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Chapitre 12

"Ruyi? Where did she go?" Chen Kai asked, staring at Feixiao's empty hands.

"She went to another place, perhaps she has become another life!"

"Really?" Chen Kai looked around at the sea of flowers. Ruyi was gone, and the flowers were withering away, leaving only broken branches and yellowing autumn grass. The scene of his first meeting with Ruyi was still in his mind. The girl in overalls with freckles on her face seemed to appear before him again, bringing the scent of sunshine.

"Sigh!" Fei Xiao sighed, picking up a withered flower from the ground: "Blooming season, blooming season, each flower has only one blooming season, so how can there be a flower that never withers? Isn't human life the same?"

Chen Kai sensed an unusual sadness in his tone; he seemed to feel more envy than sympathy for Ruyi's fate.

Looking at the withered yellow leaves everywhere, I don't know what to say. Life goes on and on, and next spring, beautiful flowers will surely bloom here again.

There is no perfect grass in this world, nor is there an everlasting flower. When the resilient grass blooms, its life ends.

Chapter 5 Game

On the way back, everyone looked listless. Even Liang Dong, who was sitting next to Chen Kai, looked tired and kept yawning.

"Sigh, what's going on?" He hung his head, puzzled. "I didn't do anything, why am I so tired?"

Chen Kai stared at the red dot on his arm. Yes, he'd donated at least 500cc of blood; no wonder he was exhausted. It seems there's no such thing as a free lunch, just like Chihiro's parents in *Spirited Away*, who turned into pigs because they ate something for free.

"Hey, what's this?" Liang Dong said, reaching for the backpack Chen Kai was holding. "Everyone else's bags have lots of stuff when they go out and little stuff when they come back. Why is yours the opposite?"

"Local specialties! I just went to buy local specialties!" Chen Kai said incoherently, while tightly protecting his backpack with both hands.

"There's nowhere to buy anything along the way!" Liang Dong said, a suspicious look in his small eyes. "Did you take someone's things?"

"No!" Chen Kai was truly impressed by his imagination. He couldn't very well say that the bag contained a white, talking fox, could he?

"Hmph, you'd better not do anything underhanded!" Liang Dong said, wiggling his fat body. "But judging from your appearance, you don't have the guts!"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Chen Kai breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the man didn't want to look at his bag anymore. "Even if you gave me the courage, I wouldn't dare!" He hugged the bag tightly in his arms. Through the bag, he could feel the warmth of Fei Xiao's body inside. He felt an overwhelming joy in his heart: he had actually met a vixen. How awesome was that!

Back home, Chen Kai no longer felt happy about meeting Fei Xiao. He had only been away for less than three days, and his house was already a pigsty. When Fei Xiao returned home, she glared at him and kept complaining about how the bag was too cramped, how it suffocated her, and how it affected his image. Chen Kai could only apologize while cleaning. Good heavens, if he could choose again, he would never want to see this annoying person again.

Two weeks later, the weather was getting colder and colder. Chen Kai was about to go home after class when his classmate grabbed him and said, "Chen Kai, do you want to go see some pretty girls?"

"What beautiful woman? I'm not going!" He shook his head. Ever since he met Feixiao, he had lost interest in beautiful things and found that most beautiful people were not good people.

"You're really interested in men, huh?" The boy pushed up his glasses and looked Chen Kai up and down.

"Let's go! Let's go!" Chen Kai jumped up immediately, startled. "Where are we? Are there any pretty girls in our department?"

"Hehe, come with me!" the boy said, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and pulled Chen Kai out of the lecture hall.

Where are you going?

"Hey, a beautiful girl just arrived in Class 1 next door!" After turning around a couple of times, sure enough, I saw a girl talking to a few other girls in the corridor, while a few boys in the distance were casually glancing in her direction.

The girl was wearing a white sweater and had long hair. She was the kind of pure and innocent type that college boys liked, and she had pretty features. However, she was not quite stunningly beautiful, which shows how rare it is to find female students in science departments.

"Hey! Du Juan, are you done with get out of class?" the boy who had pulled Chen Kai over shouted to the girl.

The girl waved to them, her eyes crinkling into crescent moons with laughter. The boy next to Chen Kai continued, "This is Chen Kai, one of the top ten most popular figures in our department!"

"What?" Chen Kai's eyes widened in surprise. He had barely attended any classes since the start of the semester, so how could he suddenly be promoted to one of the top ten influential figures?

"You're Chen Kai?" Du Juan came over and looked him up and down, then smiled. "My name is Du Juan. Since I transferred departments, you've been the subject of my most frequent conversations!"

