Eight Who Left

There was no time to think.

It was not only Yang Jian who felt terror closing in from all directions; everyone else had heard the security room door opening, as well as the heavy footsteps approaching from both ahead and behind.

And they all knew that only this dozen or so people remained in the entire school.

So Zhang Wei, Zhao Lei, Wang Shanshan, and the others knew perfectly well that those footsteps had to belong to ghosts.

The ghosts were steadily drawing closer.

But at that moment, Yang Jian gritted his teeth and, without hesitation, bit down hard on one of the eyes on his arm.

"Ah~!"

The agonizing pain of flesh being torn open flooded through his body. His muscles trembled from the pain, but he did not give up because of it.

With a burst of searing pain, Yang Jian forcibly bit the red eye off his arm.

"Yang Jian, you..." The others all turned toward him upon hearing his scream.

They were immediately stunned, then their faces filled with fear.

Yang Jian's arm was a bloody mess, blood ran from his mouth, and his eyes had turned crimson, perhaps from being overly bloodshot, seeming to emit a faint red glow. The skin across his body kept cracking, with bits of flesh occasionally falling away. The sight was enough to make one's hair stand on end and instinctively feel afraid.

Had Yang Jian been possessed by a ghost?

The red eyes beneath Yang Jian's flesh were now rapidly moving around. Wherever they passed, they left behind scarlet cracks, as though his body had been torn apart and blood was seeping out, staining his clothes red.

Pain—heart-rending pain. This agony was far worse than when the Ghost Infant had bitten him and an eye had grown out.

But this time, it was not the Ghost Infant that had bitten Yang Jian.

It was Yang Jian who had bitten himself.

And that red eye had already disappeared into his mouth.

Yet at the wound on his arm, the red eye that had been bitten off began to squirm again. Soon, an even larger red eye grew out, filling the wound as it surveyed everything around it with an eerie expression.

The sixth eye had appeared.

Because the fifth eye was in his stomach.

As Yang Jian howled in pain, red light seeped from the cracks where his skin had been forced apart. One beam, two beams, three beams. The red light gradually spread across his entire body.

The ground around them was affected as well.

The red light spread along the ground like thick fog, forming a stark contrast with the dense darkness around it.

At that moment, another line of words appeared on the unseen Human-Skin Parchment.

"At five thirty, after swallowing an eye, I successfully grew a sixth eye. Eerie red light spread from my body. I could sense that wherever the red light covered was the Ghost Domain—my Ghost Domain. But I discovered that the vicious ghost inside my body was constantly reviving. Perhaps I would soon be occupied by the vicious ghost, lose consciousness, and become a ghost."

"While opening the Ghost Domain, other nearby ghosts arrived. Someone was killed by a ghost."

As if to confirm the words on the Human-Skin Parchment, a pale hand reached out from the darkness and suddenly seized the neck of a classmate who was trembling in terror.

The cold, stiff hand carried terrifying, monstrous strength as it dragged the student backward into the darkness behind it.

"No! Don't! Help! Save me!" The student screamed madly, flailing his arms and trying to grab hold of something.

But it was useless.

He quickly vanished into the darkness, and his screams vanished along with him. Like a stone falling into water, it caused only a faint ripple before everything soon returned to stillness.

The others turned pale with fright, their hands and feet icy cold.

They had all seen it happen, but none of them dared to pull him back. They did not have the courage.

Qian Wanhao had been frightened into tears. He had already lost his mind and instinctively turned to run. It did not matter where he went, as long as he could leave this place—leave this cursed place.

But the moment he turned around, he slammed heavily into a stiff corpse.

An old man in a long gown, his body covered in livor mortis, stood in the darkness with a deathly gray face, staring at him. There was not the slightest trace of life in his eyes, no human emotion at all—only numbness and eeriness.

Qian Wanhao tried to run again, only to find that he could no longer move.

The old man slowly raised his withered hand and reached toward his face.

"Ah~!" A shrill, horrifying scream rang out before his death.

"Don't come over! Don't come over! Don't come over! Don't come over! Stay away from me!"

A female student crouched nearby with her hair disheveled, clutching her head. She muttered to herself, her eyes filled with terror. Under such extreme fear, her mind had already collapsed.

Even if she survived, she would likely become mentally ill afterward.

Zhao Lei no longer had the strength to run. He simply sat limply on the ground like a man who had lost his soul, terrified senseless.

Miao Xiaoshan crouched on the ground, covering her ears and burying her face in her knees as she sobbed and trembled.

Wang Shanshan clung tightly to one of Yang Jian's arms, almost curling entirely into his embrace. She did not find Yang Jian frightening at all now. What frightened her more were the ghosts that could emerge from the darkness at any moment.

Perhaps because several students had died, the ghosts around them seemed to have temporarily stopped moving.

But darkness had already enveloped them. The surroundings were terrifyingly quiet; even the screams could no longer be heard.

Yet this eerie silence did not last long.

Before long.

"Tap. Tap tap." Footsteps rang out in the darkness once again.

This time, there was not just one set of footsteps, but several.

Ahead, behind, from every direction.

At that moment, pale hands stretched out from the darkness one after another. One landed on Zhang Wei's shoulder, one grabbed a female student's hair, and one clutched Miao Xiaoshan's ankle. Everyone was attacked by vicious ghosts at that moment.

The time displayed on the phone was 5:30.

It was exactly as the Human-Skin Parchment had said. At 5:30, everyone died.

"Get lost!" At that moment, however, a suppressed roar of pain rang out, carrying the desperate struggle of someone fighting to survive.

Yang Jian stood up. His skin was cracked, and through those cracks, eyes seemed to be hidden beneath the flesh. At the same time, red light radiated from his body, covering an area roughly five meters around him.

The red light illuminated the surroundings and drove back the darkness.

The pale hands swiftly withdrew.

The old man in the black long gown, his face covered in livor mortis, took a step back and left the range of the red light. His grayish-white eyes stared numbly at Yang Jian.

The old man paused briefly, then took another step forward.

He entered the area covered by the red light again.

But the red light on Yang Jian's body flickered several times like an unstable electric lamp, then vanished.

Yang Jian, Wang Shanshan, Zhang Wei, Zhao Lei, and the other three also vanished at the same time.

The old man approached, but there was nothing left around him.

The footsteps around them gradually faded away.

With a bang, the door to the nearby security room shut once more.

Darkness surged in like a tide.

Another line appeared on the Human-Skin Parchment: At 5:30, everyone died. That was impossible.

5:31: I survived. There were eight of us. I left the school. Hehe.

A strange smiling face appeared on the Human-Skin Parchment, but quickly disappeared again.