Chapter 1 The Beginning

Yin City Experimental High School was founded in the 1930s. Its predecessor was Jingyang High School, built with donations from local gentry. After several changes, it became one of the best schools in Yin City, with the highest college entrance examination scores, the most abundant teaching resources, and the highest comprehensive quality of students.

Monday, 7:50 a.m., the morning hustle and bustle in Experimental High School gradually subsided with the ringing of the bell.

The first class was about to begin, and the student on duty, wearing a blue and white school uniform and standing guard at the school gate, hurried toward the teaching building.

The electric retractable gate closed completely under the command of the predetermined program. Outside the gate, Li Ang strolled along with his bag, neither fast nor slow.

Instead of walking through the main entrance, he came to the iron fence where there were no electronic surveillance cameras and only a protective forest of trees. He sprinted slightly, pushed off hard, and then used the force of his steps to leap into the air.

Like a gymnast vaulting over a horse, he gracefully flipped over the man-high iron fence, patted the leaves off his body, and walked into the teaching building as if nothing had happened.

Knock, knock, knock.

Knocking on the door, he entered the classroom. All the students, as well as the homeroom teacher, Shi Qingsong, who was teaching a history lesson on the podium, turned their attention to Li Ang.

"Late again."

Shi Qingsong, a middle-aged man with a scholarly air, pushed his glasses and tapped the podium with his knuckles. "What's the reason this time?

"Last time you said you ate Mapo Tofu at a street restaurant and were chased down ten streets by the Mapo and her husband.

"The time before that, you said you saw a homeless man sleeping on the street and, afraid he would catch a cold, you covered him with three shared bicycles.

"The time before that, you were afraid of an awkward atmosphere while getting a scrub, so you took the initiative to talk to the masseur and asked him, 'Haven't eaten yet?', As a result, the masseur, feeling his professional dignity challenged, scrubbed off two layers of your skin, causing unbearable pain and leading to your late arrival at school the next day."

Ha, he remembers everything.

Li Ang said modestly, "Reporting to the teacher, last night I fought a desperate battle with a ghost and killed it on the spot, successfully blocking the news that Niu Gui She Shen (ox-headed devils and snake-bodied gods) actually exist."

Shi Qingsong was amused. "Confucius said, 'Don't talk about strange forces, violence, and chaos.' How can there be monsters in this world?"

Li Ang nodded. "You see, how successful the information blockade is."

Shi Qingsong's eyes twitched. "...Go back and sit down. Come to the office after class."

Li Ang was relieved and returned to his seat.

His deskmate was a girl, Wang Congshan, who was the class monitor and also considered Li Ang's childhood friend.

When they were in elementary school, Wang Congshan was afraid of being bitten by mosquitoes, so the considerate Li Ang caught a toad from the sewer and pressed it on her head to help her eat any mosquitoes that dared to fly over;

When they were raising silkworms together, Wang Congshan's silkworms died, so Li Ang, thinking of his friend, caught a bunch of white maggots to comfort her and let her continue raising them. Sure enough, she raised a large number of green-headed flies, which flew and ravaged the classroom;

When they were playing hide-and-seek together, Wang Congshan hid in a large wooden cabinet. The kind-hearted Li Ang, afraid of hurting her self-esteem, brought ten stacks of mosquito coils, lit them, and placed them in front of the wooden cabinet, smoking her until her eyes were red and swollen, and she rolled out of the wooden cabinet herself;

Well... now that he thought about it, it seemed that the memories of their childhood friendship were quite "sweet"...

Li Ang sat down and, while rummaging through his bag for textbooks, whispered to Wang Congshan, "Good morning, Biaozi."

The class monitor, who was already used to her deskmate's style, glared at him. "Who is Biaozi? Don't give people such inexplicable nicknames, you idiot."

"Okay, Biaozi, I got it, Biaozi."

"..." Wang Congshan took a breath and automatically blocked the harassment.

When class was over, Shi Qingsong answered a phone call outside the classroom and had to go to the newly built faculty office building to get a document, so he told Li Ang to find him again at noon to discuss student conduct issues.

After the homeroom teacher left, the students could finally let loose and chat in groups of three or five.

"Hey, have you heard? Another person died on Qianhua Road. This morning, more than a dozen police cars went there and blocked four streets."

"Ah, what's going on? Didn't there just happen a traffic accident there a few days ago? A tourist didn't know what he was thinking and suddenly stuck his head out of the tour bus window.

"As a result, a bus happened to be passing by... His body was still in the car, but his head flew off like a sugarcane, landing right in the bowl of noodles of a guy who was eating noodles on the street..."

"Hiss..." The students listening gasped.

"This time it's not just a traffic accident. I heard that a sanitation worker saw a man's body embedded in the utility pole on the side of the road at the intersection of Qianhua Road when he went to work early in the morning..."

"Embedded? How embedded?"

"Have you ever tried to pierce a bun with chopsticks? That man was lying flat on the ground, with a twelve-meter-long utility pole growing out of his chest..."

"How is that possible? Is that fake?"

"Tsk, the police said that he was thinking of taking his own life and jumped from a high-rise building, just happened to be penetrated by a concrete pole, but the tallest building near the intersection is only three or four stories high, and the height of the fall is not enough at all.

"Moreover, the wires at the top of the utility pole were undamaged, and there was no blood on the entire concrete pole. The corpse seemed to have 'grown' out of the utility pole, completely natural..."

The expressions on the faces of the students who were chatting together were a little unnatural. The student who was telling the story secretly took out his mobile phone from his bag to search online and chuckled, "Heh, hundreds of people saw it at the intersection at that time. My uncle happened to be there and uploaded photos to the family group and Weibo, but now, you can't find any relevant information on Weibo or Tieba. The words 'Qianhua Road' are also blocked..."

After speaking, he showed his mobile phone to the others. Li Ang also took a peek.

The photos were probably taken from a distance and were a bit blurry. You could vaguely see a man in a suit lying under a concrete utility pole, surrounded by a circle of police officers and some firefighters holding concrete saws.

Obviously, the police probably couldn't completely remove the body without damaging the utility pole, so they could only let the fire department saw the utility pole in half.

On the mobile phone screen, the bizarre and even horrifying scene scared the girls around to turn pale, while the boys pretended to be calm and smiled reluctantly.

As the saying goes, Ye Gong likes dragons (professed love of something one actually fears). In recent months, there have been endless cases of unnatural deaths of this type of urban legends. People talked about the legends while fearing them like tigers.

Seeing the fearful expressions on the faces of the students, Wang Congshan, as the class monitor, hurriedly said, "Okay, okay, it's best not to exchange and spread such content in the school. Class is about to start. Go back to your seats."

The crowd dispersed silently in a depressing atmosphere, while Li Ang squinted his eyes, recalling the photo.

That was not something that a serial killer or an accident could do. The only explanation was the ethereal theory of ghosts and gods.

This is the real world that players face.

Li Ang was silent and wrote the words "Qianhua Road" in his notebook.