The choice was to have faith in his teammate's ability or his own judgment. With the time ticking down, Feng Bujue had to come to a decision soon. The internal struggle was more pressure applied by the system other than fear. Regardless of how Feng Bujue made his choice, the fact that he had chosen to tussle with the system meant that he had already lost. Because he had been distracted to consider something that he would never come to a concrete decision on, and that would only bring him danger.
Right then, the sound of a baby crying suddenly entered Feng Bujue's ears. He turned to the voice, and it came from the corner of the dark corridor that expanded before him. He did not hurry toward it but instead lowered his head to look at the time. It was 00:40:27. Another eighteen seconds, and he would have missed his chance to make the call.
In the end, he still made the choice to press the speed-dial button. Even though they had just finished one scenario together, he had faith in Passing Rain's ability. Furthermore, he knew that if he did not make this call, in the next fifteen minutes, the other party would be placed in the same spot as him, suffering from the same psychological pressure.
At the very least, he had come to the decision that as long as the situation permitted it, the call had to be made. Regardless of whether the call would be connected or not, at least this proved that one of the parties was safe. In terms of probability, as long as the call was made, there was a fifty percent chance that neither of them would earn the ghosts' ire, but if the call was not made, the probability would be raised to one hundred percent, and one of them would suffer.
The call only rang once before Passing Rain picked it up. "I'm fine, don't worry."
"Er…" Feng Bujue was glad to hear her voice, but he could not help himself from saying, "Didn't you say… not to ask about the other's condition?"
About two seconds of silence followed. Then Feng Bujue heard a beep, and the next second, the call ended.
There was only one explanation. While Passing Rain did not intend to insult, the annoyed lady leveled a curse word at Feng Bujue and then hung up the phone.
Listening to the busy tone that followed the beep, Feng Bujue stood baffled and slowly moved the phone to before his face. "Hey! What's the meaning of this? How could you hang up on me? It was you who said we shouldn't update each other on our conditions, okay‽ And now you cursed me for it? The fact that you could voice it means that you think you're right?"
He widened his eyes and growled at the phone. However, the call was already over, and Passing Rain could not hear him; he was merely venting for the sake of it. "Idiot? Dummy? Retard? What else can it be? What exactly have I done? As indignant as you were, there's no reason for you to hang up on me, right? I knew I shouldn't have made that call!"
The sound of a baby crying became more obvious, and like the lyrics in the song, "Wu wa wa, wu wa wa… The baby's cries fill your ears."
Feng Bujue closed the flip phone and held it in his left palm. He also held the flashlight in that hand as he pulled out the kitchen knife with his right hand and jogged forward.
After turning around the corner, he instantly saw a basket on the ground; it was the kind of bamboo basket that people carried to picnics. There was a baby lying inside the basket. The baby was swaddled in a white towel, and only his head was showing. He did not look particularly scary. Like a newborn, his eyes were closed, and he had not grown into his features.
Feng Bujue groaned audibly and then squatted down to look at the baby. In a calm tone, he said, "Tell me what do you want. You have thirty seconds, or else I'll help you transplant your little head."
The baby continued to cry, and in fact, he cried even harder. The crying became shrill, like the sound of nails clawing down a pane of glass, designed to make one's heart quiver.
"All you do is cry!" Feng Bujue raised his voice. "I'm telling you, I'm still counting the time!"
His interrogation led to the worst possible result. The baby slowly opened his eyes to reveal a pair of ruby red eyes, and the face scrunched together to show a wicked smile. According to legend, babies who had just arrived into this world possessed Yin Yang Vision because their soul had not fully formed yet. If a baby died at this stage, their level of resentment would be impossibly high, and they would be more aggressive and dangerous than normal ghosts.
Before Feng Bujue's eyes, the basket that carried the baby turned into a human body in the blink of an eye. The victim's face was frozen in horror. His limbs were gone, and the contents of his stomach were hollowed out, scattered around the corridor. That baby was lying inside the hollow body, smiling at Feng Bujue.
"So, this is why the lyrics go 'the bones as his cradle, skin as his clothes'," Feng Bujue commented. "Let me guess… Hmm… Your mother was a student here, who had her heart cheated by one of the students or staff. She was nine months pregnant when she came to the school to beg the father for mercy but was cruelly rejected. In the end, she chose to commit suicide in this corridor and personally gouge you out of her body before she died."
That was why Feng Bujue's was a novelist. His ability to turn the details that he saw into a plot was unrivalled. After hearing that, the ghost baby suddenly stopped laughing, and the next second, it started to scream at the top of its lungs. The scream was incredibly scary, and it shattered the glass windows in the corridor, and Feng Bujue's Life Points dropped like crazy.
It was going to be impossible to deal with this monster the peaceful way. Feng Bujue quickly raised his knife and aimed it at the baby, but before the knife could make contact, his wrist was held back by some force. He turned to look and saw an arm reach out supernaturally from inside the wall to halt his attack. It appeared as if the torn limbs of the dead bodies that littered the corridor were still around there somewhere.
Thankfully, the baby could only continue its scream for so long. It stopped after eight seconds, or else it would have been possible for Feng Bujue's Life Points to directly slide down to zero. However, his situation was still not optimistic as more arms and legs reached out from the walls on the corridor, and each of them were wiggling violently.
Feng Bujue knew that a long battle was unbeneficial to him, and he made the decision of using the knife to cut at the arm instead. Unfortunately, an arm was not so easily sawed through, even if the owner of the arm was already dead. The sharp blade of the knife fell on the arm's flesh, and blood flowed, seeping into the dead body's dried husk, splashing onto the ghost baby. The baby laughed, and the laughter drilled into Feng Bujue's ears. If not for the system that limited the sensation of pain, Feng Bujue would have fainted.
