Abandoned No. 3 Middle School? Not Even a Dog Would Go There

Night fell.

The former site of Red Star Middle School lay in the eastern outskirts of Linhai City.

Far from the bustling city center, most of its streetlights were broken, and the flickering lights cast twisted shadows across the dilapidated streets.

Weeds grew thick all around, and a warning sign reading "Danger zone, keep out" hung from the rusty iron gates.

Standing outside the gates, Su Bai took a deep breath of the cold, musty air.

"System, how high is the pollution level here?"

[Ding! The dark matter concentration in the area ahead is 15%, making it a low-level polluted zone. Prolonged exposure will cause mental exhaustion and mild hallucinations.]

"Only 15%?" Su Bai curled his lip.

The pollution level in his own divine kingdom was as high as 99%. To him, this 15% concentration was as refreshing as breathing fresh air.

Su Bai gripped the iron gate with both hands and nimbly climbed over.

The moment he landed, something gave a sharp crunch beneath his foot.

He looked down and saw a piece of weathered animal bone.

The campus was deathly silent, save for the rustle of wind through the weeds.

Several dilapidated school buildings stood in the darkness like monsters with their jaws wide open, silently waiting for prey to come to them.

Su Bai pulled a powerful flashlight from his pocket and switched it on, sweeping its beam through the darkness.

"According to Lin Que's intel, the incident happened in Senior Class 2's classroom, on the fourth floor of Teaching Building No. 3."

Su Bai got his bearings and headed toward the building at the far end.

Along the way, he saw plenty of mutated plants. Dark purple vines covered the walls, and several mutated spiders the size of fists were even spinning webs in the corners.

These low-level mutated creatures, however, seemed to have little interest in Su Bai. Or rather, they instinctively sensed an aura of pollution on him more terrifying than their own and avoided him.

After all, although Su Bai had not released his divine kingdom, he was himself the host of that wasteland with 99% pollution.

Soon, Su Bai arrived at Teaching Building No. 3.

The iron gate to the stairwell had vanished without a trace. Beyond it was pitch-black, like a bottomless pit.

Su Bai did not hesitate. He stepped straight inside.

First floor, clear.

Second floor, clear, though the broken glass and wrecked desks covering the floor were a bit of an obstacle.

Third floor...

As Su Bai stepped onto the stairs to the third floor, a chilling wind suddenly blew from deep inside the stairwell, making him shiver.

[Ding! Warning: faint rule fluctuations detected.]

[A nascent low-level Anomaly may be present ahead. Host, please proceed with caution.]

The system notification lifted Su Bai's spirits.

An Anomaly?

That meant he had come to the right place!

He slowed his pace and carefully climbed to the fourth floor.

A strong mixture of blood and formalin hung in the corridor.

His flashlight beam swept across the walls, revealing dark red splatter stains everywhere, as though a brutal massacre had taken place here all those years ago.

"Senior Class 1... Senior Class 2..."

Su Bai stopped in front of a wooden door that stood slightly ajar.

The sign on the door read "Senior Class 2."

He reached out and gently pushed it open.

"Creeeak-"

The grating sound echoed through the empty corridor.

The scene inside the classroom came into view.

Desks and chairs lay scattered and overturned, and traces of writing from more than a decade ago remained on the blackboard.

But hanging conspicuously from the ceiling in the very center of the classroom was a coarse hemp rope!

An overturned chair lay beneath the rope.

Beside the chair lay a girl's school uniform jacket, covered in dust and stained completely dark red with blood.

"Found it!"

Delighted, Su Bai hurried forward and reached out to pick up the uniform.

Just as his fingers were about to touch it.

"Boo-hoo-hoo..."

The faint sound of a woman crying suddenly rang out in the empty classroom.

It was shrill and mournful, as though she were breathing right beside Su Bai's ear.

At the same time, the temperature in the classroom plunged. The flashlight flickered violently before going out completely with a pop.

The entire classroom was plunged into absolute darkness.

"Who's there?" Su Bai jerked his hand back, his body taut.

"It hurts... It hurts so much..."

