Ch38 - Sha, Sha, Sha

This roleplaying instance didn’t give them the corresponding memories or script. They had to immersively explore what each person’s ‘role’ was like. After sitting down on the bench, Nan Zhou’s group finally had time to explore the secrets of their ‘roles’.

Nan Zhou took out the mobile phone from the pocket of his pants and used his face to unlock the screen. He looked at the dizzying array of apps and for a moment, he didn’t know where to start. Should he check the social network software first to see who he was in contact with recently? Should he take a look at the office software such as the memo to see his recent daily plans? Or… 

Jiang Fang saw him frowning while holding the mobile phone and reached out a hand to him, shaking it tentatively. “Hmm?”

Nan Zhou understood and handed over the phone. Jiang Fang took it and swiped his thumb twice to click on the ‘settings’ button and then the ‘app usage statistics’ page. Suddenly, the app usage ranking for the last seven days appeared. The specific usage time of each app was arranged in order from high to low. The rankings were marked with red, yellow and blue respectively and made things clear with one glance.

Nan Zhou told him, “Ah. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” 

Li Yinhang silently copied the process on the side, very worry-free. On a mobile phone, the usage frequency and regularity of an app used perfectly marked the life trajectory of a modern person.

Nan Zhou was playing a senior in the architecture department and the most frequently used software in the last seven days was namely Baidu Tieba, WeChat and PUBG. He opened Tieba. ‘Nan Zhou’ had recently visited Tieba, which was Jinjing University’s campus web forum.

‘Nan Zhou’ had recently browsed posts and the first 100 were all posts from the ‘Midnight Ghost Stories’ section of Jinjing University’s web forum. The time span was as long as eight years ago. From the dead posts with 0 replies to the hot posts with thousands of replies, he went in and read them all.

Nan Zhou found this experience wonderful. He could clearly understand that the role he was playing had strong anxiety about a ‘ghost’ matter.

He briefly reviewed the posts that ‘Nan Zhou’ had browsed. Jinjing University had numerous classic campus horror legends. It had a long history and it could be called hundreds of ghosts fighting. For example, Jinjing University used to be a graveyard.

In fact, in legends, every school was built on a graveyard. It seemed that people in the past didn’t like to engage in serious infrastructure. They especially liked to bang away clumsily in all directions with no overall vision and the burial mounds were set up everywhere like guerrilla warfare.

For example, the No. 3 female dormitory of Jinjing University used the old-fashioned squatting toilets in which there were just slabs of stone to block the compartments and there was regular flushing. If a person squatted in the innermost public toilet cubicle in the middle of the night and waited a while, they would hear someone singing ‘Farewell’ intermittently from the sewer pipe at the end.

In fact, the girl’s toilet and the girl’s public bathhouse were next to each other. A girl didn’t like to take a bath with others so she chose to go alone in the middle of the night. As she was washing, she sang to raise her courage and this had a reverberation effect that caused ghostly singing. 

For example, the medical department building of Jinjing University stood out among the teaching buildings that had black and red matte bricks as the main color. This building was completely built with red bricks. It was said that it generally had yin energy. The principle specially invited a Feng Shui master who calculated that red bricks should be used to block the yin energy of the building.

In fact, this teaching building was donated by someone after the entire school had already been built. The person who donated the building used red as the main color because they wanted to be ‘a bit of red among thousands of flowers.’

There was only one unsolved mystery on the Jinjing University campus. The school once had a male student who jumped from the west teaching building in the east district due to love. Meanwhile, the entire dormitory where he lived was successfully accepted for postgraduate studies. Since then, the people in the dormitory started to suffer from bloody disasters and some students saw a white shadow falling from the west building.

However, this puzzle had nothing to do with the strange rustling they faced. Usually, these campus posts about ‘realistic stories’ had very high views. However, most people came to watch the excitement and few people believed them. 

The replies in the posts generally followed these types:

1L: Moving a chair and sitting in the front row to see how the original poster composes a story.