Realizing that he had not escaped from the arms, Feng Bujue quickly dropped the phone and flashlight in his other arm to grab Mario's Wrench from his backpack. Using a speed that was too fast for the baby to catch up with, he aimed for the baby's head. This time, he was successful and was lucky enough to activate the effect of Brain Concussion.
After the monster received damage, all the broken limbs stopped moving. Feng Bujue made use of the opportunity to remove his right hand from the grab. Using both of his hands, he launched a flurry of attacks at the baby inside the carcass cradle. Blood and flesh flew. It would not be wrong to say that Feng Bujue was quite ruthless.
Soon, the limbs that crawled out from the walls disappeared. It seemed as if the monster did not have the power to maintain them anymore. Feng Bujue thought that this meant the baby was almost dead, but something else happened.
He noticed that the face of the dead body that carried the ghost baby slowly became muddled, and eventually the face rearranged itself to turn into Feng Bujue's face. Then, it opened its lips and started to speak in a voice that was similar to his own.
"So painful… Stop… Stop!"
The dead body's voice turned into a full-on scream, and it started to struggle earnestly as it wiggled its dried body about.
Just as Feng Bujue was distracted, the ghost baby disappeared before his eyes. All that remained was the dead body and its hollowed-out cavity.
Feng Bujue knew that he had been careless; he should have killed the baby when he realized that it was still alive. Unfortunately, he had given it the chance to recover. He put the knife away and picked up the items that he had dropped on the ground earlier. Standing up, he scanned all the dead bodies in the corridor with the flashlight, trying to find the baby.
"He he he…" A hair-chilling laughter began, and this time, it did not sound like it came from a baby at all; the laughter originated from somewhere… incredibly close to him.
Feng Bujue noticed something and lowered his head to look at his chest. The thing that he saw would be enough to make anyone puke. The ghost baby covered in blood was curled up in his chest, lying on its side. One of its hands was grabbing Feng Bujue's rib-bone, and that was exactly where the laughter came from.
"You intend to cause me to commit suicide through this illusion?" Feng Bujue commented calmly and ignored this phenomenon. He reached into his backpack. He knew that what he saw was an illusion; his sense of touch was not affected, so he could still touch his shirt and the backpack that he was carrying on his back.
He removed the Eyes of Hostility. As he put it on, he said, "I almost forgot about this.
He remembered the other use of this item. After putting on the equipment, with the help of the flashlight, Feng Bujue scanned every dead body in the corridor carefully. If the ghost baby was creating the illusion, it could be traced. As he expected, when his eyes fell on a dead body that appeared hollow, the Eyes of Hostility reacted. There was a monster there that was targeting the player.
Feng Bujue took large strides toward it and raised the wrench without hesitation. The monster that was heavily injured had no choice but to accept its fate.
"Main quest progress updated. Explore Ye Jie Elite Academy to resolve the seven supernatural phenomena. Current progress, 3/7"
"Main quest progress updated. Explore Ye Jie Elite Academy to resolve the seven supernatural phenomena. Current progress, 4/7"
Almost at the same time, the system came out with those two notifications. This meant that while Feng Bujue landed the final blow, Passing Rain had also completed the mission related to the thirteenth step.
"Hmm…" Feng Bujue huffed and said self-deprecatingly, "Looks like I was worried for no reason."
…
In the main building, Passing Rain leaned against the wall and slid to the ground. Looking past her into the corridor, the path was filled with the bodies of countless monsters, and the blood combined to form a river. The heavy stench of blood and number of monsters were enough to chase anyone away. But at that moment, the only living human around did not have the energy to move anywhere else.
The lamp and sword were placed next to her. She held the phone in her right hand while her left hand was covering the flesh wound on the right side of her waist. She was bleeding heavily, with blood oozing out between her fingers.
This dimension connected to the thirteenth step was inescapable once she stepped into it. There was no place to run or hide. The dimension was filled with monsters, and some of them looked horrid enough to make her Terror Points rise with their appearance alone. Those who stumbled in there were either killed and became part of the ghost army or, like Passing Rain, massacred all of them.
During the previous call, Passing Rain's situation had not been that good; she had been lying when she told Feng Bujue that she was fine.
At the time, she had been in the middle of a battle. Even though she was already injured, she was in control enough to adjust her breathing and pick up the phone at first notice. She also understood that she would only become an unnecessary burden on her teammate if she showed any sign of weakness.
Since Passing Rain had killed all the monsters in the dimension, she needed to rest. Her Stamina Points was slowly recovering, but she did not have a method to cure her bleeding status. The only way she could stop her Life Points from dropping was to stop moving and keep her hand pressed over the wound.
The system would not treat this as AFK-like behavior because the player had to stop moving due to a specific reason. Under normal difficulty, the system wouldn't be cruel enough to force dying players to keep moving, but things might be different in nightmare difficulty.
Passing Rain paid attention to the time on the phone; there were still ten minutes to the next call. She did not wish to attract the haunting in her current condition, so she had to make the call when it was her turn.
In the previous communication, Feng Bujue had felt blown off, while Passing Rain had felt wronged. Objectively speaking, both were responsibility, but the main responsibility was still on Feng Bujue's shoulders for saying that unsavory thing at the wrong time.
No matter where, no matter when, even if you are right, a man should never try to point out the contradiction in a woman's words.
Drip drop… drip drop…
Just as Passing Rain thought that she could catch her breath, from the darkness down the hall, the sound of water dripping suddenly began.
