Congratulations on Your Successful Escape

Chapter 15

Darkness, endless darkness entangled his limbs and dragged him into an endless abyss.

All the colours seemed to have broken into pieces and faded, melting into the darkness of eternal night.

This felt so familiar …

It was like … it was like the nightmare he had been having …

Mo Yi was in a trance, clenching the photo frame in his hand in vain, lettings its ice-cold hard edges and corners dig into his chest and abdomen, reminding him that he was not in a dream.

Suddenly, an icy chill that bit to the bones burst out, and the monstrous malice and resentment almost solidified into an entity, merging with the surrounding darkness, and then surged towards Mo Yi.

It seemed that the whole world wanted to kill him!

The alarms all over his whole body desperately rang! Screaming warnings about the impending danger!

Mo Yi’s merely felt cold and stiff all over, and his sudden fear was like a pair of invisible hands around his throat, strangling the air out of his chest. The feeling of death was so close that he could only tremble and wait for its arrival.

But when the resentment approached, it seemed to stop.

The photo frame in his arms suddenly began to violently shake!

The pausing resentment was like a beast that found its prey, or a shark that smelt blood. It changed its direction, and then pounced fiercely and cruelly on the photo frame!

Mo Yi only felt a strong force rushing towards the photo frame, heavily knocking him back, and the sweet fishy taste of rust bubbled forth from his chest.

He finally touched the ground.

Mo Yi squeezed out a painful gasp with difficulty and curled up on the sticky wet ground. From head to toe, he was filled with so much pain that he almost broke into pieces, but it didn’t hold a match to the ripping pain in his left leg … it was probably broken.

There was a damp, moldy smell lingering around his nose, just like in the corridor.

He raised his eyelids with difficulty and looked to the side.

The surrounding darkness wasn’t like before, without a glimmer of light, but had turned into a dim turbid grey haze. It was just enough so that he could clearly see around him.

He caught sight of the silver photo frame that was now damaged. It looked corroded, twisted, and charred black, as if it had suffered from some inhumane torture. It lay beside him, giving off the appearance that it had given up all hope.

Mo Yi distinctly knew in his heart that the force that nearly ripped him apart was originally aimed at him, but it had changed directions when he touched the photo frame. It could even be said that the photo frame had blocked a blow for him.

He dared not imagine what he would have become if he hadn’t fallen down with the photo frame.

Mo Yi couldn’t help squeezing out a hoarse cough from his throat. His lungs were like broken bellows. Every time he coughed, he pulled at the wounds all over his body, and the pain was unbearable.

Just then, out of the corners of his eyes, he caught a glimpse of a strange thing which had fallen on the middle of the twisted photo frame.

Mo Yi was stunned.

Subconsciously, he felt that this was precisely the key he was looking for.

Then, perhaps born with a high tolerance for pain, he struggled to stand up, and limply walked over and bent down and picked it up.

It was a wrinkled-up piece of paper.

There was only a familiar sketch on the paper, hasty and careless, as it were a child’s unconscious jottings at whim. At first glance, it looked like a deformed bird.

Mo Yi was stunned for a second, and a blurry picture flashed through his mind: this was precisely the sketch drawn on the blackboard of Zhao Qiulan’s classroom.

The only unexplained sentence in the hint abruptly jumped into his mind with unparalleled clarity: footless swallow.

Mo Yi’s heart was pounding, and he turned the paper over.

The paper shone with triumphant brilliant rays of light. Mo Yi felt dizzy, and he couldn’t help closing his eyes to avoid the dazzling light.

There was a sound of quarreling voices in his ear.

Mo Yi opened his eyes in surprise and was shocked to find that he was standing in a corridor.

He raised his eyes blankly. In the next second, the black “4f” on top of his head nearly stung his eyes.

But not far away, the quarrelling voices became louder and louder. Mo Yi frowned and dragged his half lame leg to follow the sound.

.

Only one of the doors was open, and “Principal’s Office” was written in standard bold letters on the door. There were two men fiercely arguing about something. One of them was facing Mo Yi. He was an old man in his 50s or 60s who looked slightly bald, and he seemed to be out of his mind.

And the other one was a tall and thin young man with his back facing Mo Yi. His hands opened and closed, and he was in the process of gesturing something. “… Please, let me do this. Or I’ll really go crazy!”

The old man was silent.

Agitated, the young man continued, “She wants to kill me! Don’t you understand! She’s going to kill me! It’s self defence!”

The old man was suddenly stirred, and he stood up, slapping the table. His saliva went flying and his cheeks were flushed. “Then you shouldn’t have done anything to her in the first place!”

The young man choked for a moment, then roared in a louder voice, “Yes, it was that bitch who seduced me first! There are photos of that kind! What a respectable person!”

