Translator: CinderTL
Yes. The statue from the sculpture studio!
But how could it be here?
Before he could react, his body lurched to the side as a hand yanked him back from behind.
The spot where he had been standing moments before erupted with a loud thump. The marble floor shattered, revealing a dark, iron hammer.
Someone had thrown it!
The person who pulled him was naturally Wang Qi, but Jiang Cheng had no time to think about anything else. The female statue in front of him had also come to life.
As a half-bust, it had no legs, only an upper body. It crashed to the floor and began crawling toward him at terrifying speed, like a spider with broken legs.
At that moment, Jiang Cheng realized the mission had truly begun.
He immediately sprinted for the Gate. Fortunately, it opened. Wang Qi, after briefly fending off the male statue that had ambushed Jiang Cheng, also ran for the Gate.
As Wang Qi reached the exit, Jiang Cheng quickly slammed the Gate shut.
The two of them turned and fled down the opposite end of the corridor.
But the reanimated statues clearly weren't ready to let them go. The wooden door of the Sculpture Hall began to pound with heavy thump-thump sounds, before finally bursting open.
The two revived statues pursued them—the same ones they had seen outside the sculpture studio.
The male statue, wielding a hammer, ran after them, while the female statue crawled rapidly across the floor. Combined with the dim lighting, the scene was truly terrifying.
"Find an open space and deal with them," Jiang Cheng said urgently.
"They're just stronger than ordinary humans, nothing special," Wang Qi summarized after a brief exchange with the male statue. "But normal attacks won't work. You have to strike the back of their heads to kill them."
The two soon reached a fork in the corridor. To the right was a staircase, and beside it stood a small door that appeared to lead to a cleaning supply closet.
"Follow me," Jiang Cheng said, running toward the stairs.
As the two statues caught up, they saw a figure standing at the top of the staircase, Jiang Cheng looking down at them from above.
In just half a minute, both statues had undergone a transformation in both appearance and texture. Their material had become wrinkled, resembling gray-white clothing from a distance.
A startling thought flashed through Jiang Cheng's mind: given enough time, these sculptures might become indistinguishable from real people.
The moment they saw Jiang Cheng, a human-like emotion—excitement—flickered in the hollow eyes of the two sculptures. This excitement quickly morphed into greed.
The sculptures raced up the stairs, jostling for position, oblivious to the small Gate behind them that had quietly opened.
The male sculpture raised its hammer high, already poised to throw it from a distance—clearly intending to repeat its previous tactic and smash Jiang Cheng to death.
But before the hammer could be released, Wang Qi suddenly appeared behind the sculpture, swinging his hook with brutal force.
Bang! A dull thud echoed as a visible crack snaked from the back of the sculpture's head, spreading across its entire skull. With a final shatter, the head crumbled to pieces.
The remaining body remained frozen in its throwing pose, but it had reverted to an ordinary sculpture, unmoving.
Witnessing its companion's demise, a flicker of human-like fear crossed the female sculpture's face.
With Jiang Cheng blocking its path and Wang Qi behind it, the situation had been completely reversed.
Perhaps because its partner had just been killed by Wang Qi, the female sculpture chose Jiang Cheng as its target, lunging at him with a ferocious attack.
Jiang Cheng dodged the statue's dagger-like claws, then punched it to the ground. He followed up with a scythe strike to finish it off.
"Phew," Jiang Cheng exhaled. It was as he'd expected. Aside from their enhanced strength and grotesque appearance, these animated statues weren't that difficult to defeat.
But by "not that difficult," he meant for someone like himself or Wang Qi. Fatty and the others clearly didn't fall into that category.
"Hmm?" Wang Qi seemed to have noticed something. He crouched down, staring intently at the female statue's body, and reached out to touch it.
Jiang Cheng naturally didn't think he was taking advantage. Frowning, he asked, "What's wrong?"
"Look at this. There seems to be a change on their bodies. They've developed a layer of wrinkles, like they're shedding their skin," Wang Qi said, pausing.
Jiang Cheng had noticed this earlier, but with Fatty and the others on his mind, he hadn't investigated further. Now, hearing Wang Qi's observation, he walked over and crouched beside him. He ran his hand over the headless statue's surface. It remained motionless, but the texture was indeed different from a normal statue's—more delicate, almost like fine fabric.
With a gentle tug, a layer peeled away, like a stiff, washed garment clinging to the sculpture's form.
After a moment, Jiang Cheng suddenly stood up and walked back to where he had been standing earlier. A folded garment lay on the ground there.
