Translator: CinderTL
Professor Qiu was stunned. It was the first time in his career that a student had dared to point a finger at him and lecture him so directly. He was clearly unprepared for such insolence.
Liang Shan stared at the scene unfolding before him, his mind blank.
He couldn't understand it. They were the vulnerable ones, yet Jiang Cheng seemed to have the upper hand. How dare he point a finger at a ghost and berate it—not just one, but two at once?
"Me?" Professor Qiu's eye twitched uncontrollably. "What about me?"
"I'll ask you this: where are we?" Jiang Cheng pointed at the floor, his voice ringing with authority.
"An anatomy lab."
"Good. Since you know this is an anatomy lab, shouldn't you know to maintain silence?" Jiang Cheng pressed, his tone sharp. "Why were you shouting so loudly earlier? Do you think being a professor puts you above the rules?"
"I—"
"Enough with the excuses. Explanations are just attempts to cover up the truth. I'm reporting this incident to the college. Kiss your end-of-year bonuses and commendations goodbye. You'll all be eating dirt this winter."
Wang Wenli and Qiu Xicheng visibly panicked upon hearing the second half of Jiang Cheng's statement. Qiu Xicheng hastily tried to appease him, saying, "What are you talking about? Don't be angry. We're just looking out for you. Let's all take a step back, okay?"
"Fine, then let's see how sincere you are," Jiang Cheng replied, stretching out his hand and pointing to the registry book a few steps away. He drawled, "Professor Wang, would you please fetch the registry for me? I arrived late today and haven't signed in yet."
"Of course, of course," Wang Wenli replied eagerly, acting as if Jiang Cheng's words alone could actually result in disciplinary action against the two professors.
Jiang Cheng breathed a sigh of relief, assuming their brains had been pickled by too much time in those glass tanks.
Wang Wenli walked to the desk and picked up the registry.
"And a pen," Jiang Cheng reminded him, craning his neck. "Don't forget the pen. How am I supposed to sign without one?"
"Right, right."
But the moment Wang Wenli reached for the pen, Jiang Cheng, Fatty, and the others suddenly frowned. Liang Shan's lips turned deathly pale.
The registry and a pen sat at one end of a long table, while at the other end stood an object covered with a cloth.
Judging by the shape of the drape, the object beneath was roughly a few dozen centimeters tall—a rather bulky cylinder.
Initially, no one had noticed it, as the cloth blended seamlessly with the room's decor.
But now that the cloth had slipped off, they saw that it concealed a large specimen jar.
Inside the jar floated a human head—Shi Xiaoya's head!
Unlike any of the other heads they had seen, Shi Xiaoya's grimaced grotesquely, her eyes wide open and bloodshot to the point of appearing to drip blood.
The head bobbed up and down in the glass jar, its long black hair swirling like a tangled mass of aquatic weeds.
Yet this horrifying sight seemed visible only to Jiang Cheng and his group. The two professors and the other students wore their usual, oblivious expressions, as if nothing had changed.
After verifying the registry, Jiang Cheng swiftly signed his name.
Jiang Cheng immediately turned and strode toward the exit, saying as he walked, "Alright, that's enough for today. I keep my word—I won't blab about your rule-breaking."
Fatty Huai Yi, Huai Yiwen, and Liang Shan, keenly aware of the situation, slowly backed away and followed Jiang Cheng out the door.
5 meters.
4 meters.
3 meters.
The gate loomed closer, and everyone's hearts pounded in their throats.
Since their earlier confrontation, no sound had come from behind them. Neither the two professors nor the students had made any move to stop them.
2 meters.
1 meter.
Just as Jiang Cheng, leading the group, lifted his leg to step over the threshold, a piercing screech sliced through the air behind them, like a knife blade scraping against glass.
Liang Shan instinctively glanced back. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
The scene behind them had utterly transformed. The two professors had removed their masks and unbuttoned their lab coats, revealing slick, bruised, purplish skin. Even from this distance, a nauseating stench wafted from their bodies.
The students, too, had undergone a ghastly metamorphosis. Their faces, now unmasked, were completely blank—empty voids where features should have been.
Their mouths, noses, chins—all facial features had vanished, as if violently ripped away.
Their white lab coats had been replaced with plasticky garments that gaped open, revealing Y-shaped incisions stretching from their necks to their abdomens. Their bellies were hollowed out, their internal organs and intestines surgically removed.
Each student's garment was marked with a number in black marker, starting with 1 on the far left and ending with 13.
A strange dizziness washed over Liang Shan as his mind grew increasingly heavy. Then it dawned on him: these students were likely dissected corpses.
Just as Liang Shan was about to lose consciousness, a hand grabbed him by the collar from behind and yanked him out. "What the hell are you staring at? Run!"
Jiang Cheng pulled Liang Shan from the dissection room with a single, powerful motion. Strangely, the moment Liang Shan crossed the threshold, his awareness returned.
As Jiang Cheng dragged Liang Shan away, he seized the opportunity to glance back inside. Two professors stood in the center of the room, glaring at them with venomous eyes.
The students stood in neat rows behind the professors, their formation creating a scene of eerie formality, like a medieval church conducting some arcane ritual.
Even more terrifying, the two professors jointly held a specimen jar containing a human head.
The jar was now covered in a dense network of hairline cracks, as if on the verge of shattering. Through these fissures, Jiang Cheng witnessed a horrifying transformation.
The head inside... it had changed.
No, not exactly. It was still Shi Xiaoya's head, but hidden behind her thick, tangled hair was another face.
An old man's face.
The old man's face stared fixedly at them, psychically controlling the head to slam violently against the glass, as if desperate to burst free and tear them apart.
The Ghost Face Old Madam!
Jiang Cheng whirled around and fled, glancing at his phone mid-stride. Less than five seconds remained until the deadline.
As the timer reached zero, a loud bang echoed behind them.
Jiang Cheng knew: the Ghost Face Old Madam had broken free.
The group scrambled down the stairs, leaping several steps at a time. Something was chasing them through the corridor, moving swiftly and sounding massive—far larger than just a severed head.
"Doctor!" Fatty Huai Yi gasped, breathless. "There's one student who's different—a girl. She hasn't changed. I think it's Xiaoting. She's been hiding among the others all along, which is why she's still alive."
Jiang Cheng hadn't noticed, his attention fixed solely on the Ghost Face. "Are you sure?"
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(End of the Chapter)
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