“Then neither can you … then neither can you …” The old man pointed at the young man, trembling all over, looking like he hated iron for not becoming steel.

The young man dejectedly sat down on a chair, buried his face in his palms, and replied dully, “I didn’t want it to be like this either. Who would have known, I just pushed her head … then it struck the steps …”

Suddenly, he raised his head and looked at the old man,

Mo Yi was surprised. He recognized the face: the young man was the man in the silver photo frame, the monster trying to keep him in the illusion.

His voice was low and hoarse, like a hissing poisonous snake. “Now that the matter has reached this stage, a dead person can’t be resurrected. Her wronged soul is entangled with me and wants to drag me away to share the same fate. I can’t just sit back and wait for death.”

The young man stood up, took out a piece of crumbled up paper from his pockets, patted it on the table and showed a nervous smile. “The Great Master said that this must be useful. We only need her corpse.”

The old man was still hesitating.

The young man suddenly fell to his knees with a thump and looked at the old man with tears and snot flowing down profusely and said, “Please, help me again! Please, help me! Dad!”

The old man hardened his heart, and finally nodded.

The whole scene once again went ablaze with brilliant rays of light, dazzling him until he could hardly open his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, Mo Yi had returned to the grey space.

He lowered his eyes and stood for a long time.

At this moment, all the clues finally were connected, pieced together to form a complete picture in his mind.

This building should be the embodiment of Zhao Qiulan’s three years of high school. The ghosts and monsters on each floor corresponded with her bitter experiences every year.

The first floor with Hanako corresponded to her mother who committed suicide after killing her father when she was in her first year of high school; the moving photos on the second floor corresponded with the forced nude photos taken of her at school in her second year of high school, the steps on the third floor corresponded to when she was molested by the teacher, and while struggling, was killed when she was knocked down on the steps.

And the teacher … was the man in the photo.

Mo Yi lowered his head and scrutinized the wrinkled-up paper in his hand, only to see a few lines of illegible characters and a few rough sketches, which had become blurred and indistinct because of the passage of time.

He could barely discern that what was written on it was a long-lost practise of the magical arts, the purpose of which was to seal the soul, so that it could not reincarnate, could not have a chance of rebirth, and could not stage a rebellion.

Mo Yi rubbed the deformed bird on the edge of the paper with his fingertips. He was a little distracted for a moment.

He finally recognized the totem.

This was a Saint Martlet bird, also known as a swallow, which could be found in some Heraldry books.

It has no feet and could only fly forever, just like Zhao Qiulan, who was trapped in despair and helplessness, and whose soul could not be freed. Unlike swallows, they keep flying until they die, and she was already dead, so her “forever” was truly endless.

Mo Yi smoothed the paper with his fingers, but he felt a folded mark at the end. He was puzzled, fumbled for the gap, and unfolded the paper along the edge of the crease.

There was a strange pattern painted on it, with a line of maroon words beside it. “Fear of fire, caution.”

Mo Yi was stunned for a while, then raised his head, only to find that the darkness around him had become lighter and had almost faded to a pale greyish white. His field of vision had also broadened.

Only then did he realize that he was now standing in a deep pit. The pit was rectangular, and it looked … like it was in the same shape as the whole school campus building. The bright red lines in the pit were arranged in a crisscross pattern, and the red oozing, like fresh blood, formed a weird pattern on the floor, and in every corner lay a pile of pale bones.

Mo Yi stood in the middle of the pattern.

He took a deep breath and reached into his pocket. An ice-cold object pressed against his fingertips and he pulled it out.

It was a silver lighter.

Mo Yi pursed the corners of his lips with a complicated expression in the depths of his eyes.

He didn’t smoke. However, on his way home yesterday, he wasn’t sure for what reason, he bought a lighter from a roadside stand and put it in his pocket.

But he couldn’t predict the future, let alone know that it would come in handy today.

Perhaps … there merely was nothing more to it?

Mo Yi’s mind was in a tangle, and he held the lighter tightly with his fingers until the metal case was tainted with his warm body temperature, as if this would calm him down.

He took a deep breath and drove out the chaotic thoughts in his mind.

— In any case, destroying this array was now the top priority.

Mo Yi turned on the lighter and loosened his fingers. The ignited flame was pulled down by gravity, whirling as it fell. When it touched the blood red lines on the ground, it instantly burned, and then spread at a rapid speed. Everywhere it went, there was fire.

As the bones were burning, a few slight “kacha” sounds rang in his ears, and several cracks appeared in the air. Then the whole space, as if it were unable to endure it, cracked and shattered into thick black fragments.

Immediately afterwards, the scene in front of him flashed, and Mo Yi found that he was standing in the corridor of the school campus.

He looked around blankly for a long time and recognized that this was the second floor, and it happened to be where he had entered the photo.

And outside the window beside him, a row of numbers in the dark sky flashed a brilliant bright blue: “0:08.”

