"Holy crap!"
The violent pounding on the door felt as though it were hammering against Wei Liang himself. He yelped and slid straight over to Lin Yi, as if the soles of his feet had been greased with vintage butter from 1982.
But just as he reached him, he saw Lin Yi hurrying out from between the rows of seats.
"Why are you coming back out?" he asked, puzzled.
Lin Yi pointed toward the back of the classroom, signaling for Wei Liang to rush over with him.
"Over there!"
Wei Liang followed Lin Yi's gesture and suddenly understood what he intended.
"Once the classroom lights start flickering, you must immediately crouch beneath a desk and hold tight to the legs of the desk or chair!"
But the main section of the Circular Lecture Hall had no desks. During class, students unfolded the writing pads tucked into their armrests and used those as desks.
So, theoretically speaking, only the desks beside the bookshelves at the back of the classroom counted as actual "desks."
Sure enough, as Lin Yi rushed over, the twenty-odd people left in the classroom whom he had classified as "normal students" immediately abandoned their reading and ran toward the desks with their heads lowered.
But those unsettling classmates embedded in their seats still showed no reaction. Instead, the excitement in their eyes grew stronger as the incandescent lights flickered.
"Pop-bzzz-"
Another incandescent light began to flicker.
Then a third, a fourth...
One after another, the incandescent lights began flickering.
When every incandescent light was flickering, the enormous Circular Lecture Hall seemed to turn into a dance hall rendered in nothing but black and white.
Lin Yi and Wei Liang rushed beneath neighboring desks, then instinctively grabbed the same desk leg.
They both snatched their hands back like lightning and said in unison, "You take it, you take it."
"Oh, screw the politeness. You grab the top, I'll grab the bottom. We'll work it from both ends!" Wei Liang waved his large hand, seized Lin Yi's hand, and pressed it against the desk leg.
Lin Yi had no time to quibble over that, but just then, he suddenly noticed that the classroom seemed to have grown a little dimmer...
He abruptly raised his head toward the ceiling and saw that one of the bulbs had gone out!
"Shit, do you have a death wish? You're actually looking up!" Wei Liang wanted to push Lin Yi's head down, but his arms were too short to reach.
"Don't panic. There shouldn't be a problem before all the lights go out..." Lin Yi reassured him, then added, "Besides, I'm only taking one look."
"Aren't you afraid they'll all go out at once?" Wei Liang said, speechless.
"There should be a process to it, right?" Lin Yi said.
But before he finished speaking, a succession of pops rang out from the ceiling. The lights were going out rather quickly, as though they were being raked with machine-gun fire, though there was still a pattern to it.
"Uh... did it speed up?" Lin Yi's mouth fell open.
"Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop..."
The classroom visibly dimmed.
Lin Yi wanted to say something else, but Wei Liang stopped him with a furious glare. "Stop, stop! Lin, quit fucking jinxing us!"
"Don't panic. If my calculations are right, we still have thirty seconds before they all go out..." Lin Yi argued. "There's enough time."
"Seriously, do you believe that yourself?" Wei Liang curled his lip.
"I do."
"..."
While they were talking, Lin Yi hurriedly cast one final glance across the Circular Lecture Hall.
"One, two, three, four, five..."
With that hurried glance, he took in all the classmates who had remained completely motionless. Time was short, so he could not count the last few individually, but he had narrowed the number of unsettling students down to between thirty-five and thirty-seven.
"Stop looking around!" Wei Liang thumped Lin Yi hard on the back, his voice urgent and worried. "Hurry up and stare at the desk leg!"
"Eighteen," Lin Yi said, but afraid Wei Liang would worry too much, he quickly withdrew his gaze.
As he did, he noticed that Wei Liang, crouching beside him, was gripping the desk leg tightly with both hands. Paired with his solemn, earnest expression, he looked exactly like a warrior holding thick incense sticks in a temple, bowing before a statue to steel himself before setting out.
The only incongruous detail was that this warrior was crouching beneath a square desk, turning the originally solemn, heroic atmosphere into something adorably idiotic.
Just then, the pounding outside the classroom drew everyone's attention.
Bang, bang, bang!
Bang, bang, bang!
Bang, bang, bang!
