Free Web NovelLight and shadow shifted, and a young girl whispered in the darkness.
"Disc Spirit, Disc Spirit, please come out..."
"Looking at the night ahead and behind, a woman binds a straw effigy, with a paper-powdered face, a headscarf, and a shirt and skirt, calling it Purple Maiden."
"Purple Maiden, Purple Maiden, you are my shadow, I am your clothes. If death can take away pain, then let him become a corpse..."
The next moment, the scene before her eyes began to shake violently, disorienting screams echoed in the twilight corridor, a nauseatingly strong smell of blood filled the air, and something's life was fading away.
Then...
The illusory bubble shattered, and Lu Yibei glimpsed the scene hidden behind the curtain.
It was already very dark. Lin Yiqi was slumped alone in the venting room, her left hand resting lightly on her lower abdomen, her right hand holding a blood-stained fire axe, which hung limply on the ground.
Her pale face was splashed with a little blood, and her lips were slightly parted, panting heavily like a goldfish out of water.
A boy's corpse lay quietly in the center of the room, the blood spreading from beneath his body had almost stained the entire floor red.
The sky gradually darkened. Outside the window, the early autumn Chan emitted a dying shriek.
Lin Yiqi looked numbly at the boy lying in the center of the room and suddenly laughed.
"I succeeded! Hehehe! I succeeded! Even if you secretly informed on me and deserted at the last minute, I still succeeded! Hahahaha!"
As she laughed, she began to cry, covering her face with her hands and sobbing uncontrollably.
Amidst the chillingly morbid laughter and the utterly despairing cries, the sun completely sank below the horizon, and the entire room was shrouded in shadow.
Lu Yibei did not wake up; the illusion continued.
She felt something maddening surging in the darkness, with malice, eroding Lin Yiqi's body.
"Ah—!" Lin Yiqi let out a long sigh of relief and release, spread her arms, embraced the darkness, and then looked at the darkest corner of the room, muttering softly.
"Are you here to take the promised thing? Then take it all... Take it all..."
In the darkness, a deep purple mark slowly lit up on her forehead.
...
"Gurgle—Gurgle—!"
Amidst the soft sound of a rolling suitcase, the scene before Lu Yibei's eyes gradually became clear.
Under the night sky, a young girl wearing a black stand-collar Coat and sunglasses, dragging a suitcase, crept through the quiet campus.
She entered the teaching building, ascended the stairs, passed through the empty corridor, and arrived at the venting room at the end of the top floor corridor.
Lu Yibei's gaze stopped outside the door of that venting room.
The room was pitch black, and nothing could be seen, only the sound of flesh and blood being cut and the girl's panting and retching.
The unsettling sounds lasted for an unknown period. Lu Yibei guessed what was happening in the room, feeling a chill down her spine.
After a brief silence, the sound of cutting and sewing fabric echoed in the dark room.
Before long, the girl left the room, dragging the suitcase behind her, turned and entered another venting room. Immediately after, the sound of cutting fabric resounded again.
Not only did Lin Yiqi successfully kill Zhao Ke, but she also... and then sewed him piece by piece into those venting dolls! Lu Yibei made a guess close to the truth, and a shiver ran down her spine.
The girl's hurried footsteps, the sound of the suitcase wheels rolling, the sound of fabric being cut and sewn...
These three sounds cycled in the venting room late at night until the sky began to lighten.
The girl walked out of the last venting room looking haggard, dragging the suitcase, and quietly left.
Lu Yibei watched her receding figure with mixed emotions until it disappeared from sight, leaving only the empty corridor, filled with an unsettling atmosphere.
Then...
Day broke, and Shihekou Middle School, which had slept through the night, awakened in the morning sun, regaining some vitality. No one knew that last night, under the cover of darkness, the flower of evil had quietly bloomed.
After an unknown period, footsteps echoed in the corridor, and a group of students filled with anger and suppressed emotions arrived outside the venting room.
They pounded the venting dolls hard, occasionally whispering, softly voicing their resentment towards Zhao Ke.
"Didn't see that kid surnamed Zhao today? Is he not at school?"
"Bang bang—Bang bang—!"
"Who knows where he went? It's better for us to mind our own business about him. Haven't you seen that even the Teacher doesn't dare to manage him?"
"Bang bang—Bang bang—!"
"You're right, it's better to mind our own business about him. I wish he would never show up at school again!"
"Bang bang—Bang bang—!"
As their fists and feet fell, the venting dolls made dull thuds, but they couldn't hear the muffled groans of pain hidden beneath the dolls, nor could they smell the stench of decay filling the air.
...
"Hoo—!"
Emerging from the illusion, Lu Yibei slowly exhaled a breath of foul air.
She didn't expect the girl plagued by the urban legend to be Lin Yiqi, who had appeared in Zhao Ke's diary, and that such a secret was hidden behind the sealing of Shihekou Middle School.
But where did that urban legend come from, the one perched on her shoulder like an unformed infant?
Why did she suddenly return here at such a special moment as the moonless night, after being away from Shihekou Middle School for so long?