The crying grew louder and louder, gradually turning into a neurotic murmur.

By the faint moonlight outside the window, Su Bai saw a blurry white figure beneath the hanging rope. He had no idea when it had appeared.

Its back was to Su Bai, its hair hung loose and wild, and its body twitched at an exceedingly unnatural rate.

[Ding! Nascent low-level Anomaly discovered: Hanged Ghost's Obsession.]

[It has no complete rules and can only feed on human mental energy by creating illusions and fear.]

[Recommendation: flee immediately, or disperse it through physical means.]

Flee?

Su Bai sneered.

I dared to take a wasteland with 99% pollution, and you think I'm scared of a half-finished thing like you that doesn't even have a rule?

"Hey, mourning the dead in the middle of the night?" Su Bai shouted.

The white figure abruptly stopped twitching.

Its head began twisting backward at an inhuman angle, turning a full 180 degrees.

A deathly pale face with no features except a gaping, bloody maw fixed itself squarely on Su Bai.

"Stay... keep me company..."

The figure let out a piercing shriek and lunged at Su Bai.

It moved with blinding speed, trailing a bone-chilling wind.

An ordinary student would probably have been weak at the knees with fear by now, or summoned their own dependents to fight.

But Su Bai had no dependents.

He had only himself.

"System, open the divine kingdom passage! Suck it in!"

Rather than retreat, Su Bai advanced, flinging his arms wide as the figure lunged at him.

Boom!

A black vortex the size of a washbasin instantly formed in front of his chest.

From the vortex came a terrifying suction force belonging to 99% dark matter pollution.

The white figure had only just reached Su Bai and had not even had time to bite when the suction seized its body.

"Aaaargh-"

It screamed in terror and struggled desperately to break free.

But its meager power of pollution, before Su Bai's heavily polluted wasteland-level dark matter, was like a tiny flame caught in a storm.

Slurp!

In just one second, the white figure was forcibly swallowed by the divine kingdom passage.

[Ding! Successfully captured one low-level Anomaly obsession. It can be used as material to strengthen resentment.]

Su Bai clapped his hands and smiled in satisfaction.

"You thought you could scare me? Once you're in my divine kingdom, you're not even fit to be fertilizer."

With that little interruption dealt with, Su Bai switched on his backup flashlight and bent down to pick up the bloodstained uniform from the floor.

The uniform was icy to the touch, and a heavy residue of resentment and despair clung to it.

[Ding! Core medium detected: Bloodstained School Uniform of Despair.]

[All materials for creating the Midnight Female Ghost in Red have been gathered!]

[Begin creation immediately?]

Su Bai took a deep breath, suppressing his excitement.

"It's not safe here. If I make too much noise during the creation process and draw the City Appearance Bureau here, that'll be trouble."

He stuffed the uniform into his backpack, promptly turned around, and left the classroom.

Ten minutes later, Su Bai climbed back over Red Star Middle School's iron gate and disappeared into the night.

What he did not know was that, shortly after he left.

Several people in black uniforms with the City Appearance Bureau's Abnormalities Handling Section emblem embroidered on their chests hurried to Teaching Building No. 3.

The short-haired woman leading them held a compass-like instrument and frowned deeply at its needle, which had returned to zero.

"Captain Bai, the fluctuations from the pollution source here have disappeared," a team member reported.

The woman called Captain Bai was Bai Lan, the deputy captain of the City Appearance Bureau's Abnormalities Handling Section.

She walked into Senior Class 2's classroom and looked at the empty hemp rope, a grave look flashing in her eyes.

"The low-level Anomaly here has been gestating for three years and was about to take shape. How could it suddenly disappear?"

"And there are no signs of a fight at the scene, not even any residual divine power."

Bai Lan crouched down and touched the thin layer of black powder on the floor.

It was extremely concentrated dark matter residue.

"This aura of pollution... its purity is terrifyingly high. It's almost as if it was dug straight out of the abyss."

Bai Lan stood and gave a cold order: "Investigate! Find out who came here tonight! Whoever it was, anyone who can silently devour an Anomaly is definitely an extremely dangerous variable!"