Le Chemin des Fantômes Lésés, Partie 1 Le Chemin des Fantômes Lésés

Chapitre 3

Several people dressed in school staff uniforms walked up to them and pointed to the lottery box behind them: "You are the last two of the seventy-seven new students who have registered in the third batch. Please stand over there. The number of lots you draw in there later will be your dormitory."

"The seventy-seventh?"

"The barrier around this lottery tube can only be broken by seventy-seven freshmen standing in their designated positions; this is the only way."

It's just a dormitory, and they have to go through all this trouble! No wonder it's a perverted academy led by a perverted principal…

"But... what is a destined position?"

"You can stand wherever you want; the place you stand by your own will is your destined place."

The two did as instructed, walked over, stood where they wanted, stopped, and looked at the barrier around the lottery tube. Sure enough, as soon as they stopped, the barrier opened automatically.

The first student walked up to the lottery box and drew a lot.

"Room 208, Dormitory Building No. 1".

The ticket issued a mechanical-sounding click, startling the student so much that he nearly dropped it. After the number was read, the ticket automatically transformed into a room key.

Then came the second student, the third...

When it was Lou Lifan's turn, he walked over and drew a stick. The stick seemed to carry a faint electric current, which made his hand go numb for a moment.

The sign also emitted a flat voice: "Dormitory Building No. 7, Room 333".

After drawing lots, Lou Lifan did not leave, but waited for Pei Linhai to draw next.

Pei Linhai drew lots.

"Room 333, Dormitory Building No. 7".

Before the two of them could even marvel at the coincidence, a loud gasp rippled through the staff watching them draw lots.

"Ah...that room..."

"Huh? What?"

"Isn't that the room?"

"Oh! It's that one..."

"How pitiful..."

What were they saying? Lou Lifan and Pei Linhai looked rather grim. Judging from their expressions, it was like a bolt from the blue.

Is it really necessary to be so surprised? Is there something strange about that room?

"Oh dear... how pitiful..." the staff sighed, then turned and ran away, not even giving them a chance to ask questions.

What on earth happened?!

The two, filled with doubts, had no one to ask, so they could only put aside their own thoughts and find their rooms first.

The two entered Building No. 7. The interior was very old, at least a hundred years old, but because it was well maintained, the occasional glimpses of disrepair only added to its mystery, rather than making it look dilapidated. They walked up the wooden stairs, and with each step, the wooden stairs made a small groan, somewhat like the cry of a baby. If they hadn't seen this kind of thing many times before, they probably would have felt a chill run down their spines.

As soon as they stepped onto the second floor, a chilling aura swept over them, an aura only found in places inhabited by creatures with long-term negative energy.

This must be the dormitory at the Paranormal Academy, right? How can there be such a strong negative energy?!

They exchanged a glance, and Lou Lifan closed his eyes, calming his mind and sensing inch by inch the possible creatures with negative energy in the entire building.

A little further in, even further in...

Lou Lifan sensed the surroundings while leading Pei Linhai inside.

From the outside, the dormitory building looked no more than 50 meters wide, but they walked for a full five minutes, covering at least four or five hundred meters, and still hadn't reached the end, or even found a room. All they saw were identical walls and wall lamps flashing by in sections.

"Li Fan...it seems we're stuck in some kind of maze..."

Lou Lifan, who was focused on sensing, did not notice that he had omitted his surname. He simply nodded and asked, "Of all those abilities, which one are you best at?"

Pei Linhai smiled knowingly: "Perfect for solving the maze..."

Lou Lifan tacitly stepped aside. Pei Linhai clasped his hands together, closed his eyes slightly, and a circle of light appeared in his palms. He then swept...

"break!"

A flash of red light, and the identical walls and wall lamps around them shattered instantly, crashing to the ground and raising a cloud of dust.

"Cough cough cough... Who set this up! Cough cough cough... So inconsiderate!"

Normally, a maze would turn into smoke and disappear after being broken, but this was the first time they had ever seen one turn into smoke and dust like this.

The smoke and dust gradually condensed into a human shape, and the negative fluctuations that Lou Lifan had just felt suddenly became very strong. A little girl of eleven or twelve years old wearing a black dress then appeared in front of them.

