Jiang Nuan came back to herself with a start.
She was still crouched in front of her suitcase, the little deer cup clutched in her hand.
The electronic clock in the dorm room had already changed to 9:57 p.m. At some point, the other two girls had climbed into bed and were now lying rigidly on their sides, facing the wall.
Ji Chuying walked in carrying her toiletries. Her damp, dripping hair clung to the sides of her face, and that unnaturally wide grin still hung from the corners of her mouth.
“It’s 9:59.”
She stared straight at Jiang Nuan.
“Best friend, get back to bed.”
Jiang Nuan’s lips twitched.
This best friend of hers really was reliable. Showing her the way, giving testimony in front of the teacher, reminding her about the dorm rules—she never missed a thing.
Jiang Nuan shoved the cup back into her suitcase, snapped the lid shut, and immediately climbed the ladder to her bed.
The moment she lay down, the lights in the room went out with a sharp click.
The dorm plunged into darkness. A sliver of moonlight filtered in through the window, just enough to outline the desks, chairs, and beds.
Jiang Nuan closed her eyes and thought about the memory she had just recovered.
So she had once had another close friend named Zheng Chengxin.
The Zheng family was no small clan either, but Jiang Nuan hadn’t seen that name in the news at all during this period.
…Could something have happened to Zheng Chengxin?
In this apocalypse, disappearances and deaths were far too common.
Someone she had been chatting with one day might be impossible to find even a trace of a few days later.
Then there was Bai Siyuan’s remark from back then: “I’ll make sure you’re well taken care of.”
For some reason, it floated back into her memory again.
It was an entirely ordinary thing to say, yet Jiang Nuan felt inexplicably uneasy.
Once she left the restricted zone, she would have to keep an eye out for news about the Zheng family.
Suddenly, dragging footsteps sounded in the hallway.
One step.
Then another.
The sound drew closer.
The dormitory inspection had begun.
Jiang Nuan held her breath.
She still didn’t know the precise rules for inspections. No returning late, and everyone had to remain in bed.
What else?
Was she supposed to pretend to be asleep, or cooperate when the teacher called roll?
The broadcast had only said that anyone who failed to return to the dormitory before the deadline would have their enrollment revoked.
The footsteps stopped outside Room 307.
Click.
The dorm-room door was pushed open.
A chill wind carrying a bloody, fishy stench slipped inside and slowly crawled along the floor.
Jiang Nuan squeezed her eyes shut.
The heavy footsteps entered the room and stopped beside the door for two seconds.
When it found nothing to see, the sound grew much louder.
The footsteps first stopped beside the bed nearest the door. The bed frame creaked faintly.
It sounded as though something had bent down and was leaning over the bed, peering at the person lying there.
After several seconds, the footsteps shifted slowly and stopped beneath Ji Chuying’s bed.
The dorm room was terrifyingly quiet.
No one turned over. No one made a sound in response to the inspector’s approach.
Jiang Nuan couldn’t even tell whether the people in the other three beds were still capable of moving.
The footsteps continued.
Jiang Nuan kept her eyes closed and slowed her breathing, making the rise and fall of her chest almost imperceptible.
The dorm room fell silent again. Jiang Nuan counted her breaths—one, two—without knowing how much time had passed.
At last, she couldn’t take it anymore and opened her eyes a fraction.
A mass of black shadow was hunched over the bed across from her.
Its back was facing her. It looked like a person bent over the upper bunk, its head dangling down as it stared at the person lying there.
Jiang Nuan’s back went rigid.
It was the female teacher from the duty room downstairs.
Jiang Nuan had caught a glimpse of the woman when she entered the dormitory hall. She was no more than five foot three.
But the shadow before her had lowered its head until it was almost touching the ceiling.
No normal person could bend that far.
Jiang Nuan’s gaze shifted inch by inch.
In the darkness, she first saw two shoes.
Their toes pointed directly toward the bed across from her, planted firmly on the floor.
Then came a pair of straight, rigid legs.
Higher up, the creature’s shoulders were still in place.
But above them, where a head should have been attached, there was only a section of black shadow stretched thin and long.
It looked like a rope that kept extending into the darkness.
The rope reached almost to the ceiling before drooping back down, staring at the person lying on the bed.
That head turned slowly, inch by inch.
A chill shot up Jiang Nuan’s spine, and she instinctively closed her eyes.
A faint rustling came from the ceiling.
It sounded as though something long, thin, and pliable were rubbing its way across the ceiling, inch by inch.
Jiang Nuan did not dare move. She made her breathing as light as possible and pretended to be deeply asleep.
The sound above her did not stop.
Scrape.
Scrape, scrape.
The bed sank ever so slightly.
