one side bulged out, their teeth smashed out, their eyeballs pressed into their sockets and crushed... They were thrown haphazardly on the ground, hung on windows, and slammed against doors, countless in number, like a mass grave.
Bloodstains were everywhere, splattered in the bright red corridor, making them appear even blacker.
Like old scabs on flesh.
The window at the far end was smashed, letting out a mournful, howling wind, like a cry.
Xue Chao snapped out of his brief surprise: "They're all cat corpses, you can look at them?"
The girl gripped his clothes tightly, and a low voice came through the earphone: "...I have to go, I'm holding you back."
Xue Chao started walking slowly, and the girl followed closely behind, like a chick hiding under an eagle's wing, trying not to look around.
Xue Chao observed the miserable state of each cat; they were all black cats, and all the same one—the cat that had led the way.
At the end of the stairwell, a cat hanging on the windowsill suddenly rolled its eyes, as if it had risen from the dead. A tennis ball was spat out of its deformed mouth. The tennis ball bounced, jumped over the threshold, and rolled down the stairwell little by little.
The cat's eyes were fixed on them.
This is the cat's last "direction".
...Does it want them to leave the dormitory building?
Xue Chao led the girl downstairs, and the girl gently pulled him back, asking, "We haven't seen that bedroom yet..."
They were completely focused on guarding against the person outside the door, and dared not make a sound for fear of attracting the other party's attention, so they did not take the initiative to explore the dormitory room whose layout had suddenly changed.
Xue Chao shook his head and pointed to the dormitory room: "It's back to normal."
They went in and it was a small bedroom, but when they went out it turned back into a dormitory, so it was unbearable to look at.
The girl was a little annoyed. There should be important clues in the bedroom. She was too busy being scared. But Xue Chao just led her down to the fourth floor and wasn't in a hurry. The same footsteps as on the fifth floor came from below, as if they had been repeated.
He made the exact same choice, leading his people to hide in a dormitory room with a key, and sure enough, it was the same bedroom.
The girl understood; it was like a fixed plot that was repeatedly triggered.
This time, she wouldn't allow herself to lie flat. She tiptoed around the room and found that the sounds she made were very faint, almost like no sound at all. But it was precisely that faint sound that made her more sensitive.
As the person outside approached, the two people searching inside pretended to be dead. Sure enough, the man banged on the door to scare them, laughed loudly, and walked away. Then, as if the scene was playing out, he angrily slashed wildly before suddenly opening the window, followed by the cat's screams...
No, the sound is different.
Slightly supporting his dizzy head, Xue Chao realized that after experiencing it once before, this time the impact was negligible for him. He only felt a slight pain, as if he had gotten used to it, and was immediately able to do other things. He looked at the girl and found that she had started to tremble again, even more so than before.
He actually felt that girls weren't so easily scared into shutting down; it was just that the scenario was too realistic for her fears. It was like throwing someone allergic to mangoes into a mango orchard overflowing with juice—it was hard for them not to stumble and fall at every step.
Even more frightened than before... Xue Chao listened again and discerned a gender characteristic in the pitiful cries—it wasn't a cat meowing, but a woman's.
It is as sharp as a needle, as thin as a thread of life, and it pierces the soul, as mournful as a ghost.
Xue Chao had heard many screams. Apart from the screams made when suddenly frightened, any other screams with a hint of sorrow or resentment sounded like a final lament of betrayal or abandonment by the whole world, just like now.
However, there is no whole world.
This is just a woman's screams as she is being beaten by her husband.
Silence fell again. The female ghost should still be hanging from the light bulb on the sixth floor, but who knows if this time when she goes out, the corridor will be filled with her mangled corpse... just like those cats?
But the girl moved first. She mustered a bit of courage out of nowhere and instinctively tried to push the door open, but Xue Chao stopped her with lightning speed and tilted his head in confusion.
She remembered that once she left, the bedroom would become a sleeping room, so she needed to find clues first: "But I've already looked through all the books, there are no markings or writings, and what I've found can't really be called 'clues,' they're not as good as my guess. Listen to me, I think the female ghost and the crazy man outside the door are probably the room owner's parents..."
Xue Chao suddenly said, "Do you still need to search your room?"
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