"Living with a handsome man, is that it?" Chen Kai smiled and said to her, "I'm tired of hearing it myself, aren't you all tired of it too!"

After saying that, he picked up his schoolbag and left, leaving Dujuan standing there dumbfounded in the corridor, unsure whether to go or stay.

"Chen Kai! You just wait!" She suddenly blurted out as she watched Chen Kai's retreating figure, startling the classmates next to her.

A few days later, one evening, the family phone, which was usually silent, rang. Fei Xiao was lounging on the sofa watching TV when she casually picked it up: "Hello? Who is it?"

A girl's voice came from inside: "I'm looking for Chen Kai!"

Feixiao chuckled, her phoenix eyes narrowing into slits. "Chen Kai! Is this your girlfriend? Come answer the phone!"

Chen Kai, who was researching and writing his paper, nearly fell off his chair when he heard this. "What girlfriend? Don't talk nonsense!"

He quickly ran over and answered the phone: "Hello? Who is this?"

"This is Du Juan! You remember me, right? Can you come to the school? To the small conference room in the department! I need to speak with you urgently!" She hung up before Chen Kai could reply.

"Why is this woman acting like this?" Chen Kai grabbed the microphone, glanced at his watch, and realized it was almost nine o'clock. He quickly got dressed and hurriedly prepared to leave.

"Where are you going?" Feixiao asked, puzzled.

"Go to school!" Chen Kai glanced back at him. "I'll be back in a bit!"

"Chen Kai, be careful on the road so late!"

"Okay!" Chen Kai thought this guy was getting more and more meddlesome. He opened the door and stepped into the vast night. What did she want to see him about so late? He had a bad feeling about it.

When he arrived at the school, although it was a bit late, there were still many students wandering around the campus. Chen Kai walked all the way to the teaching building, went up to the third floor, and found the corridor inside to be pitch black. He reached out and pressed a switch, but the light still didn't turn on, which made him feel strange.

I had no choice but to find the small conference room in the dark. From the outside, I couldn't see anything inside except for the glass on the door that was gleaming in the darkness.

He looked around and saw that no one was there. He turned around and was about to leave. He thought that the cuckoo was probably playing a prank on him.

"Chen Kai! Is that you?" The door to the conference room at the back was suddenly pulled open a crack, startling Chen Kai.

Someone inside waved to him, and Chen Kai cautiously asked, "Is that Du Juan?"

"Yes, come in, we're just waiting for you!" A voice came from the dark door. Chen Kai looked at the pitch-black conference room, mustered his courage, pushed open the door, and went in.

Once inside, I discovered there was more than one person; there seemed to be seven or eight people standing in a circle around the table, their features obscured in the darkness.

"What's going on?" Chen Kai exclaimed in disbelief. Had he offended some kind of gangster?

"Shh~" someone next to him said, "We're all classmates, don't be afraid, let's play a game today!"

"What? What game are we playing here? Hide and seek?"

Before he could get a reply, Chen Kai suddenly saw a bright light. Someone had struck a match and lit a candle. The candlelight illuminated the face of the person holding the candle; it was Du Juan, her face flickering in and out of the light.

Chen Kai looked at her face; it appeared ethereal and frightening in the darkness, making him think that it would be better not to light the candle at all.

“The game we’re playing is called ‘The Night Banquet of a Hundred Ghosts’!” she said, reaching for a candle and handing it to Chen Kai.

Chen Kai borrowed the candlelight and found that everyone in the room looked familiar, as if they were all from the same department as him. Each person was holding a candle and had a funny expression on their face, so it seemed that no one was taking it seriously.

"This... it's probably best not to play this game," Chen Kai muttered. This game didn't sound very good, especially since he seemed to be in contact with more dead people than living people lately. He was really afraid of attracting some vengeful ghosts.

"Oh, it's just a game, there are so many people, let's give it a try today!" Du Juan said, lighting all the candles. In the candlelight, Chen Kai noticed that everyone who came was male. It seems that the beauty of the department is still quite charming.

"Come here, don't stand by the door!" Du Juan turned around and waved to Chen Kai.

Helpless, Chen Kai carried the candle over and noticed a yellow piece of paper on the round table, covered with distorted red symbols. Seeing this, his heart skipped a beat: "Hey! What's this?"

“This is a talisman! It’s to protect us in case we attract something!” Dujuan said, blinking her big eyes.

"This isn't some random junk! Let's get back to the dorm, why are we playing with this if we have nothing better to do?" Chen Kai pointed to the talisman paper spread out on the table. "And this, it's not just random scribbles either!"

“I found this calligraphy and painting, how can you say it’s just random scribbles?” Du Juan, standing beside her, looked displeased.

