Chapter 28.2
Editor: Princess
Thanks to the groundwork they’d laid in the first two hours, there weren’t many places left to search. Mu Nan kept an eye out for signs of secret rooms and quickly found a diary that belonged to Shang Yaqin.
The diary detailed all of Shang Yaqin’s experiences with school bullying, making it a shocking read for Mu Nan. Finally, he found the part he was looking for.
Shang Yaqin mentioned finding a forbidden ritual in a book. If she committed suicide at a specific time, she could turn her soul into a vengeful ghost. The price, however, was that her soul would be trapped here permanently.
At the end of the diary, she wrote:
[I wanted to know if there was a way to undo this ritual, so I flipped to the last page, but it only had seven words: ‘The one who ties the bell must untie it.’]
And that, was where the diary ended.
“The one who ties the bell must untie it.” Mu Nan repeated the phrase over and over but still couldn’t figure out what it meant.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing roar echoed through the air. Mu Nan was so startled that he dropped the diary.
Then accompanied by a sinister, maniacal laugh, a broadcast announced, “The mechanism has been activated. The ghost’s killing is no longer restricted by the two-hour condition.”
“What?!” Mu Nan picked the diary up hurriedly, unsure if he had triggered the mechanism himself. He shouted Cheng Han’s name as he ran upstairs.
“What’s wrong?” Cheng Han asked when he saw him rushing over.
“Did something trigger a mechanism?”
Cheng Han however was completely calm. “It was Cui Zhixing.”
“How do you know it was him?” Mu Nan asked him.
The answer presented itself. Cui Zhixing came running downstairs in a panic. “I don’t know what I did! There was this room with these weird red strings, and I accidentally broke one. Then this happened!”
Mu Nan and Cheng Han exchanged a glance. “We’ll go check it out. You go back and protect the two girls.”
“Got it.” Gritting his teeth, Cui Zhixing ran downstairs.
Mu Nan and Cheng Han went upstairs and saw a small room with its door wide open. The light inside was dim, the floor covered in strange symbols, and countless red strings crisscrossed the air, forming an eerie formation. One of the strings was broken in the middle, its loose end swaying gently in the air.
“This is it.” Cheng Han swung his hand, cutting down a few red strings at the doorway.
“What are you doing?” Mu Nan was shocked.
Cheng Han shrugged indifferently. “It’s already broken, so a few more won’t make a difference.”
Stepping over the remaining red strings, they saw a platform at the back of the room. On it was engraved the same phrase Mu Nan had just read in the diary: The one who ties the bell must untie it.
“That phrase again? What does it even mean?”
Beside the platform was a peachwood sword, clearly meant for exorcising ghosts. However the sword was chained to the platform with iron, making it impossible to carry around.
Just as Mu Nan reached for the sword, two blood-curdling screams from the girls echoed through the building.
“Not good! Something’s happened!” Mu Nan and Cheng Han dropped everything and rushed back to the second floor.
After five hours of non-stop running, their stamina was almost completely drained.
When they finally reached the auditorium, where the two girls were supposed to be resting, the place was completely empty.
“Could it be….. they got the news and ran away?” Mu Nan clung to a sliver of hope.
“They’re in trouble.” Mu Nan said with certainty.
The stage in the auditorium was elevated. Mu Nan climbed onto it, trying to see if anyone was hiding in the room.
However just then, a creaking sound came from above, and before he could react, two bodies dressed in red fell from either side of him.
The two corpses had disheveled hair, faces frozen in terror, smeared with bloodstains, and bulging eyes. Their red dresses were tattered, exposing mangled flesh.
And as the bodies had fallen from above, gravity made them spin midair, causing them to occasionally brush against Mu Nan.
The sight left Mu Nan completely stunned. It took him a full three seconds before he could scream.
He fell to the ground in fear, scrambling backward on all fours as he shouted, “What—what the hell is this?!”
And hearing the commotion, Cheng Han rushed over, and glancing at the two corpses, he saw that they were hung by ropes. He lowered them to the ground. “These must be the two girls.”
“So.” Mu Nan said, still sitting on the ground as he looked up at Cheng Han, “Their talismans are gone. Cui Zhixing did this.”
Cheng Han nodded. “It must’ve been him.”
“He’s the traitor!” Mu Nan suddenly became agitated. “We weren’t even sure about the talismans’ purpose, yet he acted like he needed them so badly. And after something happened, his first thought was to grab the talismans. He must know something!”
As Mu Nan spoke, another thought popped into his head. “I have another guess, but maybe I’m overthinking it.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Mu Nan sounded uncertain, but still continued, “That key phrase, “the one who ties the bell must untie it”. I think the ‘bell-tier’ might refer to the person who told Shang Yaqin about the ritual, or the one who deliberately let her find that book.”
Cheng Han’s eyes showed a hint of surprise, as if he hadn’t expected him to think of this. But after a moment, he nodded. “You might be right.”
“So, if we deal with Cui Zhixing, will this all be over?”
“Either way, it’s worth a shot.” Cheng Han showed no hesitation or guilt about targeting a teammate. “He needs a talisman too, which means, no matter who he is, he’s afraid of the ghost.”
Mu Nan stood up as well. “Let’s team up. First, we’ll figure out how to make them turn on each other. Then we’ll use the sword to get rid of the ghost. That should let us escape.”
“En.” Cheng Han extended his hand to him. “Let’s do this.”
Reaching out, Mu Nan gave him a high five. “We’ll make it!”
The two of them left the auditorium one after the other, however Mu Nan’s right eyelid twitched violently twice.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that things wouldn’t be this simple.