Chapter Ninety-Two: The White Phantom

By the time midnight quietly passed, the moonlight was faint and pale as it spilled over the earth. Shadow and light mottled the trees, and the immense silhouette of the academic building covered a stretch of green lawn. Song Nianqiang and Fatty were crouched on that grass, talking about something.

“Are you sure it’s okay to leave those two there? Fatty, you’d better be damn certain, or they’ll come back as vengeful spirits to haunt you!” Song Nianqiang said teasingly, squatting there with a blade of grass he had no idea where he had found clamped between his teeth.

“Get lost. You think those two idiots are really stupid enough to stay there all night? They probably bolted out of the school ages ago. I put a little something on them; before two in the morning, no ghosts are getting anywhere near them.” Fatty rolled his eyes and stood up, stretching. “Damn, I’m getting sleepy.”

Just as Fatty had said, the couple had indeed been scared out of their wits and had no desire to linger there for even a moment. So the instant Fatty and Song Nianqiang left, they slipped away after them, running all the way out of Huaxia Vocational High School and heading straight to the police station. As for what the chief would do with them once they got there, that was no longer Song Nianqiang’s concern. By his estimate, the two of them would most likely be sent off to a psychiatric hospital for a while.

“Let’s walk around. If we keep hanging around here, those little ghosts may not come looking for us anyway. We might as well go out and look for them,” Fatty suggested.

Song Nianqiang thought it over and decided that made sense, so the two of them took a moonlit tour of Huaxia Vocational High School.

And honestly, the campus really was decent. The two of them eventually made their way to the playground. Walking along a tree-lined path, they chatted and laughed without restraint, trading dirty jokes they would normally be too embarrassed to say at school. Before long they reached the basketball court. Looking at the empty court, Song Nianqiang suddenly sighed with feeling.

“How nice it would be if there were a basketball here right now!”

Fatty shot him a disdainful glance. “Even if there were a basketball, could you even see it? From far away, you probably wouldn’t even know where the hoop is.”

Though there was moonlight, what Fatty said was true: from any distance, it was impossible to make out exactly where the basket was.

“Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean I can’t shoot blind, damn it!” As he spoke, a white blur drifted straight across the basketball court. Song Nianqiang and Fatty saw it clearly. They immediately sprang into action and took off after it, but when they reached the administration building, they were stopped cold by the glass.

Since they had gone to save the couple, all the arrangements they had made earlier had become useless. Now they could only wander around Huaxia Vocational High School and hope to run into a ghost.

“Damn it! What do we do now!” Fatty angrily slammed a fist against the glass door, but it was thick glass, and his furious blow did nothing at all. Song Nianqiang stared at the door for a moment, then turned back to the small grove, hauled out a huge stone, and called, “Fatty, give me a hand!”

The stone was far too heavy for Song Nianqiang to throw by himself.

“Holy crap, you’re the smart one!” Fatty laughed when he saw the stone in Song Nianqiang’s arms. In a few quick steps he came over, and together they hoisted the boulder. Then they stepped back a few paces and hurled it with all their strength.

With a sharp crash, the thick glass door still could not withstand Song Nianqiang’s stone and shattered on the spot. But that was only the beginning. The most notorious kind of shoddy construction came into play now, and the chain reaction caused by the impact was violent. A whole row of glass walls linked to the main door actually collapsed on its own.

A thunderous roar rang out again and again, and shattered glass flew everywhere. Song Nianqiang and Fatty were startled, but fortunately they reacted quickly. The moment they saw the glass wall give way, they retreated at once, narrowly escaping being cut to pieces by the shards.

It took nearly five minutes before the aftereffects of the collapse finally died down. Looking at the field of broken glass with lingering fear, Song Nianqiang turned to Fatty and said, “This building isn’t shoddy too, is it? What if it collapses again after we go in?”

