Chapter 50: Nightly Ghost Stories

A night without dreams.

The next morning, Mo Kaka lazily slept in until it was already half-past eight before she dilly-dallied crawling out of her quilt.

After putting on a cozy sweater, Mo Kaka rubbed her sleepy eyes and prepared to go to the washroom and wash her face.

While climbing out of bed, Mo Kaka noticed a strange whiff amid the room’s air.

Because one’s sense of smell when one just woke up wasn’t that sensitive, Mo Kaka approached the trash bin and leaned in for a sniff. Inside was just the yellow braised chicken’s leftover bones and wasn’t at all the source of this strange smell.

“Weird. Where is this fishy smell coming from?”

She turned around, still unconvinced. She then closed her eyes and followed the strange smell, immediately touching Sun Yulan’s bedside. Sun Yulan’s body was completely covered up by her comforter with only her head peeking out.

She closed her eyes again and sniffed around some more, confirming that the weird smell was coming from Sun Yulan’s bed.

“Right! Call the police! Call them right now!”

“Don’t forget to contact a teacher!”

“Someone call the dormitory aunty(1) and tell them someone’s dead!”

A few girls quickly took out their phones and made their calls, while the others couldn’t believe what was happening. They all stared at the wide-open door, their hearts almost leaping out of their chests. Some were so scared that they cried out of fear, but those who were braver acted like nothing big had happened and even went so far as to take a look at Mo Kaka’s room and take pictures of the bloody scene.

Ye Shangyu resided on the fifth floor and was coincidentally living in the same dormitory as the dead Sun Yulan.

Mo Kaka’s loud banging didn’t reach her side, but the whole hallway was bustling with commotion. As a result, Ye Shangyu came out of her room and heard that someone had died bizarrely.

“… So, this is that Sun Yulan? I heard that she was chopped up and that her head is the only thing left of her! Her death was too inhumane!”

“Sun Yulan must have provoked a dangerous person. Doesn’t she live an uncautious lifestyle? Otherwise, maybe too much hate and rage made that person go this far? From my point of view, this murderer must have planned this since before. There must have been a problem with Sun Yulan herself, or else Mo Kaka wouldn’t have been left unscathed while Sun Yulan died.”

“…”

Several girls nervously wagged their tongues as well as took several pictures and posted them online, trying to win people’s surprised reactions.

Ye Shangyu stood confused among the crowd, her eyes watched attentively at Sun Yulan and her quilt.

Last night, she and the other players looked through half of the archives. She then took her time going back and arriving at the guarded dorm entrance.

After going back, she gazed at the captured image on her screen. Ye Shangyu knew those twenty or so archives inside out. She remembered that there was this particular archive that was related to a quilt.

“I need to tell them that a supernatural story has emerged.”

Ye Shangyu lowered her head, her hair falling to the sides of her face, and texted the boys. Afterward, she lifted her head and instigated one of the girls, who took the photo, to lift Sun Yulan’s quilt.

“Is it not okay?”

Looking at the half-leaking head, the girl who took the photo was also about to lose her head from terror, but believing that a corpse would attract more buzz, she bore with it and clenched her teeth, cautiously raising the comforter. However, the scene under the blanket was far too much. It even made the soles of her feet numb from the fright and prevented her from taking any photos.

Under the quilt was such a hellish scene.

The quilt’s cover was split open, forming a ginormous hole. The cotton pieces were all stained with blood, and the entire scene changed into a bloody cottony field.

The amount of blood splattered on the quilt was quite a lot, but Sun Yulan’s body was nowhere to be found. Only this decapitated head was left of her, and its cold dead eyes were filled with dread.

The dorm room was immediately filled with sharp intakes of breaths. This type of gory scene even made the girls, who were braver than average, unable to maintain their composure.

She more or less understood the situation, so Ye Shangyu quietly slipped away from the dormitory.

