Hell High School (10): Dangerous Night

Tan Xiao was forced to take a shower early the next morning, soaked a packet of oatmeal in milk, and just finished hanging the freshly washed sheets and duvet in the room before heading to class with a thermos and pencil case.

He looked resentfully at Wen Yi, who was closely following him. After being outsmarted by the other party yesterday, Wen Yi looked like a fox spirit from “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio” who had successfully absorbed live essence, his previously pale face now flushed, with a charming demeanor in his eyes and eyebrows, full of springtime vitality.

Tan Xiao felt that this was definitely not a case of being overly suspicious or jumping to conclusions; Wen Yi’s expression was very obvious!

What was the use of disguising oneself alone? They were so close to each other, going to class together, leaving school together, and eating together.

If Wen Yi went out looking like this, 100% of the time, they would be exposed.

For the sake of his own reputation and for Wen Yi’s good, Tan Xiao had no choice but to continue making him wear a mask that could cover most of his face. He even got a pair of black-framed glasses from the supermarket for him to wear, just to cover up a bit.

Besides masks and gloves, Tan Xiao thought for a moment and pulled out two wool scarves of the same style but different colors from the cabinet, tying one on himself and the other on Wen Yi.

While helping the other person tie the scarf, he said with a cold face, “You absolutely cannot take off the scarf casually, and you must not let anyone see it, understood?”

Wen Yi nodded, “Understood.”

You can’t blame Tan Xiao for this expression; he had already told Wen Yi before, but the other party wouldn’t listen, and now he was in this situation. He had no way back and was definitely feeling angry.

Wen Yi really loved to bite. Half an hour ago, when Tan Xiao was forced to take a shower, he found that his body was covered with marks left by the other party.

The scratches on his back were needless to say, like he had been clawed by a cat, and not a little kitten, but a very wild wildcat.

His abs and chest muscles were even more unbearable to look at, covered in claw marks and bite marks. After a whole night, they hadn’t faded much; instead, the fading marks made the bluish-purple and reddish marks appear even more ambiguous.

Of course, he would retaliate with a tooth for a tooth, and he didn’t even need to lift Wen Yi’s clothes to know that the other person wasn’t in any better shape.

After all, Wen Yi’s skin was even whiter than his, and a few bruises on such excessively fair skin were as obvious as a red plum blossom on white snow.

A thick winter coat, long pants, and boots can cover most areas, but when he was brushing his teeth, he saw a bunch of hickeys on his neck in the mirror.

So, he didn’t care about the neck being choked and specifically dug out a turtleneck sweater from the closet to cover his neck.

Because he was afraid that bending down or similar actions would expose a small patch of skin from the turtleneck, revealing the marks, he added a scarf to cover the back thoroughly as well.

After all, on such a cold day, they couldn’t just blame the red mark on a mosquito, and saying it was from sleeping on a cool mat wouldn’t work either. In this cold weather, everyone sleeps under soft quilts; cotton can’t leave such ambiguous marks.

The innocent classmates didn’t understand anything. If it were the old Tan Xiao, he wouldn’t have noticed either.

After a night of studying, Tan Xiao felt that experienced people were very different from inexperienced ones. The teachers in the class might be able to figure it out, so they had to be more low-key and restrained today!

Tan Xiao’s low-key demeanor was quite obvious: at breakfast today, they each ate separately without speaking, and on the way to the classroom, he refused to hold Wen Yi’s hand, even actively avoiding it.

If Wen Yi wanted to hold his hand, he would walk a bit faster, not allowing the other person to catch up. However, if the other person slowed down, Tan Xiao would also slow his pace, ensuring that he didn’t leave Wen Yi too far behind.

But Wen Yi wasn’t upset; if he got one chance, he could get a second, a third…

The boy’s body was much more honest than his mouth; he didn’t think Tan Xiao could escape his grasp.

He knew that Tan Xiao was just being overly shy, so he was throwing a tantrum. If the other person really didn’t like it, he wouldn’t have cooperated yesterday.

During class, today’s Tan Xiao was different from yesterday. He sat properly in the middle of his desk, not shifting towards Wen Yi at all.

