The Terrifying Phone Call

Everyone else's eyes remained fixed on Yang Jian.

When they saw him dial the phone, the ringing of the phone echoed through the school. The crowd found it strange, and before they could ask anything, they saw him hastily hang up, looking terrified.

"Yang Jian, wh-what's going on?"

Seeing Yang Jian so scared, Zhang Wei also started trembling. "Don't scare me. We're all counting on you. If you're like this, I'm losing all confidence. Please, just smile, you know, that knowing smile you get when watching something… give me some hope."

Yang Jian's composure and his act of leading them out of the ghost domain had given everyone the confidence to survive.

His current expression immediately threw everyone into a panic.

Yang Jian's expression flickered, looking extremely grim. Before he could speak, the satellite positioning phone belonging to Zhou Zheng, which he was holding, was dialed. It began to ring with a "didi, didi" sound.

He glanced at it, his pupils contracting sharply.

The caller ID on the phone displayed: 138.

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

He had called back.

"As expected... this is a trap, a very terrifying trap." Yang Jian gritted his teeth, unsure if he felt more anger or fear.

Didi, didi.

The phone continued to ring, but he didn't answer.

Because he knew that whoever was calling was definitely not alive. Who knew what would happen if he picked up.

Fortunately, the phone's settings still worked; the ringing didn't go on forever.

After not being answered for a long time, the call was hung up shortly after.

And no more calls came to his phone.

"Ding ding ding, ding ding ding."

"I love you, I love you, just like a mouse loves rice."

"Melancholy moonlight flows like a river of longing."

However, the phones of the other students started ringing one after another, various ringtones echoing.

Everyone took out their phones to look. The caller ID on all of them was 138.

"Yang, Yang Jian, look."

Wang Shanshan, Miao Xiaoshan, and Zhao Lei, among others, showed him their phone screens, fear in their eyes.

"Don't answer," Yang Jian said with an extremely solemn expression.

The others nodded. They all understood in their hearts that this call was very strange and they definitely shouldn't answer it.

Zhang Wei didn't have a phone; he had lent his to Yang Jian earlier. He looked at the screens of their phones and stammered, "He, he's f***ing serious, they all have the same caller ID. This 138 phone is so powerful, making over a dozen calls at once? Is this haunted?"

"This isn't that 138 number, mine shows Teacher Wang's phone number." A classmate named Qian Wanhao subconsciously answered the call.

"Qian Wanhao, are you crazy or did your brain get scrambled?" Zhao Lei, next to him, was so scared he almost shouted, "We told you not to answer the phone!"

"What are you so nervous about? This is Teacher Wang's number," Qian Wanhao said. "Maybe Teacher Wang is here to save us."

"Hang up quickly."

Yang Jian's eyes also narrowed. He rushed over, trying to snatch the phone and hang up the call.

Teacher Wang called?

This was even more terrifying. Teacher Wang was the first person to disappear in the ghost domain. Now that everyone else was dead, how could he possibly still be alive?

Indeed.

From Qian Wanhao's phone, only the sound of crackling static could be heard. Teacher Wang didn't speak.

However, the next sound that made Yang Jian feel terrified rang out.

"Dong, dong dong." A knocking sound came from the other end of the phone.

The sound was exactly the same as the one outside the classroom earlier.

Heavy, oppressive, suffocating.

It was only then that Qian Wanhao realized the seriousness of the situation. His face turned deathly pale, and with a tremble of his hand, he quickly dropped the phone.

The phone fell to the ground, the screen shattering, but the call was still connected and hadn't been hung up.

"Dong, dong dong." The eerie knocking sound came from the receiver again.

"Dong, dong dong."

Yang Jian rushed over at that moment, picked up Qian Wanhao's phone at the fastest speed, and turned off the call.

"Qian Wanhao, you idiot, if you want to die, go die by yourself! Don't drag us down!"

Zhao Lei, enraged, grabbed his collar and yelled at him. But his anger couldn't hide the fear in his eyes. Although he didn't know what would happen if the call was answered, he was certain it wouldn't be anything good.

"Damn it, it's true what they say: you're not afraid of god-like enemies, but you're afraid of pig-like teammates. At critical moments, there are always a few morons who bravely step up to court death, not only harming themselves but also others. Qian Wanhao, you're truly great. You've moved me so much I want to kill you. I studied so hard for nine years of compulsory education, but I'm not as outstanding as you."

Zhang Wei said, "Was that old man outside the classroom earlier your own grandfather? If you love him so much, why don't you go talk to him and ask him to let us go?"

"I, I really didn't mean to. The name on the caller ID was clearly the teacher's. If it had been someone else's call, I definitely wouldn't have answered," Qian Wanhao said, crying like a child and wiping his tears.

"So you'll answer the teacher's call, but if the teacher told you to die, would you die?" Zhang Wei was so angry he wanted to hit him.

"Enough, everyone calm down. Now is not the time to talk about this. It's also my fault, I should have warned you all earlier," Yang Jian said as he walked over. "Besides, can we survive by arguing and infighting? Look at the situation we're in."

Everyone immediately fell silent.

"Yang Jian, what happened after you answered the call just now?" Miao Xiaoshan asked nervously.

Yang Jian replied, "What else could happen? Soon your grandfather will come to chat with us."

"What?"

Everyone's eyes widened in terror.

Yes, that old man would definitely come here.

The knocking sound from the phone had a terrifying function: it could summon that old man.

As for the outcome, it was obvious.

And...

Yang Jian tightly gripped the phone in his hand, recalling the post by Lightning King on the forum.

"A trap, the entire story on the forum is a trap. Lightning King encountered that old man knocking on his door at home. From the situation in the classroom earlier, someone had already died when the old man knocked on the first door. And Lightning King had two doors at home, the first being the main door, and the second being the room door."

"This means that Lightning King was alone at home. When the first door was knocked on, he was already dead. The subsequent story on the forum couldn't have been posted by him, and the phone number and audio files left behind weren't made by him either. Only one thing could have done this."

"A ghost~!"

Yang Jian took several deep breaths.

That's right.

The story at the beginning of the post was by Lightning King, a living person. But at the end, he was already dead, and it was a ghost that continued posting.

To prove this guess, he opened the forum story again and scrolled to the end.

As expected.

His guess was not wrong. The last few replies in the forum story had many typos, completely different from Lightning King's earlier posts. Furthermore, there was a gap of half an hour between the posts.

This... is a curse spread by an evil ghost.

Everyone who heard the knocking sound would be sought out by this old man.

If that was the case, it would explain everything that had happened before.

"Online, hearing the knocking sound on the phone summons the old man, like being tagged with an invisible coordinate. Hearing the knocking sound in reality means immediate death. But why didn't that old man appear when I opened the audio file in the restroom earlier?"

Sweat beaded on Yang Jian's forehead as he thought.

He was trying to figure out the old man's pattern of action and his method of killing.

In order to survive.