There was no time left to think.
Not only because Yang Jian felt the horror closing in from every direction, but the others heard the door of the security room opening and the heavy footfalls. They were all alert to the stark reality that only a handful of them remained in the entire school.
Zhang Wei, Zhao Lei, Wang Shanshan, and the rest understood that the footsteps were undoubtedly... ghosts. Ghosts tirelessly advancing towards them.
Just then, in an act of desperate resolve, Yang Jian clenched his teeth and bit down hard on one of the eyes on his arm.
"Ah!" The searing pain as flesh tore was unbearable, shooting through his entire body, muscles quivering in agony. Despite the pain, he couldn't afford to give up now—too much was at stake.
Blood splattered, his flesh a blur of red.
The excruciating sensation flooded Yang Jian as he forcibly bit off one of the red eyes from his arm.
"Yang Jian, you…" the others watched, shocked at his scream, and then horror dawned on them.
Yang Jian's arm was a mess of torn flesh, blood flowing from his mouth while his eyes turned bloodshot, shining with a faint red light, as if growing brighter... His skin began to crack and flake, dropping in patches, sending shivers of terror down the spine of all who saw. They couldn't help but feel afraid.
Had Yang Jian been possessed?
Creeping beneath his skin, the red eyes moved with alarming speed, leaving trails of crimson cracks, as if his body was being ripped apart and blood was seeping through, staining his clothes.
The pain was indescribable, far exceeding anything he had felt before, even when he was bitten by the ghost infant and an eye grew in place.
This time it wasn't the ghost infant that had bitten him, but he himself.
And now the red eye he had bitten off had disappeared inside his mouth.
At the site of the wound on his arm, where the red eye had been bitten away, the flesh wiggled oddly. Soon after, a new, larger, red eye emerged to fill the gap, gazing around with an eerie air.
The sixth eye had appeared.
The fifth was in his stomach.
Red light broke through the skin of the wailing Yang Jian, emanating from the fissures of his flesh, one ray, then two, three... the red light soon expanded across his entire body.
The ground around him was being affected by this luminescence.
The red light, thick as fog, spread along the ground, standing in stark contrast to the oppressive darkness around it.
At that moment, unnoticed by anyone, another line surfaced on the parchment.
"At 5:30 a.m., after swallowing an eye, I successfully grew a sixth eye. A bizarre red glow emitted from me, covering the area that felt like my personalized ghost realm. But I realize that the malicious spirit within me is reviving, and I might soon be overtaken by it, losing consciousness, becoming a ghoul."
"While the ghost realm was open, nearby ghosts... they came. Some were killed by them."
As if to prove the parchment's words, a pale hand stretched out from the darkness, suddenly seizing a trembling student by the neck.
The cold, stiff hand exerted a terrifying force, dragging the student back into the cover of darkness.
"No, please, help me..." The student screamed frantically, flailing his arms, trying to grasp at anything.
But it was futile.
He vanished into the dark, his screams silenced as though a stone had been dropped into water, rippling briefly before tranquility returned.
The others, their faces pale and limbs cold, had witnessed the scene but none dared to intervene; they lacked the courage.
Qian Wanhao was crying out in fear, having lost all reason. His instinct was to flee, to escape from this cursed place.
But the moment he turned around, he collided with a cold, stiff body.
An old man clad in a long robe, his face deathly pale and spotted with decay, stood in the darkness. His expressionless eyes lacked any human emotion, filled only with numbness and malice.
Qian Wanhao wanted to run but found he couldn't move his body at all.
The old man's skeletal hand reached out slowly towards his face...
Amidst his final shrill scream, the agony was piercing.
"Stay away, stay away, stay away..." A girl with disheveled hair huddled nearby, mumbling in terror, her psyche already fractured by extreme fear. Survival was possible, but sanity seemed forever lost.
Zhao Lei, drained of any will to flee, sat listlessly on the ground, paralyzed by fear.
Miao Xiaoshan crouched down, hands over her ears, tears streaming down her face while she shook with fear.
Wang Shanshan clung desperately to Yang Jian's arm, burying herself against him without caring for his ghastly appearance. The ghosts that might emerge from the darkness scared her even more.
Perhaps it was the death of some of their comrades that caused the ghosts to temporarily halt their approach.
The engulfing darkness had silenced the world, and even the sounds of despair were hushed.
But this eerie stillness did not last long.
"Step. Step step." Footsteps began to echo again from within the darkness.
This time it wasn't just one set of footsteps but several.
Ahead, behind, in all directions...
Pale hands continuously stretched out from the dark: one landed on Zhang Wei's shoulder, grabbed a girl's hair, and snatched at Miao Xiaoshan's ankle... Everyone was under assault.
The phone read 5:30 a.m.
Just like the parchment had predicted, at 5:30 a.m., everyone died.
"Get away." But suddenly, a pained and angry roar surged through the silence, filled with a ferocious fight for survival.
Yang Jian stood up, his skin cracked, eyes peering from beneath, while red light radiated from his body, dispelling the darkness within a five-meter perimeter.
The white hands retreated swiftly at the red illumination.
The old man in the black robe stepped back, leaving the reach of the red light, his grey eyes numbly watching Yang Jian.
The old man paused but then stepped forward again, moving back into the realm of red light.
However, the red glow flickered intermittently like an erratic light bulb, then extinguished.
Gone together with the light were Yang Jian, Wang Shanshan, Zhang Wei, Zhao Lei... and seven others.
The old man advanced, leaving nothing but emptiness behind.
The footsteps around them faded away.
The door of the nearby security room slammed shut.
Darkness swept through like a receding tide.
On the parchment, yet more words appeared: "5:30 a.m., everyone died... That's not possible."
"5:31 a.m.: I survived... Eight of us left the campus... heh heh."
A bizarre smiling face appeared on the parchment, then vanished just as fast.
Am I really human, or am I a ghost?