The Hand in the Toilet

The restroom door opened, and a deathly pale hand reached out from the darkness. Everyone was so frightened that they did not dare make a sound, their hearts pounding as they stood frozen in silence.

Yang Jian had never expected Fang Jing, his classmate, to suddenly go mad and grab him, shoving him toward the ghost.

"Fang Jing, are you trying to get me killed?"

Yang Jian gritted his teeth. The moment he realized something was wrong, he reacted at once and hurriedly grabbed Fang Jing's arm.

Their steps halted, and both of them froze.

"Yang Jian, I won't have peace in this life unless you die. Did you really think what I said before was just empty talk? You're still too naive. You knew I'd made my intentions clear, yet you still didn't guard against me. But that was exactly what I expected. After all, you're just a student who doesn't understand anything yet."

"You still don't know how cruel this world is. Today, I'll teach you a lesson."

Fang Jing turned back and roared, "Why aren't you helping? We have to push him in to hold back the ghost in the restroom. Otherwise, once that ghost comes out, all of you are finished. If you want to live, someone has to be sacrificed. There's no other way."

Using righteousness to pressure people worked as expected. Under the threat of a vicious ghost, people would do anything to survive, especially when given a seemingly justified reason.

Three male students immediately rushed over with terrified looks on their faces and grabbed Yang Jian.

The four of them pushed together. No one could have resisted that.

Yang Jian was immediately forced backward, quickly shoved to the restroom entrance.

The next moment, the pale hand reaching out from the darkness landed on his shoulder. Its fingers tightened, gripping him with icy rigidity.

A terrifying force dragged Yang Jian toward the pitch-black restroom behind him.

"Yang Jian, get in there! You're dead for sure this time. Be smarter in your next life!" Fang Jing slammed into him and roared.

Yang Jian was filled with rage. He could already feel his entire shoulder going numb, as though that icy, pale hand had crushed it. At the same time, a bone-deep chill enveloped his body, and even his blood seemed about to freeze.

"You scum! We're classmates, yet you want to kill me? Fine, then none of you will have it easy either. If I'm going to die, I'll drag a few of you down with me!"

With that, he stopped resisting and tightly grabbed the arms of two students.

The terrifying pulling force behind him dragged several of them forward.

Fang Jing had already realized something was wrong and hurriedly backed away, not letting Yang Jian grab him.

"No, don't! Let me go! Yang Jian, let me go!"

"Please, I don't want to die! Don't grab me, grab someone else!"

The two students Yang Jian had caught were terrified beyond measure, begging with trembling, tearful voices.

Yang Jian believed he was already at death's door, so he was no longer as afraid. Feeling the darkness closing in around him, he said coldly, "Stop screaming. Since you wanted to kill me, I'll make you die with me. Fang Jing, don't get too pleased with yourself."

"If I turn into a ghost after I die, I definitely won't let you go."

Bang!

With a loud crash, the pale arm withdrew into the darkness, and the restroom door instantly slammed shut.

Yang Jian and the two students who had framed him vanished from sight together.

The door remained tightly closed. There was no movement anymore.

Seeing this, Fang Jing finally let out a huge sigh of relief. A faint smile appeared on his still-shaken face.

Yang Jian, you were finally finished.

"Fang Jing, y-you really got Yang Jian and the others killed?" the others nearby asked shakily after witnessing the scene.

Fang Jing's face twisted viciously. "Shut up. Without me, that ghost would have come out, and we'd all be dead. What are you still standing around for? If you want to live, follow me."

"They can only hold the ghost back for so long. Once it kills the three of them, it'll come out again. Then we'll be the ones who die."

With that, he turned and headed back upstairs without another word.

"Fang Jing, why are we going back?"

"Going farther down is a dead end. Who knows what else we'll run into? If we go back, we might find Zhou Zheng. If he isn't dead yet, he might be able to save us," Fang Jing said.

He was also terrified beyond measure.

Because the more people died in the Ghost Domain, the more terrifying it became. There was not much time left to escape.

It was cold and dark, accompanied by the drip, drip of water, as though a faucet had not been fully turned off.

Yang Jian and the two students had been dragged into this utterly lightless restroom by that pale hand.

"Get out! Get out of here!"

Duan Peng and Zheng Fei broke free from Yang Jian. Terrified, they hurriedly felt around along the walls, trying to open the door and escape.

The icy walls were mottled and uneven, giving off a rotten stench.

The restroom was not large. Under normal circumstances, even with their eyes closed, they should have been able to find the door and leave. Yet no matter where they felt, all they found was wall.

There was a wall on the left and a wall on the right, an endless wall blocking them.

The door had disappeared.

"The door... where's the door? Where's the entrance? It was just here! Zheng Fei, have you found it?" Duan Peng asked in a trembling, tearful voice.

"I haven't found it either," Zheng Fei replied fearfully.

They frantically groped along the walls, their hands searching every inch, trying to find the familiar restroom door.

But no matter how they searched, they could not find the door out. There was only a mottled, icy wall.

Or perhaps there had never been a door here at all.

While they searched for a way out, Yang Jian's situation was even worse.

He could feel that icy hand still gripping his shoulder. At first, only his shoulder had gone numb, but now one entire arm had lost all feeling. As time passed, more and more of his body went numb. If it spread through his entire body, Yang Jian was certain he would become a cold corpse.

Cold sweat drenched Yang Jian's body as he struggled with all his strength.

It was useless. The place being gripped felt as though it had been nailed down by an iron spike, completely immovable.

No matter what he tried, his struggles had no effect.

"Am I really going to die here?" That was the only thought in his mind.

In the end, perhaps he had accepted his fate.

Instead, he no longer felt afraid. Since he was going to die anyway, he only wanted to call his family and leave some last words behind.

A bitter smile appeared on Yang Jian's lips. Enduring the icy numbness spreading through his body, he took out his phone and tried to call his family.

But when he turned on the phone, the screen flashed. What appeared was the forum story he had read earlier.

The story was already on its final page.

There was an audio file on the forum.

Yang Jian suddenly saw the audio file and froze. At once, he thought of the old man's knocking from before.

"Wait... if that old man really kills through the sound of knocking, then that sound shouldn't only work on people. It should work on ghosts too. Zhou Zheng said that only ghosts can deal with ghosts."

His eyes lit up as the thought struck him, and a glimmer of hope surged within him.

Without hesitation, Yang Jian used his other arm, which could still move, and tapped the audio file.

Knock, knock knock!

The dull knocking sounded again, echoing through the darkness.

But something unexpected happened.

The pale hand gripping Yang Jian's shoulder seemed to have been scalded. It rapidly withdrew and vanished into the darkness.

The icy, rigid sensation quickly receded from his body.