Chapter 152: bl**d Handprints on the Window
The person responsible for receiving and reviewing the speech manuscripts was a tall boy with slender limbs, dressed in a light pink shirt, with a very neutral hairstyle tied into small braids.
His thin and fair face had lightly pink lips and he wore a pair of orange-framed glasses, behind which were a pair of charming peach blossom eyes.
If he were a girl, he would definitely be very pretty, but… Luxianbei glanced again at the boy sitting only one table away from him, and couldn’t help but shiver slightly.
Seeing Luxianbei sit down across from him, the boy who had been staring intently at his computer, apparently reading something, tilted his eyebrow and said, “Are you Lu Shiba?”
“It’s Yu Bei…” Luxianbei replied expressionlessly, “My name is Luxianbei.”
Lu Shiba, what the hell is that? Sounds like some rough-and-tumble gangster from a low-tier world.
“I know.” The boy rolled his eyes and spoke in a strange, sarcastic tone, “But the classmates all call you Lu Shiba. Didn’t you know?”
Luxianbei, “…”
I really didn’t know. If possible, please tell me which idiot came up with this nickname.
Then I’ll just let the urban legends in the apartment come at me in the middle of the night and wake me up to go to the bathroom.
Thinking this, Luxianbei quietly bent down, opened a gap in his guitar bag, reached inside, took out the printed speech manuscript, placed it on the table, and pushed it toward the boy.
The boy took the manuscript, frowned after reading just a few lines, and by the time he finished the first page, he sat up straight, his expression serious and grave.
To be honest, Luxianbei felt quite nervous when he submitted the manuscript, and seeing the reviewer show such an expression only increased the pressure.
After all, it was a vague and rough piece of fluff writing, with a probability of being sent back for a rewrite.
However…
After the boy opposite him finished reading two and a half pages of the manuscript, his eyes even reddened slightly, and he couldn’t help but sniffle.
Luxianbei, “???”
No way, are you okay, uh, big brother? It’s just a piece of drivel…
“It’s written so well!” The boy exclaimed, slapping the table, “Lu Shiba, oh no, Lu classmate, this piece of yours is the most heartfelt one I’ve read among so many manuscripts!”
Luxianbei, “…”
Alright, he really is the type who is quite sensitive and easily blinded by the oils of inspirational drivel.
People like him, living in this world full of urban legends, if they have any potential for spirit energy, they might have long been brainwashed by cult organizations and taken to play **. Luxianbei thought.
While he was pondering, the boy suddenly stood up and took his hands excitedly, saying, “Lu classmate, in addition to reviewing manuscripts here, I’m also the vice president of the news agency. I want to know, after the anniversary celebration, could you…?”
The vice president? No wonder the school newspaper has a strong taste of stale drivel… Luxianbei internally mocked, then with the most tactful expression he could muster, he flatly refused, “No!”
“Ah?” The boy seemed stunned for a moment but quickly became even more agitated, “Don’t rush to refuse! Talent like yours deserves to be seen by more people!”
See what? Selling false success and superficial cures, what use is that? Luxianbei rolled his eyes, looking for an excuse to slip away.
“Can we discuss this another day? Everyone is busy preparing for the anniversary celebration, right? I have other things to attend to, so I’ll take my leave.”
“Then can we exchange contact information? I’m afraid you won’t come looking for me later!”
Luxianbei, “…” Sis, do you really not feel awkward about exposing this?
…
A few minutes later.
In front of Office 407.
The boy who was responsible for reviewing the manuscripts waved at Luxianbei, his voice eerie, “Lu classmate, we must communicate more in the future!”
“Uh… Okay!” Luxianbei awkwardly replied, quickened his pace, and fled from the floor where the anniversary preparation office was located.
…
Like many modern young people, Luxianbei didn’t like to stay in crowded places, not out of social anxiety, but because he found it troublesome.
Staying at home, enjoying the air conditioning while playing a couple of games, or lounging on a soft sofa with a cold drink in one hand and his SWITCH in the other—wasn’t that much more enjoyable?
Why, despite being clearly unhappy, did he have to pretend to be friendly with people he didn’t know well, putting on a forced smile to go out and have fun?
Thus, Luxianbei disliked being in situations like the anniversary preparation office, especially since there was… uh, what was that boy’s name again?
…
Due to the anniversary celebration, the library closed its doors early after the morning.
After leaving the anniversary office, Luxianbei aimlessly wandered around campus for a long time before finally deciding to head to the study room and spend some time alone before the speech began.
There was air conditioning, drinking water, charging sockets, and the free Wi-Fi wasn’t too bad…
With such comprehensive facilities, if provided with enough food and individual compartments, some people could practically stay there forever, through life and d*ath.
The study room was located in a teaching building south of the library.
Half of that teaching building was occupied by a major that was even more desolate than the Chinese language major—Remote Sensing Science and Engineering classrooms.
