The Answered Call

Yang Jian put down the phone and glanced back at the grove with extreme wariness and fear.

That old man was truly terrifying.

No matter how many times he encountered him, even seeing him from afar was enough to make his skin crawl and fill him with fear.

"Fang Jing should already be dead, right?"

Yang Jian's gaze shifted slightly. "The most urgent thing now is to leave the Ghost Domain and get away from that old man. If he catches us again, we'll probably be dead for sure. Whether it's Zhang Wei, Wang Shanshan, or me, the outcome will be the same."

So what if he had become a Ghost Tamer? Didn't Zhou Zheng die from a ghost revival after using the power of ghosts too much?

And the reason Zhou Zheng had died was surely because that old ghost was more terrifying than the Ghost Infant.

The Ghost Infant could not suppress that old man, so it naturally dragged Zhou Zheng down with it.

Before long.

When Zhang Wei saw Yang Jian return, he let out a slight sigh of relief. "Yang Jian, where did you run off to? Did you find Fang Jing? The whole school is haunted, and you're the only one crazy enough to run around everywhere. I don't even dare move my feet."

"Although I got through to Fang Jing's phone, he probably ran into a ghost, just as expected."

Yang Jian said, "And I saw the old man who knocked on the classroom door over there. We can't go near that area anymore. The most urgent thing now is to leave this place. If we stay any longer, I don't know how many more people will die here."

By the end of that.

Everyone else had fallen silent, their faces filled with fear and lingering dread.

That was right.

It had only been a few hours. They had fled all this way, yet only this handful of people were still alive.

Everyone else had vanished.

And everyone understood perfectly well what it meant to disappear in a haunted place.

This was not a dream, nor was it a movie. A real haunting could kill people.

"Yang Jian, thank you for leading us out. Without you, we definitely would have met with disaster too."

"Yeah, thank you. And we're sorry about what happened before. When Fang Jing shoved you into the restroom, we didn't stop him. Later, we realized Fang Jing was a demon. Along the way, he left Zhao Qiang behind, left Wang Gang behind, and even made the female students stay behind to cover his escape."

"That guy is a beast."

Several classmates behind him spoke up. They cursed Fang Jing while expressing their apologies to Yang Jian.

There were four of them. Yang Jian had brought them out from the trees earlier. They had been classmates traveling with Fang Jing.

He thought Fang Jing deserved to die, but the others did not. Since he had seen them, bringing them out was only a small effort. They were classmates, after all. There was no need to be so cold-blooded.

"It's too early to thank me. You can all see that we're still in this school, still within the Ghost Domain. Whether we can get out alive is still a question." Yang Jian shook his head.

"Even though you're all exhausted, this isn't the time to rest. I don't know much about the Ghost Domain, but we still have to try. Follow me. Let's see if we can leave the school."

He had become the group's pillar of support. Once he finished speaking, the people resting on the ground immediately stood up.

"One, two, three, four... There are only thirteen of us left now. Who knows if anyone else will die next? If I'd known this would happen, I should've taken the day off. Why go to school? Other people pay money to attend school; we risk our lives." Zhang Wei said irritably.

The others glanced at him, then lowered their heads without speaking. Their spirits were extremely low, and they were in terrible condition.

If they could not see hope of survival soon, Yang Jian believed they would not be far from a mental breakdown. He had already seen girls with pale faces muttering to themselves.

"Let's go."

Yang Jian could not worry about whether they would break down mentally or not.

The question now was whether they could leave this place alive.

With him leading the way.

No one worried about getting lost, and as they walked, they did indeed seem to be moving farther and farther away from the Ghost Domain.

The darkness around them was not as dense. Although the sky was still dim, they could clearly see the road and the surrounding buildings.

Before long.

They arrived at the school gate.

The guard booth was empty.

The road was utterly silent, frighteningly quiet.

The streetlights were off, and not a single vehicle passed by.

The surroundings were strange. Apart from their voices, there was no sound at all.

Yang Jian glanced at the closed door of the guard booth, his eyes filled with vigilance. He did not dare approach any door. Who knew whether something terrifying would emerge once it was opened?

