“Zuo Si!! What are you doing? What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you talking to me?”
Ding Ruxiao’s voice, filled with both fear and surprise, reached Zuo Si’s ears.
Zuo Si could even feel her standing right beside him, and could even smell her familiar fragrance.
Pat-pat…pat-pat…
Familiar footsteps reached his ears, and Zuo Si instantly felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave.
What he feared most had come to pass.
He knew what sound would follow without even thinking.
Ding Ruxiao’s voice came first.
“Who are you? What do you want? Don’t come any closer!!”
“Since you won’t leave, then stay and die!!”
“I’ll leave…I’ll leave…Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!”
“Trying to leave? Too late!”
Bang! The sound of a wooden stick striking flesh.
“Ah!!!” Ding Ruxiao’s scream shattered Zuo Si’s heart.
He wanted to open his eyes, he wanted to make a sound! But another voice inside him kept telling him it was all an illusion.
“Zuo Si…save me!”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The wooden stick struck again and again.
Ding Ruxiao’s screams never stopped.
“Zuo Si, don’t you…don’t you love me? Are you going to just watch me get killed?”
“How could you be so cruel…”
She was crying, her voice growing weaker and weaker.
And tears streamed down Zuo Si’s face.
His heart was in turmoil.
“What if…what if it’s real? Even if I survive, what then? Ding Ruxiao is dying beside me. How can I face living in this world?”
His body trembled uncontrollably; Zuo Si was on the verge of losing his mind.
“Calm down! I must calm down!”
“Think about it carefully. Whether it’s being discovered by the night watchmen, or Lin Zihao and Ding Ruxiao coming to find me, these are the things I fear most. They can’t all happen at the same time!”
“And there’s the most important thing! They haven’t touched me at all!”
“If this really happened to me, why haven’t the three of them touched me even once!?”
Thinking this, Zuo Si gradually calmed down, his heart as unbreakable as steel.
The sounds around him disappeared completely.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Now he just had to wait for the alarm to ring again.
Although the alarm was set too early, every phone has a function: it will ring again after five minutes if the alarm isn’t canceled.
So, Zuo Si just needed to wait for the alarm to ring again, and this test of courage would be successfully completed.
Bang! Another sound of a door opening.
After a brief silence.
Ha~
It sounded like someone was breathing in his ear, cold and eerie. If there was a hallucination just now, the only thing missing was the sense of touch. Now, he regained his sense of touch.
He could clearly feel a cold wind blowing past his ears.
His left hand also turned icy cold at the same instant, as if enveloped by a chilling aura.
This chilling sensation spread continuously, starting with just his palm.
Then it spread to his arm… and even half his body…
Crack!
Like the sound of porcelain shattering on the ground, the chilling sensation quickly dissipated after the sound ended.
Ring ring~ Ring ring~
The alarm clock rang again. Zuo Si let out a long breath; five minutes had passed.
He suddenly opened his eyes, staring in shock at the mirror in front of him.
The mirror was shattered!
And it cracked from his face outwards in pieces…
As if he had been punched like that.
Composing himself, he looked at the sink in front of him; there was a box on it.
It seemed this was the mission reward: the wondrous music box. He examined it closely; it was made of mahogany, intricately carved with various patterns.
Although it looked old, it didn’t appear worn at all.
Opening the lid, he saw a cute doll standing inside, ready to dance.
There was a knob on the right side of the box; turning it winds the music box.
Zuo Si didn’t rush to experiment; he didn’t want to attract all the children to this place.
He looked at the ground and found several white shards.
“The sound of the porcelain breaking earlier… that was this thing.”
Crouching down for a closer look, he realized it was Qin Shuangya’s plate.
“I clearly put it in my pocket, how did it fall out by itself? Did Qin Shuangya save me??”
Recalling the chilling feeling he felt earlier, combined with the sound of the plate shattering,
Zuo Si was almost certain that Qin Shuangya had saved him.
“Qin Shuangya!”
“Qin Shuangya!”
He called out Qin Shuangya’s name, but there was no response.
“Has her soul already vanished?”
Zuo Si felt incredibly guilty.
“I only wanted to use her. Love, lovers, it was all a lie. How could she be so foolish? She actually sacrificed herself for me?!”
Zuo Si had never felt so despicable. A deep sense of guilt overwhelmed him, yet he didn’t know how to make up for everything Qin Shuangya had done for him.
He picked up the plates one by one, checked them carefully, wrapped them up, and put them back in his jacket pocket.
“Since I agreed to be your lover tonight, we absolutely won’t be apart tonight!”
He took a breath, trying to regain his composure.
The night wasn’t over yet; the mission had to continue.
Zuo Si took out his live-streaming phone and looked at the comments, wanting to know what had just happened.
The viewership had already reached 30,000, and the comments were scrolling by rapidly.
“Holy crap, today’s livestream was so high-energy!”
“The streamer is amazing! The bathroom is supposed to be the most yin place, and you actually dared to play ghost games there!”
“What were those shadows surrounding the streamer just now? And how did the toilet door suddenly open?”
“How did the mirror break?! Why did my screen suddenly go black?!”
“Me too! My screen went black at the crucial moment! Thumbs down! Thumbs down!”
“Are you all stupid? This must be a real ghost! The streamer stood there without moving; there’s no way he could have turned off the stream!”
“My god, the streamer on the Wild Wolf platform is insane! Under the guise of ghost hunting, he’s actually seeing a real ghost…?!”
“Protect yourself with the comments! Protect yourself with the comments!”
“…”
Zuo Si chatted with his viewers for a few minutes, and he already had a general understanding of the situation.
The viewers didn’t say anyone went into the bathroom, nor did they hear any other voices.
In other words, what Zuo Si heard was indeed a hallucination.
However, a few shadowy figures had indeed appeared near him…
Zuo Si looked at the music box in his hand, intending to do the third optional quest.
But not here.
He planned to go to the rooftop, where the view was unobstructed and he wouldn’t be easily spotted by the night watchmen.
Upon reaching the sixth floor, he found a rusty iron staircase leading to the roof.
Afraid of falling, Zuo Si found a small classroom in the corner of the sixth floor.
He found a reasonably intact table and chair, sat down, lit a candle, and began winding the music box.