Fatty actually agreed with him. He nodded approvingly and said, “Very possible. But there’s a ghost inside that we only just managed to find. So tell me, do we go in or not?”

The two of them stood there at the entrance, debating like a pair of lunatics whether the building was shoddy and whether they should go inside.

“Maybe we should forget it?” Fatty said, worried for his own life.

Seeing the frightened expression on Fatty’s face, Song Nianqiang could no longer hold back and burst out laughing. “Haha! Fatty, your acting is really something else. I’m impressed!”

“Damn it, yours isn’t bad either. Come on, let’s go. We don’t know where that ghost has run off to now.” As he spoke, Fatty headed for the building. At first the visibility was still decent, but after they had walked a little way, the world before them turned completely pitch black. The surroundings were wrapped in a suffocating darkness.

“Fatty, find the lights!” Song Nianqiang pulled his phone from his pocket and used it as a flashlight. His E66’s flash could serve as a light, and Fatty complained to him in a hurt tone, “You think I don’t want to? This damn school doesn’t even have electricity!”

“Damn it!” Song Nianqiang shot the school’s board of directors a scornful look. With no other choice, he had to lead the way with his phone. But when they reached the second floor, Fatty finally managed to turn the lights on. It turned out the first floor had deliberately not been powered, so that the boys and girls who were “deeply in love” would have a place to vent their feelings. The school really had gone to great lengths.

The corridor lit up at once, and at the far end the white ghostly figure hurried up the stairs. “After it!” Song Nianqiang shouted, then took off down the corridor in pursuit. Fatty, meanwhile, quickly ran up the corridor on the other side, found the switch, and turned on the lights for Song Nianqiang.

The instant the lights came on, the corridor flickered. Fatty narrowed his eyes slightly, and in that very instant, the white ghostly figure suddenly appeared in front of him, stretching out two ghastly pale fingers to clamp down on his throat.

But Fatty had not grown up eating rice for nothing. Though he had eaten plenty of plain meals in his life, he had always eaten them with dishes on the side. So just as the white figure was about to grab his neck, he swiftly formed a gesture with both hands, shaped like three incense sticks, and took a T-shaped stance with his feet. The ghost had not been prepared at all, and this move forced it back hard.

“Fatty, behind you!” Song Nianqiang had also come up and discovered that there was another hanged ghost behind Fatty. That ghost was actually using the rope it had hanged itself with to loop around Fatty’s neck. At Song Nianqiang’s warning, Fatty immediately rolled aside on the spot and quickly pulled a talisman from his pocket. Without even looking, he hurled it backward.

Drawn by the ghostly aura, the talisman instantly slapped onto the unsuspecting spirit. The ghost let out a miserable shriek. Instead of fleeing, however, it rushed straight at Fatty. Fatty was sitting on the floor and had no time to dodge. Fortunately, he still had another talisman in his hand. Seeing the ghost charge at him, he roared, “Get lost!” The talisman flashed with yellow light, and the ghost seemed to suffer a crushing blow. After a piteous cry, it dissolved into a wisp of blue smoke.

But the white-clad ghost had noticed Song Nianqiang’s arrival. After a brief hesitation, it shot past Fatty and continued running upstairs. Fatty tried to grab at the ghost’s foot, but he was a fraction too late and only seized a handful of air.

“We’ve been doing this for more than a day or two, and you’re still this careless!” Song Nianqiang reached Fatty’s side and yanked him upright. The two of them then headed for the fourth floor, though this time they were not in a hurry. Judging by the white ghost’s trail, it seemed to be deliberately leading them upward.

“Qiang, this building only has three floors! We’re heading to the fourth floor!” Fatty suddenly realized something and grabbed Song Nianqiang’s arm. At those words, Song Nianqiang felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck his mind. He formed a seal with both hands, and the Five Thunder Spell was unleashed at once. Five bolts of blue lightning crashed down from the sky, and both Song Nianqiang and Fatty instantly broke into a cold sweat.