Chapter 2: A Ghostly Shadow, Peeping at the Illicit Affair (3/3)

Late at night, the student dormitory had already sunk completely into darkness, silent and still. Even those who weren't asleep were merely lying under their covers with headphones on, occasionally letting out a faint chuckle. Tang Haoyang had just finished watching an episode of *Chinese Poetry Conference*, and feeling the urge to relieve himself, he got up to go to the bathroom. His dorm room was mixed—since very few male students chose Chinese Language and Literature as their major—and of his three roommates, only Ren Jie was asleep; his breathing came calm and steady from time to time, while the other two had their phone screens lit up, doing who knew what. Just as he was about to get out of bed, the sound of high heels walking suddenly rang out, one click after another, exceptionally clear, appearing all the more eerie in the dead of night—just like the erratic flapping of bats and the cries of owls in a horror film.

"What is that sound?" one roommate sat up and asked. "Did you guys hear that? It sounds like it's coming from the hallway outside."

Another roommate said, "It does sound like high heels walking. Could it be a female teacher doing a bed check? This late at night?"

Tang Haoyang had already gone into the bathroom, and by the time he came out after finishing his business, the sound was still going. Curious, he leaned in to the peephole, trying to see what was outside. The hallway light wasn't on—it was a motion-sensor light—and by its dim glow he saw a pitch-black figure walking past. But that figure seemed to sense someone watching from behind the door, and it turned its head directly, pressing its face right up against the peephole. Its whole face was covered in blood streaks, and its bulging eyeballs nearly touched the peephole, grinning eerily all the while.

Tang Haoyang immediately screamed in fright and stumbled backward, his legs giving out from under him as he fell flat on his rear, startling Ren Jie awake from his deep sleep. The other two roommates were also badly frightened, and hurried down from their beds to help him up.

"What's wrong?" one of them asked.

"What... what did you see?" the other asked, a bit fearfully.

Tang Haoyang still hadn't recovered, his eyes flickering with terror, and he said with lingering dread, "Don't look. Don't go over there. Whatever's out there—it's not human."

"Not human? You mean it's a ghost?"

Tang Haoyang nodded at the two of them, then nodded at Ren Jie, who had just sat up. Both roommates sucked in a sharp breath of cold air, at a loss for words.

It wasn't clear which roommate finally spoke up: "I told you so. The school really is haunted. I saw it before myself, but none of you believed me."

After that, silence fell, and no one answered.

Ghosts—this is a term that has circulated in China for five thousand years. Since the founding of the nation, there had been continuous efforts to root out feudal superstition, but even now, many bizarre phenomena still cannot be explained by science. They remain just as mysterious and unfathomable as they were five thousand years ago. Whether or not they exist, the best approach is to respect ghosts and spirits while keeping one's distance from them; the next best is, naturally, to do nothing that weighs on one's conscience, so as not to fear a ghost knocking at the door. Viewed in this light, it stood to reason that someone at Jiangzhu University had indeed done something that weighed on their conscience.