Chapter 99: Surprise Hygiene Inspection
Because of Tang Xinjue's words, a blankness appeared on the girl's face.
She stared at the red thread in a daze, seemingly recalling something, her features crumpled into a ball with difficulty, the hand that reached for the red thread began to tremble, and her breathing was so coarse that it seemed as if she was breathing into a bellows.
“Is it my... is it my... flesh and blood?”
Tang Xinjue stared at her, “You were killed and maimed by the school authorities before you were born, so do you remember, where is your body?”
Jiang tongxue raised her eyes blankly, her expression even more confused.
“Body? I... don't know.”
When she had awakened from the murky darkness and accepted the reality that she was a ghost that had been dead for an unknown length of time, she had only drifted aimlessly in the limited space, thinking of nothing but her hatred for the school, and had never contemplated this question.
Tang Xinjue nodded softly, “I see.”
“I've always wondered before why you guys were suppressed here by the school. The game gave you guys more strength, and you should be the real NPCs here, but you've become the sealed party... now I know.”
She chiseled her words down, “They stole your power.”
After being eroded by the red threads, the candidate's flesh and blood would be assimilated into the red threads as well, strangling their organs and then vomiting it all out of their mouths, a process that would be accompanied by the life force being drained out rapidly until all that was left was an empty shell.
When the assimilation proceeded to the end, they would probably end up blowing themselves up like the body attached to that male dormitory ghost, creating more red threads that would become the new sustenance for the school.
—So where did the dense red threads underneath the floor of the men's dormitory come from before this?
The answer is clear.
“The reason why the Academic Affairs can somehow control this dungeon is not from their own in-game power at all, but from a batch of bodies that they have long possessed, and that is you who were once buried here.”
Jiang tongxue's pupils contracted, and before she could digest this information, on the sidelines, Jiang Lan was the first to ask, “In that case, is it possible to find the Academic Affairs Office through the red thread? Perhaps one would be able to sense the experiences of one's own flesh and blood.”
Keke, however, frowned, “Even if the red thread is made out of blood, it is detached from the physical body from the moment a person dies, can it still have a connection?”
“The red thread affects more than just the physical body.” Tang Xinjue said with certainty, “If that's all, then the male dormitory ghost from before could have completely escaped when he blew himself up - he didn't.”
“Right!” Guo Guo came to a realization and nodded vigorously, “And if the ghosts weren't tied to the red thread, why would they want to eat it so badly, and eat it and be able to break away from the environmental seal?”
This meant that it was definitely not just the body that was bound to the red thread, but also their souls!
Tang Xinjue sighed tersely to lead back to the topic and said to Jiang tongxue, “Everything points the clues to the red thread, so we brought it back. Living people are devoured by the red thread, but ghosts can eat the red thread instead, it temporarily allows you to move freely within the dormitory building, but if you can't control your instinctive desires, resulting in too much devouring, you'll self-destruct instead.”
After all, a person's body, naturally, can only withstand one person's share of "flesh and blood".
After a few words, Jiang tongxue finally regained her senses from the state of shock and rage, her gaze fell on the red line in a complicated manner, and she spoke quietly, “I want to take revenge.”
This was their initial and final wish, the first thought they had when they awoke from the darkness, and the soft spot that could both drive them crazy and keep them sane.
Jiang tongxue tilted her head slightly and opened her mouth, an ear-piercing and unmistakable shrill whistle emanating from it as the whirlwind that swept non-stop through the dormitory room finally stabilized and coalesced around her.
“I'll just take one first and try to see if I can get out.” Jiang tongxue swallowed hard and said sorrowfully, “Just, one first.”
“No.” Tang Xinjue, however, shook her head once again, “You're occupying No. 13's body right now, she hasn't been eroded by the red thread nor is she lacking in flesh and blood. If you eat it, you'll directly explode yourself along with No. 13.”
“So ...”
The others comprehended Tang Xinjue's meaning and coincidentally cast their eyes on the unconscious No. 5, No. 6 and No. 10.
The student ghosts and monsters needed bodies to resume their actions, and eating the red threads also required fitted bodies, and right now, they had three dying bodies right under their eyes that were equally in desperate need of sustaining life!
Jiang tongxue looked along their gazes and was startled, “Ah, they're still alive?”