The fierce pounding reverberated through the classroom door, which began to shake violently. Before long, those tremors spread to all the walls around the classroom.
Bang, bang, bang!
Bang, bang, bang!
Bang, bang, bang!
The classroom floor began trembling too. The incandescent lights on the ceiling swung and clattered, like a string of wind chimes tossed about by raging winds.
"Pop! Pop! Pop..."
The incandescent lights went out one after another as they swayed. Before long, just as Lin Yi silently counted thirty, the final light went out with a pop, exactly as he had calculated.
The entire classroom was pitch-black, with only scattered patches of light squeezing in through the windows.
Because of the difference between the indoor and outdoor temperatures, a layer of white frost had formed on the classroom windows. Raindrops struck the glass, scoring lines across it.
Cold spread steadily inward from outside the windows, and an indescribable eeriness was gradually seeping through the classroom walls.
Lin Yi and Wei Liang had long since lost any inclination to tease each other. Both wore grave expressions.
Wei Liang tugged his baseball cap down and pulled his hoodie tighter, as though trying to shrink his entire body into an iron shell that did not exist.
The classroom shook harder and harder, and only now did Lin Yi understand.
The Teaching Building was not a safe zone, but neither... was the classroom!
The classroom was only a relatively safe area during certain times!
And those times clearly didn't include now!
If I survive tonight, I have to find a way back to the Dormitory tomorrow!
When thick fog scaled the high walls, when the tide soaked the iron cage, every protection would become fragile yellow paper. The dim light and shadows abruptly carried everyone back to the savage ancient past.
Under cover of darkness, those that hid by day and roamed by night began baring their fangs.
"Bang! Bang... bang."
Just as fear began radiating from all the students huddled beneath the desks, the pounding on the classroom door suddenly became less terrifying.
The classroom, which had felt as though it were pitching through fierce winds and towering waves, gradually steadied as well.
Exhalations sounded one after another in the darkness, as though everyone had quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
"Lin..." Wei Liang's voice was as faint as a mosquito's buzz. "Are we safe?"
But Lin Yi did not answer. Instead, he glared fiercely at him.
Idiot, don't communicate with anyone!
Wei Liang immediately caught on and hurriedly shut his mouth, drawing his neck in as he stared at the desk leg.
Lin Yi's expression grew even graver.
Something's wrong!
Something's very wrong!
After twenty minutes of foreplay, how could the rest possibly end so abruptly?
Those thirty-odd classmates had not even moved yet!
Lin Yi held his breath and focused, his body taut, not daring to relax in the slightest.
Sure enough, as though responding to Lin Yi's serious attitude, a crisp sound rang out in the darkness.
"Click!"
The classroom door's lock turned.
Someone outside was unlocking the door.
"Click! Click! Click..."
The lock turned round and round, each crisp sound seeming to roll over everyone like a wheel.
"Clack... click!"
When the lock completed its final turn, the slowly depressing door handle weighed on everyone's heart like a heavy mountain.
"Dee, dee, deee-"
Someone slowly pushed the classroom door open from outside.
"Hiss-"
As though the door of a sealed space capsule had opened, stark white fog poured in from outside.
Without the incandescent lights shining on it, the thick fog crawled and spread across the floor like tentacles. A cold, damp presence seeped in with traces of icy wind, as though the entire classroom had been moved into a cellar.
"Scrape, scrape, scrape..."
The sound of stone scraping against the floor arose inside the classroom.
Something seemed to be moving through the classroom wrapped in thick fog, like a Dementor from "Harry X-ter" crawling across the floor while dragging a stone...
Lin Yi struggled to glance at his watch face.
Without the lights, the classroom was far too dark. He only managed to make out the markings on the dial with considerable difficulty.
22:00.
Ten o'clock sharp...
It's May sixth. In S City, it won't get light until at least five, right? Another seven hours. Do we have to spend them like this?
Lin Yi's longest record had been playing a match of Baby's Honor while squatting over the toilet. He had defended the base for thirty-six minutes and still lost... When he stood up, his legs had trembled and refused to obey him. His whole body had felt awful, as though the blood could not reach his brain...
Could he really stay beneath a desk in that same toilet-squatting position for seven hours...?
He shook his head, inwardly cursing his own stupidity. At a damned moment like this, what right did he have to negotiate whether he would squat or sit on a toilet?
