1TWITF[C Chapter 49

Chapter 49

Late at night, a cold wind blew in gusts.

Nie Yunzhen and Shi Yan ran for their lives, not knowing how far they had run in the pitch-black night. Nie Yunzhen truly regretted it from the bottom of his heart: “If I had known…”

Shi Yan also couldn’t help but feel some resentment, but when she thought about it, wasn’t she the one who had rigged the cards to get Yun Qian to come? Thinking about it that way, she didn’t seem to have any grounds to blame Nie Yunzhen.

The result of their carefully laid plans had instead sent them into a dead end. It had to be said, it was truly self-inflicted.

“Don’t talk, let’s just run,” Shi Yan said. There was no point in thinking about it anymore.

“Wait a minute, I suddenly have a question.” Because there were no ghosts chasing behind them, Nie Yunzhen’s chaotic brain tried hard to regain clarity. He asked a question that Shi Yan had been afraid to bring up in her heart.

“What if… the Chu Xiu who’s sending us messages is also fake? What do we do?”

One sentence made Shi Yan silent as well.

Her gaze, through the moonlight, traced the appearance of the man in front of her. He didn’t seem to be pretending, but she couldn’t help but become suspicious because of that sentence.

Yes, who could prove that that “Chu Xiu” was real?

Or, who could prove that the current Nie Yunzhen was real?

“What?” Nie Yunzhen didn’t react at all.

Shi Yan agreed with his statement.

“Okay.”

The two jogged to near the fork in the road. Shi Yan, slightly out of breath, took a few steps back facing Nie Yunzhen, and then quickly disappeared into the darkness.

Soon, they each received a message from Chu Xiu.

Chu Xiu: “Are you guys together now? It’s best to run separately, and don’t ask each other about your locations. Make sure to put all your phones on silent.”

After sending the message, Chu Xiu immediately put his phone away, looked around, his eyes alert. He identified the direction and walked towards a certain place.

*

“What do we do? That voice just now must have been Zhang Zhijie’s.” Ling Weiwei was almost incoherent. She tightly grabbed Sun Hao’s sleeve, afraid to let go.

The other two boys were also terrified. Huang Yuanwang was especially scared. Just now, he had been discussing the game with Zhang Zhijie on the bus, but soon after, he heard the news of his death. This cruel reality made it hard for him not to collapse.

“Don’t talk nonsense. What if you misheard? Maybe Zhang Zhijie just likes to shout,” Huang Yuanwang tried to convince the others with a clumsy excuse that he didn’t even believe himself.

“What do we do now? Should we hide?” They had originally planned to hide for a few rounds, and then go back after someone got caught, so they wouldn’t lose face and wouldn’t have to waste too much time. But now… who dared to be caught?

That was a real ghost…

The thought that they had actually come to Yinming Road with a ghost, ridden on the same bus, and were now playing hide-and-seek together, made them shudder with fear.

“What’s working against us now is that we can’t see clearly in the dark, and we don’t know… we don’t know if Yun Qian is the same,” saying that name made Zhang Dan shudder with fear, but she had to say it.

“So, what do we do now?” Sun Hao grabbed a handful of his hair in frustration.

Her gaze lingered on Ling Weiwei’s pale face for a moment, and she hardened her heart and continued, “And it’s best if we run separately.”

“Why?” Ling Weiwei asked in disbelief.

“But, I…” Ling Weiwei didn’t say it out loud, but everyone could see that she was very, very scared.

She hugged her arms tightly, secretly vowing in her heart that she had to go back!

She had to go back alive, and then, she would never enter Yinming Road again!

The four people had different opinions and started arguing. In the end, Sun Hao and Zhang Dan chose to leave separately, and Huang Yuanwang and Ling Weiwei walked together.

Huang Yuanwang: “Well, we’re both pretty scared, but I’ll definitely let you run first.”

Ling Weiwei was very beautiful. It would be a lie to say that he didn’t have any other thoughts about her usually. It was the same now, both fearing and fantasizing.

Ling Weiwei’s face looked a little better, and she nodded, “Thank you, let’s keep walking. Hopefully, we can get out of here. I definitely won’t hold you back.”

The two walked forward hand in hand, and about 500 meters behind them, a girl in a school uniform walked forward slowly. Her eyes were almost completely white, and otherwise, she looked like a normal girl.

*

City Police Station.

Officer Zhao waited for a long time and finally waited for all the reporters to leave. She breathed a sigh of relief and hurried to the parking lot to drive away.