When she had just stared wide-eyed through the hole in the wall, she was still wondering why Tang Xinjue and her party had brought back three dead people.
Without needing to say any words, Jiang tongxue waved her hand, two strong winds blew up in the void, and in the twinkling of an eye, they landed on the two, No. 5 and No. 6, and disappeared. The two people who had long ago had their eyes tightly closed suddenly sucked in a breath and opened their eyes.
In the next second, Jiang tongxue herself leaned back, and No. 13's body went limp to the ground, while she herself entered No. 10's body, pondering over the wound on her arm.
“It's weak, she's very weak right now, her vigor is diminishing and it won't be long before she dies completely.”
She closed her eyes, “This feeling makes me a bit familiar, as if I've had this experience before during the time when I was muddled and not fully awake.”
She was now basically convinced of Tang Xinjue's speculation.
It wasn't at all surprising that the school would dare to get countless students killed here, and then use their corpses to do unspeakable things.
Ever since No. 10 was possessed, the “red threading” of their bodies seemed to have stopped, and tongxue Jiang even pulled out a thin red thread from No. 10's wrist and swallowed it whole into her mouth, smacking it twice: “I don't feel anything.”
Tang Xinjue: “This kind of red thread that has just been formed has not been processed by the Academic Affairs Office, it should only be a semi-finished product, and the total amount hasn't changed much since you ate your own.”
She already had more guesses in her mind, but there was no need to say more at this moment, handing over the red thread she had brought out, “Eat this and try.”
Jiang tongxue stretched her neck and sucked the thread into it, just about to speak the next moment her face suddenly changed, raising her hands in a daze, as if she had seen something unbelievable.
Immediately afterward she turned and flung herself in front of the broken hole in the wall and tentatively extended a hand.
The arm stretched out unhindered, then the shoulder, head, the whole body ... when Jiang tongxue's entire body stood within the corridor, so excited that she couldn't even speak.
Tang Xinjue timely reminded her, “The red thread has limited effectiveness, don't stay outside for too long.”
Jiang tongxue was dizzily pulled back, the whole ghost was still in a state of disbelief, a moment to organize the language: “You know what, it seems like I've just been starving for five hundred years to finally be able to eat, and for the first time I know what it means to be full, no, it should have been the first drink of water…” She gesticulated incoherently trying to express her feelings.
The other two girls attached to No. 5 and No. 6 ate the red thread and also revealed indescribably strange looks.
It was the first time they had left the dormitory that had held them captive for so long, and walking into the dark corridors that they had previously known nothing about, they actually felt like they were in a trance.
“I told you how they always know what we're doing, know what we're discussing, and appear like ghosts at all times.” A girl's eyes turned red, “So they're hiding here!”
Speaking of the excitement, the girl's body exploded with eerie yin qi around her, and she couldn't wait to dig into the ground and find the faculty office.
Jiang tongxue held a cluster of red thread over: “Don't be in a hurry, eat first before doing anything.”
The girl: “...okay.”
Zhang You took care of the remaining few girls, seeing the scene of Jiang tongxue and the other ghosts feasting, he was still a bit worried, “Xinjue, the previous male dormitory ghosts also ate red threads, but they failed to find the Academic Affairs office, can we do it this time?”
“We are different.” Tang Xinjue leaned against the wall, her voice clear.
The male dormitory ghosts and monsters had killed each other and the candidates in the last exam, and there would have been very few left. However, here in the girls' dormitory, it was still untouched, with a huge number of newborn ghosts eyeing it, or else it wouldn't have caused the Academic Affairs to cower until now and not dare to show their faces.
“There's still one thing I haven't figured out.” Zhang You walked over to her side, she had just mentally captured some of the information in Tang Xinjue's words, and after integrating it in her mind, she questioned, “If the red threads were created after the dungeon was formed, but the bodies of these students were literally retained by the school a long time ago before they were utilized, right?”
—Then just how perverted is this school to store the students' corpses after torturing them to death, alienating their flesh and blood, and extracting their power?
Moreover, if the school could really independently create something as insidious as the “Red Thread”, it would be no exaggeration to say that it was favored by the game, so how could it become the weaker party in the dungeon?
Tang Xinjue was not surprised that Zhang You would think of this, and replied with a smile, “Who says that these red threads must have been created in the game?”
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