Chapter Thirty: The Thrilling Teachers’ Dormitory

Just as Mr. Peng was about to reach Jiang Yuqi, she suddenly seemed to lose her balance and fell straight down. Mr. Peng hurried over to check; he didn’t think she would die from the fall—it was only the second floor, after all.

The trouble would come if she was injured and had to be taken to the hospital; if the doctors discovered anything, that would be a problem.

But as he leaned out the window to look below, something unexpected happened.

Though it was already night, there were still streetlights casting a faint glow along the roadside.

Yet what Mr. Peng saw was something that should never have appeared.

Outside was pitch-black—a pure, unbroken darkness.

This darkness seemed to devour every trace of light, endless and all-consuming.

Mr. Peng was so startled that he shrank back, blinking rapidly, unable to believe what he’d just seen.

“Could my eyes be playing tricks on me?”

Thinking this, he looked outside again, but still, there was only darkness—nothing at all was visible.

More than that, he noticed an uncanny silence all around him.

This was absurd; at this hour, there should still be some people on campus—those staying in the dormitories, for example.

And even if Jiang Yuqi had fallen from the second floor, it was unlikely to be fatal—so why was there no sound at all?

It was eerie—far too eerie!

Cold sweat broke out across Mr. Peng’s forehead.

He glanced back, only to see the greasy, overweight man staring fixedly at one spot, as if he were frozen in place.

Yet when Mr. Peng looked in that direction, all he saw was an ordinary mirror.

“Hey, fatty, what… what are you looking at?”

But the greasy man didn’t seem to hear him; he remained motionless, still staring at that spot.

The already unsettling atmosphere grew even more oppressive.

It felt as if some invisible force was pressing down on Mr. Peng, suffocating him.

He swallowed hard and, moving slowly, walked over to the man, giving him a gentle push.

“What… what’s wrong with you?”

The man turned his head mechanically, his pupils trembling violently. “Just now… I just saw a clown…”

He pointed to the spot he’d been staring at.

“You mean there’s a clown in the mirror?”

Mr. Peng asked instinctively.

The words seemed to trigger the greasy man; he bolted for the door, shouting as he ran.

“Please, don’t kill me! I’m guilty! I’ll turn myself in!”

With that, he yanked open the door and dashed out.

But the instant he stepped outside, the door slammed shut behind him, and his hysterical screams erupted from the hallway.

“Ah!!!”

A moment later, blood seeped under the door, pooling at Mr. Peng’s feet.

That was the breaking point.

He rushed to the door, desperately trying to open it, but the handle seemed welded in place—it wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard he tried.

“What the hell is happening?!”

Letting go of the handle, he stumbled backward, terror etched deep in his eyes as he scanned the room.

Now, all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

The oppressive, suffocating terror drove him toward the window—the only possible escape.

He hurried over, trying to open it, but it was as immovable as the door.

This time, he didn’t give up; he began pounding on the glass again and again.

The window, after all, was made of regular glass—not bulletproof—so it should shatter under enough force.

Cracks began to spider across the surface, but through the fractures, Mr. Peng witnessed a horrifying sight.

From any other angle, there was only darkness outside. But through the splintered glass, he saw a different world entirely.

It was not darkness, but a field of pallid white—featureless, as if nothing existed there.

The greasy man was at the center of this pale expanse, his body stained with blood, barely clinging to life.

As Mr. Peng struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, a figure dressed in green, wearing clown makeup, approached the wounded man, a short knife dripping blood in hand.

Mr. Peng realized something was terribly wrong. He tried to avert his gaze, but found that he was utterly paralyzed, unable to look away, forced to watch as the clown drew closer.

When the clown stood before the man, the latter began to writhe and struggle violently, though he couldn’t utter a single sound.

Looking more closely, Mr. Peng saw that the man’s mouth had been sewn shut with thread.

Before he could process this, the clown raised his blade and began a merciless attack.

Suddenly—

Mr. Peng collapsed to the floor, staring at the black void beyond the window, his mind reeling.

What on earth was happening?

What had occurred here?

“The mirror—there’s something wrong with that mirror!”

Recalling the fat man’s words, he turned to face it.

Now, it seemed everything in the dormitory had vanished, leaving only Mr. Peng and the mirror.

He walked toward it slowly, finding it looked perfectly ordinary. There was no clown—only his own reflection.

“Could the clown be me?”

No sooner had the thought occurred to him than he noticed something strange.

He’d just moved, yet his reflection seemed never to have shifted its gaze from him.

He waved tentatively; the reflection didn’t move, still staring at him with the same posture.

Looking closer, he saw a faint smile on the face in the mirror.

It was a bizarre smile—almost as if mocking him.

“Damn you!”

Mr. Peng lashed out, his fist smashing against the glass.

The once-smooth surface fractured into countless shards.

And in each tiny mirror, he saw himself—smiling.

“Who? Who is behind this? Show yourself!”

He began to shout in fury, but his rage was pointless; every image in the mirror smiled back with that same unsettling expression.

His fist was bleeding from the blow, blood smearing the glass and making the reflections appear even more bloodthirsty.

As he teetered on the edge of collapse, the mirror seemed to come alive, drawing closer and closer.

He tried to flee, but the dormitory was so small—no matter how he ran, escape was impossible.

“Take a good look—do you remember who I am?”

The reflection in the mirror suddenly spoke, the voice painfully familiar.

He looked again, and his image began to change, morphing through a series of transformations, until finally it became a handsome young man.