Chapter 22: Night Entry into the Art Building

Page 1 of 3

Study hours at High Mountain High School were tightly packed.

After the morning examination, the students spent the afternoon studying on their own while the teachers marked the papers. During evening study hall, the teachers had to go over the exam questions.

At last, they managed to endure until they could return to the dormitory.

It was already nearly midnight.

There were still twenty minutes before the dorm supervisor came to inspect the rooms.

“Does everyone understand the plan?” Baili Dao asked solemnly.

The success or failure of their mission in the instance depended on this operation.

The Art Building could only be entered at midnight. If they failed to get inside tonight, their chances of discovering who the truant was would become exceedingly slim.

After all, the instance had never said that the student had escaped on the final day!

“Yeah. I’ll handle the stealing. Brother Baili and Shi Gandang can stand guard, while Brother Wei Wang will receive us in the Black Room,” Tu Xingsun declared confidently.

Today’s exam had tormented him terribly.

He was the sort of hopelessly illiterate person who could barely recognize a single written character. If not for one of his abilities being related to theft—allowing him to secretly steal the exam papers of the top five students in the class and copy them—his homeroom teacher might have sent him to the Black Room during evening study hall to be processed as trash.

Shi Gandang silently reached into his pocket and scattered a handful of pebbles onto the bed.

In the blink of an eye, the pebbles transformed into stone sculptures resembling the four men. They lay quietly on the bed, pretending to be asleep.

The skill: Stone Soldiers from Scattered Rocks!

Baili Dao walked to the window. The pupils of his eyes gradually changed, narrowing into slits. His gaze became as keen as an eagle’s while hunting, and even the whites of his eyes seemed faintly tinged with yellow.

Eagle Sight!

This was his title skill.

It allowed him to observe things at distances invisible to the human eye, as well as the tiniest of movements. It was also how he had previously noticed Wu Wang’s line of sight shifting upward.

“There’s one security guard on every floor of the teaching building. There’s no one outside the principal’s office, but every stairwell is guarded. Brother Shi, are you certain you can deal with them?” Baili Dao asked.

The tall figure replied in a deep, muffled voice, “Yes. I have an item that can put them to sleep for half an hour. We must move quickly. Once we have the things, we leave immediately and lock the doors behind us. We can’t let them wake up and notice anything amiss.”

At first, they had planned to knock the guards unconscious.

But during evening study hall, they had happened to see two security guards making their rounds. Each stood nearly two meters tall, their muscles straining against their uniforms as though the fabric might burst at any moment. Their eyes were bloodshot and webbed with red veins, while patches of rotten flesh covered their faces.

They looked exactly like the Gargantuar from Plants vs. Zombies—except they were missing the little zombie on their backs.

The group knew that defeating them was probably impossible.

That thing clearly wasn’t human. It was a ghost whose entire brain seemed to be made of muscle and strength.

No wonder the students couldn’t simply climb over the wall and escape school.

Getting caught would mean being beaten to death on the spot!

“Good! The operation begins now!”

---

“His shoes are torn, his hat is torn, even the kasaya on his back is torn...”

Humming a little tune, Wu Wang had already arrived at the Black Room.

Page 1 of 3

Page 2 of 3

At his feet lay a corpse that had swollen slightly from being soaked, dragging a trail of water across the empty ground.

It was Liu Yang’s corpse.

Wu Wang had previously hidden it beneath the school’s lotus pond, even tying stones to its limbs to keep it from floating back up.

Today, he had gone to great lengths to haul the body back ashore.

“Buddy, since you can turn into a ghost inside the Black Room, you should be able to do it in the Art Building too, right?”

Gripping the corpse, he slowly dragged it toward the rear of the Black Room.

That was something he had only just figured out.

Principal Wang feared the tentacled ghost that had escaped from the Black Room. The tentacle monster’s appendages were multicolored, like an oil painting. The supernatural tale of the Black Room belonged neither to the Ghost School’s faction nor to the students. It was connected to the Art Building. And the Art Building did not exist during ordinary hours...

After piecing together all these complicated clues, Wu Wang reached a conclusion.

What Principal Wang truly feared was the tentacled ghost entering the Art Building. That might trigger some kind of change.

That was why he had brought Liu Yang along.

