There's a Monster

Light squeezed in through the crack, gray and hazy, like daylight filtered through something!

Air rushed in with it, a breeze carrying the smell of damp dust.

Lin Yang pushed the door open.

The hinges let out a piercing creak.

There was a corridor outside.

It was long, stretching out to the left and right, its ends disappearing into the gray gloom.

The teaching building was covered in old-fashioned white plaster, which had peeled away in great patches to reveal blackened cement beneath.

The walls were covered in handprints!

Bloody handprints!

They were dark red, some already blackened, and still looked unnaturally wet, overlapping in layers across the grayish-white walls.

The handprints varied in size, and there were scratch marks. It was as though countless hands had pounded desperately against the wall before something dragged them away!

There were marks on the floor too.

Dark red spots trailed all the way from the far end of the corridor to the classroom door.

Everyone was pushing their way out.

Lin Yang was the first to step through the door. He felt the hard cement of the corridor floor beneath his feet.

"We're out! We made it out!"

"We really made it out!"

Hysterical cheers erupted one after another behind him!

Someone rushed out of the classroom and stumbled against the corridor railing, gulping down the outside air, even though it carried an indescribable musty smell.

Someone dropped to their knees, tears streaming down their face as they sobbed too hard to speak.

Someone ran madly down the corridor, covering more than ten meters before running back, as if checking that the corridor was real and they weren't dreaming.

"I'm out!" The fat man rushed to the edge of the corridor, grabbed the railing with both hands, and shook it hard twice, sending rust raining down!

He tilted his head back, spread his arms, and closed his eyes, as though enjoying a long-lost freedom. "The path to salvation lies within."

Lin Yang stood by the railing, scanning the fog outside with a deep frown.

He studied it carefully, looking down.

He had suspected something from the first minute he transmigrated here, and now, looking down from the third floor, that suspicion had become an almost certain conclusion.

This was a three-story teaching building.

Below was a courtyard paved with cracked cement, with a dried-up flower bed and a few clumps of withered yellow weeds in the middle.

Across from it stood another building, identical to this one: three stories, white plaster walls, corridors facing corridors and windows facing windows, like a mirror.

A metal skybridge connected the two buildings. It was rusted beyond recognition, and several pieces of torn cloth hung from its railing, bearing the words "False Person Experimental Middle School." They swayed in the wind.

The school gate stood to the left of the courtyard. It was an iron barred gate, and it was closed.

Beyond it lay no streets or human buildings, only fog that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Beneath the fog, a boundless expanse of green grass was faintly visible.

"Something's wrong out there... In this situation, we absolutely can't afford any more trouble."

He turned, ready to stop everyone and make a plan before setting out.

But it seemed he was already too late.

Excited cheers rose from the people around him.

"Hey! Look! There are stairs over there!"

"Come on, come on! Let's go down and take a look! Maybe we can find a way out!"

Lin Yang raised his voice. "All of you, stop right there!"

His voice boomed down the corridor.

Some people stopped and looked back at him, but even more ignored him completely.

They had been locked up for two days and two nights, and their minds had been pushed to the breaking point.

Even if this world was gloomy, bizarre, and covered in bloody handprints, it was still ten thousand times bigger than that classroom. They never wanted to be trapped by anything again!

"We've escaped now, so why should we still listen to you?"

"Yeah! Now we can get out and call the police!"

"I'm going to expose this unscrupulous organization! How dare they imprison us!"

A middle-aged man in a plaid shirt was the first to run toward the stairs.

He ran fast, his footsteps echoing through the empty corridor!

Then came a second person, a third, and more and more people surged toward the stairs like water bursting through a floodgate.

Lin Yang followed them for a few steps, but the crowd had already scattered.

Even the fat man had run off, laughing wildly and shouting that he was free!

Only Jiang Yu'an and Shen Cheng stayed put. Shen Cheng walked over to Lin Yang and scratched his head.

"Brother Lin, this..."

"Forget it. Those idiots won't turn back until they hit a wall."

