Chapter 153: Why Don’t You Play With Us?
The moment the door shut heavily, the light in the self-study room dimmed suddenly, as if the sunlight was blocked by thick clouds, and everything in sight was enveloped in a grayish haze, as if all in the classroom was gradually aging.
Lu Yibei looked up at the window and was surprised to find that above, the early autumn sunlight was still fierce; it just couldn’t reach this self-study room.
He stared out the window for a few seconds, then suddenly realized that the music from students rehearsing in the distant open space that he could occasionally hear when he entered this teaching building had vanished at some point.
It was as if some force had isolated the self-study room from the campus outside… Lu Yibei squinted, thinking.
If the current situation was indeed caused by the Urban Legends Chat Group, then the issues behind it were likely much more significant than imagined.
While Lu Yibei was briefly pondering, the light in the classroom seemed to have unknowingly darkened even further, and the atmosphere became increasingly oppressive.
This feeling reminded him of when he was very little and had been accidentally locked in the classroom by a teacher after school.
At that time, he stood alone by the classroom window, watching the sunlight gradually swallowed by the horizon, its colors splendid like a blazing flame.
He didn’t dare to turn around; he just silently appreciated it, as if it symbolized the beauty of an end.
He felt that the classroom behind him was filled with students, some whispering, some wrestling like beasts, and some just sitting quietly behind him, examining him with indescribable eyes.
The classroom was lively.
But… they were not his familiar classmates.
Outside the classroom, in the corridor, a phantom-like sound of footsteps could be heard, intermittently wandering on the same floor.
Perhaps it was the patrolling janitors?
He tried to call out loudly, but only his own youthful voice echoed through the campus.
Then.
The sky was completely darkened, the last bit of light swallowed by darkness, as if the entire world had drifted far away from him.
Due to the long time and excessive fright, Lu Yibei could no longer remember the specific details after the sky had gone completely dark that day; he only remembered that in the end, it was his dad and Water Brother who climbed the wall and unlocked the door to take him out of the school, and they were caught on surveillance, resulting in a compensation of nearly two thousand to the school the next day.
He only remembered that day, when he first tasted the fear that came from darkness.
……
Soon, the self-study room was completely darkened, the dim yellow light making it hard to tell whether it was dusk or evening. At that moment, a sneaky sound echoed in the silent classroom.
“Pat—pat—!”
Lu Yibei looked in the direction of the sound but found that the desks and chairs, which were unknowingly stained with mottled rust, completely obstructed his line of sight.
“Pat—pat—!”
The series of strange sounds resembled footsteps, quick in speed and light, as if stepping on some slippery, viscous liquid.
In this self-study room, was there something wrapped in slime or bl**d quickly crawling in the invisible places?
What exactly was it, and was it dangerous?
While Lu Yibei was pondering, a hand was already pressing down on his guitar case.
He swallowed hard, focused his attention, and fixed his gaze in the direction from which the suspicious footsteps were coming. Immediately, his eyes experienced a wave of mild heat.
Just a slight warmth?
Lu Yibei tilted his head, his expression somewhat confused.
……
In the past month, he had experienced nearly a dozen encounters with urban legends, and had summarized some experience in judging their strength.
From his conclusions, the degree of burning in his eyes when encountering an urban legend for the first time was significantly related to the strength of the other party; the danger level could be divided into four tiers.
Those urban legends residing in his home, which even ordinary people found difficult to harm, almost never made his eyes show any unusual reactions.
Their danger level roughly corresponded to the unclassified urban legends accounted for by the Siye Society, belonging to the first tier.
The second tier included the Decapitated Senior, Zhu Linglong, and Luxu; they were capable of harming ordinary people, but he had the ability to overcome them, roughly corresponding to danger levels between D and C grade based on encounters.
The third tier comprised the monstrous hand that attacked Professor Ma from the sink and the urban legends that emerged after the four troublemakers from Shihhekou Middle School were transformed.
Their abilities had reached a rather bizarre level, leaving ordinary people with almost no capability to resist.
When encountering them, his eyes burned as if on fire, and under severe stimulation, symptoms like blurred vision and tears spilling out would appear, as if he had provoked inflammation, persisting with dryness and biting pain for hours.
Mr. Rabbit could also be broadly included in this tier of urban legends; based on the public files provided by Jiang Li, it should be rated B level.
In this tier of urban legends, Lu Yibei felt that his chances in direct combat were quite low, but in a one-on-one encounter, even if he couldn’t win, he could still run away.
In short, as long as he didn’t act recklessly, the probability of dying wouldn’t be too high.
Aside from these three tiers, there were other urban legends that Lu Yibei was uncertain about how to further classify them.