Besides.

Looking at the deathly still scene outside, he knew that leaving the school would be useless.

As long as they remained inside the Ghost Domain, it was the same everywhere.

"What's going on outside? Why isn't there anyone here? At this time, there are usually lots of parents outside picking up students." Miao Xiaoshan asked, her curiosity tinged with panic.

Indeed.

Normally, the area outside this high school would be packed with people and crowded with vehicles.

But now there was nothing there. Aside from them, not even a shadow could be seen.

"I'll go out and take a look." Zhang Wei volunteered, climbing over the railing and stepping onto the road outside.

He looked left and right along the road, only to see the end of it swallowed by endless darkness, as though it led into the depths of hell.

The direction they had come from was also covered in darkness.

The entire area seemed completely cut off from the world.

"It's useless. We can't walk out of here, so don't waste your strength." Yang Jian said.

"Then... does that mean we'll be trapped here until we die? I... I don't want to die!" One of the girls immediately broke down and collapsed onto the ground, tears streaming down her face.

The other male students had not broken down, but the fear of death in their eyes was obvious to everyone.

"Yang Jian, think of something. Please save us. I... I don't want to encounter ghosts again." Wang Shanshan clutched his arm beside him, her tear-filled eyes pleading.

Yang Jian fell silent for a moment. "Let me think carefully."

He did not intend to keep walking. Instead, he sat down on a stone bollard beside them to rest first.

After fleeing all the way here, he was exhausted too.

Suddenly.

He lowered his head and looked at Zhang Wei's phone in his hand.

"Did you try calling for help earlier?"

"I... I tried before. The call went through, but..." one classmate said.

"Zhao Lei, but what?"

"There was no sound. There was nothing at all on the other end, yet it was answered. I... I didn't dare call again." Zhao Lei fell silent for a moment before replying.

The phone had been answered, but there was no sound.

Yang Jian's heart tightened.

This place was already haunted. With something so strange happening, they truly did not dare continue calling for help.

"But back in the classroom, the calls could still connect. This only started shortly after we left the classroom." Miao Xiaoshan suddenly reminded them. "Zhang Wei called for an ambulance before."

"That's right." Zhang Wei nodded.

Shortly after leaving the classroom. If he calculated the time, that should have been when the Ghost Domain appeared again—when Yang Jian reached the half landing on the second floor and the lights flickered out.

"Is that so? I'll try another number."

Yang Jian suddenly thought of someone's phone number and decided to give it a try.

He opened Zhang Wei's phone, logged onto that forum, then used the satellite positioning phone Zhou Zheng had given him to make a call.

138

This was the phone number Lightning King had left on the forum.

He wanted to know whether Lightning King had met with trouble. If something had happened to him, his phone might have ended up as evidence in the hands of some Ghost Tamer. Since Ghost Tamers like Zhou Zheng dealt with supernatural incidents, someone might also be handling this case.

It was worth a try.

The phone did not lose signal. On the contrary, the call connected smoothly.

However, the situation was even worse than he had imagined.

Ring, ring. Ring, ring.

The ringtone from the phone on the other end began to sound, yet it echoed through the silent school and reached everyone's ears. It was not loud, but it was exceptionally clear and deeply unsettling.

Yang Jian's hand froze as he held the phone.

"Lightning King's phone is in this school?"

His pupils suddenly contracted. He hurriedly stood up and looked around in shock, instinctively searching for the source of the ringtone.

Cold sweat began to form on his face.

That online acquaintance, Lightning King, was an emergency room doctor from another province. He had run into trouble while browsing the internet at home, hundreds of kilometers away. If his ringtone was appearing here, that meant he was here too.

"Beep."

At that moment, however, the call was answered, but no sound came from the other end.

At the same time, the ringtone echoing through the school vanished.

Then Yang Jian saw a faint phone light shine from a third-floor window in one of the teaching buildings. He could vaguely make out a blurred figure standing by the window, seemingly looking this way.

"Damn it." Yang Jian broke out in a cold sweat and hurriedly hung up.