Zyklon-Säbel

Kapitel 79

"What else did I want to ask you? Why was everyone gone after we went into the restroom?" Li Yang asked, puzzled.

"I encountered a ghost!" Abao pouted aggrievedly, and then told Li Yang about the female ghost he saw in the girls' restroom and how he inexplicably ran into me in the old teaching building.

"How could this happen?" Li Yang scratched his head in confusion, while I leaned against the bed, unable to move due to the soreness.

"But then I noticed you hadn't come out, so I rushed into the restroom to look for you, and I saw something really strange there." Li Yang also told me and A Bao what he had seen in the women's restroom.

"No way, there are two more female ghosts?" Abao's mouth dropped open in horror.

"By the way, I heard someone call my name on the stairs just now, and then I felt short of breath. What happened?" Li Yang asked me.

"I don't know either." I moved my body with difficulty and said, "I felt like there was a wall of air around me, but I still managed to find a gap and managed to get you out. But this air wall is really damn powerful!" I couldn't help but curse, my right side of my body felt like it was paralyzed.

"You look like you strained a muscle after overexertion. By the way, Li Yang, do you have any liniment here? Applying some to it should help!" A Bao said to Li Yang.

"Herb liniment? I have some!" Li Yang immediately turned and went to his room, returning shortly with a bottle of red liniment. He asked A Bao, "Are you sure applying this will make it better?"

"This..." Abao touched his chin uncertainly, then said with a desperate look, "Let's try applying this!"

What? Try it? You think I'm a guinea pig? I was about to retort when Li Yang rolled up my sleeve and poured the medicinal wine on it.

"Ugh~~ Can you be a little gentler?" I gritted my teeth and glared at Li Yang. This guy had absolutely no sense of restraint when he hit me.

"I've been gentle enough, just bear with it!" Li Yang had an expression that said, "Just accept your fate," and had already poured most of the medicinal wine onto my right arm.

"By the way, Lin Xiao, what are you doing in that old teaching building?" Abao asked.

"It's a long story, let's talk about it tomorrow...tomorrow!" Perhaps the soreness in my body had exhausted me too much. I felt extremely tired, as if all the strength in my body had been drained. What's worse, the medicinal wine seemed to have taken effect. My right arm was not only sore but also burning, as if it had been coated with chili oil.

"No...stop applying it!" I almost groaned, "It's burning!"

"Spicy is effective!" Li Yang seemed very satisfied with the medicated oil's effects. He even took off my shirt and poured the remaining medicated wine onto my right shoulder.

"It hurts so much!" I screamed in pain.

"How can you be so sensitive to pain?" Li Yang said, patting my shoulder, which made me shudder.

After Li Yang poured the last drop of medicinal wine on me, I barely had the strength to speak. My right side was burning with pain, and my head was starting to spin and I was becoming delirious. I didn't even know when Li Yang and A Bao left; all I knew was that I was sweating profusely...

**************

The right side of my body ached so much that I couldn't even lift a finger, and my skin felt an unusual burning pain, as if I had been doused with boiling water. It felt like I was in a fire, with every nerve clenched. Meanwhile, the left side of my body was exhausted and had no strength at all, as if all my strength had been used to endure the pain on the right side.

In my daze, I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt incredibly heavy. I could only vaguely hear Abao's anxious voice: "What should we do? Should we take him to the hospital?"

"Going to the hospital won't cure it." That voice... it sounds like Fang Lei's. Fang Lei, are you here? I felt a surge of anxiety, but I couldn't move.

"What should we do? It's all my fault for coming up with such a bad idea, this medicinal wine!" Abao seemed to be crying.

"This is not your fault!" Li Yang glanced worriedly at Lin Xiao, who was still sleeping on the bed. However, Lin Xiao looked very strange. The skin on his right arm and shoulder had turned a bright red that looked like it was about to bleed. His skin had also become very translucent, and you could even see the blood vessels inside.

“What you encountered last night was probably a ghost wall, but unfortunately none of you know any magic, so you had to force your way out. Theoretically, people without magic shouldn’t be able to get out at all.” Fang Lei sat down next to Lin Xiao and anxiously touched his right hand, only to receive a weak groan from Lin Xiao, whose face showed an expression of extreme pain.

"Then how did he bring me out?" Li Yang asked.

"We'll have to ask him when he wakes up." Fang Lei took off the lotus hairpin from her hair and then said to Li Yang, "Go and get a washbasin."

Li Yang nodded, immediately handed a washbasin behind him to Fang Lei, and asked, "What do you want?"

"His body was clearly blocked because his meridians were damaged by ghost energy when he broke through the ghost wall. However, you accidentally used a blood-activating medicinal wine to wipe him last night, so the injury didn't show up immediately until this morning. So now I'm going to bleed him to remove all the bad blood that has been affected by the ghost energy," Fang Lei replied.

"Bloodletting? How much blood will be drawn? A lot could kill someone," Abao said worriedly.

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing!" Fang Lei said, and immediately began to swiftly press several acupoints on Lin Xiao's right side. Then, she grabbed Lin Xiao's right hand, spread his five fingers, and plunged the lotus hairpin deep into the tips of his five fingers. Instantly, a thick, pungent spurt of blood gushed from his fingertips, shooting right into the basin in front of him.