He only knew that when encountering them, there was a common phenomenon: his eyes would briefly go blind, seeing light and shadow that didn’t belong to the real world.
Jumeng, Zigu, the giant fish on the playground, the creatures in the bamboo slips, and the mysterious girl in dreams all exhibited this phenomenon; even the tortoiseshell cat appearing in the frozen food store could be counted as half.
They should belong to the A grade or even Cataclysm Grade urban legends that Jiang Li emphasized one shouldn’t probe too deeply into, as it wouldn’t be beneficial.
Lu Yibei could sense a significant disparity in strength among them, but he didn’t dare to experiment.
After all, he believed that they could all k*ll him; the difference was only in whether it was easy or would take some effort.
Now, Lu Yibei’s eyes were only slightly warm, hardly even to the level experienced when he saw the Decapitated Senior.
Based on his accumulated experience, the urban legend appearing in the self-study room should belong to the relatively manageable type.
However, he couldn’t let his guard down… Lu Yibei reminded himself quietly; the accuracy of judgments made from his experiences was still debatable.
After all, during the process of gathering experiences, he had encountered an unpredictable variable like Stinky Sister Jumeng.
When Jumeng first appeared in the form of a magpie at his home, his eyes showed no unusual reaction until he stabbed her once…
From the various whispers he had heard in the Siye Society afterward, that one stab nearly triggered a “counter-terrorism” operation across the entire city.
It was Jumeng’s existence that made Lu Yibei feel that whether the targeted urban legend harbored malice was one of the significant factors that would cause his eyes to heat up.
So…
From the current situation, it appeared that the urban legend in the self-study room was either weak or had no malicious intent.
However, if it were the latter, he still needed to be cautious; what if it suddenly changed its mind?
With this thought, Lu Yibei leaned down and took out the Ming King Statue from his guitar case, as if to bolster his courage, and “DUANG!” placed it on the adjacent seat.
Following that, he grabbed a handful of talismans and scattered them around as if they were free, before loading the poker g*n and cocking it, slapping it down on the table with a “bang!”
After completing all of this, he glanced in the direction from which the eerie footsteps had been coming, confirming that the invisible being had not approached, and that the warmth in his eyes hadn’t changed. He nodded in satisfaction.
As long as there’s no threat, do whatever you want; I’ll just put on my headphones, and I won’t care about anyone!
Lu Yibei thought, putting on his headphones, opening his faintly recognized software, and clicked on a song by Zhou Jielun titled “MARTINI,” and the next moment, a tune called “AFAKER” sounded in his ears.
Lu Yibei, “???”
This sudden leniency in tone hit him unexpectedly.
Skip the song!
“ROOM OF ANGEL”… hmm, the theme song of “Silent Hill 4,” quite tasteful!
No more than a minute after Lu Yibei put on his headphones, he had to take them off with a pale face, locating the document for his presentation.
Actually, the presentation was coming up soon; it wasn’t the time for listening to music. It was better to thoroughly familiarize himself with this motivational essay; if he stuttered during the presentation, that wouldn’t be good.
Lu Yibei thought that just as he opened the presentation document, the computer screen turned to a field of snowflake dots, flickering twice before going black.
The pitch-black screen was like a mirror, reflecting Lu Yibei’s figure, turning his back to himself.
Then, it awkwardly turned around.
That frighteningly pale face wore a calm, composed expression, as if already dead, with wide-open eyes void of pupils, slowly approaching.
“Bang—!”
Just as Lu Yibei felt the reflection on the screen was about to spring out, he swiftly closed the laptop, shut his eyes, and took a deep breath.
“Whoosh—!”
In the darkness, it felt as if something within the laptop wanted to break free, violently vibrating for a moment before settling into silence.
No, stay calm, stay calm. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, and poses a life-threatening situation, I cannot let it urban legendify.
If I recite that description now to trigger urban legendification, I’d have to wait until tomorrow morning for things to return to normal, and my school anniversary presentation would definitely be ruined, Lu Yibei thought.
Although he despised noise, he didn’t want to be the odd one out.
The moment the phrase “being an odd one out” surfaced in his mind, something lightly tapped on his back, cold and stiff, like a frozen, rigid corpse.
His body trembled violently; he sat dazed for a long time before awkwardly turning his hand back to touch the rough paper.
It was a yellowed piece of lined notebook paper, already stained with wet bl**d, with a line of text written in a crooked script, resembling the childish handwriting of an elementary school student.
“Why don’t you play with me?”
In an instant, he recalled fragments of dark memories sealed within his childhood.
He saw the scene he had glimpsed that day as a young child and heard the whispers of those “classmates” he was unfamiliar with, after dark, in his ear.
“Lu Yibei, why don’t you play with us?”
