Ch40 - Sha, Sha, Sha

There was a scream and the two brothers sleeping on the upper bunk almost fell off. They opened their eyes and saw Sun Guojing standing barefoot on the ground with a pale face. His voice was hoarse. His throat seemed to be narrowed and his voice could only be squeezed out in a half airy manner. “There is something in my quilt!”

The lights from two flashlights were immediately projected from the top bunks. The down feather quilt was kicked to the ground by Sun Guojing. Under the dim light of the flashlight, there were several abnormal bulges that looked like the curve of a human body. 

Qi Tianyun jumped down from the top bunk, found the broom beside the radiator and mustered up his courage to lift the quilt up. It was empty. Before they could react, they heard the dormitory auntie knock on the door twice. “Who called out? What’s going on?”

Sun Guojing’s eyes were still dazed. Qi Tianyun and Luo Ge exchanged looks before replying in a loud voice, “Someone had a nightmare!”

The dormitory auntie was disgruntled. “Keep your voice down! How old are you to still be making noise when dreaming? Other people are sleeping.”

She muttered a few times before leaving. 

Sun Guojing fumbled to the side, pulling out a chair and sitting on it. He buried his face in his hands.

The two of them knew Sun Guojing. He wasn’t someone to be easily surprised. If he said he saw it then he really saw it.

Qi Tianyun patted him on the shoulder in comfort but Sun Guojing was full of resentment.

“What did I do?” He kicked the corner of the table to vent, causing the steel table to shake. “I just fucking smashed the glass! Why did I attract the ghost?”

Luo Ge and Qi Tianyun didn’t know how to comfort him. They had played PVE three times. Their instances were of a chainsaw murderer, a werewolf under the moon and the apocalypse with plant mutations. It might be dangerous but at least the danger was tangible. This was the first time they were playing a pure supernatural instance. They played it as an ordinary PVE instance. They didn’t expect the ghost to not follow the basic laws at all.

The atmosphere in the bedroom stagnated for a moment. Sun Guojing suddenly jumped up and stripped off his clothes one by one. He yelled, “Look for me. Is there anything on me?”

Based on his small experience with watching horror movies, he wasn’t afraid of the ghost being stealthy. He was afraid that the ghost would keep thinking about him. If the ghost left a mark on him then it was the nail in the coffin. He was dead.

After a search, Sun Guojing stood in the middle of the dormitory wearing red striped underwear and barely felt relieved. There weren’t any signs like ghost handprints as he had imagined. Even the bone-eating chill had disappeared. It was as if the ghost had just come to his bed for a visit. 

The haze in Sun Guojing’s mind was swept away and he wanted to curse to vent his mood. Just then—

Knock.

Sun Guojing’s words were stuck in his throat and the blood that had just gathered in his face drained again. He cleared his throat and asked, “Did you hear that?”

There was a knock at the door. He concluded from Qi Tianyun and Luo Ge’s ugly expressions that they also heard it. At this time, there were three regular knocks on the bedroom door. 

Knock, knock, knock.

The rhythm was calm.

“Damn!!!”

As the saying went, ghosts were afraid of wicked people. Therefore, Sun Guojing released all the dirty swear words he could think of. After nearly a minute of non-stop vicious curses, Sun Guojing finally ended with a general type of curse. 

“Who the hell is it?!”

“Hello.” The person outside was repeatedly insulted but there were no fluctuations in his voice. He even maintained his politeness. “My name is Xie Xiangyu. I am a player.”

There was a bang and the bedroom door opened in a resentful manner.

Xie Xiangyu, who was standing at the door, was pulled in by a big hand and pushed against the wall in the darkness. His back collided with the hard wall and there was a muffled noise. 

The trio was furious at the feeling of being played and they glared at Xie Xiangyu. Xie Xiangyu straightened from the wall and gently touched his shoulders. “It hurts.”

Sun Guojing gritted his teeth. “Are you fucking crazy?”

The lights were turned off so early that there were probably still a large number of students who hadn’t slept. In front of so many NPCs, this person openly exposed his identity and also wanted to pull them into the water with him? Was this guy a fool?

