Found You

In Qin Feng's perception, countless gray-black wisps of resentment, thinner than strands of hair, seeped out from every crack in the walls, ceiling, and floor.

They were no longer disorderly drifting threads, but converged together and surged toward some source on the rooftop.

He stepped onto the stairs, his pace steady.

"Creak... creak..."

The old voice-activated lights flickered on and off with his precisely controlled footsteps.

The higher he went, the thicker the rusty stench of blood and decay in the air became.

The fifth floor. The resentment here had nearly condensed into tangible ink, trailing long, despairing strands through the air.

Inside Dorm 502.

The curtains were drawn tight, blocking out every trace of light.

The door was firmly barricaded by a desk, with two suitcases stuffed with books and weighing over a hundred pounds pressing down on top.

Two pale-faced male students huddled in the corner, their bodies shaking like sieves.

"Liu Kai... the police left... they really left! They forgot about us!" The slightly chubby Zhang Wei hugged his knees, his teeth chattering wildly, his voice warped by overwhelming terror.

"When they knocked on each door and cleared everyone out, we... we slept like dead pigs... That ghost thing must have done this!"

Liu Kai gripped his phone tightly, veins bulging across the back of his hand.

Fear was the finest plague, spreading geometrically through a sealed, hopeless environment.

Suddenly, a shrill, piercing ring like that of an old rotary phone exploded through the dead-silent room without warning.

"Ring-ring—ring-ring—!"

The source of the sound was the phone clenched in Liu Kai's hand.

Both students jolted violently.

Zhang Wei let out a short scream as if someone had seized him by the throat, then clamped a hand over his mouth.

Liu Kai stared at the unknown number ending in "0000" on the screen, his pupils instantly shrinking to pinpoints.

He wanted to hang up. He wanted to throw the damned phone into the eighteenth level of hell. But his fingers seemed welded in place by some invisible force, unable to move.

The call was forcibly connected.

"Bzzz... crackle..."

After a burst of teeth-grinding static, an eerie voice slowly flowed from the receiver.

The voice was neither male nor female, like countless sharp steel needles scraping madly across glass. Every syllable carried a bone-scraping, icy malice.

"Sharp... metal... will pierce... your body."

"You... will become a puddle of mush..."

"Nailed... to the floor..."

As soon as the voice fell silent, the call abruptly ended.

The room was so quiet that they could hear their hearts pounding inside their chests.

"No... no! I don't want to die!" Liu Kai sprang up from the floor as if insane and began frantically searching the dorm room, his eyes bloodshot. "Scissors, throw them out! Fruit knife, throw that out too! And your pen holder—there's a utility knife in it, hurry!"

In a frenzy, he hurled everything with sharp metal parts out the window with all his strength. A chaotic clatter sounded from downstairs.

Yet even so, the police outside showed no reaction whatsoever.

Zhang Wei was infected by his panic and shakily joined him in clearing things out.

Before long, every object in the dorm that could be considered a weapon had been removed.

"There's... nothing left..." Liu Kai panted heavily, leaning against the wall with unfocused eyes. "There's no sharp metal anymore. I won't die... Right, I won't die..." He repeated it like self-hypnosis, trying to drive away the fear clinging to his bones.

Zhang Wei looked at the empty room and relaxed slightly.

But just then, his gaze unconsciously swept over the dorm's old metal bunk bed.

The next second, his face turned whiter than the peeling wall paint.

"Liu... Liu Kai..." He pointed at the bed with a hand trembling so violently it had become distorted. "The bed... the frame..."

Liu Kai followed his gaze and froze as well.

It was a metal bed that had been in use for who knew how many years. Its paint had long since peeled away, revealing rusted metal underneath.

Due to years of disrepair, one of the square support rods connecting the upper and lower bunks had broken at its joint. Years of pressure had torn the break into an incomparably sharp gap that glinted with a cold, rusty sheen.

"No... impossible..." Liu Kai's lips trembled as he backed away step by step, as though the bed were some prehistoric beast.

A pen cap that had rolled away when he threw out the pen holder caught under his foot. He instantly lost his balance and stumbled backward.

His survival instincts made him reach out reflexively and grab the edge of the upper bunk, trying to steady himself.

"Creak—snap!"

The already fragile joint at the bedframe's edge could not withstand Liu Kai's sudden grip. The last remaining strand of metal snapped apart!

The entire upper bunk, along with its mattress and bedding, instantly lost all support and crashed down like a massive guillotine toward the broken support rod beneath it, gleaming with lethal cold light!

Time seemed to freeze at that moment.

In Liu Kai's pupils, there was only that lethal rusty metal spike drawing closer and closer.

Zhang Wei collapsed onto the floor, his mouth hanging open in terror, but no sound emerged from his throat.

The prophecy was about to come true.

Not through a ghost's shove, nor through outside interference, but through the victim's own actions driven by fear, which ultimately triggered the mechanism of death.

A perfect closed loop of rules.

"Bang—!"

At that critical instant, the dorm door, firmly barricaded by the desk, was violently kicked open from outside by an irresistible force!

Wood chips and scraps of paper flew everywhere as the two heavy suitcases were overturned by the tremendous force.

A tall figure appeared against the dim corridor light, descending like a god.

Without the slightest pause, his right hand flashed into his sports bag and drew a pitch-black pistol etched with fine silver patterns, the movement as smooth as if he had practiced it thousands of times.

He did not even take the time to aim, locking onto the target through instinct alone.

"Bang!"

The muffled gunshot exploded through the cramped dorm room, making their eardrums buzz.

A spinning bullet, carrying scorching air and terrifying kinetic force, struck the broken support rod that was about to pierce Liu Kai's body with perfect precision!

"Clang!!"

The enormous impact sent the metal rod flying away, narrowly grazing Liu Kai's falling body!

"Thud!"

Everything happened in the blink of an eye.

Liu Kai and Zhang Wei were both stunned, staring blankly at the stranger holding a gun, a wisp of smoke still rising from its muzzle. Their minds were completely blank.

Qin Feng slowly lowered the gun. With a flick of his wrist, a scorching shell casing popped out with a "ding" and landed in his open other palm.

Without even looking at it, he casually slipped the casing into his pocket. His gaze swept over the two terrified students before finally settling on the collapsed metal bed.

A playful curve rose at the corner of his mouth as he spoke unhurriedly.

"Students, have you never read the school's dormitory safety regulations?"

Before his words had even faded, the phone Liu Kai had dropped to the floor suddenly burst with a blood-red glow across its screen!

No longer a ringtone, but a shriek so piercing it could tear apart the soul, overflowing with fury and venomous resentment, transformed into a tangible mental shockwave that swept through the entire room!

"—Aaaaaah!!!"

Zhang Wei and Liu Kai instantly clutched their heads and screamed, feeling as if countless steel needles were stabbing into their brains.

Qin Feng merely furrowed his brow slightly, his cold, sharp gaze instantly locking onto the violently vibrating phone whose screen flickered on and off.

He stepped forward, raised his foot, and stomped down cleanly.

"Crack!"

The screen shattered, and the shriek stopped abruptly.

There was no trace of mockery left in Qin Feng's eyes, only the absolute chill of a hunter who had locked onto his prey.

"Found you, little thing."