Death Approaches

Yang Jian was frantically thinking of countermeasures.

He knew very well that the knocking sounds from the phone call earlier would definitely attract that old man.

And once the old man appeared, the outcome would be obvious.

The forum, the story, the audio file, the knocking old man, and the phone call.

All the pieces collided in Yang Jian's mind, a chaotic mess. He had grasped a small pattern, but couldn't deduce any further information.

This was his first encounter with a ghost; he hadn't dealt with them before. Reaching this point was already quite good. He wasn't Fang Jing, who was rumored to know everything that would happen in the future.

"Wait, Fang Jing, the future." Yang Jian's expression suddenly shifted. "That parchment."

Suddenly, he urgently took out the stack of dark brown parchment from his pocket.

"Yang, Yang Jian, look, look over there." Zhang Wei suddenly said, his voice trembling as he pointed towards the school.

Yang Jian looked up and his blood ran cold.

A dense, ink-like darkness was slowly encroaching from a few hundred meters ahead, swallowing everything in its path. The surrounding ground began to decay, trees withered, rotten concrete became mottled and moldy, and streetlights were covered in rust, swaying precariously.

An old man in a black long gown, covered in corpse spots, with a ashen face and vacant eyes, was stiffly walking towards them.

Step by step, unhurriedly.

"Damn it, it's here already?" Yang Jian's heart pounded.

"Yang Jian, w-what do we do now? What do we do? Are we going to die?"

Zhang Wei was on the verge of tears. "I don't want to die, I'm still so young, I'm still a virgin. Yang Jian, hurry and think of something! Fang Jing said you'd be amazing in the future, you must have a way, right?"

"We can't get out, can we?"

Wang Shanshan, her hands pale, clutched his arm, her face full of fear.

Zhao Lei trembled all over, terrified by the approaching darkness, and kept retreating, trying to escape the school. But when he turned around, he found an equally dense darkness closing in from behind.

They were surrounded by darkness, with nowhere to escape.

Yang Jian ignored them for the moment. Sweating profusely, he opened the parchment in his hand, trying to find some crucial information on it.

On the parchment, a line of clear, large characters appeared before his eyes: June 22nd, 5 AM. The ghost domain appeared before us again. Yes, that ghost has returned.

June 22nd, 5:30 AM. We all died. Not a single one of us survived.

I am Yang Jian. When you see this, I am already dead.

"You wrote that we died? Bullshit! There has to be a way out of here. When that old man grabbed me and dragged me into the toilet before, he didn't follow. I want to know why. If you don't tell me now, I'll find a place to bury you, and you'll never see the light of day again."

Yang Jian said through gritted teeth, with a hint of threat.

The parchment in his hand seemed to hear his words. The writing on it began to blur, and then all the text disappeared. Another line of text then appeared:

"June 21st, 9 PM. I was dragged into a toilet by a ghost. I didn't die because there was an even more terrifying ghost in the toilet. It was another ghost domain. I saw some very frightening things, but I didn't realize it at the time."

"June 21st, 9:30 PM. I was lost in the toilet, but that old man came to the toilet door. He was knocking. He was looking for me, but I didn't hear him. Perhaps because of this, I narrowly escaped certain death."

Yang Jian's heart tightened when he read this.

Could it be that the old man was knocking outside the toilet door when he was lost inside earlier?

Soon, more writing appeared on the parchment.

"After that incident, I guessed that the ghost domain was the key to surviving at that time. If I could use the ghost domain, I might have a chance to survive. After all, I am now also... a ghost. Zhou Zheng was right, only ghosts can deal with ghosts, and only another ghost domain can lead one out of a ghost domain."

"June 22nd, 5:15 AM. The old man appeared. I tried to use the ghost domain, but I failed. My strength was not enough."

"June 22nd, 5:30 AM. We all died."

Seeing this, Yang Jian's eyes narrowed.

Although the ending was still death at 5:30, he saw a glimmer of hope for survival.

Ghost domain!

Yes, where this old man appeared, a ghost domain was born. So, he was now a ghost wielder.

Why couldn't he use the ghost domain?

If Zhou Zheng were here, he would find Yang Jian's thought incredibly laughable, because not every ghost has a ghost domain. Ghosts with ghost domains are very rare. But they are correspondingly terrifying.

"I have to try. There's no other way." Yang Jian tightly gripped the parchment. "Tell me, how do I use the ghost domain?"

The parchment quickly continued to display text.

"Yang Jian, who are you talking to? Look, everything around us has become abnormal. What should we do now?"

Zhang Wei was crying from fear. He was counting on Yang Jian to save him and was terrified of hearing bad news from Yang Jian's mouth.

"Don't talk, I'm thinking of a way. Give me some time." Yang Jian's tone was urgent, his gaze flickered.

The old man was still walking towards them, less than a hundred meters away now.

They were anxious, they were scared, and he was equally anxious and scared.

After all, no one wanted to die.

The writing on the parchment continued to appear: "June 20th, 5:20 AM. I passed through my previous failure, believing it was due to the ghost within my body not reviving enough. Perhaps opening more eyes would be useful."

"The number of eyes?"

Yang Jian didn't have time to think further. It was ten minutes until 5:30 AM, and he didn't want to die here, just as the parchment predicted.

Immediately, the skin on his arm split open, and five blood-red eyes simultaneously opened.

Each eye emitted a faint red glow.

"5:22 AM. I decided to increase the number of eyes," the writing on the parchment appeared.

"Method, I need the method."

Yang Jian growled at the parchment, "If I die, this thing will be lost too. You didn't want me to discard you before, so if I die, do you think someone else will pick you up?"

The writing on the parchment blurred again, and finally, another line appeared: "5:24 AM. After my attempt, I ate one of the eyes on my arm, successfully increasing the number of eyes. With six eyes, I successfully used my own ghost domain. I am becoming more and more like a ghost."

"5:30 AM. I did not open my ghost domain. All of us died."

Eat the eyes?

Yang Jian stared at the five strange, blood-red eyes on his arm, completely stunned.

But when he saw the last sentence, "5:30 AM. All of us died."

He knew he had no choice.

At this moment, darkness descended, and the surroundings quickly grew dim. The old man was less than twenty meters away from them.

"Creak."

The moment darkness enveloped them, the door of the security room not far away slowly opened, and a pale hand reached out.

Beyond the guardrail behind them, a blurry figure slowly approached on the road shrouded in darkness.

Nearby, several phone lights weakly pierced through the darkness, like classmates who had gotten separated, approaching step by step with their phones.

Yang Jian, Zhang Wei, Zhao Lei, Wang Shanshan, Miao Xiaoshan, and Qian Wanhao were all surrounded by ghosts.