"Hello, I'm Byte, the dormitory manager. Nice to meet you!"

The little girl bowed deeply.

Pei Linhai was taken aback by her grand gesture and immediately bowed deeply in return.

"We're the same, we're the same!"

"There are more weirdos in the dorm than you think, so please bear with us!"

Another deep bend.

"Of course, of course!"

He also bent over.

"Bite will often make harmless little mistakes, please forgive him as long as you don't die!"

Then bend over again.

"Where... Ah?!"

Pei Linhai's waist, which was about to bend down, froze in mid-air.

"you say……???"

The little girl chuckled and vanished into the dust. As she disappeared, so did the intense negative energy.

"Why is the dormitory manager for boys such a small girl?" Pei Linhai asked.

"I don't know," Lou Lifan replied.

"Why is there such a strong negative aura emanating from her?" Pei Linhai asked.

"I don't know..." Lou Lifan replied.

“Could it be a monster? But it doesn’t quite look like one…” Pei Linhai asked.

“If you have any more questions, ask her directly, don’t come to me,” Lou Lifan replied.

As the smoke and dust completely dissipated, the doors to one after another, exquisitely decorated rooms, as bright as palaces, appeared on the equally bright walls.

Each door had a gold plaque with the room number written on it, and below the number was a nameplate. There were two nameplates on each door, meaning that two people lived in each room.

"328, 329, 330... Ah, I've got it! It's 333!"

They unlocked the door with the key and pushed it open—the two were immediately stunned.

The entire room was decorated in a lovely pink, with countless little hearts drawn on the walls—yes, the kind you see in shoujo manga… On the wall directly opposite the door, several lines of large characters were painted in bright red.

"Welcome to the Couples' Room! Everyone who stays in this room is destined to become a happy couple!"

The string of large heart symbols that followed was shocking.

The two poor people seemed to have been struck on the head with a club, frozen in place—

Chapter Two, The Ghost Story (The Night Classmates)

Poor Lou Lifan and Pei Linhai spent two days finally managing to tidy up the room again, throwing away all sorts of unidentified objects, including the roses on the bedside table, and repainting the walls...

I don't know which freak wrote those big characters, but they even used telekinesis to attach them, which made them spend three hours just on this.

While working, Lou Lifan remained silent and did his own thing, while Pei Linhai kept muttering to himself, seemingly complaining about something. Later, he realized that Pei Linhai was complaining that there was a special barrier within the dormitory area that prohibited the summoning of shikigami, as if the lovely students were to "do it themselves and be self-sufficient."

So, it seems like they could have easily set a rule prohibiting the use of superpowers to climb the stairs in the school building, but that perverted principal just wouldn't allow it! He probably just wanted people to cheat their way up and then happily kick them back down; that must be one of his interests...

Lou Lifan was certain once again that such a person would never be so kind as to build a school here specifically to seal the Ghost Gate; he was just a super pervert who simply enjoyed watching others suffer...

The people next to them in their two rooms moved in a day after they arrived, apparently delayed during check-in. When Lou Lifan visited, he discovered that they were the four unlucky guys who had been abandoned, each covered in thick bandages. Room 332 on the left housed Luo Tianwu and Su Jueming, while room 334 on the right housed Le Sui and Gongye.

The relationship between these four men was a mixed bag. On good days, they could sit in a room playing mahjong shirtless; on bad days, they could fight tooth and nail, from inside the house to outside, using every weapon and ability imaginable, causing countless damages to public facilities. Then, the little girl caretaker suddenly appeared, a menacing smile on her face, and told them that if they didn't stop, she'd send them to the snake den in the back mountains to clean. Normally, these men considered themselves incredibly handsome, dashing, the kind of men who would cause countless beautiful women to scream if they stepped outside… so they resolutely didn't want to be tainted by the stench of the snake den, which hadn't been cleaned for two hundred years, and naturally slunk back to their room.

