Chapter 88: Surprise Hygiene Inspection
In front of 919 and 921's dusty doors stood a dozen or so candidates in a tight formation.
Zheng Wanqing excitedly summoned [Fist as Big as a Hammer], and her mutilated right arm instantly became whole again, “I've been unhappy with these doors for a long time.”
Now she could finally demolish the door with honor!
Jiang tongxue* stood aside with her arms wrapped around herself, skimming her lips less optimistically, “We've tried many times, and we can only enter up to two meters behind the door. Any deeper than that and we won't be able to continue.”
*decided to not translate it instead of using 'Classmate Jiang', since it is still a form of address
In its opinion, the human candidates couldn't even enter the door; they were still worse than the ghosts.
Tang Xinjue reminded, “Be careful with everything, and retreat back immediately if you feel something is wrong.”
“Don't worry.”
Zheng Wanqing swung her fist and ruthlessly slammed it down towards the dusty wooden door!
Boom!
Dust flew up as Zheng Wanqing coughed and came out with a skeptical face, “...It’s not smashed open.”
Her iron fist could even smash through the wall of Grandma Mayas house, but she couldn't even smash open such a single flimsy wooden door?
No. 5 and No. 6 immediately flashed up, “Let us try.”
Before the words fell the two raised their arms and flames roared out of the flamethrower, instantly flooding the door of 919.
After more than ten seconds the flames dissipated as the guns retracted, leaving only two scorched black marks on the dormitory door. Neither the iron locks nor the door panels moved at all.
The crowd looked at each other in disbelief: not even the most destructive fire-breathing ability?
Zheng Wanqing, also No. 5 and her sister, ran to the 921 door and tried again, but the result was the same—not even half a crack appeared, as if the attack was in vain.
Guo Guo rubbed her eyes to confirm that she was not mistaken: “This is a wooden door? What a joke, more like an alloy steel armor bulletproof door! Did your school hide the weapons arsenal behind the door to make it so solid?”
Jiang tongxue shrugged with No. 13's body, “See, we told you so, didn't we.”
Not only did their ghostly methods prove ineffective against these two doors, but the living's method was also this way.
Tang Xinjue brushed away the sparks and dust in the air and examined the doors for a long time, “They should have been subjected to some sort of prohibition. Not a physical defense, more like nullifying our attacks.”
How could they do real damage to these two doors?
In the silence, Keke suddenly stepped out of the group.
Jiang Lan called out to her in a low voice for a moment, but ultimately did not stop her, only saying softly, “...Be careful.”
Keke waved her hand and removed the bandage wrapped around her neck, revealing the black runes that were densely interlaced and spread to her jaw, and the crowd's breath became shallow for a moment as they watched.
So, was this the reason for the bandages wrapped around No. 3's body?
“Arsonists and boxers, get ready to attack right away.” She also removed her sunglasses.
Tang Xinjue raised her eyebrows slightly, vaguely anticipating what was about to happen.
Looking at Keke, who was heading this way, No. 5 was unsure, “You're going to...”
“Shhh.” Keke held against her index finger, “Don't ask if you don't want to be disdained, I don't care if you cry in anger.”
Turning she stood still in front of the door, closed her eyes, the usual voice line tied to the poisonous tongue lowered, as if dreaming:
“Seeing is believing, speaking is believing. In the next ten seconds, the two doors in front of me will be the same as ordinary wooden doors, materializing the destruction of all outside forces...”
Keke opened her eyes, “...In the name of truth.”
Something was different.
Tang Xinjue keenly captured this, and her toilet plunger slammed into 919's door like a swift wind. Zheng Wanqing's fist wind launched afterward, and the two forces overlapped and landed on the door, and with a devastating thud, the wooden door broke with a loud bang! Splattered broken pieces of iron swept and spread out. Everyone within the range of the wave immediately blocked their heads and retreated extremely fast in the direction of their teammates' cover.
Jiang Lan broke into the center of the airflow to carry out Keke, who had nearly gone limp, but the latter tried her best to open her eyes and look to the other side, her brows tightly twisted like twine: “There's not enough time.”
On Tang Xinjue's side, the door had been opened, but the 921 door on No. 5 and No. 6's side had not completely burned down.
Ten seconds passed in an instant, and seeing that the attack that landed on the door was going to fail again, Keke gritted her teeth and continued:
“Piercing through the false fog, the effective time of the attack will be extended to 20 seconds!”
As the words fell, the weakening fire suddenly rose against the wind, completely engulfing the dormitory door.
This was… the crowd suddenly realized..
Spirit of Language!
*言灵, literally ‘word spirit’. I picked ‘Spirit of Language’ from several commonly used translations in Wikipedia
The Spirit of Language that Keke used clearly had a price. Blood fell from the corners of her mouth like a broken line, as if it couldn't be wiped clean no matter how hard she wiped it. Her entire person seemed to be drained, paling and withering at an obvious rate.