Just then, a bright light suddenly appeared in the classroom, catching Lin Yi completely off guard.
He instinctively glanced at his watch.
22:02.
Two minutes have passed...
I have to admit, thinking random bullshit really does kill time. If that's how it works, maybe I really can ride this out.
Wait! Where the fuck is that light coming from?!
He instinctively wanted to look toward the light, but he did not even need to search for it. He saw a light source beneath another desk nearby.
A classmate huddling beneath that desk had actually switched on a portable flashlight!
Lin Yi's eyes widened. Even his mind short-circuited for a moment.
He never could have imagined encountering such a little genius in a randomly assigned classroom like this!
Clearly, this one had come prepared!
Just then, Lin Yi instinctively wanted to use this precious light to look around the classroom, but at the same time, he immediately remembered the Head Teacher's warning before leaving.
When the classroom lights began flickering, the first step was to crouch beneath a desk and grip its legs tightly.
Then, neither close your eyes nor look at anything other than the patterns on the floor or the desk legs!
Recalling the line "Do not look back" in the Student Rules as well, Lin Yi instantly arrived at a horrifying deduction.
That thing in the fog has come into the classroom!
Is the ban on looking around meant to keep me from seeing it... or is there some other reason?
More thoughts surfaced in Lin Yi's mind.
But this time, he had learned his lesson.
Since unwanted thoughts had come at a time like this, then fine...
He focused his gaze on the desk leg and let the black-stocking sect and the white-stocking sect battle in his mind.
Sure enough, thinking about that instantly left him feeling refreshed, and the discomfort permeating his surroundings faded considerably.
However, the drawbacks of numbing himself soon began to show.
Clack!
A dull smack suddenly sounded in the deathly silent classroom.
It was the sound of a folding seat springing back into place.
Clearly, one of the eerie classmates had left his seat.
"Scuff-scuff-"
This classmate began walking slowly through the classroom with heavy, dragging steps. His rubber soles rubbed against the floor tiles, making a sound like scraping sandpaper.
"Scuff-scuff-"
The footsteps drew closer and closer...
"Scuff-"
A foot wearing an old-fashioned sneaker appeared before Lin Yi, less than a forearm's length from his face.
Then came the other foot.
The two feet moved past him in an extremely stiff manner, rubbing against the floor. The scuffing sounded like thousands upon thousands of ants crawling over Lin Yi's body, making him uncomfortable all over.
An intense discomfort and a tide of strangeness rose within Lin Yi, but he held his breath and concentrated, staring at the desk leg in front of him while using Black Stockings and Beautiful Legs and beautiful legs in white stockings to repeatedly kick apart every thought surfacing in his mind.
He kept it up until the owner of those legs vanished from the corner of his eye.
"Whew..."
He let out a long breath. Only a dozen or so seconds had passed, but the stale air in his chest felt as though it had been sealed away for centuries.
Just then, some sudden noises trapped that half-exhaled breath in his throat.
"Huh? Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey..."
As that voice rang out, the portable flashlight's beam suddenly began thrashing erratically like an eel.
Amid a burst of commotion, desks and chairs were shoved aside. The owner of the portable flashlight seemed to have been lifted into the air. Then, whatever he saw, he let out an "Ah!" filled with intense terror.
At the same time, the portable flashlight fell onto the floor tiles with a clatter. Its dazzling beam shot out like a sharp sword, cleaving through the pitch-black classroom.
The bright light swept across Lin Yi's face along the way. He instinctively wanted to squint and turn his head, but his neck had barely moved before his entire body abruptly froze.
At the very edge of his peripheral vision, a mass of shadow appeared that the portable flashlight's beam could not cut through!
At some point, a classmate had come to stand beside the desk he was hiding under!
Lin Yi froze in place, wishing he could suck back every trace of the faint breath he had just exhaled.
"Scritch, scritch, scritch..."
Some sound came from the classmate, and then a hand appeared in Lin Yi's field of vision.
The classmate bent down with extreme slowness and reached out to pick up the flashlight.
The whole process resembled the movements of a marionette.
Just as he was about to pick up the flashlight, his head tilted slightly to one side with the momentum, and he saw Lin Yi crouching beneath the desk.
Before you continue