Opening
This story is purely fictional. Except for some real place names, any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental.
Jiangzhu University was built in 2003 as a private institution. The school was constructed against the mountains, surrounded on three sides, making winters exceptionally cold. The mountain forest at night was even more shrouded in gloom—no one dared approach it. At the entrance to the forest stood a warning sign reading "No Entry," surrounded by a sparse, rusted iron fence.
This was a story that had circulated within the university for over a decade.
Legend has it that around 2005, when the back mountain forest had not yet been designated forbidden ground, the building closest to the school's back forest was a boys' dormitory.
One summer night, wind, rain, thunder, and lightning filled the sky, torrential rain scouring the earth as if trying to wash it clean, and it did not stop for a long time. In a dormitory room on the first floor, a boy tossed and turned, unable to sleep from the noise. The air was stifling and humid, and he heard his roommate breathing heavily with effort. The roommate had congenital asthma, and it was clearly acting up now. The roommate got out of bed and went to the balcony to use his oxygen inhaler. The boy, worried, got up too and went to the balcony, supporting his roommate with one hand while helping him squeeze the oxygen device with the other.
Suddenly, a long bolt of lightning tore through the night sky, and a figure passed by in front of the balcony. In the balcony light, they saw—it was a monster, neither human nor ghost, standing before them. It wore a black raincoat and held a blood-red knife in its hand, blood still dripping from the tip. Its face was an ashen, bone-white color, crimson bloodstains mixed with rainwater streaking down its face in eerie patterns, and a pair of blood-red eyes stared fixedly at them at that very moment.
Two terrified screams rang out at once, louder even than the thunder and rain. The two boys clutched each other in fright, and the one with asthma immediately felt his breath choke in his chest, passing out on the spot, unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital that very night, but all efforts to save him failed, and he died. A poor young life, extinguished so mysteriously and unaccountably on that thunderstorm night.
When this incident spread through the school afterward, many people were too frightened to go out onto their balconies at night. The students in the dormitory room where the death occurred all moved out. Strangely, a faint, foul stench of decay would drift about the dormitory building from time to time, and no one knew where it came from. There was also often the sound of crows cawing, echoing through the valley, sending chills down anyone who heard it.
Later, on some unknown day, a group of students went to play in the back mountain forest and, to their shock, found a skeleton in the grass, with only a little rotted flesh still clinging to it.
After that, the boys' dormitory building in front of the mountain forest was relocated, and the entire building was converted into a warehouse. No one knows exactly when it happened, but a rusted warning sign was put up at the entrance to the forest, and a fence was erected around it, and without a sound it silently became forbidden ground for the school. As for the other boy who had seen the monster, no one knew where he had gone either.
This story quietly passed down from one generation of Jiangzhu University students to the next, and as the years accumulated, it had been told for a full fifteen years—until, fifteen years later, a new story slowly began.