Xie Xiangyu smiled. “I have something to say to you. Will you let me in?” 

Out of the trio, Qi Tianyun had the strongest brain. He was responsible for all the heavy mental work such as keeping the accounts for the barbecue stall. He rudely took out a flashlight and shone it on Xie Xiangyu’s face. Xie Xiangyu turned his head away slightly but didn’t show any signs of disapproval at this rude behavior.

Xie Xiangyu looked very smart and there was a stud-like thing on his left earlobe. On closer inspection, it was a red mole. He was thin and around 1.75 meters tall. In front of these three strong men with a net height of 1.8 meters, he looked like a handsome and intellectual young man who was experienced. As long as he didn’t have any powerful items then he wasn’t a threat at all in terms of his size.

However, Qi Tianyun was still full of vigilance. “What do you want to do?”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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The trio, “……”

They were too embarrassed to admit that the three of them went to rob people only to end up counter-robbed by Nan Zhou. They had to grit their teeth and acquiesce to Xie Xiangyu’s statement. 

“The three of them feel very dangerous.” Xie Xiangyu continued. “In comparison, I choose to cooperate with you.”

Qi Tianyun inquired, “What clue did you find?”

“Based on the instance time, something happened on the evening of October 20th and the early hours of October 21st.”

“On my phone, there is a contact number for someone called Qi Tianyun. At around 8 o’clock in the evening on the 20th, he asked me to go buy 200 yuan worth of barbecue from East Street and send it to Activity Room 403 on the East Fifth Building.” 

He looked around. “Who is Qi Tianyun?”

Xie Xiangyu saw the eyes of the other two people and judged Qi Tianyun’s identity. He stared at Qi Tianyun. “Do you know why you had me buy barbecue?”

The three men shook their heads like ignorant dogs.

“It is because you have information that can be used against me. The male dormitory building for the physical education department has the closest straight line distance to the female dormitory. I used to hide in the corridor of your dormitory building and use a telescope to peep at the girl’s dormitory. Then I was caught by you when you came home late.” 

He didn’t show the slightest shame when he said this.

Qi Tianyun reflexively took out his phone to see the chat record and judge if this person was telling the truth or not.

“Of course, there is no such thing on your phone.” Xie Xiangyu smiled. “You are threatening me. How can evidence for this type of blackmail be left in writing?”

Qi Tianyun was suspicious. “Then how do you know about it?” 

Xie Xiangyu grinned. He was carrying a telescope with him. His search history showed ‘what are the consequences of being reported for peeping at the girl’s dormitory?’ The nearest building to the girl’s dormitory was the dormitory for the physical education students. Xie Xiangyu obeyed Qi Tianyun’s unreasonable demand. It wasn’t difficult to come to such a conclusion.

The trio were dumbfounded. They had prioritized investigating Hu Li and didn’t thoroughly check themselves.

Sun Guojing reflexively let go of the hand twisting Xie Xiangyu’s collar. Xie Xiangyu straightened his collar and did up the shirt button that Sun Guojing had pulled apart violently. Then he smoothed out the wrinkles with his thumb. In the darkness, Xie Xiangyu’s eyes were as bright as the stars. “Believe me. I will be very useful to you.”

*** 

In the dormitory of the international students.

Jiang Fang demonstrated his experiment for Nan Zhou and Li Yinhang. Two hours ago, he registered for an account and made a post on the campus web forum. The title was quite straightforward. It was: Do you remember Hu Li?

The forum owner didn’t delete it. In other words, Hu Li wasn’t an officially banned word. Still, this didn’t mean much. Perhaps the person responsible for deleting the post wasn’t online. Thus, Jiang Fang continued to write the post.

Do you remember a person called Hu Li? 

He is a very quiet person. Every time he goes to class, he will sit in the back row by the window. Sometimes I will see him sitting alone with his head lowered in the South Second Cafeteria. He has no same-sex friends, no girlfriend and no special interests. He lives like an invisible person.

So why is it that no one remembers him except for me?

It is strange, isn’t it?

There were quite a lot of replies. 

“Is the post owner writing a novel?”

