Chapter Nineteen: The Urban Legend Incident at Tangcheng University
In the dead of night, at Tangcheng University, College of Arts and Literature building.
A laboratory of about two hundred square meters was lit, and through the light coming from within, one could vaguely see a metal plaque hanging at the door reading “Cultural Relics and Museum Studies 1.”
Inside the laboratory, at a long table, a short boy with freckles was facing a laptop, burning the midnight oil.
The boy’s name is Li Ziqi, a first-year graduate student in the history department and a fellow student of Mao Sanyou.
Earlier, Professor Hou had been quite furious with Luxianbei and a junior named Xinyi, getting increasingly upset as he looked at the artifacts he collected from the antique market during the day. Feeling overwhelmed, he had the students return them to the school early for safekeeping in the laboratory.
As a hardcore gamer and a “penny-pincher,” Li Ziqi naturally wouldn’t miss the opportunity to enjoy the school’s internet free of charge. He volunteered to bring the artifacts back and, as a matter of course, started playing games.
“Whew—!” Having just won another round, Li Ziqi leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh and stretched.
“I’ve heard that the lab’s internet is incredibly fast, way faster than in the dorms. Now that I’ve tried it, it’s indeed exceptional, so satisfying!”
After resting for a moment, Li Ziqi got up to make himself a cup of coffee. Just as he was about to return to the computer for another game, he casually glanced out the window by the corridor and was suddenly hit with a chill.
At that moment, the office was empty, and the corridor felt particularly closed off. The night sky outside was a deep black, seemingly ready to swallow everything whole.
Stunned for two seconds, Li Ziqi withdrew his gaze, shook his head with a bitter smile, and returned to the long table. He patted his cheeks and muttered, “Don’t be superstitious. It’s a long night, there’s no need for sleep. I should make the most of it and play a few more rounds.”
As he spoke, he clicked the “Start” option on the game’s main interface and poured all his enthusiasm into the game.
He was playing a popular shooting game featuring a mode where a four-player team enters various urban legend locations to search for legends and use silver-b*llet-loaded firearms to take them down, completing bounty tasks.
Though the urban legends depicted in the game were mostly ugly and grotesque in appearance and appeared in horrifying manners, Li Ziqi had been playing for so long and had seen all kinds of storms that he was no longer fazed.
Theoretically, that should be the case…
However, this new game round felt oddly off. Li Ziqi, who prided himself on being a monster-hunting expert, could usually find a legend within five minutes, but this time, after more than ten minutes, the team had only discovered a lot of signs of monster activity without spotting any actual legends.
As time went by, his teammates began to grow restless, and soon one person exited the game. With a leader to follow, the other two teammates quickly followed suit.
“d*mn it, a bunch of useless teammates!” Li Ziqi cursed vehemently, downing his now lukewarm coffee in one go, “Hmph, I don’t need you! I can complete the task alone!”
With that, he continued to control his character, searching in a map set in an abandoned hospital.
From the background story, this hospital had been abandoned for a long time, with mold growing on the surrounding walls, and shoe prints occasionally visible on the dust-covered floor, suggesting someone often moved along the dimly lit corridor.
Li Ziqi controlled his character down a long corridor, and gradually yellowed scraps of paper began to appear on the floor. Black-and-white photos of doctors hung on the walls, with some faces scratched out, leaving only dark, hollow voids.
Accompanied by eerie music, his character kept moving forward. Li Ziqi habitually glanced at the mini-map and suddenly his body froze.
His character was now outside the mini-map’s boundary.
A bug? It must be a bug, Li Ziqi thought, rotating the mouse to control his character toward a map that seemed to have a lot more space ahead, gulping nervously.
He then controlled his character to jog toward the safe room.
There, the character could enter rest mode, a built-in feature for health regeneration, and it also allowed for reloading the map.
Li Ziqi had no idea how many times he had cleared this map, so he was very familiar with the internal structure of the building. Before long, his character reached the door of the safe room.
However, the door to the safe room had mysteriously been shut.
Li Ziqi frowned, his expression darkening.
In the game, only players could close the safe room door. The fact that it was closed indicated that one of those three guys had done this before leaving the game.
“d*mn it, those guys closed the door when they exited!”
He cursed again and while speaking, controlled his character to grab a melee weapon, a baseball bat, and rushed forward to smash the safe room door.
“Ding—Ding—Ding—!”