She had quite a few questions to ask Mo Kaka, but Mo Kaka was being flocked by a group of girls and was currently lowering her head, crying her eyes out. This wasn’t a good time to ask her.

Before the police arrived, Ye Shangyu took her laptop with her and left the dorms, meeting up with the other two on the three-way intersection.

“Sister Ye, the supernatural story has been uncovered. Is it in the archive?”

“Number 5.”

The three left the school and went to a small private room. Bai Yan took out the archive that Ye Shangyu was referring to, sweeping it a glance, “What exactly is going on?”

“A girl died, only her head was left. Her quilt had a large opening in the middle, it must have been how the ghost got in.” Ye Shangyu said concisely and comprehensively.

“Sure enough, it’s similar to number 5.” Bai Yan compared, “The president went to the victim’s house to investigate and then finally encountered this ghost. That family’s pillows, mattresses, quilts, and long pillows all had hidden ghosts inside. This ghost could also move through people’s clothes. While the president was investigating this matter, the ghost was caught in the act and was seen getting into them.”

“But, clothes are so thin. How could a ghost get in?” Luo Xing raised his hand as if he were a good student politely asking his teacher a question.

“It’s a ghost, which means that we shouldn’t care about logic. You can still talk about physics when dealing with ghosts?” Bai Yan touched his chin, “However, the president was also a determined person. After he found out, he boldly stripped naked and hurried up to banish this ghost. Fortunately, his investigation was held at night. If not, he would have met some people on the streets, and the consequences would simply be…”

Bai Yan clicked his tongue twice. He couldn’t restrain his laughter when imagining the scene.

Although the president had already turned into a ghost, it didn’t stop him from enjoying himself.

“It’s not good to talk about people behind their backs. Moreover, this is a ghost, maybe it could sense…”

Bai Yan choked up from Luo Xing’s words, almost suffocating in the process.

He initially wanted to call out this brat saying, ‘Don’t speak up. Just go do your practice exams,’ but discovered that Luo Xing, who was hardly ever without his practice tests, was flipping over the archive with a concentrated expression on his face.

He suddenly became even more depressed.

“Okay, you guys quiet down. I want to listen to something.”

Ye Shangyu typed in a few commands on her keyboard, and the other two adjusted their heads to get a view of the screen, discovering an unfamiliar girl on it with a police officer questioning her.

“This is…?”

“En, Mo Kaka. She’s being questioned by the police for their records.”

“Big shot, can you cover for me? Have you teamed up with other players?” Bai Yan cheekily asked while grinning.

Ye Shangyu shot a glance at Bai Yan and indifferently said, “This matter is outside the game. Let’s listen to this first.”

The three’s attentions were completely on the screen. Ye Shangyu adjusted the laptop’s volume so that everyone could hear Mo Kaka’s testimony.

“…”

“…I didn’t find out anything in particular. Really, I was in deep sleep last night. I didn’t hear any suspicious movements nor did I sense anybody entering and escaping my dorm room.”

“Hidden under the bed? I don’t think this is plausible. The bottoms of our beds are narrow, even extending our arms there would already be difficult, so it couldn’t have been able to fit a person.”

“The bathroom is also impossible. Before we went to bed last night, we went to the bathroom several times, so how could someone be there.”

“None. I didn’t hear anything.”

“What did we do yesterday? Yesterday afternoon, Lanlan and I were together in our dorm room, playing on our phones. We were both looking at the school forum’s gossip section. When night fell, she went to get her quilt and came back. We then ate some yellow braised chicken and used our phones after. When it was lights out, we went to sleep at the same time…”

“Enemies? Lanlan didn’t have any enemies. She’s like me, an otaku. She also didn’t have a boyfriend. Normally, if we had the chance to not go out, we wouldn’t. Lanlan’s temper was also good, and she wouldn’t offend anyone.”

