Chapter Thirty-Nine: Confronting Fear

Li Dongxu was trembling so fiercely now that he resembled a battered drum caught in a storm. Those who knew him might think he was terrified, while others might imagine he was dancing wildly to a beat only he could hear.

“Wh-Wh-Wh…”
Li Dongxu stammered for ages, unable to utter a second word. Still, Wang Hui and Yuan Zhikong guessed he was trying to ask, “What do we do?”

Yuan Zhikong glanced around and spoke slowly, “Actually, I’ve heard what you should do when you encounter monsters like this.”

“What should we do?” Wang Hui instinctively asked.

“Find a cold, shadowy corner to lie down in. That way, after you’re killed, at least your corpse won’t rot too quickly.”

Xiao Zi, Wang Hui: “…”

Li Dongxu: “Damn it.”

“I can’t die! I’ve never had a girlfriend! I still want to eat barbecue later, I want to play games at the internet café! I can’t die!”
Perhaps the pressure of impending death unleashed some hidden potential, and Li Dongxu managed to speak a full sentence at last, though it was utterly useless.

Just then, Wang Hui suddenly shrieked, “Holy crap! Look—what is that?”

He pointed toward the bottom of the stairwell, terror etching his face.

Yuan Zhikong looked instinctively, saw nothing, and was about to tell Wang Hui so. But the moment he turned his head, he saw a blood-red figure standing right behind Li Dongxu.

“Move!”
Yuan Zhikong shouted, and Li Dongxu instinctively crouched down. At that exact moment, the blood-red shadow struck where Li Dongxu had just been, then vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Li Dongxu was now utterly petrified, his clothes drenched with sweat. From his perspective, the world had become eerily silent, and the surge of adrenaline heightened his senses to an almost supernatural degree.

He was like a frightened animal, responding to every slightest disturbance.

Because of this, he noticed a shadow slowly ascending from the bottom of the stairs.

“Oh God! There really is a ghost!”
He screamed, abandoning all else, and ran toward the restroom—the only available route.

Once Li Dongxu had fled a fair distance, Wang Hui and Yuan Zhikong stared at each other, wide-eyed.

“What do we do now? According to the legend, everyone who enters that restroom disappears.”

---

“So tell me, is it better to wait here to be killed or disappear together?”
Without waiting for Wang Hui’s answer, Yuan Zhikong bolted toward the restroom.

From experience, he knew that in situations like this, anyone who strayed from the protagonist would be the first to die.

But who was the protagonist?

He ruled out Wang Hui, who was usually dazed and clueless, and Li Dongxu, whose cowardice was just displayed for all to see.
That left himself—calm, decisive, and intelligent.

Thinking this, he glanced over his shoulder at Wang Hui. “If you don’t want to die, hurry and follow me.”

Yet, he never considered the possibility that the real protagonist might be the ghost toying with them all along.

Lost in these thoughts, the lights flickered twice and then suddenly went out, plunging everything into endless darkness.

“Wang Hui! Li Dongxu!”
He shouted at the top of his lungs, running as he called.
But no matter how loudly he yelled, there was no response.

Now he was like a lamb among wolves—unable to see the predators, left only to await their slaughter.

Yuan Zhikong was petrified, staring at the teacher’s dormitory door, pounding on it frantically.

“Teacher, teacher, I’m a student here! Please, help me!”
When faced with danger, the presence of others brings immense comfort.
A moment ago, Wang Hui and Li Dongxu were at his side, but now they’d vanished into the darkness, leaving Yuan Zhikong struggling to maintain his composure.

So he could only seek help from whoever might be inside the teacher’s dormitory.

No matter how hard he knocked or how loudly he shouted, the door remained tightly shut, showing no sign of opening.

He gasped for breath, reminding himself again and again to stay calm.

He had no idea what kind of space he was in. By his reasoning, there were two possibilities:

Either the ghost had transported them to another dimension, making them disappear from the real world,
Or the ghost hadn’t moved them but had merely induced a hallucination.

How to distinguish between these two states?

He looked at the peephole in the door.

It was an old wooden door, the peephole long broken, leaving only an empty hole.

Through this hole, he could see inside.

---

If he could see the teacher inside, it meant he’d fallen victim to a hallucination. If not, he had likely entered another space altogether.

Peering through the peephole, he was met with something entirely unexpected.

A pair of bright red eyes stared back at him.

These were not the red of conjunctivitis, but the vivid crimson of fresh blood, with pupils shrouded in gray—like the eyes of the dead.

“Ah!”
Even Yuan Zhikong could not help but collapse in terror, staring at the wooden door as if he could see the horrifying ghost lurking behind it.

It seemed he really had been transported to some bizarre and sinister realm.

“No… no…”
The last shreds of Yuan Zhikong’s psychological defenses were shattered. He scrambled backward, crawling desperately.

But after only a few steps, a red figure flashed past him.

From the shape, he could tell it was human-like, its blood-red veins twisting around its body like a net, its aura suffocating, as if it had crawled straight out of hell.

Yuan Zhikong only glanced at it before falling into a stupor. When he finally came to, he heard screams echoing from the distance.

These were not the cries of Wang Hui or Li Dongxu, nor the voice of a single person, but the anguished wails of several people at once.

The sound was harrowing, the kind one might make only after enduring utter despair.

As soon as the cries reached Yuan Zhikong’s mind, they exploded there, reminding him of something Li Dongxu had said earlier.

“I heard some people mysteriously disappeared in the restroom on this floor, and we…”

Did everyone who entered the restroom disappear?

Perhaps they didn’t just disappear—they were trapped forever by that monster in this space.

What now? What now?

He felt like a beast trapped in a cage with no hope of escape.

Normally, such creatures meet only one end: surrendering to their fate, waiting for death.

But he would never submit so easily.

With this resolve, he slowly stood, fixed his gaze on the source of the screams, and began to walk toward it.

Rather than await horror, he would confront his fear head-on.