With the sound of clashing metal, Li Ziqi’s anger gradually subsided. Just at the moment he stopped attacking, his character’s view fixed on the lattice window of the safe room. Peering through, he froze in place.
After those three players exited the game, their characters were leaning against the farthest wall from the door, facing the entrance, standing in a row.
Seeing those characters, now lacking player control and looking expressionless like corpses, with hollow eyes fixed on him, Li Ziqi suddenly felt a chill run down his spine, muttered “d*mn it!” under his breath, and quickly pressed the ESC key, bringing up the menu to exit the game.
At that moment, a soft sound of tiny footsteps echoed from the speakers, sounding as if someone were slowly approaching from behind.
Li Ziqi moved the mouse to control his character to turn around but saw nothing but the dark, empty corridor.
“Pat—pat—!”
The soft footsteps continued to emanate from the speakers. Li Ziqi felt a chill run down his back and, without hesitation, exited the game.
As the sound of mission failure echoed, the footsteps that had unnerved him also vanished with the ambient sound.
However, in those few seconds as the game interface gradually turned gray, Li Ziqi didn’t notice that the three characters in the safe room suddenly moved, turned to face the wall, and then the screen plunged into darkness, transitioning back to the main interface.
After exiting the game, the tension that Li Ziqi had been holding onto didn’t relax.
Today was the first time he had spent the night in the laboratory and experienced such a bizarre situation in a game, leading him to feel paranoid.
He sat in front of the computer, distractedly browsing Bilibili for quirky videos, but couldn’t help but quickly turn to glance behind him, then at the direction of the laboratory corridor, feeling that the empty laboratory or the corridor outside always concealed someone, revealing only a pair of cold eyes watching him.
Li Ziqi’s scalp tingled, and his heart pounded like a drum. He knew very well that it was all due to the game bug causing his anxiousness, that it was just his imagination driven by fear.
Yet, he couldn’t help but think of the frightening urban legends that circulated in the school.
Li Ziqi regretted a bit; had he known, he would have played less and returned to the dorm before it closed.
While he was lost in thought, suddenly…
“Pat—pat—!”
The empty corridor outside seemed to echo with soft footsteps, just like what he heard in the game.
Li Ziqi’s body stiffened, panic and fear flashing in his eyes.
“Pat—pat—!”
The footsteps were steady and rhythmical, striking at his heart, drawing closer.
Toward the laboratory.
“Who is it? Who’s outside!”
“Is it the security guard making rounds? Are you out there in the corridor?”
Li Ziqi felt sweat bead on his forehead, sensing his voice trembled.
The tiny footsteps outside suddenly halted, silence enveloping the area.
Li Ziqi pressed down on his fear, straining to listen, yet heard nothing. The corridor was dead silent, and the only sound was the whirring of the laptop’s cooling fan.
Li Ziqi stared fixedly at the door, time drifted slowly, each second felt like a year. Just when he could no longer bear the mental pressure, the footsteps outside began again.
“Pat—pat—!”
The sounds grew closer, still low and faint, like an illusion.
When the footsteps neared the laboratory, they vanished once more.
Suddenly, an image of the three characters in the safe room, expressionless faces, flashed in Li Ziqi’s mind. He shivered, his emotions completely collapsed, and shouted in the direction of the door.
“Is the person outside the security guard making rounds? I don’t care who you are; this kind of joke isn’t funny at all!”
“If you keep creeping me out like this, I’ll really call the police!”
“…”
After shouting several times, Li Ziqi felt a release of emotion and suddenly wasn’t so scared anymore. He quietly stared at the direction of the door for about ten minutes, finally feeling relieved.
Following that, he plugged his headphones into the computer and redirected his attention to the quirky videos.
After watching a few particularly funny clips and bursting into laughter, the earlier fear that had plagued him finally dissipated. Li Ziqi opened the game main interface again and clicked “Start Game.”
As the loading completed and the character entered the map, his expression suddenly changed.
By coincidence, he found himself randomly back on that abandoned hospital map.
“It’s all random; it’s all random…”
Li Ziqi muttered as a form of self-comfort, controlling his character to move. However, after taking just two steps, he pulled his hands away from the keyboard.
He saw his three “teammates,” who, for some unknown bug reason, had characters whose heads had mysteriously disappeared but were still running deeper into the abandoned hospital.
After a pause, Li Ziqi snapped back to reality, fumbling to prepare to exit the game.