2L (owner): It isn’t a story. It is true. If it is fake then I’ll swallow shit on the spot.

3L: Look, the original poster is cheating food and drinks again. 

After roughly reading all the posts, Nan Zhou put down his phone and started to eat his dessert again. He didn’t like to stare at electronic products for too long because it wasted his eyes.

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.

Jiang Fang asked him, “Have you found anything?”

“Tfr, akb atlcur.” Rjc Itbe wfcalbcfv bcf bo atfw. “P tjnfc’a rffc jcs qbrar jybea gfmfca vfjatr bo raevfcar ja atf rmtbbi.”

Djrfv bc atf lcobgwjalbc ulnfc, Le Ol wera yf vfjv jcv atf qfgrbc ktb ifoa atf gfmbgvlcu wluta cba yf tfgf jcswbgf. 

Ol Tlctjcu kbcvfgfv, “Cgf sbe regf atfs jgf ybat raevfcar bo atlr rmtbbi?”

Nan Zhou answered, “Even if they aren’t students, they must be staff at this school. Before going to the broadcasting station, I went to the school gates.”

Jiang Fang had a hunch. “You couldn’t go out?”

Nan Zhou nodded. “We can’t leave the school. If we make a reverse deduction, the place where these two people died and became ghosts must be the school.” 

Li Yinhang, “……”

This statement caused numbness to shoot all the way down her spine to the back of her heels. She resisted the creepy feeling. “Are you sure there is no news of a student’s death?”

“Yes.” Nan Zhou’s voice was firm. “I also searched for Hu Li but I didn’t find him. It is like he disappeared into thin air…”

Li Yinhang asked a pragmatic question. “Did the forum master delete the posts?” 

Nan Zhou raised his eyebrow. “……”

He wondered, “Can this happen?”

Li Yinhang answered, “…In order to maintain the stability of public opinion, schools will generally do this.”

Nan Zhou exclaimed, “…Ah.” 

He thought about it for a moment before saying, “Then put this aside first. I will say the second thing.”

Li Yinhang, “……” After so long, Nan Zhou didn’t consider the possibility of posts being deleted to control public opinion?

Li Yinhang felt a subtle sense of kinship with this bigshot.

Nan Zhou quickly gave the second clue. “The horror legends of Jinjing University don’t include a ‘non-existent place.’” 

“At present, the campus legends of Jinjing University include the singing in the toilet, the suppressing of the yin building, the dripping faucet in the middle of the night, the perverted man disguised as a woman who went to the girl’s dormitory to peep, etc. but there was no mention of a ‘place that doesn’t exist.’”

Jiang Fang played with his mobile phone. “Is it because this legend is too unpopular?”

“It is possible.” Then Nan Zhou added, “There is also another possibility.”

His voice became quiet. “If a place doesn’t exist in the first place, how can other people know it exists?” 

Li Yinhang once again felt numb from the back of her neck to her heels.

Bigshot, please stop telling ghost stories without changing your expression.

She immediately interrupted. “I found out a bit as well… there is no Hu Li in my contacts.”

The person who left the recording seemed to acquiesce that they knew Hu Li. Now she had looked through every social network software on her phone and there was no ‘Hu Li’ in her contacts. This was also a valuable discovery. 

Nan Zhou asked Jiang Fang, “What about you?”

“Um…” Jiang Fang smiled. “I really found something.”

He raised his phone and called a number. Nan Zhou’s phone rang and vibrated. A name was displayed on the screen. “Brother Fang.”

Jiang Fang took the phone away from his ear. The calling interface of his screen displayed another name: Baby. 

Nan Zhou, “……?”

“Teacher Nan.” Jiang Fang smiled slightly. “The system seems to have a different idea about our relationship.”

After receiving this information, Nan Zhou quickly brought up the usual communication tools. Facts proved that he and this foreign exchange student were engaged in a pleasant and blush-inducing same-sex exchange.

Nan Zhou’s thoughts turned like the wind. “Then we can live together at night.” 