He stared straight at the blackboard, his hands neatly placed on his desk, even pushing the books piled on the desk slightly towards his side, looking as if he didn’t want to cross any boundaries.

Wen Yi waited for a while until the test paper reached Tan Xiao’s hands. Seeing the latter frowning at the wrong question, he naturally leaned over: “You should draw a guide line here for this question…”

Tan Xiao suddenly understood, and after a moment, he reacted: “I didn’t ask you to explain the questions to me.”

Was he someone who could be easily coaxed? He couldn’t just easily give in to Wen Yi.

Wen Yi just smiled at him, hid tone gentle: “Do you still want me to explain?”

Compared to the teacher, Wen Yi’s explanation was clearly more coherent, and his tone was much better than the teacher’s.

Learning was more important, he told himself. He clicked the blue ballpoint pen in his hand: “Then… can you explain this physics problem to me again?”

The pace of life in the third year of high school is very fast. For someone focused on studying, there is simply not enough free time, and there’s no mind to gossip about other people’s stories.

But not everyone is a good student who loves learning; at least most of the players entering the instance were not.

The content taught by the teacher in class was like listening to a foreign language for them. Even university student players felt like they had returned all the knowledge they painstakingly learned back to the teacher.

Especially in certain math and science courses, it almost had a hypnotic effect. While listening, players’ eyes turned into slits, and they felt drowsy.

However, after the ghost teacher threw a piece of chalk that directly hit one player’s head, no player dared to doze off. If they felt sleepy, they would desperately pinch their thighs to stay awake, relying on the pain to keep themselves alert.

Unlike ordinary survival scenarios, this kind of supernatural storyline involved not only survival but also puzzle-solving elements. If they collected enough storyline fragments, they could unlock the entire plot of the instance and complete it ahead of time.

Moreover, there were no monster-killing side missions, so to achieve a high score, they could only rely on gathering storyline fragments.

After spending a day in the game, most players hadn’t obtained any effective storyline clues, only knowing that the night was very dangerous.

From sunset to the end of evening study, and from the end of evening study to sunrise, Hell High School became a hunting ground for ghosts and monsters.

In the classroom, there were teacher ghosts and student ghosts. The teacher ghosts were manageable; as long as they attended class earnestly, they would only suffer mentally and physically, without any life-threatening danger.

In front of the student ghosts, you must maintain the persona of a good student. Good students had a higher status in the class compared to bad students. However, not every class was the same; from freshman to senior year, there were a total of 60 classes, and each class had its own subtle differences.

Except for Class 8 in senior year, the players in other classes had a tough time.

For a student like Xia Yizhen, who was physically strong but had poor grades since elementary school, attending classes and studying was less appealing than fighting with ghosts.

Perhaps her bad luck was at play; tonight, after finishing a day of evening self-study, she encountered some trouble while walking back to the girls’ dormitory from the dormitory building.

In the center of Hell High School, not far from the school gate, there was a beautiful artificial lake. In the center of the lake, there was a winding corridor and a viewing pavilion, surrounded by patches of lotus flowers and a bunch of plump koi fish.

There was also a white marble bridge over the artificial lake. If you came out of the laboratory building and went directly across the bridge, you could take a shortcut back to the girls’ dormitory.

Although Xia Yizhen could swim, at night, because there were more trees over there and the artificial lake was large, she usually preferred to take a few more steps and go the long way around.

But today was different. As she dragged her tired feet towards the dormitory, she heard a girl with a choked voice say, “You, don’t do this…”

She followed the sound and saw a girl with beautiful, jet-black hair in a school uniform being bullied by a boy under a willow tree by the lake.

Their position was relatively concealed; the willow’s lush branches and leaves covered most of their bodies, but when Xia Yizhen arrived, the angle was just right to see the two clearly.

Although this was high school, there were still quite a few couples secretly dating.

However, hearing the crying tone, Xia Yizhen instinctively felt something was off.

Sure enough, not long after, the boy started to touch the girl inappropriately, even reaching directly into her school uniform. The girl was wearing a summer uniform, with a shirt on top and a light blue pleated skirt on the bottom.

She began to struggle, but the boy slapped her hard and cursed, “Bitch, stop pretending.”

