The sound of footsteps approached, and some people's mindsets began to change.
Ji Li's face was reflected in the window. Dim moonlight entered his eyes, making those tricolored pupils appear eerie and profound.
After a long while, he finally turned around slowly, stood before Room 1716's door, and spoke his first words.
"Open the door."
Three weightless words stirred up towering waves.
Along the row of windowsills, every last light went out, and the darkness completely swallowed Haunted Academy.
The overwhelming, terrifying aura of the black-clothed people standing in formation shattered every pane of glass, sending fragments flying in all directions.
The entire E-2 building rang with the thunderous sound of collapse, the violent noise like its final roar of unwillingness in the dead of night.
In an instant, all the floor tiles beneath everyone's feet vanished. The ceiling also turned pitch-black; starlight, the moon, and the sky all ceased to exist.
The Seventeenth Floor remained, but everything above and below it had disappeared.
This Seventeenth Floor became the last remaining part of E-2, existing within strange darkness—something that should not exist, yet truly did.
A lone door stood before Room 1716. With the walls gone, it seemed meaningless, yet anyone wishing to enter still had to unlock it.
The ghost inside Molan finally could no longer endure it. It revealed itself.
The moment those twin pupils appeared, this outstanding woman from Branch No. 10 still retained her sanity, but her gaze became blank and devoid of life.
Yet the price of losing so much intelligence was that great patches of scales grew across her skin, giving off a faint chill and threat like snake scales.
When she spoke, her voice was strange, neither human nor nonhuman, neither ghost nor not a ghost, sending chills down the listener's spine:
"For