Jiang Fang nodded. “Please.”

Li Yinhang was envious. She was thinking about how to make the request to go to their dormitory and sleep on the floor natural and not artificial. She was thinking this when a faint sound entered her ears.

“Sha—”

Li Yinhang stiffened before she abruptly got up and looked under the bench. 

…There was nothing.

Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang asked simultaneously, “What’s wrong?”

Li Yinhang was worried that the two bigshots would dislike her for being too suspicious but she still truthfully answered. “I heard a strange sound. It was like a rustling…”

There seemed to be something that had been lurking under their bench, peering quietly at them. Just now, it twisted its body and accidentally exposed its whereabouts. She described her feelings but the contempt that she imagined from the bigshots didn’t happen. 

Jiang Fang suggested, “The dormitory for international students is all single rooms so the management isn’t strict. Come and stay with me at night.”

Nan Zhou added succinctly, “Yes, let’s be together.”

Li Yinhang almost burst into tears. She was willing to buy steamed cake for the bigshot for a lifetime.

Meanwhile, as the Cube Boat team was communicating with each other, a single barrel hand-held telescope poked out from the corner of a distant window and fell on the people sitting by the boulevard. 

In the round MCF lens, the figure of Jiang Fang on the right side of the bench appeared first. He was feeding Nanji Star cake crumbs while occasionally glancing at his phone. He seemed to be a very gentle person. On the left side of the bench was Li Yinhang. She took everything out of her bag and spread it on her legs one by one, taking inventory of the bag.

The person holding the lens watched her for a moment, his mouth twitching with boredom. Then he shifted his focus to Nan Zhou sitting between them. Nan Zhou was concentrating on eating the last steamed cake. The slightly curly long black hair fell down over his lips. He wasn’t happy so he put down the half-bitten cake and borrowed a hair tie from Jiang Fang.

The telescope focused on him for a long time. The focus was adjusted slowly from near to far. He could even see the two strands of hair that failed to be tied properly and stuck to his shoulders and neck.

He was observing and looking at every detail of Nan Zhou. There was no obscenity in his eyes. It was more like an x-ray penetration as well as nostalgia. Surprise slowly filled the peeping eyes. “Oh…” 

He muttered to himself. “I’ve seen you before. How can it be you?”

He wanted to watch Nan Zhou for a while when there was a suspicious voice from behind him.

“Xie Xiangyu, what are you doing here?”

The young man turned slightly sideways, revealing half of his handsome face. The afternoon sun saturated the color of the maple leaves nearby into his eyes, causing his light brown eyes to be covered with the redness of the maple leaves. 

The owner of the voice was the vice president who was also a male. The vice president saw this glance and subconsciously gentled.

He put down the freshly copied autumn camping plans. “The camping club only meets in the evening. You came too early.”

Xie Xiangyu, the seventh player doing this task and a member of the camping club, removed his elbows from the window sill.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was like the spring breeze. “I have something to do tonight. I came here to ask for a leave of absence.” 

The vice president felt some displeasure after hearing this but he said he understood. Then he turned around and left to prepare other needed materials. Once the unimportant person left, Xie Xiangyu lay down against the window again and raised the telescope with a fixed focal length to his eyes.

He wanted to see Nan Zhou again. However, once he started looking, he directly met Nan Zhou’s cold eyes through the lens. The eyes were looking at him from 100 meters away! Xie Xiangyu quickly withdrew and covered the peephole. He turned his face away and smiled while letting out a sigh. He exclaimed silently, “…Wow.”

The other side.

“Someone was looking at us.” 

Nan Zhou pointed to one of the windows of Building 18 that was 100 meters away. “It is that place on the fourth floor.”

The author has something to say:

System: Sleep in the same bed for several days.

System: One person engages in intimate behaviors such as hugging, touching the hem of the shirt and touching the thigh. 

System: One person peeped at the same-sex magazine and finished reading it.

System: Yes (confirmed).