Liu Yang had not objected in the slightest.

He had followed without saying a word. The only trouble was that a corpse soaked through with water was rather heavy to carry.

A moment later, Wu Wang arrived.

Behind the once-empty Black Room now stood a three-story building.

The words “Art Building” had been rendered in large gilded letters across the roof. However, the place looked as though it had been abandoned for many years. The gilding had grown dull, and moss and withered leaves covered it.

Gurgle... gurgle...

Wu Wang felt as though something was writhing beneath his clothes. He could not help lifting his bulletproof vest to take a look.

The Bloody School Uniform was visibly changing. The various colors of graffiti painted across it crawled and flowed over the fabric as though they were alive.

The long-sealed iron door before him was covered in countless colors of graffiti as well, flowing in response.

Sure enough, his guess had been correct.

Once he put on this uniform, he could enter the Art Building without needing that ridiculous box of oil paints!

“Now, the game officially begins!”

Grinning wildly, he approached the entrance.

From the moment he stepped inside, the true core of the instance would finally unveil its mysterious veil to him.

Everything before this had merely been child’s play.

Pop—

Wu Wang reached out. He did not even need to push open the great iron door, which was covered in dust and graffiti. His entire body simply sank into a barrier formed by a thin curtain of water, and ripples spread across the surface of the door.

He and the corpse he was dragging were sucked inside the building together.

Whoosh—

The moment he entered, a pungent smell mixed with dust assaulted his nose. It was somewhat like cheap oil paints, but more reminiscent of the formaldehyde stench from spray paint.

Wu Wang surveyed the first floor.

Page 2 of 3

Page 3 of 3

The lighting was exceedingly dim. Only a faint, pale yellow glow allowed him to make out the general outline of the place.

This already surprised Wu Wang considerably. He had assumed the building would be completely without electricity or any other source of light.

Looking more carefully, he saw all kinds of desks, chairs, benches, and other objects piled chaotically throughout the corridor. On the left, the debris had been stacked all the way to the ceiling, making it completely impossible to pass around.

On both sides were numerous classroom doors, some standing open and others tightly locked. Faint writing could be seen on them: Vocal Music Classroom One, Vocal Music Classroom Two, and so on.

It seemed this floor contained the music classrooms.

“Hee-hee-hee... tee-hee...”

In the silence, where even the fall of a needle could have been heard, an eerie laugh suddenly rang out. It echoed through the corridor like a demon’s muttering, lingering without end.

There was someone inside the Art Building?

Wu Wang’s expression turned solemn.

No. This damned place did not look as though it housed any people.

It was most likely something unclean, something connected to the supernatural tale of the Art Building.

That was the laughter of a ghost!

“Are you... Chu Yuqian? Where are we?”

An even more abrupt voice came from beside his feet.

Wu Wang lowered his head sharply.

Liu Yang was awake!

Not only was he awake, but his head—once shattered to pieces by the fall from the building—and his limbs, swollen from being soaked for an entire day, had completely returned to normal.

He sat on the ground like a living person, rubbing his head with a bewildered look in his eyes.

“Uh, buddy, do you remember what happened before you came here?” Wu Wang asked, tilting his head.

Liu Yang merely frowned in confusion.

“I remember being in class. Teacher Yao called my name and asked me to go up front, and then... I appeared here.”

Sure enough, he did not remember that he had died.

Wu Wang had no intention of telling him.

Who knew whether this fellow, upon remembering that he was dead, would suddenly split open and transform into the kind of tentacled ghost Baili Dao and the others had described?

After all, Qing He Yi Kan had warned them before falling unconscious that the Black Room’s supernatural tale was connected to students who had jumped from the building.

“Do you know about the school’s Art Building?” Wu Wang reached out and pulled Liu Yang to his feet. “When I was a child, there was an uncle named Neil on the children’s channel who believed in me even more than my own mother did. He urged me to create art every single day.”

“We’re in the Art Building now. There should be some white latex glue here that I’ve never managed to find before. Want to come and try it with me?”

Liu Yang froze slightly after hearing this.

A moment later, he pointed behind Wu Wang and asked uncertainly,

“I don’t really mind, but... did that person come here with us too?”

“!?”

Page 3 of 3