Chapter 1 Parting of Ways

Feng Bujue and Si Yu parted ways on the sports field. The former went around the main building, heading deeper into the campus, while the latter entered the teaching building directly opposite the school gate.

If the two could act together, this script shouldn't be too difficult. They could discuss puzzles, share the burden in combat, and it would feel much better to have someone around when terrifying scenes occurred. But now, they were restricted to acting alone and had to complete that phone call setting, which seemed to have a conspiracy... It could be said that the danger and difficulty of the script had at least doubled.

In the previous ballad, many clues about locations and specific objects could be found, such as a well, stairs, a mirror, a piano, and so on...

Putting aside everything else, the well probably wouldn't be in the building or near places like the sports field. So, it was most likely in some corner near the wall.

Following this line of thought, Feng Bujue went around the main building and continued forward. At this moment, the moonlight was bright, like silver frost spilling across the ground, and he could see the way ahead clearly without turning on his flashlight. He didn't walk fast, and he occasionally checked the script time displayed on his phone. He had to make the call at the tenth minute.

In the Five Elements, water is in the north. Coincidentally, Feng Bujue found a well on the north side of the campus. The well's edge wasn't high, made of piled white stones, and the stone surface was uneven. The wellhead wasn't sealed, but there was no rope or bucket set up.

More than ten meters away from the well, there was an L-shaped bungalow. Looking inside through the window, one could see a long water trough and a row of faucets. Feng Bujue walked to the door and found some iron buckets, mops, and other items. It seemed to be a place for storing cleaning supplies.

Feng Bujue first went into the bungalow and searched carefully, even counting the number of faucets and mops, but found no useful clues. Walking out of the house, he saw that the time had reached nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds, so he picked up his phone and pressed the speed dial key.

However, the phone didn't automatically dial. Instead, a line of text was displayed on the screen: [Time not yet reached. Your next dialing time should be 10:00-10:45]

"So that's how it is. You must dial within forty-five seconds after reaching the specified time..." Feng Bujue muttered. He waited for half a minute, and when the time on his phone turned exactly ten minutes, he pressed the speed dial key again. A string of numbers was quickly and automatically listed on the screen, and the first call began.

The "beep" sound only lasted once before Si Yu answered.

After all, they were friends in the game, and the two of them hadn't exchanged a single word since entering the script. Feng Bujue wanted to be polite and say something like "What a coincidence" as a greeting. He didn't expect that he wouldn't even have time to say this nonsense. As soon as the other party answered the phone, she went straight to the point: "The area of this main building is larger than expected, and all the lights inside are off. After entering the door, there are several rows of shoe cabinets, and after passing through them, there is a horizontal corridor. There is a schematic diagram of the floor on the wall. I'm still on the first floor for now and plan to search floor by floor, from 1F all the way to the roof, going into every door to take a look. No anomalies have been encountered yet. What's the situation on your side?"

It was the first time Feng Bujue had heard her say so much in one breath, and he was a little unaccustomed to it. However, he also understood that the one-minute call time was precious, and Si Yu was likely holding the phone to her ear with one hand and carrying a lantern with the other. It would be dangerous if she was attacked at this moment, and she wouldn't have time to take out her weapon.

Therefore, Feng Bujue followed her meaning and replied quickly: "I found a well, which should be the place referred to in the first sentence. I'm about to study it." He paused for a second. "I'll briefly explain the ballad just now. The second sentence refers to the 'thirteenth step' ghost story. I've seen it. There are three relatively tall buildings on campus. The main building is the tallest, with seven floors plus a roof. I estimate that you will have a high probability of triggering this plot when you go upstairs. Remember to count the number of steps. If you find that there are thirteen steps when you go up to a certain floor, it means that you have entered a space filled with ghosts.

"The third sentence should refer to the toilet. If you hear a constant dripping sound from a toilet, then it is very likely..."

Beep—beep—beep—

Short, busy tones sounded continuously. The one-minute call time had passed, and their first call had ended just like that. The next one would have to wait until fifteen minutes later, when Si Yu would call Feng Bujue's phone.

Although Feng Bujue's words were unfinished, that was all he could say. In fact, his reminder was a bit superfluous, because Si Yu had heard of the story of the thirteenth step, and she also remembered the content of the ballad just now almost perfectly. In terms of combat ability, Feng Bujue was a little too worried about her. He should be worried about himself.

Taking the phone away from his ear and looking at the screen, Feng Bujue tried to dial again. This time, the text refreshed on the screen was: [Time not yet reached. Your next dialing time should be 40:00-40:45]

"Hmm... I seem to understand the meaning of this kind of call a little bit," Feng Bujue thought to himself. "With only one minute of call time, you can't say a few words at all. The main purpose of this kind of contact is not to let players help each other, but to let players hinder each other..."

He was indeed right... The system was facing two players with very strong individual abilities, so it generated such a setting. With the strength of these two, even if they were separated, it wouldn't be enough to create unbearable pressure.

However... the worry each had for their teammate could become their burden.

First, they were clearly told that they could not travel together, and even if they met by chance, they could not communicate. And they had to make a phone call every once in a while. Those who failed to dial the other party's number or failed to answer in time would be hunted down by ghosts.