"You drew this?" Isn't this just scribbling?

"Okay, enough chit-chat! Let's each tell a ghost story about ourselves, then blow out the candles and see if the legends are true!"

"What are you looking for?" Chen Kai looked at Du Juan with a determined expression, seemingly full of expectation. Why was she so persistent?

"No! Just curious!" Du Juan said, turning around and sticking her tongue out at him.

Seeing her determination, Chen Kai didn't stop her, hoping they hadn't attracted anything bad.

"Let's begin!" Du Juan said, nudging the boy next to her with her candle. "You go first, I'll be last!"

The boy nodded and began his story: "I know that ten years ago, I heard that a woman hanged herself in this conference room, and her body wasn't discovered for several days. Once, my classmates and I came here to set up the conference room..."

That's truly a shocking statement! Chen Kai was stunned. Ten years ago? If he remembered correctly, this teaching building hadn't even been built for ten years. He looked up at the ceiling again; only the smoke detector was protruding. Hanging himself with that seemed rather difficult!

But everyone around was startled. The boy finished his vivid story, blew out the candle in his hand, and the round table dimmed a little.

The people behind continued their stories, each one more frightening than the last. Although they sounded obviously fake, it was still quite scary to hear them in this dark room. Eventually, Chen Kai became restless. As the candles went out one by one, it seemed as if something was really emerging from the shadows of the room, approaching them step by step.

"Hey! It's your turn!" The boy next to Chen Kai nudged him. Now only two candles were lit, the one in his hand and the one in Du Juan's hand. The boy's face seemed to be half swallowed by darkness.

"Okay!" Chen Kai paused for a moment. A ghost story? Something related to himself? He could only tell the story of Fei Xiao, since he had firsthand experience with such a thing!

The people around Chen Kai were looking at him with a look of horror. Another candle was about to go out. What story was Chen Kai going to tell?

"Ahem!" Chen Kai cleared his throat, looking at the solemn faces in the darkness around him, and said, "The story I'm about to tell is my own experience, and it's absolutely true!"

"Um, um!" He was still trying to figure out how to start when someone next to him said, "Hurry up!"

"Um, I know a vixen!" The words were met with a deathly silence, and after a while, someone in the darkness couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"It's true! I really know a vixen!" This time, it was met with a burst of laughter.

"That's so funny! I thought you were going to tell a scary story, but it's just a joke!" "Wow, this is hilarious! Do people still read *Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio* these days?" "Aren't fox spirits beautiful women?"

"Listen to me!" Chen Kai shouted, but the force of his shout blew out the candle in his hand. Chen Kai looked at the candle dejectedly, a look of discouragement on his face, and sighed, "My story is over."

"Hahaha, I'm dying of laughter..." "This is so funny!"

Laughter continued to erupt around them, and the terrifying atmosphere vanished completely.

Are only bloody and frightening stories considered ghost stories? Is my own and Fei Xiao's real experience only good for making people laugh?

"Hey! It's your turn!" Chen Kai nudged Du Juan next to him in an annoyed tone. Now, only one candle in Du Juan's hand was still lit. She was holding that candle and lying on the table, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.

"Alright, alright! I'll tell you!" Du Juan said, holding the candle in both hands, closing her eyes and beginning to tell the story: "There was a little girl who never had a father and always lived with her mother. Every time she asked her mother where her father had gone, her mother wouldn't answer her. Later, even her mother left..."

"...The little girl finally saw her father, her father who had been watching over her all along!" It was a long and tedious story, but told by her in the darkness, it became quite touching. Everyone around remained silent. As the story ended and the last candle was about to go out, what would appear?

After Du Juan finished speaking, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and mustered her courage to blow out the candle in her hand.

At this point, the entire room was plunged into boundless darkness.

"Is there anything?" Chen Kai asked the people around him.

"Nothing? There's nothing there!" "It was a lie after all. It seems materialism is more accurate!"

"How's it going?" Chen Kai asked Du Juan beside him, "Should we turn on the light?"

"Sigh, well then!" she sighed, her voice filled with deep disappointment. She stood up and turned on the light.

The lights were blinding, and Chen Kai immediately squinted. In that instant, he thought he saw a dark figure crouching on the round table; it seemed to be the back of a man. A feeling of fear gripped his heart.

"Ah! What is that?" He was startled and fell off the chair.

"What? Don't scare me!" The classmate next to him was also quite frightened by his shout.

Chen Kai scrambled to his feet. What was that thing? He was absolutely certain he wasn't mistaken; it was the back of a person, the back of a man with disheveled hair.