“Lz, hurry up.”

“Samesexfriends.”

“What the hell is going on? Pretending to be a ghost?” 

Jiang Fang didn’t reply to anyone and just continued to write the details. He completely relied on his imagination and put together various details to form a false ‘Hu Li’. It was as if this Hu Li really lived in front of him.

It seems that I’m the only person in the world who remembers him. Every time I mention to other people that there is a person called Hu Li, they will always ask me the same question.

Who is Hu Li?

However, I feel that my memories are also fading. 

What does he look like?

I remember he once participated in a group activity with me.

I pulled out the group photos and looked at them one by one, but I couldn’t find him.

Ah, perhaps he was the one taking the photos. 

Still, maybe I am going to forget who Hu Li is.

This post was the reason why Jiang Fang was playing with his phone. Jiang Fang’s words weren’t very embellished. They were simple and cool but contained a bit of neuroticism.

This so-called mystical writing method obviously caught the interest of a lot of people and they kept urging him to update. They said that it was such an exciting story. If the original poster left it unfinished then he would receive the ‘happy corner’ a hundred times. (TL: Happy corner is an action where several people carry a victim with his legs spread open, bringing his groin up against a pole or tree trunk.)

Li Yinhang saw it and felt cold. It was because she noticed that the owner of the web forum manipulated this post that was soaring in popularity and added a ‘hot’ to it. She stammered, “…S-So Hu Li isn’t a topic that the school prohibits from discussing?” 

In the current situation, players couldn’t leave the school so the stage of the instance was limited to Jinjing University. Hu Li was an important clue so he was unlikely to be an outsider. He could only be a student of Jinjing University.

In the death recording, the speaker made it clear that Hu Li was dead. It was reasonable to say that if a student died at school, the school should maintain stability. Then why could the word ‘Hu Li’ be pinned in the school’s official web forum and talked about in such a manner? In addition, Li Yinhang felt a strange sense of disharmony regarding this matter but she couldn’t tell what it was.

Jiang Fang told her, “It is more than that.”

He gave his phone to Nan Zhou. Nan Zhou scanned through the more than 200 replies to the post. “This post has been published for two hours.” 

“Yes.”

Nan Zhou put down the phone and stared straight at Jiang Fang. “However, no one has come out to say that they know someone called Hu Li.”

There was buzzing in Li Yinhang’s head before she felt cold. Yes. Hu Li’s name was placed in the title. Such a hot post floated on the front page for two hours but no one who knew him came out and said, “Hey, isn’t there a person called Hu Li in XX department?” Did this mean… Hu Li really was completely erased from the world, becoming a forgotten ‘non-existent’ person?

Nan Zhou frowned as if there were still things he couldn’t figure out. He looked particularly beautiful when he frowned. 

Jiang Fang glanced at him. “What are you thinking about?”

“Hmm.” Nan Zhou wondered, “What is the difference between ‘disappearing’ and ‘death’?”

“If Hu Li is really erased by some existence then he should be forgotten in everyone’s memory.”

“So why did the person who left the death message say he is dead?” 

“Like you said in the post, why does only he remember?”

Li Yinhang felt like her brain had become paste due to all the questions. “So what do we do now?”

Nan Zhou asked, “On the evening of the 20th, where did we agree to meet?”

Jiang Fang replied, “The EastFifth Building, Activity Room 403.” 

Nan Zhou suggested, “Tomorrow, go there to investigate.”

Jiang Fang also agreed. “Tomorrow is fine.”

Li Yinhang had been worried that the two of them would run to 403 in the middle of the night. Upon hearing this, she quietly sighed with relief.

“It’s time to wash.” Nan Zhou stood up and walked to Jiang Fang. He hung the ‘Sixth Sense Cross’ emitting a natural red light that had originally been around his neck onto Jiang Fang’s neck. The thin silver chain that rubbed against Jiang Fang’s skin apart from where the choker was made him itchy. 

This feeling of itchiness didn’t just come from the silver chain. In order to fasten the chain, half of Nan Zhou’s body had crossed Jiang Fang’s shoulder and his slightly curly hair was slowly moving along Jiang Fang’s neck.