It felt as though something had crawled onto the edge of her bed and was staring down at her from above, checking whether she was truly asleep.
Jiang Nuan could feel that head hanging down from the ceiling, suspended in front of her. It did not touch her. It simply hovered there.
As though waiting for her to reveal a flaw.
Jiang Nuan had no idea how much time passed. She didn’t dare open her eyes to check the time and could only silently count her heartbeats.
When she reached one hundred, the scraping sound overhead began again.
Only after the dormitory door opened without a sound and closed just as quietly did the cold, bloody stench finally dissipate.
The room fell silent once more—a deathly silence.
Jiang Nuan remained lying down.
After waiting for a while, she finally opened her eyes very slowly.
The dormitory was still pitch-black.
Once her eyes adjusted, the outlines of the room gradually emerged from the darkness.
The three roommates remained in their original positions, lying motionless with their backs to her.
She didn’t know whether they were asleep, dead, or awake in some other way she couldn’t comprehend.
The thing conducting the inspection had left.
At least the inspection was over. She had returned to the dormitory on time and lain quietly in bed until the end. Her enrollment should be safe for now.
She couldn’t stay here any longer. She had to find Qi Sui and Qinian.
Jiang Nuan silently pushed off her blanket, climbed down the ladder, and gently opened the dorm-room door.
The hallway was pitch-black. She could barely make out which way she was facing as she headed toward the stairs.
But after taking only two steps, she stopped.
The hallway was too quiet.
The dormitory inspector had left Room 307 only moments ago, yet there were no heavy footsteps continuing down the corridor, nor any sounds of doors unlocking and closing.
It hadn’t gone far.
Either it had slipped into one of the rooms, or it was crouching somewhere she couldn’t see.
Jiang Nuan quickly backed against the wall and hid behind a support pillar.
The instant she was concealed, the door of the last dormitory at the end of the hall opened.
Tap.
Tap.
The dormitory inspector stepped out.
She still looked the way Jiang Nuan had seen her downstairs: thin and short.
But her footsteps were extraordinarily heavy. Her long, slender neck jutted forward, as though it could no longer support the weight of her head. Her entire body seemed to sag beneath it.
The dormitory inspector stretched her neck as she passed Room 307.
Jiang Nuan carefully shifted around behind the pillar, keeping out of the teacher’s line of sight.
Fortunately, the inspector did not look in her direction. She reached the end of the hallway; once she turned the corner, the stairs would be right there.
But Jiang Nuan did not let her guard down. She remained poised to strike at any moment.
Just as the dormitory inspector was about to turn the corner, her body stayed still, but her neck gave a faint, teeth-grating crack.
Click.
That unnaturally long neck suddenly twisted around, her face turning backward to stare directly at the pillar where Jiang Nuan was hiding.
Every alarm in Jiang Nuan’s mind went off.
Almost the instant she turned her head, the Moonblade shot from Jiang Nuan’s hand!
The moon blade slashed out of the darkness in a streak of silver, heading straight for that face.
Jiang Nuan didn’t even see how it moved.
The dormitory inspector’s long-necked figure suddenly lifted both feet off the ground and leaped up to the ceiling.
Bang!
The moon blade struck deep into the wall.
The small, thin figure clung to the ceiling on all fours, hanging upside down. Its long neck twisted as its head remained angled backward, its eyes locked relentlessly on Jiang Nuan.
“Student, you’re not allowed to leave your dorm after lights-out.”
“Then what do you call stretching your neck onto someone else’s bed?” She raised her right hand, and three moon blades instantly took shape. “A demonstration?”
All three moon blades tore through the air at once.
The dormitory inspector abruptly bent all four limbs and swept toward the opposite wall.
But just as it landed, Jiang Nuan’s left hand, which had been hanging at her side, suddenly shot upward.
Another moon blade—already formed—whistled through the air.
With a wet thud, the slender, twisted neck was pinned firmly to the wall.
As the creature struggled, Jiang Nuan spun around and dashed down the stairs, racing toward the dormitory lobby.
The lobby entrance was just ahead.
Jiang Nuan shoved open the glass door, and a cold wind carrying the darkness of night rushed into her face.
The moment she stepped outside, she unexpectedly collided with someone’s arms.
The other person reacted even faster than she did. One arm swept around her, holding her securely against his chest.
The moon blade in Jiang Nuan’s hand was just about to form when a familiar voice came from above her head.
“A Nuan?”
Jiang Nuan froze.
His voice trembled faintly, as though he feared she would disappear again the next second.
A sudden sting filled her nose, and she looked up.
In the moonlight, Bai Siyuan’s face was pale. His black hair was slightly disheveled by the wind, yet it only made his clean, refined features stand out more.
The moon blade in her hand silently dissipated.
“Big brother.”