Ouch! I felt a piercing pain spreading through my fingertips, but a sliver of strength seemed to return to my body. I struggled to open my eyes and finally saw Fang Lei's beautiful face, filled with worry, which I hadn't seen in a long time...

Volume Three: Delicacies of Hell, Chapter Fifteen: Following

Volume Three: Delicacies of Hell, Chapter Fifteen: Following

If Fang Lei hadn't been holding my right hand tightly, I probably would have gone crazy from the pain, and I think my facial expression would have been extremely distorted.

"Does it hurt a lot? Bear with it!" Fang Lei gripped my hand tightly while carefully wiping the sweat from my face. I endured the excruciating pain, as if my skin was being peeled off and my tendons were being pulled out. I was drenched in sweat, and soon my clothes were completely soaked. I gripped the blanket tightly with my left hand, gritting my teeth and trying my best to suppress the scream in my throat.

I don't know how much time passed, almost a century, but the pain on the right side of my body gradually subsided, and my right arm no longer hurt as much as before. There were still occasional tingling sensations, like needles after numbness, but this was nothing compared to the pain I had just experienced.

"Alright!" Fang Lei's face showed a relaxed smile, as if she had just finished putting away the lotus hairpin. She took out a packet of medicine powder from her pocket and carefully applied it to my right hand fingers. I could feel the medicine powder was cool and refreshing. A cool sensation slowly seeped into my skin from the wound on my fingertip, and my entire right arm gradually felt relaxed and comfortable.

"What is this?" I asked in a hoarse voice.

"This is a unique healing medicine from our Emei sect. Don't worry, your right arm is saved now," Fang Lei said, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

"Really?" I shifted my body, about to move my right arm, but Fang Lei grabbed me and said, "You can't move your right arm for the next three days."

"What? I can't move?" I was a little surprised. Wasn't that agreed upon?

"You!" Fang Lei looked at me with a mixture of reproach and concern, and said, "Do you know that even people with magic wouldn't dare to force their way through that ghost wall? You actually managed to crash into it. It's a miracle you didn't break all your bones on the spot. Although your right arm is fine, you still need to rest for a while."

"That's a ghost wall? I've never encountered that before!" I said with a smile.

"It'd better not happen again!" Li Yang patted his chest and said, "I don't want you to end up with multiple broken bones."

“Yeah, yeah, that lab building is terrifying!” Abao chimed in.

"Fang Lei, what do you think is going on with that laboratory building and the old teaching building?" I asked.

"It's probably the work of the Netherworld!" Fang Lei's face darkened. "The Netherworld in ** City last time is actually similar to this one in principle. I felt something was off as soon as I entered this school this morning. Logically, a school should have a strong yang energy because most of the students are energetic young people, and the righteous energy in a school should also be strong. But this school is filled with yin energy, so it seems that the resentment of these ghosts is very powerful. And this guesthouse, I feel that the humidity here is particularly high. Although I don't know why yet, there must be something strange about it."

"Judging from the current situation, it seems there should be two female ghosts in that laboratory building. One is the woman Abao encountered who has no heart, and the other is the woman I saw whose head has been blown open inside the wall," Li Yang said.

"By the way, Bao, you said the female ghost you saw was dressed in white and blue?" I asked.

"Yeah, what's wrong?" Abao asked me.

"Because I saw a figure when I was going up the stairs to find Li Yang, but unfortunately I fell down on the stairs, so I only saw a blue dress," I replied.

“By the way, Lin Xiao,” Li Yang stroked his chin and said to me, “Do you remember what Juanzi told us about the murder case in the old teaching building? The girl fell headfirst and died. Do you think it could be the woman I saw in the wall?”

“If you think she is that female ghost, then who is the heartless woman that Abao saw? Juanzi also said that there were only two murder cases twenty years ago,” I said.

“That’s true.” Li Yang nodded in agreement.

"So, what we need to find out now is who that heartless woman is, and whether there is any connection between those two cases from twenty years ago. Also, although I just arrived, I have a feeling that these recent cases are not as simple as just a psychopathic killer," Fang Lei said.

"If he's already cooking people, how can he not seem like a psychopathic killer?" Li Yang disagreed with Fang Lei's point of view.

"Even if he's a psychopathic killer, why is the location of the murder exactly the same as it was twenty years ago? Is it really just a coincidence?" Fang Lei asked.

"So was it really Lin Xiao I saw that night?" Abao asked.

"Maybe it's just a hallucination!" Fang Lei gave A Bao a reassuring smile.

"By the way, Lin Xiao, what are you doing in that old school building?" A Bao turned around and asked curiously.

"Sigh!" I sighed and said, "It's a long story!" I tried to sit up straight and began to recount what happened that night...

*************

When I stepped out of the teahouse again, it was already late. The stars were mostly obscured by the branches and leaves of the surrounding trees, with only a few glimmers visible. Looking up, the stars twinkled like diamonds among the green leaves, as if they were set in a huge piece of green jade. I kicked a pebble on the path in frustration. I didn't know where to go. I felt as if everything in this world was irrelevant to me, and the men and women before me were just strange, living beings.