Jiang Fang gritted his teeth and the breath he exhaled was hot. He wondered, “Why give it to me?”

“I’m going to wash up.” Nan Zhou replied very straightforwardly. “I’m afraid it won’t be easy to use if it gets wet.”

Li Yinhang made the bed while Nan Zhou placed the sleeping Nanji Star at the head of the bed and went to the bathroom of the dormitory. 

The accommodation environment of the international students dormitory was significantly better than ordinary dormitories. It wasn’t just a single room. It also had a TV, a balcony and a private bathroom.

A huge, silver-plated mirror was mounted on the wall of the bathroom. The toiletries on the countertop were also very simple. There was a half used bottle of mouthwash, a man’s facial cleanser and an electric shaver.

Nan Zhou opened the lid of the mouthwash and sniffed it before testing it by taking a sip. Then his brow furrowed fiercely.

…It hurt. He hesitated over whether to spit it out or swallow it. In the end, he was worried that the sulfuric acid would burn his stomach so he spat it out. He turned on the tap and rinsed the blue mouthwash that had accumulated at the bottom of the sink. 

However, the water flowing out of the tap was extremely low in temperature. It was abnormally cold. The water drops splashed on Nan Zhou’s skin and he frowned again. Suddenly—

“Sha—”

It was the familiar, rustling sound.

Nan Zhou stopped moving. 

“Sha—”

He identified the source of the sound and looked up slowly. He noticed that his reflection in the mirror seemed taller than usual. It was a bit too tall. So tall that he reached the top of the mirror. So tall… that his neck was bent to one side by the top of the mirror.

The expression on this face didn’t belong to Nan Zhou. The corners of the mouth were bent upwards. He kept such a smile while his head pressed against the edge of the mirror, becoming more and more crooked. Once the angle between his neck and head in the mirror was around 45 degrees, Nan Zhou didn’t hesitate to throw a punch.

Crack— 

The strange shadow in the mirror disappeared. Nan Zhou’s face returned to normal. It was just that his face was split into five pieces and at first glance, it was rather strange. Nan Zhou found that the water had recovered its normal water temperature and simply cleaned a small cut on the back of his finger.

The moment the clear sound of glass cracking was heard, Jiang Fang rushed over and appeared at the door, gasping slightly. Nan Zhou turned around. It was the first time he had seen Jiang Fang lose his calm demeanor and he found it novel for a moment.

“Fortunately, I gave you the cross.” Nan Zhou shook the residual water off his hand. “Otherwise, it would be a waste if it was used on me.”

Jiang Fang struggled to control his expression. “You… did you hear the ‘sha’ sound?” 

Nan Zhou was a bit surprised by Jiang Fang’s judgment and speed of analysis. He never mentioned to Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang that he had heard the ‘sha’ sound twice. It was once at the basketball court when he had just entered the instance. The second time was when they went to find Xie Xiangyu. He stood in the corridor and heard it again.

Nan Zhou answered, “Yes.”

He continued lightly, “Yinhang heard it once and I heard it twice. The name of the instance mentions it so I thought that I should be in the most danger.”

After becoming clear about this point, Nan Zhou decided that he could react to the danger and it was wasteful to put the cross that could predict danger on his body. It was best to put it on Jiang Fang, who had never heard the strange sound, in order to play the best protective role. 

Jiang Fang heard Nan Zhou’s words and his breathing became a bit heavy. There was a certain strong emotion surging in his voice like he was about to lose control. “You are like this. What should I do if something happens to you?”

Nan Zhou was puzzled. “Didn’t something happen?”

Then he spoke to Li Yinhang, who had heard the sound but didn’t dare approach due to the invisible emotional vortex between the two people. “Yinhang, you stand further away.”

Then he stood in front of the immobile Jiang Fang who had long been filled with anger. He raised his hand to loosen his tie. He removed his neat school uniform, revealing the perfect lower abdomen and muscle lines of his arms. “Brother Fang, look and see if there are any changes on my body.” 

The author has something to say:

Nan Zhou is playing with fire in various ways.