“ — No!!!!”

There was a piercing scream in his ear, sad and hoarse, as if suffering from all kinds of pain. “Eight minutes! There’s still eight minutes left! I’ll have two souls in eight minutes! I can escape! Don’t —!”

What was this voice?

Mo Yi was taken aback and limped to the stairwell.

The silver photo frame hanging on the wall had disappeared, and the man in the photo was also gone. Only the black and smelly liquid dripped down the wall, leaving charred and corrosive traces.

He seemed to catch a glimpse of a girl’s figure.

When Mo Yi turned his head and looked again, there was no one there.

A familiar sweet female voice rang in his ear:

“Congratulations to Player Mo Yi. You have completed the side mission: Sweet Revenge. The mission reward has been sent to your account. Please collect it after the game is over.”

Mo Yi’s tense nerves suddenly relaxed, and the pain and soreness all over his body came like a tide. He was forced to reach out and hold the wall to barely keep himself from falling.

The wall under his palm suddenly shook. Mo Yi looked up in astonishment, only to find that the end of the corridor had begun to collapse, and the whole school campus building was crumbling! The building seemed to be violently shaking.

Mo Yi was startled and clearly understood in an instant.

The whole school campus building was Zhao Qiulan’s experience, or the embodiment of her resentment. When “Sweet Revenge” was completed, the building obviously had no need to exist…

Therefore, it started to fall apart.

The window joints were pressed into an odd shape by the crumbling wall, then broke apart and fell into the void, revealing a large area of flowing darkness.

Only then did Mo Yi discover … the darkness outside the window was actually never empty, but a thick mist that that had practically solidified into an entity!

In the wake of the collapsed wall, the silent mist rushed into the breaking corridor, dashing towards where Mo Yi was!

There was nowhere to escape.

There was no way to go.

A sense of danger struck, and the feeling of constriction was a hundred times more terrifying than in the illusion! It squeezed every trace of breath of air from his chest, choking his throat, forcing him to tremble uncontrollably.

The mist slowly swallowed him.

During the struggle, the wound on his forehead split open again. Warm and viscous blood covered his eyelashes, dying Mo Yi’s entire vision a bright red.

In this bright red view, he saw the mist gathering.

The surrounding mist thinned into a pale pallor, but in the middle, it slowly condensed into a tall human form!

The numbers in mid air flashed a faint blue light behind him, and Mo Yi was stiff. The mist around him seemed to be tangled around his limbs, so he could only watch helplessly as the man slowly approached step by step.

The ice-cold breath of death lingered in his noise.

The man stood still in front of him, stretched out his cold hands, and like an iron hoop, firmly clasped Mo Yi’s chin, and then lowered his head and licked the bleeding wound on his forehead.

The ice-cold and rough tongue swirled on his flesh, and the wound that had just healed was torn open again, and extraordinary pain instantly struck.

It hurt! Why did it hurt so much!

It seemed that all the pain he had experienced in his life had come together, and then multiplied hundreds of times! All the pain was wedged into his head and hammered his nerves like a furious storm.

Mo Yi’s vision was black, and he was almost unable to breathe.

For some reason, along with the pain, a manic mood rose up, boiling along the blood vessels, steaming, and fermenting, like a sleeping beast, seizing the opportunity to charge at the cage of reason at the bottom of his heart.

Roaring, howling, and venting the astonishing desire for dominance!

The fury that came out of nowhere dominated Mo Yi’s reason and body. He struggled to cast off the shackles of the mist around him!

The body under his palm was cold and strong, as if it contained unlimited power and terrible explosive force.

A desire for destruction rose in his heart.

Mo Yi involuntarily showed a neurotic smile, buried his head in the hollow of the man’s neck, and bit down fiercely and heavily!

The sharp canine teeth pierced the skin. To his amazement, the man’s blood was unexpectedly burning hot, gushing out from the wound, and the salty liquid flowed into Mo Yi’s body along his throat.

The warm heat filled his entire body, and his reason was almost paralyzed. The rich smell of blood made him almost addicted like it was a drug, and he increased the power between his teeth.

In the hazy light, Mo Yi realized that —

After he broke free, the man didn’t do anything else. Instead, he turned his head indulgingly, exposing the hollows of his neck under his teeth.

He even gave a deep smile.

Finally, the bloody impulse had nearly passed, and he became sober and calm. Mo Yi looked over the man’s shoulder and saw the faint blue light flashing, and the number in the air became: 0:00.

The outdated electronic music rang in his ears, “Congratulation on your successful escape!”

All sounds and images were pulled away, and Mo Yi’s vision went dark and he fainted.

And the second before he lost consciousness, the last image in his retina was … the man turned his head, and then dropped an ice-cold bloody kiss on his bloody eyelashes.