Just then, the computer screen suddenly turned black, accompanied by a strange laughter. A pair of pale hands unexpectedly reached out from the screen and seized his head…
————
“Ding-dong—ding-dong ding-dong—!”
In the morning, at the Tangcheng Four Seasons Hotel.
After discussing “Self-Detonation and Being Detonated Art” with his ancestor in a dream, Luxianbei went to the hotel rooftop to bask in the sun. Just as he returned to his room, ready for a nap, he was abruptly awakened by a rapid doorbell ringing.
Opening his eyes after completing over an hour’s worth of sit-ups, he looked towards the door and impatiently inquired, “Who is it!? It’s early in the morning…”
“It’s me, Ma Zhen!” came Professor Ma’s voice from outside the door. “Luxianbei, wake up quickly, get ready, we’re going to meet my old friend.”
“…”
Luxianbei glanced at the sky that had just begun to shine with a hint of sunlight, fell silent for a few seconds, then pretended not to hear Professor Ma’s call and began talking to himself.
“Who on earth is it? Why aren’t you speaking? If you don’t speak, I’m going back to sleep!”
“Ding-dong—ding-dong—!”
Hearing Luxianbei’s voice, Professor Ma pressed the doorbell twice more. “Stupid kid, hurry up and get to the dining room for breakfast; if you’re late, it will be all gone!”
Breakfast? Breakfast is a must; I still need to take care of my health! A gleam flashed in Luxianbei’s eyes. “Oh! Professor? Wait a moment, I’m coming out right away.”
In this world, only Miaomiao Sauce and breakfast cannot be neglected!
As he spoke, he jumped out of bed, gathering the Zhipianxian figures he had set up as safeguards in various corners of the room while putting on his clothes.
Five minutes later, he followed Professor Ma to the dining room.
Looking at the empty, desolate dining room, which seemed as if it had never been visited, Luxianbei looked expressionlessly at Professor Ma and complained, “Professor, scholars can’t lie! Look at this…”
“Idiot, what do you know? Early to bed and early to rise, developing good habits benefits no one but yourself!” Professor Ma scolded, giving Luxianbei a hard slap on the back of the head.
“Go get me a bowl of soy milk, two pieces of bread, and a plate of fruit. I’ll go find us a seat first.”
Watching Professor Ma leave, Luxianbei rolled his eyes. “There’s no one here; what seat are we saving? It’s so early, and no one has come for breakfast yet!”
As soon as he finished speaking, he heard a very gentle voice beside him.
“They’ve already eaten, they rushed to Tangcheng University because there was an unexpected incident there, and everyone has left!”
“Ah?” Luxianbei froze for a moment, turned around, and saw a girl.
She was a girl with short blonde hair, clad in a slightly oversized cream-colored down jacket, concealing her figure entirely.
As Luxianbei turned, his gaze met her beautiful apricot-shaped eyes; her blue irises sparkled in the light, seemingly veiled with a layer of mist.
In short, she was very cute, like the kind of girl who could cry for a long time if you hit her.
“Hello, my name is Fu Xinyi, and I’m Professor Zhang’s student.” The girl extended her hand and smiled warmly at Luxianbei.
Seeing Luxianbei not shake her hand, she took the initiative to grab his hand, shook it gently, then leaned closer to his ear and lowered her voice, saying, “Let me tell you, they hurriedly rushed to Tangcheng University because someone died there, and it was one of our project team students. I heard it’s an urban legend incident!”
“What do you think, isn’t that scary?”
Luxianbei nodded perfunctorily, then tilted his head and inquired, “Miss, have we met somewhere before?”
“……” Fu Xinyi stared at Luxianbei for a few seconds, then burst out laughing, “Wow, your pickup line is quite classic! Alright, I won’t talk to you anymore; I have to hurry to Tangcheng University to see the excitement!”
As she spoke, Fu Xinyi waved goodbye to Luxianbei, her steps light and dance-like as she left the dining room.
Watching her retreating figure, Luxianbei furrowed his brow.
I definitely have seen her before…
Could she be somewhat similar to that “insider” who appeared last night?
Luxianbei thought as he jogged to the food station, grabbed a croissant to munch on, and shouted to Professor Ma, “Professor, you can handle your own breakfast! I’m heading to Tangcheng University!”
Upon hearing Luxianbei’s shout, Professor Ma turned to see Fu Xinyi and Luxianbei leaving in sequence, paused for a moment, then angrily slammed his hand on the table, “Hmph, stupid kid, forgetting the teacher for the sake of a pretty face!”