But to her annoyance, a car was parked right behind her car. No matter how good her driving skills were, there was no way she could drive out of the gap between the wall and that car.

“Who is it? They must be sick!” she cursed angrily.

There was actually someone inside?

She walked halfway around the car from the back. The side windows of the car were one-way glass, so only the front could be seen. The driver was a fair-skinned and refined man.

He raised his hands to show that he wasn’t carrying a weapon, and then opened the car door and stood in front of her.

Officer Zhao frowned tightly, quickly recovered her calm expression to avoid this guy writing nonsense and damaging the police’s image, and squeezed out a fake smile: “Hello, Mr. Lu, what’s the matter? If you want to ask about the car accident that happened on Yinming Road before, you can read the case report.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll leave as soon as I’m done asking.” He opened his mouth slowly in that inexplicable tone.

“Go ahead.”

“Officer Zhao, do you know the Omniscient God?” Lu Yanli stared into her eyes.

“Was the death of the students at the Fourth High School in this city some time ago related to the Omniscient God Sect?”

Unexpectedly, Officer Zhao’s eyebrows slowly furrowed, as if trying hard to remember something. After a long while, she shook her head: “No.”

How could that be?

He had clearly found out that every one of those students’ families believed in the Omniscient God.

Lu Yanli continued to ask: “Do you know if the senior leaders of this school have shown signs of believing in the Omniscient God Sect?”

Officer Zhao’s eyebrows furrowed even more, and she shook her head slowly: “I don’t know. I haven’t been in office for very long. The previous team leader knows.”

“Who was the previous team leader? What was their name?”

“It was… it was An Ru.”

“Where did he go?”

“He… he went to investigate Yinming Road… Everyone told him not to go, but he still went. He’s been missing ever since, and he hasn’t come back.”

Officer Zhao shook her head.

She had just been transferred from another place and didn’t know much.

Lu Yanli wasn’t disappointed and decided to go back and continue investigating with An Ru as a breakthrough point. Since he was investigating Yinming Road and the Omniscient God Sect, there might be unexpected surprises.

Behind him, Officer Zhao rubbed her eyes in a daze. Seeing that she was standing in front of the car staring blankly without realizing it, she couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

Really… she was under too much pressure lately. She needed to relax at home this weekend.

She suddenly noticed something was wrong and turned her head sharply!

The parking lot was empty, and there weren’t many cars. In theory, in the eyes of an experienced veteran police officer, if someone were hiding in this environment, they would definitely not escape her sharp eyes. But now, she couldn’t see a single person, but she had a feeling of being secretly watched by something.

This feeling of being chased by a gaze made her very uncomfortable, as if… she were prey being targeted by a beast.

“Who’s there? Who’s in there?!”

No one answered, and the lights at the deepest part of the parking lot suddenly went out. Then, the lights went out one after another, and darkness spread rapidly towards Officer Zhao.

Officer Zhao felt fear for no reason. The fear engraved in her bones made her quickly open the car door and sit down. Just as she was about to start the car, she was stunned.

She slowly lowered her head.

The seat belt she had subconsciously fastened was cold and slippery to the touch. But that texture wasn’t a seat belt at all, but… a group of beetles holding onto the seat belt! They were still crawling and had already crawled onto her body!

The seat belt began to tighten, and then, a pair of white and soft arms stretched out from the back seat and tightly encircled Officer Zhao’s neck.

“No… don’t!”

Officer Zhao tried to call for help, but her tightened throat couldn’t transmit the sound outside the car. She struggled desperately, using a knife to cut the seat belt, but she couldn’t cut it at all. She desperately tried to pry open the cold and icy hand, but she was still unable to move it. She could only watch helplessly in the rearview mirror as she died little by little.

Before she died, she realized that they were all insects.

The lights that went out one by one, the darkness that silently devoured the light, were all the spread of the insect swarm. When the last bit of light was swallowed by the darkness, she was also completely swallowed by the black beetles.

The black insect swarm chased out from the parking lot like a tide, and the lights that had gone out one by one turned on again. The black tide was about to catch up with the private car that had just been about to leave.

Lu Yanli gripped the steering wheel tightly and stepped on the accelerator to the floor.

It was late at night, and in theory, even if there was less traffic in the city at night, it shouldn’t be like this now, with not a single person in sight. The whole street was empty, there wasn’t a single car on the road, and even the traffic lights were blacked out. He didn’t care about any traffic rules, stepped on the gas, and the car sped away like an arrow.

Behind him, the streets were being swallowed by blackness.

Faster… faster!