“Was there anything abnormal?… Oh right! Lalan read a scary post in the forum’s section called ‘Nightly Ghost Stories.’ She said it had something to do with a quilt, which made her scared… Uncle police officer, chopping up someone and only leaving a head can’t possibly be done without any noise. Do you think that Lanlan could have been killed by a ghost?”

“…”

When Mo Kaka’s statement had concluded, Ye Shangyu typed on her keyboard while asking, “What do you guys think? Let’s share our thoughts first.”

“The forum. Clearly the forum was the problem.” Bai Yan answered, “Ye Zi, can you find that post?”

“Wait a second, what did you call me?”

“Ye Zi ah. Luo Xing’s and my name are both only two characters long, so when one says it, it reads smoothly. Saying a three character name requires too much effort.”

“As you will.” Ye Shangyu deeply gazed at Bai Yan, then bowing her head and continuing to fiddle with something on her computer.

Not a moment too soon, she suddenly pursed her brows and frowned, saying to the two, “You guys give it a try. See if you could access the forum through your phones.”

“I got in.” Bai Yan said, “But before I do anything, explain to me what I have to do in advance. I don’t want to click open that post to see what would happen. Sun Yulan opened this post and died, so I reckon that once you see this story, you would automatically be in a ghost story, and I’m still not prepared for that.”

“No need to click on it, and you can’t also click on it because the post is gone!” Ye Shangyu brows strung tighter, “I took a look at the browsing history in Sun Yulan’s phone. It showed that she was looking at the gossip section inside the school forum for half of the day, but basically didn’t click on the ‘Nightly Ghost Stories’ section.”

“The post disappeared? I suppose it’s because we didn’t trigger certain conditions.” Bai Yan muttered to himself, “Is it possible that it’s only visible during a certain time? Or, if there’s a person that activated the ghost story, the post would disappear?”

“Those are all possible.” Luo Xing looked at the phone and said, “But, there’s also another possibility. The old post disappearing doesn’t mean that new ones won’t come out. We’d better not randomly click on things in the forum, just in case someone would accidentally click on the ghost story’s post and be the next protagonist of the ghost story.”

Obviously, they’ve found an important clue, but their investigation was still stuck in a rut.

Everyone wouldn’t dare act blindly without thinking, and all looked at the ‘Nightly Ghost Stories’ with bitterness and resentment.

In truth, they were not without a solution. It’s just that the method was too cruel, so no one proposed it.

Ye Shangyu and Luo Xing both kept their silence, so it was clear that they were intending to rely on time.

Seeing that Ye Shangyu was repeatedly looking over here, with a look that said ‘You’re the type of person that does this thing, just give it to me straight’ kind of expression, Bai Yan rolled his eyes and said, “Should we hire someone and ask him to help us?”

“Okay, the responsibility of finding someone to hire should be yours.” Ye Shangyu immediately added, “You mentioned it, so you go do it.”

Bai Yan looked Luo Xing in the eye, inwardly saying that if Luo Xing even dared pass up on taking this task, the next one who would be in that forum would be this kid(2).

High school students still carried a naive view of this world. Not accepting this kind of work would mean that he was lacking in a moral sense. Furthermore, there was also another option for them, but this method would have been a bit too troublesome.

“Forget it! You just help me research the ‘Nightly Ghost Stories’ poster. The site traffic for this section is only a small amount. A day’s worth of traffic only adds up to a handful of people. All these posts have tags that indicate the number of clicks they have. Each post shows that there are people clicking them open. We should find these people and ask them one by one so that we can always fill out the contents of the posts from this.”

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T/N: I know the previous chapter said that Sun Yulan clicked on the Nightly Ghost Stories Section, but I double checked the raws.

Also, I’m currently doing some research on pay-per-chapter platforms hehe If you would like a chance to win 4 advanced chapters of Hell App and Young Masters’ Little Maid, please answer this survey! ｡◕‿◕｡ This survey closes on April 20, 2021, 11:59 PM (GMT +8), so be sure to answer it by then!