Across from them lived Tian Jin, the girl who had been shrouded in an eerie aura at the start of the semester. She lived alone in that room. This was originally a boys' dormitory, and it was unprecedented for a girl to be drawn into a boys' room by lottery. Nobody knew what to do. Besides, a previous unlucky boy had been drawn to share a room with her. Normally, the girl would have shyly cried out, "I don't want to!" and run away in tears. But… this girl was no ordinary girl. She somehow managed to scare the boy so much that he cried and screamed in his room, and within ten minutes of moving in, he packed up and ran away. It's said that, to beg not to live with his "destined" roommate, he once clung to the leg of the perverted principal and wailed…

Of course, no one dared to try living with her again after that.

With so many strange people living around, Lou Lifan and Pei Linhai's lives were anything but peaceful. Tian Jin would often grab students who had to pass by and speak ominously about what they were about to encounter—usually nothing good, as the hallway was often filled with screams. Luo Tianwu and the other three's abilities were very unstable, and mistakes were common. For example, they would often break into a fight while playing cards, and Gongye would use a talisman to detect whether someone had cheated using their sensory abilities. He would detect the lie, but the small problem of the talisman exploding after it ran out could never be solved... Usually, it was Su Jueming who got blown up. When Luo Tianwu saw his opponent get beaten up, he would get angry and curse, curse, curse... The problem was that his curses often shifted to Le Sui because he hadn't practiced enough. In a fit of anger, Le Sui would use a water-summoning spell to purify them, and everyone would get soaked, with no one able to escape. Enraged, Su Jueming would unleash his fury at this point, saying, "Go have fun in another dimension!" and then he'd throw himself there too, getting lost for two or three hours—and then spending about seven or eight days there...

This poor, dilapidated building was constantly threatened with demolition. Lou Lifan, however, remained unaffected and slept soundly. Pei Linhai, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky; he often suffered from sleep deprivation and could only read his thick book, *On the Supernatural*, with a gloomy expression. He now understood why the notification stated a one-week reporting period—it was to allow him time to adjust to and get along with those strange people…

He had considered changing rooms, but whenever he brought it up with the principal, the principal would ask him in a chillingly resentful voice if he was a terrible principal, with students wanting to change dorms one after another. He was about to ask what changing dorms had to do with the principal's performance when that pervert sat on the ground, mimicking a tragic heroine, tears streaming down his face, a small river flowing beneath the black cloth, silencing him completely.

There was nothing he could do but accept his fate. Fortunately, the four people had been lost for quite some time, and Tian Jin rarely ventured out when there were many people around, so it was a stroke of good luck amidst misfortune.

The seven days of registration passed quickly. Every new student noticed that everyone looked equally unwell upon meeting, and it wasn't just him; Pei Linhai was the same. However, Lou Lifan seemed unchanged. When Pei Linhai asked about it, Lou Lifan looked at him for a long time and said, "If you had a woman in your family who sang 'My Sun' in a raspy voice every morning until after 1 a.m., you would feel the same way I do."

Only then did Pei Linhai realize the tragic past hidden beneath this person's expressionless mask...

Who is that woman?

"My three older sisters."

"..." Three times the pain...

At the opening ceremony, in the sweltering heat of 38.5 degrees Celsius, that perverted principal, still draped in a black robe so "cool" it made you want to get heatstroke just by looking at it, delivered a passionate speech on stage, praising the students as the bravest people in the world for daring to come to Byte School. He claimed that anyone who came here would definitely become a world-class paranormal practitioner, whose value would skyrocket wherever they went, and who would never lose out whether sold by skill or by weight... (What on earth was he saying...?)

His rambling went on for three hours without getting to the point. In the end, several tall, strong teachers, who seemed used to it, dragged him off the stage and replaced him with a petite female teacher.

"Hello everyone, I'm Vice Principal Paulina, you can call me Lina." Everyone applauded as Paulina finished speaking with a smile, because from her appearance alone, it was clear she was the least eccentric person in the school… "I was born into a witch family, so sometimes I don't act according to common sense. Please be prepared! ^^"

A witch = someone who uses their spiritual power for black magic = black magic has no good uses = one wrong move and everyone is doomed...

A gust of cold wind swept across everyone's backs.

"Now, let's begin with an introduction to our school! You all already know the general overview..."