The Ritual

Decades ago, a string of student suicides occurred at Qinghe No. 3 Middle School. Many people rumored that an evil spirit was at work in the school, and the incidents had an extremely damaging impact at the time.

To quell the fallout, the school built a new classroom building and sealed off the old one. The old buildings gradually fell into disuse...

Rustle-

In a corner by the wall surrounding the abandoned campus, the grass shook violently, and a figure slowly crawled out of the wet undergrowth.

"Ptooey!"

Cheng Sheng spat out the muddy water that had gotten into his mouth, turned around, and pulled out two objects wrapped in oilcloth behind him.

He moved with great care, seemingly afraid of knocking whatever was wrapped in the oilcloth. As he pulled them out, the faint sound of living creatures struggling came from both packages, large and small.

Whether the workers had been careless back then, he didn't know, but a short section here happened not to have been blocked off with wire mesh.

The spot was well hidden, concealed by thick weeds. His predecessor and his two companions had only stumbled upon it by chance.

Naturally, Cheng Sheng knew about the rumors of an evil spirit on the old campus.

The first time his predecessor and his two companions had trespassed here, they had come on an "adventure" in pursuit of the evil spirit rumors. Naturally, nothing had happened. As they came more often afterward, they grew increasingly brazen and made the place their "secret base."

In the three's bleak and mediocre three years of high school, successfully "shattering" the campus evil spirit legend that made countless Qingsha No. 3 Middle School students blanch at its mention was probably the only thing they had to boast about.

Cheng Sheng passed through the weeds beneath the wire mesh and hurried toward the nearest building.

It was late, and heavy rain was falling from the sky. The school-closing bell rang out from the new campus in the distance, giving the place an eerie, ethereal feel.

Splosh-

Cheng Sheng stepped onto the classroom building's stairs. His soaked shoes left one footprint after another on the dusty concrete floor.

"One, two, three..."

On the first floor, he counted past several rooms before choosing a classroom at the corner with a rusty "ม.2/Class 3" sign and stepping inside.

Battered desks and chairs were piled haphazardly in the abandoned classroom. Cheng Sheng's arrival brought in a heavy dampness, and the dust accumulated on the floor rose into the air, damp and choking.

Without wasting time, Cheng Sheng put down his backpack and quickly began making preparations in the classroom.

Before coming, he had already texted his mom, Wu Li, to say he would be home late tonight, so he had simply turned off his phone altogether.

"Sulfur, silver powder, bone meal, black goat blood, candles, salt..."

Cheng Sheng checked everything he had brought, then began mixing the items together one by one by the light of his flashlight.

Most of the materials were "paint" for drawing the ritual array. To avoid the awkward situation of running out halfway through, Cheng Sheng had deliberately brought extra.

"Black goat blood, black crow blood..."

When he had reached what was almost the final step, Cheng Sheng got up and fetched the smaller of the two packages. He pulled back the waterproof cloth, revealing a white birdcage with two crows inside.

Cheng Sheng opened the cage and grabbed one of the crows. Then he picked up a fruit knife he had prepared beforehand and, his expression perfectly natural, slashed hard across its neck-

The dying crow struggled wildly, drops of dark red blood dripping into the bowl of half-finished mixture...

He had slaughtered chickens, ducks, and geese in his previous life... This was nothing much to him.

With the crow's blood mixed in, the last thing needed was his own blood.

Cheng Sheng carefully wiped the fruit knife clean and disinfected it with alcohol. Then he took a small breath and slashed the palm of his left hand...

Everything was ready. Next came drawing the array.

For this step, Cheng Sheng had practiced many times with water on his living room floor at home.

In the empty, abandoned classroom building, a figure crouched in a dim old classroom, slowly drawing a strange, sinister design on the floor by the faint light of a flashlight...

Crack-

Outside the classroom building, lightning suddenly split the rain-filled sky, illuminating the boy's face in a deathly white flash.

Cheng Sheng's hand paused. He looked up through the window and couldn't help mocking himself. "If someone barged in right now... I'd say I was playing the pencil spirit game."

As he spoke, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, dipped the nearly dry rag into the bowl, and added the final stroke to the ritual design.

It was done!

Cheng Sheng stood up and looked at the whole design with satisfaction. It was a huge circle with a six-pointed star inside, filled with numerous runes of unknown meaning... Every detail had been copied from the depiction in the Black Book.

"Light a candle at each point of the six-pointed star, and then comes the most important part..."

Cheng Sheng turned to look at the last thing he had brought, a faint glimmer in his eyes as he softly spoke the word.

"Sacrifice."

As the candles' ghostly light came to life in the dim classroom-rustle!

Cheng Sheng pulled the rainproof oilcloth off the final package.

The loud rustling of the oilcloth startled the living creatures inside the enormous chicken cage, and a flurry of wingbeats rattled like rain.

Cheng Sheng crouched down and peered through the gaps in the woven bamboo cage at the little lives confined inside.

They were grayish-brown sparrows with round heads and pointed beaks!

There were a great many of them, at least two hundred.

"My funds are limited, and the quality of the live sacrifices isn't good enough, so I can only make up for it with quantity..."

Cheng Sheng had settled on this approach long ago. He had even considered things like insect eggs and fish fry, but later found these palm-sized little creatures more suitable.

The outskirts beyond Qingsha City were full of rice paddies, and the paddies were full of sparrows. The sparrows stole rice, so besides driving them away, the nearby rice farmers occasionally caught them in nets and sold them in the city.

They were very cheap, averaging less than one nan coin apiece.

Cheng Sheng had to wait for fresh black goat blood, so he paid the rice farmer who sold him the sparrows extra to keep them for him in the meantime. Over the next few days, some had died, but plenty were still alive.

After the sparrows in the cage had fluttered about for a while and settled down, Cheng Sheng carried the cage into the array and placed it at the center.

"Now..."

Having done all that, Cheng Sheng walked out of the array. Facing the array and its twelve quietly burning candles, he took a deep breath. "I can proceed to the final step."

He focused his mind. The Black Book appeared in his thoughts and slowly opened to its first page.

"Vo't..."

Looking at the incantation that had appeared of its own accord on the Black Book's page, Cheng Sheng tried to speak.

A syllable came out of his mouth in a voice and tone that didn't belong to him at all. Immediately afterward, the rest flowed out naturally, as though beyond his control.

"...nak..'h..aPe..r`tio..."

Ethereal syllable after syllable echoed through the empty classroom, gradually drowning out the rain outside. Before he knew it, a strange wind had risen, stirring the tattered curtains by the window...

Cheng Sheng stood rigidly at the edge of the array. At that moment, he felt it wasn't he who was chanting the incantation at all. Rather, the mysterious spell recorded in the Black Book was racing to reappear in the human world through his body!

As when he read the Black Book, the deep, evil murmur sounded in his ear once more, more urgent and intense than ever before...

He felt sick, with a powerful urge to vomit, but his body was not under his control.

As the incantation continued to pour from his mouth, his mental power also drained rapidly beyond his control...

Somehow, the wound on his left palm split open on its own. Blood seeped through the thick gauze and dripped onto the floor, drop by drop, like a little dark red snake slithering swiftly toward the array...