Lu Yanli tried to identify the direction. He couldn’t care about so much, he just kept driving forward. The sound of the tires rubbing against the road echoed in the night sky, and the speed was already approaching the car’s top speed.

He gritted his teeth, turned the steering wheel, and drove in the direction of Yinming Road.

*

“Zhang Zhijie is dead, and Fang Nan is also dead.” Tian Le held Fang Nan’s phone in his hand and ran forward desperately. His face was covered with tears and sweat, mixed together. The cold wind blew, and his whole face froze.

Just now, he and Fang Nan were walking past a tree, and then a pair of white hands stretched out from behind the tree and dragged Fang Nan away.

“Found you.”

He heard Yun Qian’s cold and hoarse voice, and was immediately scared out of his wits, fleeing like an arrow from a bow.

Therefore, he didn’t see that after a while, a figure walked out from behind the tree. That figure was wearing a school uniform, his face was pale and green, and there was a long cut on his neck.

He and Yun Qian looked at each other, smiled strangely, and then they dispersed to find other people.

Good friends, we should always play together.

Tian Le ran very, very far. He vaguely heard the sound of a car starting, but he didn’t have time to think about whether those people had driven away. He only knew to keep running forward. He didn’t even know where he was running, and tripped over something under his feet. The phone was thrown out heavily and landed next to a pair of shoes.

He followed the light and saw that person.

He was so scared that he got up in a hurry, didn’t even pick up his phone, and continued running in another direction.

The light from the phone screen illuminated his face. On the other side, a man hiding behind a tree was shocked.

Lu Yanli?!

How could he be here?

As soon as he saw the name of the phone owner’s chat display, Lu Yanli immediately turned off the phone, threw it away, and threw it far away.

Chu Xiu had never seen him really angry before and was inexplicably a little guilty, and then immediately asked: “What’s wrong?”

All… are ghosts?!

Chu Xiu was shocked.

He didn’t doubt Lu Yanli’s source of information and subconsciously believed the other person’s words.

There were not many living people in this world anyway. As long as the thing that released the so-called mission was willing, they could turn anyone into a ghost.

“Why are you here?” Chu Xiu continued to ask.

He now believed that the person in front of him was a living person, so he naturally wanted to know why.

Lu Yanli’s back stiffened imperceptibly.

He knew that these people were going to play hide-and-seek here, and that playing hide-and-seek would inevitably involve ghosts, so he lured those things over to see if he could find a way to make them fight each other.

Without him needing to remind him, Chu Xiu immediately sent a message to the two people.

And this message brought them even greater shock.

Everyone… all of them are?

They weren’t playing hide-and-seek with one ghost, but eleven ghosts?!

Nie Yunzhen wished he could travel back a few hours and beat himself to death for making the suggestion. Shi Yan also regretted it so much that her intestines turned green.

How could this be?

Deep in the dense forest, inside an abandoned factory, a thick stench permeated the air.

If an experienced criminal police officer were here, they could easily tell that it was the smell of rotting corpses.

Unexpectedly, there were not many flies on the rotting corpses, but one firefly after another flew out of the factory, green and glittering, flying in the darkness.

Yun Qian, Zhang Zhijie, Fang Nan, and Xie Yu stood in front of the factory.

They were going to find other good friends.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…”

The soft voices of the young boys and girls floated in the night sky. It was a pity that there were no stars or moon tonight, only the dancing fireflies could barely be called “many little stars.”

Seeing them walk away, a girl pinched her nose and ran out from behind the factory.

She finally saw the light of the car lights, and Yun Qian got out of the car. She was about to run over, but she witnessed with her own eyes the scene of her friend Yun Qian opening her mouth and swallowing Zhang Zhijie in one bite.

That scene… even now, when she thought about it, she was still a little scared.

Yun Qian, she… she was no longer human.

Then, she saw Yun Qian reopening her mouth and spitting out one white bone after another. This pile of bones assembled itself into a person on the ground. Before long, Zhang Zhijie, who had been swallowed, reappeared.

Perhaps the emotions of shock and sadness were too strong, Wen Qing had forgotten to be afraid. She now only had one thought in her mind, to find the other classmates and take them out!

Wen Qing cautiously walked closer and came to a row of skeletons, lowered her head to look.

Playing cards?

What did this mean?

The singing in the distance continued, almost able to penetrate space, the whole forest echoed with their clear and melodious chorus.

“Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky…”

One firefly after another crawled into the skeleton, in the skull, the two black eye sockets lit up with green light.

“Like a diamond in the sky…”