Was it for that ritual?
Lu Yibei stood in place, lost in thought for a long time, then collected her thoughts, bent down, picked up the charred dolls one by one, and put them into the relatively intact box.
Then she walked to the corner of the classroom, carried the unconscious Du Sixian on her back, and left the classroom.
In the darkness, the empty corridor was exceptionally quiet. Walking through it, Lu Yibei could even hear her own footsteps.
The strange dolls and paper-man urban legend that had been active in the corridor had hidden themselves.
That's right, they were hidden!
Lu Yibei felt that as she walked through the corridor, those gazes from the darkness fell upon her, observing her back slyly and cautiously, mixed with panic.
This feeling reminded her of a time in high school when she accidentally fell asleep during evening study and woke up to find herself locked in the teaching building.
The usually noisy teaching building was silent, but by no means peaceful. She always felt that something was lurking in the darkness, watching her, making her uncomfortable.
"Ahem..." Lu Yibei cleared her throat and said expressionlessly, "If you don't have anything, I'll be going now!"
...
After a brief silence, whispers echoed in the darkness.
"She's leaving... Keep her... Don't keep her..."
"...Keep her... Don't keep her... Scared..."
Lu Yibei, "???"
What are you afraid of? Shouldn't I be the one who's afraid? ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
Lu Yibei realized that even though she had become very much like a urban legend, she still didn't quite understand the urban legend' way of thinking. She muttered to herself and continued to walk forward.
When she reached the staircase, she paused slightly and glanced towards the fourth floor.
The dark stairwell was like a large mouth, ready to swallow the only faint light. Something eerie and terrifying was lurking in the darkness.
Forget it, it's better not to meddle in matters that have nothing to do with oneself.
All of them were in the wrong. This was a tragedy caused by countless coincidences and overly paranoid emotions.
How could I possibly sort out such complicated relationships? Lu Yibei thought, after all, I'm just a simple, cute, homebody single dog!
...
Ten minutes later, at the foot of the mountain outside Shihekou Middle School.
Lu Yibei stopped by the roadside, looking back at the faintly visible abandoned school halfway up the mountain. A feeling of surviving a disaster suddenly arose, and she couldn't help but let out a long sigh of relief.
Although she hadn't found the girl plagued by the urban legend on this trip, it was still worthwhile.
However, as she gazed in the direction of Shihekou Middle School, a question gradually surfaced in her mind.
Why was there no one guarding a place like this, which was clearly a nest of urban legend, even on a special night like the moonless night, even if the Night Watch couldn't completely eradicate it?
Weren't they afraid that the urban legend inside would run out and harm people?
It seems my previous guess wasn't entirely unreasonable. There are indeed moles within the Night Watch.
Uh, except for me! Lu Yibei added in her mind, and besides, I haven't done anything harmful to anyone, let alone being just a temporary worker!
It was already past midnight, and people who were out and about had long since disappeared. In the empty streets, the figures of urban legend occasionally appeared.
On the streets, long-legged pulsating organs were running, pursued by a cloud of gray mist.
A deformed urban legend, a mixture of flesh and ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) metal garbage, like a streetlamp, blinked its single large eye with eyelashes, looking down at the empty streets.
In the shadows at the street corner, something was greedily peering, its gaze wandering back and forth between the suitcase, the Coat's inner pocket, and the sleeping Du Sixian.
They sensed the aura of the urban legend' core and the scent of flesh and blood emanating from Du Sixian, but they feared the terrifying aura emanating from Lu Yibei's body and dared not approach rashly.
As Jiang Li had warned Lu Yibei, the moonless night was a carnival for urban legend.
Walking on the streets where shadows flickered everywhere, Lu Yibei frowned, her mood could be summed up in two words: scared.
Strange, the situation wasn't this serious when I came?
Was it because the night wasn't deep enough then?
What should I do now? With so many urban legend, if I just walk back like this, who knows what kind of trouble I'll run into!
Lu Yibei felt like she was walking on a mountain path filled with bandits, carrying a large amount of gold bars. She could be rushed out at any moment, presented with the well-known phrase "This road is mine," and then have her gold bars stolen and be taken back to be the bandit chief's wife.
Although I can fight to the death, and refuse to yield, and wait until dawn to turn back into a man, and then watch helplessly as Du Sixian suffers.
But it's not guaranteed that those urban legend won't have the strange thought of "Isn't that even better?"
How about...
I just take a taxi back!?
Lu Yibei pondered, took out Uncle Zhang Shan's business card from her Coat pocket, then turned around, fumbled around on Du Sixian, and found her phone.
After studying it for a while and confirming that her phone, like her clothes, was not damaged, she pointed the front camera at her face in the dim yellow light of the street lamp, and then her pupils trembled slightly.
On the phone screen, in the image captured by the front camera, Du Sixian's forehead surprisingly had a strange mark.
Crimson outlined the shape of a flame, with light gold depicted in the center, and beneath the light gold, an unsettling black mist was hidden.
Lu Yibei stared at the mark for a few seconds, and a strange thought arose in her mind.
That was...
Her mark.