One could imagine that if one of them didn't receive a phone call from the other party that they should have made after the time arrived, or if they dialed the number but the other party didn't answer, then the person would inevitably worry and definitely think about why the other party didn't make the call. Did they miss the dialing time? Or did they encounter some accident? Also... Could the teammate cope with the ghost hunt that followed?

Although the team menu in the game allowed them to see whether their teammates were alive, it wouldn't change anything, because survival was the only information the menu could provide. As for other things, such as whether they were injured, where they were, and how high their fear value was, they were all unknown. Even if one person had their leg sawed off by a ghost and was locked in a locker bleeding, the other person couldn't help. The person who wasn't being hunted could only let their mind run wild, feeling uneasy, and eventually making mistakes due to the influence of this emotion.

So... this kind of setting was better off without it. It would be easier to simply stipulate that they couldn't talk or meet at all, and the two could just solo it.

…………

Because the phone couldn't be put into the knapsack, and the pockets on the novice clothing were specially designed to be very shallow and couldn't hold anything, Feng Bujue could only helplessly hold the phone in his hand all the time.

Although he didn't know if it would be useful, he took out the pipe wrench and held it in his other hand, slowly approaching the well. He walked very steadily, his nerves tense. If he triggered some flag, he would definitely be able to react at the first moment.

The surrounding air suddenly became cold. Just as Feng Bujue approached the well and was only two or three meters away from the wellhead, a groaning voice came intermittently from below: "Save... save... me..."

After the voice sounded, the scene in front of Feng Bujue changed. In an instant, the night turned into dusk.

And beside him, there was a short, thin boy wearing a school uniform and glasses. There were also three guys who looked like delinquents surrounding him, talking all at once, occasionally knocking the boy's head or pushing him.

"A death scene replay?" Feng Bujue said, walking over and reaching out to try. As expected, his arm was like air, passing through the bodies of the people in front of him, unable to touch them at all.

So, he patiently watched what would happen next.

Actually, there was nothing special about it, just a simple extortion. However, the boy said that he didn't have much money left, and said a few words meekly. The delinquents were naturally very dissatisfied. The boy soon took a punch to the stomach, squatted down in pain, and was then kicked and beaten.

After beating him like this for a while, the three seemed to have a new idea. They dragged him to the well, and one of them grabbed the back of the boy's collar, suspending his upper body over the well. The other two each grabbed one of his legs, holding them at almost the same height as the well's edge.

The boy was naturally very scared, flailing his hands and shouting for them to stop, but the three didn't seem to care, instead laughing loudly. This continued for less than a minute before the tragedy happened. The boy fell down, his fate unknown.

The three delinquents were a little scared at this time, saying a few self-deceiving lines: "I... I didn't want to let go... He... He was moving around on his own, so... so he fell, right... right?"

"Ah... Yes... Yes... It was this guy's own carelessness..."

Just like that, they left the boy and didn't call for help, but left directly.

The next second, all these illusions disappeared.

It was still a cold night, and Feng Bujue was still standing two or three meters away from the dry well, without moving a step. He specially looked at his phone again. When those things happened just now, the time hadn't even passed.

"Save me..." The voice sounded again.

Feng Bujue took a deep breath and leaned closer to the wellhead.

…………

At the same time, in the main building.

In a faculty office, Si Yu found a clipped newspaper article on a desk. This piece of paper was very conspicuous, and the content had been underlined with a pen, marking several keywords, one of which was the name of the school—Yejie High School. The main content of the article was about a dry well in the school:

In Heisei 6 (1994), a high school student named Tanaka Satoshi was found dead in the dry well of Yejie High School. At the time, the police investigation result was "accident," but there was also a rumor in the school that Tanaka might have committed suicide by jumping into the well because he was bullied.

A week later, three boys who often bullied Tanaka left home one after another on the same night, and then were declared missing. In the end, their bodies were all found in the dry well.

This time, although the police paid great attention to it, the case could only be left unresolved because they couldn't find any "culprit."

"Tanaka's vengeful spirit has returned to take revenge," this saying quickly spread among the students.

In Heisei 7 (1995), another boy, Sakagami Yuichi, fell into the well and died. When examining the body, it was found that in addition to the injuries caused by the fall, there were many strange bite marks on the deceased's body. Those teeth marks came from at least four different people.

Sakagami was a well-known bully in the school during his lifetime. His friend's testimony to the police stated that they were smoking nearby that day, and Sakagami said that he seemed to hear a cry for "Save me," but his friend didn't hear it and thought Sakagami was joking, so he went home alone.

In the winter of the same year, two local bōsōzoku (Japanese biker gang) members were found dead in the well. More bite marks also appeared on the bodies, and all the fingers of the two deceased were bitten off and could not be found.

In Heisei 8 (1996), the school used cement to seal the wellhead, and there were no incidents for the next two years.

In Heisei 10 (1998), the cement cover of the wellhead developed cracks for unknown reasons.

In the summer of the same year, three students from the school went missing one after another. On the tenth day after the first student went missing, a severe stench came from the cracks in the school's wellhead. The school had no choice but to smash open the cement, and three more corpses were found in the well. The corpses had all been severely damaged to varying degrees. Except for the head, the other parts were fragmented.

Rumors spread among teachers and students again: "If you hear the vengeful spirit's cry for help in the well, never stick your head out to look, or you will be dragged down."