The Remote Sensing Science and Engineering major enrolls only a little over a thousand students nationwide each year, spread across more than thirty colleges. Here at Huacheng University, they only admit a dozen or so students each year.
With just a dozen students, each course switching classrooms, the entire building had to remain half empty, so the school made reasonable use of the vacant classrooms as study rooms.
Perhaps due to the anniversary celebration, the study room, which was usually hard to find a spot in, was surprisingly empty; each classroom had only a few people, with some even completely unoccupied.
Luxianbei strolled around the teaching building and finally found a study room where only one girl was sleeping with her head down on the table. He chose a corner by the window, plugged in his laptop, and put on his headphones.
After turning it on, he first opened the browser and browsed the animal section of Bilibili’s life zone for a bit.
Um, videos related to urban legends were mostly categorized in this section, which was quite absurd.
As always, most videos lacked real content, being mainly the UP masters creating stuff out of rumors, except for one video that had a higher view count and was half-true and half-false, from a UP master named “Witch God”.
Curious, Luxianbei clicked in to take a look at the homepage and, after seeing the UP master’s selfie, backed out in less than five seconds.
Didn’t Du Sixian know she would get beaten up by the Siye Society for posting something like this online?
No, maybe it was the Siye Society that instructed her to do this.
Luxianbei shook his head, confused, closed the browser, logged into a certain chat app, searched around, and found the New Urban Legends Chat Group still quietly sitting in his list.
See, this group really isn’t simple. When I reported it yesterday, I specifically wrote over a hundred words, and it still wasn’t banned!
Luxianbei thought, just as he was about to report again, writing a new complaint of over two hundred words, a notification sound suddenly echoed in his headphones.
Huh? Didn’t I already turn off notifications?
He frowned slightly, clicked on the bouncing cartoon cat icon in the lower right corner, and the private chat window from “One Hundred and Three and a Half Cats” popped open in front of him.
[One Hundred and Three and a Half Cats: Dear group friend, I know you were the one who submitted yesterday’s report. Your malicious jokes have caused us a lot of trouble, so please stop immediately.
Otherwise, we will subject you to even stricter offline reviews.]
Luxianbei, “….” Isn’t reporting supposed to be anonymous? What are these tactics? Can even the data from Goose Factory be hacked?
Recalling the strange scene he saw in the attic of the frozen food store yesterday, he felt a chill down his spine.
If everything that happened yesterday was orchestrated by the Urban Legends Chat Group, the stricter offline review might turn into bloody violent offline retaliation.
I don’t even know if their review standards are based on combat power or courage in the face of urban legends; it’s better to be careful since I haven’t figured out the truth yet.
Luxianbei thought, his gaze fixed on the reporting option on the screen, squinting his eyes slightly.
But…
Why do I still feel a little tempted to click it?
As the saying goes, “If you don’t seek d*ath, d*ath won’t seek you.” Just as the thought of doing something reckless flashed through Luxianbei’s mind, someone suddenly tapped him on the shoulder from behind.
Luxianbei jumped, “Whoa! No! I haven’t clicked yet!”
Feeling guilty is exactly how he looked right now.
The girl sleeping in the study room had no idea that simply tapping Luxianbei’s shoulder would provoke such an intense reaction from him. Adding to the strange sound she had heard earlier, which startled her awake, she suddenly turned pale, frozen in place, not knowing what to do.
After Luxianbei howled in surprise, he noticed the frightened girl next to him, paused for a moment, took off his headphones, and awkwardly asked, “Um, is there something you need?”
“I… gulp——!” The girl swallowed hard, hesitated for a while, seemingly confirming that Luxianbei was indeed fine, then whispered, “You should leave this classroom quickly? Something feels off here.”
“Huh?” Luxianbei looked at her in confusion.
“Didn’t you hear any strange sounds just now? Just, just… ah——!” The girl was halfway through her sentence when she suddenly covered her eyes and let out a piercing scream.
She saw, on the hollow glass of the window behind Luxianbei, small bloody handprints appearing, as if an invisible bloodied baby were slowly crawling through there.
Coupled with the faint sound of baby laughter that had just barely been heard, her emotions completely collapsed. Forgetting to warn Luxianbei any further, she grabbed her backpack and ran frantically out of the classroom.
The girl’s scream pierced Luxianbei’s ears, causing him to murmur, “In broad daylight, why is it so creepy?” Upon turning around, his pupils instantly constricted violently.
He saw a series of small crimson handprints extending from the glass window to a corner of the wall beyond his sight, with un-dried bl**d slowly trickling down, sending shivers down Luxianbei’s spine.
With his mouth slightly agape, he turned back, wanting to say something to the escaping girl when the study room door was suddenly slammed shut by the wind.
“Bang—!”
With the loud sound of the door closing, a faint smell of bl**d seemed to waft through the air.
Immediately after, as if someone outside were “kindly” locking the door with a key, a soft “click” echoed through the classroom, and then the entire study room fell into a deathly silence.
Luxianbei, “…” I only thought about it for a moment; does this business move too fast?