The 921 gate fell apart in the burning, its deformed frame resembling a pitch-black hole.
At this point, the two long-blocked dormitories finally opened completely, revealing what was inside.
“You guys, you really did it?”
The first one to break in was Jiang tongxue, who mumbled incredulously and fumbled around inside in excitement. By the time the crowd found the power source and turned on the lights, she had already searched all of the two rooms, her face crumpling into a ball:
“No, none of them, they're all gone.”
Upon pressing the matter, the crowd realized that she was referring to the ghosts of the students who were originally here. It was also the same ghosts that reminded the students of 917 to run away in the memories the candidates received.
Guo Guo questioned, “Weren't you all together?”
According to what Jiang tongxue recounted, they were the source of the sobbing sound on the eighth floor every night in the memory scene, and the students who had been killed by the school before the game began. In the subconscious understanding of the crowd, the two groups of student ghosts should all be on the same side.
Yet, from the current reaction, it seemed like they didn't know the information about the 9th floor?
“Wait, I seem to be a bit confused, can someone explain it to me?”
No. 5 raised her hand in bewilderment, “How many ghosts are there in this dungeon?”
Tang Xinjue sent a pill that healed mental strength to Keke and confirmed to Jiang Lan that she was safe, before nodding and turning around to explain the situation to No. 5.
“In terms of race, there are two camps in this dormitory building dungeon, the wandering ghosts on one side, and us candidates on the other. And from the perspective of the ghosts, it can be similarly divided into two camps, on one side are the original school administrators and devouring ghosts, including the student council, the dormitory manager, the Academic Affairs Office, and so on. On the other side were the students who were persecuted in life.”
“But from the looks of it, the students are further divided by the dormitory building, aren't they?”
Jiang tongxue counted on her fingers and nodded with a crumpled face, “...That's right.”
The dormitory building had a total of 9 floors.
Long before the formation of the so-called “dungeon”, the first floor to the eighth floor already did not have living people.
Even the three dormitories on the 9th floor, only one, 917, was occupied by the latest recruits—the subject of those memory scenes—in addition to the “walking dead” of 919 and 921, who were swallowed up by the black fog along with them.
Jiang tongxue was a student on the 8th floor, or to be precise, a victim of last year's recruitment into the school. They had been trapped down there for an unknown amount of time, and managed to set foot on the 9th floor, only to find that the place was empty, with only the school administrators who had just turned into ghosts and monsters. The two sides fought, and when the faculty realized they were no match for the students, they were incredibly sneaky and ran away to hide to this day.
Tang Xinjue summarized, “If the Academic Affairs Office has all turned into ghosts, then the students of 917 should have become ghosts as well. Needless to say, the other two dormitories are even worse... But now the fact is that they all disappeared, leaving only a memory for the candidates.”
“Could it be that they are victims of the Academic Affairs Office?”
Guo Guo subconsciously asked out, reacting to her own unwillingness to believe it.
It was fine to be persecuted in life, if one was even persecuted twice after death, that would be too tragic!
Jiang tongxue's head was filled with black qi: “They dare!!!”
“This is unlikely. The ghosts of the students on the 9th floor, if they are in full numbers, have at least forty or more. Even if they confronted each other on the spot with the Academic Affairs Office, it's unlikely that they would disappear into thin air in a short period of time.”
Tang Xinjue pointed out the illogicality and concluded, “If you want to understand what had happened on the 9th floor, you still have to ask the people involved.”
And the only person who might have witnessed everything was the Academic Affairs Office.
Number 5 clapped her hands together, “Okay, I get it. So it's still necessary to find the Academic Affairs Office to force out the truth!”
Jiang tongxue agreed, “That's right, we hadn't understood the situation in the first place before we accidentally let them get away, catch them this time, ho ho...”
It cracked its fingers.
No. 11 and No. 12 weakly opened their mouths, “That, excuse me, what you're twisting is our roommate's hand, using too much force made it seem like it's going to break, can you lighten up a bit?”
In case it really breaks the arm and leg, what should No. 13 do ah!
Jiang tongxue: “... Oh, I had no body for too long, I almost forgot about this.”
The group stopped talking nonsense and focused on finding clues in the two rooms.
The layout of the rooms in here and 917 was simply a copy and paste, the same 16 beds and simple and narrow activity space. It was not too much to say that it was a women's prison. After rummaging through the boxes for a while, the crowd also found some items that seemed to be left behind by the students before they were born.
“Xinjue, look.”
Zhang You took out a few pieces of paper from the depths of the cabinet, with some crooked handwriting left on it in blood.
[Don't believe anything they say... Quickly leave here...]
[Quickly leave the school... Run!]