The girl struggled even more fiercely, using her hands and feet to fight back. She bit the boy hard, and then the tall, burly boy with a buzz cut picked up a stone from the ground and hit the back of the girl’s head with it.

The girl had blood oozing from her head and helplessly reached out towards Xia Yizhen, crying for help: “Save me!”

As a fellow girl, Xia Yizhen was furious at the sight of such a thing and couldn’t care less about anything else. She rushed over to save her.

“Let her go!”

As a result, just as she charged forward, something tripped her and she fell to the ground. The roots of the willow tree wrapped around Xia Yizhen’s calf, and the girl she thought was being bullied revealed a terrifying face swollen by the water.

She changed her previous sobbing tone and let out a cackling laugh, “Come down, come down with me!”

The boy who had beaten her before turned his face, his back head covered in black hair, while his face was completely covered in algae.

Xia Yizhen finally realized the malicious intentions of the ghost: this wasn’t a case of a girl being bullied by a boy, it was clearly a carefully crafted illusion trap by the water ghost, luring her, a lone player, to come and help.

Xia Yizhen regretted it immensely… Nighttime already amplifies people’s emotions, and combined with her extreme fatigue, she momentarily lost her rationality.

Clearly, this water ghost had many things wrong with it: for example, it was winter now, freezing cold! What girl wears a pleated skirt in this weather? And this wasn’t even her own school, the NPCs in this instance were all ghosts and monsters, she shouldn’t be this impulsive!

At that moment, Xia Yizhen erupted with a strong desire to survive. She tapped into her innate strength, breaking free from the rough tree roots with her bare hands. Her heavy punches drove the roots back, but her hands were sore from the friction.

But the girl’s hair had turned into more tree roots, and the boy with the seaweed face lunged at her, tightly hugging Xia Yizhen and slowly dragging her towards the lotus pond.

During the day, those chubby koi fish that looked so plump emerged from the shimmering water, and under the pale moonlight, they seemed to have human faces.

The fat-headed fish opened their mouths one by one, revealing their sharp, white teeth, some even still stained with flesh, making her shiver with fear. From the thick mud at the bottom of the lotus pond, white bones emerged, picked clean by the fat koi.

The icy, bone-chilling water soaked through Xia Yizhen’s clothes. In that moment, she thought of her grandmother, and of her close friends and family in the real world.

If she had known it would come to this, she shouldn’t have been greedy the first time she succeeded; she should have given up on this game!

But people can’t have a chance to regret. Perhaps if given another chance, Xia Yizhen would still choose to continue playing the game.

Just when Xia Yizhen thought she would drown and quietly disappear into the artificial lake, a clear voice came from beside her ear.

“Xia, what are you doing here so late?!”

That bone-chilling coldness instantly faded away, and the rigidness that had paralyzed her body suddenly lifted, allowing Xia Yizhen to move again.

She looked up and saw the handsome face of the NPC male classmate who had left a deep impression on her.

He wasn’t wearing a school uniform; instead, he had on a dark gray wool coat and looked at her with a puzzled expression.

“It’s freezing cold, you don’t actually want to go swimming in the artificial lake, do you?”

He pointed to the sign lying on the ground: “Look, it says here, no swimming or fishing.”

Xia Yizhen broke out in a cold sweat, realizing that she hadn’t actually fallen into the water. The surface was shimmering, but not a single koi was breaking the surface.

The reason her body couldn’t move was that the tree roots were firmly binding her limbs.

However, as Tan Xiao approached, all those roots shrank back.

It turned out she hadn’t been dragged into the pool; she had just fallen into a water ghost’s illusion from the very beginning.

By the way, the experts on the forum who have experienced supernatural events said that ghosts and monsters are not as powerful as people think. Most of them don’t have physical bodies, so while humans can’t inflict physical harm on them, they also can’t be harmed physically by them.

The vast majority of ghosts and monsters harm humans by creating illusions and mental attacks, causing them to fall into their own traps.

The more fear there is, the more real the illusions created by the ghosts and monsters become, and the greater the harm to humans.

In the artificial lake where koi were raised and lotus flowers were planted, there were enchanting water ghosts, or perhaps they were not water ghosts but rather willow trees by the lake that had turned into spirits.

