Thanks to Yi Qi's Generous Reward

There was something going on outside.

Jing immediately understood. She looked up toward the door.

But outside the classroom, there was nothing but darkness. The only person she could see was Little Red, still pressed against the door across the hall.

"Listen! Listen!" Curly Hair mouthed silently at Jing, his mouth wide open.

Jing understood and immediately listened for sounds outside.

The same stiff, shuffling footsteps continued outside. On this floor, the one above, and the one below, who knew how many ghosts like the one from earlier were wandering around?

But amid those stiff, eerie footsteps, Jing heard another strange sound.

"Thump." "Thump-thump." "Thump."

It was the sound of someone going upstairs.

After the school bell rang, the ghosts that wandered the school and hunted by sound would also walk on the stairs, making the sound of someone going up or down. Hearing footsteps on the stairs wasn't anything unusual.

But the footsteps they heard now were clearly different from the heavy, stiff ones the ghosts made. These steps were lighter, and their rhythm wasn't steady. They alternated between slow and fast, like they were made by a living person.

Was someone alive going upstairs right now?

What a joke.

Curly Hair glanced at his watch. It was now seven fifteen in the morning.

The school bell had rung at six fifty. The ghosts patrolling the halls wouldn't disappear until the final bell rang at eleven thirty.

During that time, anyone who left a classroom would be targeted and killed by a ghost. The veteran players all knew this. They wouldn't be wandering around outside at this hour.

If the person on the stairs really was human, then they could only be a new player, just like Beautiful Chu and her group—someone who had only just entered the instance