For some reason, I suddenly felt a gaze watching me from behind. This feeling of being watched made me very uncomfortable. Just as I was about to leave, someone suddenly patted me on the back.

"Yu Bo?" I turned around and saw that Yu Bo had already silently stood behind me. In that instant when I turned around, I seemed to see an extra hand next to his right hand.

"Lin Xiao." Yu Bo's hoarse voice sounded as if his throat had been burned. His sunken eyes were surrounded by dark circles like a panda's, his pale lips were bloodless, and his cheeks were sunken. Looking at his hands, they were also horribly thin, just skin and bones, making him look even more haggard and tired than when he was last seen in the Black Forest.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, puzzled.

"And what about you?" Yu Bo countered.

"I'm here to attend a forensic medicine academic seminar, and I'm staying at my alma mater. I just came out for a walk tonight. By the way, why did you just leave last time? I had to look for you everywhere," I complained.

“I just saw Baiyun!” Yu Bo stared intently into my eyes and said, “She’s standing right next to you.”

White clouds? Beside me? I shuddered for some reason, then forced a smile and said, "Impossible."

"Really, I really saw it!" Yu Bo's eyes flashed with an almost insane madness. I felt that he was no longer the senior he used to be; it seemed that something had changed him.

But just as a gust of wind blew by, I saw that another pair of hands appeared behind Yu Bo and slowly reached out towards me.

"Lin Xiao..." Yu Bo's voice seemed to come from a very, very far place, yet it also seemed to be whispering right next to my ear. I trembled all over, looked up, and Yu Bo's face was magnified infinitely in front of me.

"Oh~~!" I subconsciously took a step back, looking at Yu Bo's strange expression. I felt as if I was no longer a person, but a commodity being watched at a price.

"Do you want to see Baiyun?" Yu Bo chuckled.

“She is dead,” I stated the fact.

"You don't want to see her anymore now that she's dead? How heartless!" Yu Bo said with a look of disdain, "She loved you so much, she even rejected me, but you won't even see her once?"

"Senior~~~!" I sighed, almost groaning. The person who loved you is no longer here, but the person who remembers her isn't necessarily you; it might be someone else, lingering in someone else's heart. Of course, I knew Yu Bo's feelings for Bai Yun; I understood it the moment I saw the way Yu Bo looked at Bai Yun.

"She loves you so much. She said she wanted to be by your side forever, forever... forever..." Yu Bo's eyes were red, perhaps because of the lighting. I felt unable to move; an overwhelming longing emanating from him was altering the magnetic field of his soul. And he slowly drew closer to me, bringing his lips to my ear, whispering softly, as if in a dream, "She will be by your side..."

After saying that, Yu Bo gently slid one of his fingers across my right palm. A wave of nausea and disgust immediately made my whole body shrink. I almost immediately covered my mouth with my hand, and my body bent over, feeling dizzy.

"Sir, are you alright?" A voice suddenly rang out beside me. I looked up and saw a waiter-looking man cautiously observing me, as if equating me with those drunk people.

Yu Bo? Where is Yu Bo? I looked around, but Yu Bo seemed to have never appeared, leaving me only with a cold sweat all over my body.

What was that feeling just now? Disgust and revulsion, and... a chilling fear? It felt like a strange sensation. I touched my chest and felt so cold. The sweat on my body was slowly being dried by the cool night breeze, and I couldn't help but shiver.

Walking back to school, I don't know if it was just my imagination or the effect of Yu Bo's words, but I kept feeling like someone was following me, someone I knew all too well. Bai Yun used to like to walk quietly behind me like a cat, and then suddenly shout out from behind when I wasn't looking. So back then, I was always mentally prepared to be startled by her, always feeling like someone was following me.

And now...

That feeling is back, even stronger than before.

I could feel her footsteps behind me, light yet still present, even the breath she could hold to scare me. Almost every pore on my body was filled with her signature perfume, elegant and persistent, surrounding me.

I looked back more than once, unsure whether I wanted to see her or not. This complex and contradictory feeling lingered around me until the moment I stepped onto campus. The ever-present feeling suddenly vanished, as if it had just been my hallucination.

I stood there, turned around, and the scenery around me remained the same, but... I didn't feel that way anymore. It was as if the white clouds had suddenly hidden away the moment I stepped into the school.

What is she afraid of? Or does she just not want to see her school again?

In my confusion, my legs had unknowingly led me to a place—an open space next to the old teaching building. It was late September, and the lawn there was a dazzling green. It was there that I first encountered white clouds.

Looking up at the old teaching building in the night, the low, two-story building resembled a crouching snake in the darkness. The dim yellow light shining through the windows seemed to be the snake's eyes, coldly staring at me.

Perhaps it was just boredom, but as I stepped into this old teaching building, a chill rose directly up from the ground. Even though I was wearing shoes and socks, I could feel the cold seeping into the soles of my feet.

As soon as I went up to the second floor, I heard what sounded like A Bao's voice.