Tang Xinjue took the paper, “The blood writing hints we saw in the bathroom earlier should have been left by these students.”
The people they wanted to remind should also be the girls who were still living in 917 at that time, but it was just a pity that things were already different.
One after another, the others also found items such as diaries, photo albums, and some cell phones that had been damaged. These things recorded a part of the school's evil deeds and incriminating evidence, and there were also specks of blood on the bed in the corner as proof.
Jiang tongxue was also reminded of some painful memories, gritting her teeth, "After they tricked students into coming, they used violence to control them, often causing deaths. Later, they were accidentally found by parents, and they spent a lot of money to settle the matter before they restrained themselves and changed to punishments such as confinement."
But even so, very few people could get out of this school alive, and eventually all became the wronged souls in the dormitory building that never rest in peace.
After listening to the story, the crowd were astonished. Guo Guo asked out the doubt that accumulated in her heart: “So many people died, does no one care? Nobody called the police?”
The number of missing persons in an entire dormitory building, involving not only hundreds of families who spent money to send their children to college, but also tens of thousands of connections, could still be standing for so long?
Asked about this, Jiang tongxue's face also showed a trace of confusion: “I don't know... no one has ever managed them. Even being found out by parents only happened sporadically twice, and in the end, they all ended without any problems.”
How on earth did this beckoning, raggedy school manage to sustain itself in the real world? The girls couldn't figure that out either.
Layer after layer of mystery, perhaps the only way to figure it out was to grab those in the Academic Affairs Office.
Holding a bellyful of doubts, the crowd began to rivet through the dormitories. Those who were injured or had limited physical mobility rested on their beds. No. 5 also specially rummaged out a piece of candy and ran over to console Keke, apologizing for spitting venomous words at her earlier.
“I'm sorry, Keke tongxue, I didn't know that your original psychic ability was Spirit of Language, and I secretly badmouthed you behind your back.”
No. 5 folded her arms, “You must have had to be toxic because it is the cost of your powers!”
Keke rolled her eyes underneath her sunglasses, “Can't you think of something good, such as that I was born with such a foul mouth?”
Despite saying that, she still took the candy from No. 5 and broke it in half and shared it with A'Nian, who was also lying on the bed recuperating from her injuries.
So delicious.
A few minutes later, Zheng Wanqing made a new discovery where she was searching.
She concentrated her energy inside and let out a loud cry, forcefully lifting an entire cabinet and moving it forward by tens of centimeters, revealing the scene behind it:
In what should have been a wall, there was a half meter high cracked hole!
“This is...”
The crowd gathered around and realized that the space behind the cracked hole was still pitch-black.
“The flashlight light can't shine to the end, which means the space is huge.”
Jiang Lan came close to check for a moment and got up with some hesitation, “I have to take care of Keke and A'Nian, I'm afraid I can't go in and explore. Everyone...”
“You fool ah, just leave this kind of thing to us.”
Jiang tongxue grunted and clapped her hands, a cloudy wind suddenly blew around her, and after hovering for dozens of seconds, her face fell again, “What's going on, I can't get in?”
The girl ghosts reflected that they couldn't enter the space outside the cave, like they were cut off by some invisible force.
It was this situation again!
If the ghosts couldn't get out, they could only rely on the humans.
The crowd looked at each other, and a few were about to take the initiative when they heard Tang Xinjue's voice: “I'll give it a try.”
She approached the hole but didn't drill into it. Instead, she closed her eyes and mobilized her spiritual energy to spread outwards like a stretching silk thread, which was her other pair of “eyes” that could move.
Spiritual energy smoothly into the dark space, sensing the contours and boundaries of the space, step by step to spread out—
Suddenly, something appeared in her “field of vision”, and Tang Xinjue opened her eyes without even thinking about it:
“All of you, back off!”
When it was too late, a large group of black flying insects with buzzing wings came up from the cave entrance like a tidal wave, pouncing straight at the crowd!
“Shit, are they those fake boy ghosts from before?”
The crowd had almost forgotten about this under the tense development, but at this moment, they suddenly remembered.
“Could they be from the student council? Jiang tongxue what's this... Ouch, what a stinky bugs!”
No. 5 raised her hand to spray fire, but she saw that there seemed to be a silhouette in the pile of black bugs that was calling for help. She then hurriedly stopped No. 6’s hand. The result was that the silhouette turned into a skeleton made up of bugs in the next second, and pounced on it with a sardonic smile.
Snap!
A foot kicked onto the skeleton without any supernatural power added, but caused the skeleton to be forced to stop in place.
Jiang tongxue maneuvered No. 13's body in front of the skeleton, her face as bad as it could be.
“Everyone be quiet, I need to confirm one thing first.
“—There are male ghosts in our female dormitory's territory?”
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