His gaze passed over the figures running downstairs, crossed the courtyard, and settled on the school gate.

The fog pressed motionlessly against the other side of the gate like a wall. He saw that the people who had run downstairs had already reached the gate and were looking around.

Some were trying to push open the iron door on the first floor of the teaching building, while others were heading toward the main gate.

Shen Cheng looked at the group and asked,

"Brother Lin, aren't you going? How about we go out together? Whatever happens, escaping from here is the most important thing right now."

Before Lin Yang could speak, Jiang Yu'an answered. "We can't get out."

"What?"

"Haven't you noticed that this isn't human society anymore?"

That was what Lin Yang had wanted to say too. Shen Cheng froze. "N-not human society?? H-how is that possible?"

Just then.

The broadcast came on.

The male voice that sounded like Belial's came from every corner of the teaching building, echoing back and forth between the corridors and the courtyard.

"Friendly reminder: players, please do not leave the school grounds."

It paused for a second.

"Current survivors: 31. Current Facelings: 5."

"Good luck."

The corridor fell silent for a few seconds.

The dozen or so people below exchanged looks. Someone muttered a curse, while someone else instinctively edged toward the center of the crowd.

The broadcast's warning confirmed Lin Yang's judgment, but the feeling of being watched by something and manipulated like a pawn was even more unnerving than the bloody handprints on the corridor walls.

The people downstairs, however, didn't see it that way.

"Fuck! Still playing these fucking games!"

Zhang Hao's voice rose from the courtyard below.

"What kind of crappy broadcast is that? It just doesn't want us to get out! The more it tries to stop me, the more I'm going to get out!"

He ran to the main gate and kicked the iron bars hard twice.

The iron gate didn't budge, though rust rained down. He kicked it twice more, but his sole slipped on an iron bar, and he staggered, nearly falling over!

"It's locked tight!" he shouted to the skinny man behind him. "Find something to pry it open!"

After searching for a long time, several people brought a rusty iron ladder over from a corner and propped it against the gate frame.

The ladder swayed twice before settling against the top of the iron gate.

Lin Yang watched it all from the third floor. "Forget it. Let others meet their own fate."

Zhang Hao was crafty, though. He didn't climb up himself. Instead, he gave the tall, skinny man a push and had him go first.

The tall, skinny man was the first to climb the ladder. He was delighted. "Brother Hao, you're the one who's truly good to me!"

He moved quickly, scrambling to the top of the gate frame in a few steps and climbing over the spikes on the iron bars.

He crouched atop the gate, glanced outside, then turned back and smiled at the people below.

"There's nothing outside but grass and a little haze! Not a damn thing! Wait here, I'll go out and get you..."

He jumped down.

He landed with a dull thud, as if he had fallen onto a thin layer of mud.

He stood up, dusted off his pant legs, turned around, and waved to the people inside the gate.

"See? Nothing happened!! That crappy broadcast was just trying to scare us."

"Brother Hao, hurry up and come out. Let's get out and call the police! Fuck!"

Zhang Hao looked excited. He turned to Lin Yang and said smugly,

"You dumbass! Weren't you just fucking saying this isn't human society anymore? Hahahaha. Just wait. Once I get out, I'll have someone beat you up!"

"All right, Brother Hao, stop wasting your breath on him. Let's hurry up and go."

But before the skinny man had finished speaking, something moved in the endless white fog ahead!

It was fast!

A gray-black thing with a wet surface shot out of the fog!

It looked like a tentacle, or perhaps an earthworm magnified countless times, its surface covered in slimy folds and suckers!

It coiled around the skinny man's waist, tightened, and then yanked him back!

The skinny man went flying!

His body traced an arc through the air, the smile he had worn while waving still on his face, and then he was dragged into the fog.

A scream came from the fog, a dying wail forced out from the depths of his chest! It lasted two or three seconds before cutting off abruptly.

Chewing came from the fog!

Crunch, crunch. It sounded like something biting through bones!

Everyone inside the gate fell silent for two seconds. Then they erupted!

"There's a monster!!"