In supernatural-themed instances, ghosts became stronger over time; just because a place was safe yesterday didn’t mean it would be safe today.

Xia Yizhen snapped back to reality, feeling cold sweat pouring down her face. She stomped hard on the tree root beneath her feet and ran seven or eight steps away.

If it weren’t for Tan Xiao’s sudden appearance, she might have died here today.

After running a bit farther away from the tall trees that cast eerie shadows, she bowed and thanked him from a distance: “Tan Xiao, thank you! I’m heading back now! It’s very dangerous by the lake, you should hurry back too!”

She didn’t know if Tan Xiao was a player or a friendly NPC, but anyway, she definitely couldn’t stay by the lake any longer.

Later, Xia Yizhen even traded information about the ghost in the pavilion with other players, but that’s another story and had nothing to do with Tan Xiao.

Tan Xiao, confused, watched the girl run away, then took a step forward, picked up the knocked-over sign, and firmly planted it back into the ground.

When he bent down, the willow tree cautiously extended a branch, only to encounter the black ghostly energy swirling around Tan Xiao.

It had finally captured a prey, but this sudden intruder disrupted its good fortune. Since that was the case, it would take this young man instead.

A young man, with more yang energy than a woman, and flesh that was more delicious. It didn’t matter if he was a student ghost; within the ghostly realm, they were always hunting each other. Eating their own kind would also make them stronger.

The roots of the tree were immediately severed cleanly, and the water ghost clinging to the willow tree let out a piercing wail, losing more than half of the ghostly energy it had painstakingly cultivated.

Looking again, 14 was standing not far away!

This boy was the prey of 14, and it had just dared to snatch food from the tiger’s mouth. It had to thank 14 for leaving it a breath of life.

The water ghost hid its face back into the willow tree, trembling and curling up into a ball, not daring to make any more small movements.

Tan Xiao straightened up, brushed off the dirt on his hands, and said to Wen Yi, “Alright, let’s head back.”

Since he would get hungry after evening study sessions, Tan Xiao didn’t want to eat instant noodles every night. After class, he specifically went to the supermarket to restock.

The supermarket owner sold quite a lot of things, and he even used a very old rice cooker to cook some corn to sell.

At the entrance, there were machines for grilling sausages, meatballs, and sweet potatoes… The prices were twice as high as in the cafeteria.

But it was quite normal; the cafeteria had subsidies, while the supermarket owner didn’t.

Tan Xiao spent three spirit coins to buy a so-called fruit corn from the owner, but it turned out to be sticky in his hands. After taking a bite, he was hit with a taste of cheap syrup, and the texture was very tough.

What fruit corn? It was clearly saccharin corn.

After mentally cursing the unscrupulous owner, Tan Xiao, adhering to his principle of not wasting food, frowned and finished the corn.

When he and Wen Yi returned, they happened to wash their hands at the outdoor faucet of the lab building, and then they saw Xia Yizhen doing who-knows-what by the lake.

Tan Xiao rubbed his hands together, his breath turning into wisps of white mist in the air: “The wind is really strong, it’s howling like a ghost. Let’s hurry back.”

He never expected that there really were ghosts in the school. After all, when the wind blows hard, it does sound like ghosts howling, and places with many trees are even creepier.

If it were just one person, they would indeed be a bit scared, but since he came with Wen Yi, one person is timid as a mouse, two people are bold as brass.

Wen Yi nodded, his fingertips brushing against the small box in his pocket. When he was buying things at the supermarket, he took a glance, and the considerate supermarket owner proactively offered him the offerings.

The owner gave Wen Yi a box of various models of stock, filling his coat pocket to the brim.

Although this was an internal school supermarket, the customers here include not only students but also teachers; everything you need is available.

Tan Xiao said there weren’t that many clean sheets and duvet covers, and he had been rejecting his advances all night. With these items, the other party would surely have no reason to refuse anymore.

Tan Xiao sneezed, inexplicably feeling a sense of danger: the outdoors on a winter night could be very dangerous, after all, the low temperatures could easily freeze a person to death.

The naive him didn’t know that the indoors at night were equally dangerous, after all, the evil spirit in the dormitory was incredibly greedy, intent on making him pay all his dues, not leaving a single drop behind.