He had taken it from behind the door of the sculpture studio. It was gray-white, and when he touched it, the texture felt exactly like the sculpture's surface.
Could this garment have been peeled from the living sculpture itself?
"Could it be that if you wear this, the sculptures will mistake you for one of them and stop attacking?" Wang Qi asked, his gaze strange.
After a moment of thought, Jiang Cheng stared at the garment in his hands. The thought of it having been stripped from a sculpture made him uneasy.
Seeing Jiang Cheng's hesitation, Wang Qi reached out and said, "If you're worried about danger, I can try it."
Jiang Cheng, already putting on the garment, replied, "Brother Wang Qi, what are you saying? I'll handle any dangerous situations myself."
The garment had a hood that could be flipped over and worn on the head.
As soon as Wang Qi put it on, he felt a chilling aura.
It was as if from that moment on, Jiang Cheng's human attributes had vanished, completely disguised as a Ghost.
From the outside, Jiang Cheng's face was completely obscured by a layer of translucent gauze, giving him the appearance of someone in protective gear.
Dressed in gray and white, in this dim environment, if he stood perfectly still, he could easily be mistaken for a statue at first glance.
"So it really is like this," Wang Qi said, casting a slightly envious glance at Jiang Cheng's outfit.
Jiang Cheng, however, remained unfazed. He stretched his arms and legs, then performed a few squats and high-knee jumps.
"How does it feel?" Wang Qi pressed.
"A bit cold, a chilling cold, but bearable," Jiang Cheng replied, pausing to catch his breath. "And looking through this gauze at the outside world feels different than before."
"But..." Jiang Cheng lowered his head, examining his arm. "What's this? Why are there so many scratches?"
"Where?" Wang Qi approached, following Jiang Cheng's gaze. He saw no scratches on the arm.
When he ran his hand over it, he felt nothing. The fabric was cold, smooth, and slippery, like touching ice.
"Right here, can't you see it?" Jiang Cheng stared at his arm. "Someone deliberately carved it. Four diagonal lines, then one vertical line piercing through them—like this, forming a group. There are five groups in total."
As Jiang Cheng described it, Wang Qi understood immediately. "It's a tally mark, like how we draw the '正' character. Five groups, totaling twenty-five marks."
"That's the number of animated sculptures in this mission," Jiang Cheng mused. "Two marks are fading in the first group, corresponding to the two we just eliminated."
"Besides these, there's another pattern—an eye shape on the back of my hand. It must refer to the Bandit Ghost," Jiang Cheng continued.
Wang Qi turned his head toward the direction they had run from, a flicker of worry in his eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing here."
"I don't see anything either."
"Impossible! Two living people vanished in the blink of an eye. Is this curtain some kind of man-eating monster?" Fatty had already pulled back the curtain countless times.
But no matter how many times he looked, it was just a curtain—thick, at best. It couldn't magically conjure back the missing doctor.
What baffled them even more was that behind the curtain was a wall—a plain, unremarkable, blank wall with no window at all.
Just moments ago, Jiang Cheng and Wang Qi had vanished the instant they pulled back the curtain. The three of them hadn't understood what had happened at all.
Once they'd recovered from their shock, they immediately went to look for them. But after searching the vicinity for a long time, they couldn't find a trace of either man. Not even a ghost.
"Could it be... could it be there's a mechanism hidden in this curtain? Like a time tunnel that transported Mr. Jiang and Wang Qi to another dimension?" Shen Mengyun's eyes were filled with worry. "Maybe it's like the night the male teacher was murdered all those years ago."
"But a mechanism like that can't possibly only work once," Huai Yi, a seasoned veteran, immediately pointed out.
They pulled back the curtain repeatedly, from different angles, but the result remained the same.
Huai Yi gradually calmed down and, after some thought, said, "That theory won't work. Let's change our approach. Could it be that the problem isn't with them, but with us?"
"Us?"
"Yes," Huai Yi nodded. "Do you remember the Burnt Ghost in the school library that could steal your vision?"
"You mean Mr. Jiang hasn't disappeared, but we simply can't see each other?" Shen Mengyun's dull eyes gradually brightened.
"That's right, but this time it's clearly more complicated because we can't even touch each other," Huai Yi said. "And I have reason to say the problem lies with us. After all, only our group—you two—saw that..."
Huai Yi had initially wanted to say "that person," but quickly corrected himself: "saw that Ghost."
Besides them, there were no other living people left here.
"I have an idea. We won't find Brother Jiang and the others now. We have to keep searching for that Ghost."
"If we find that Ghost, this situation should resolve itself," Huai Yi said in a low voice.
"Let's do it!" Fatty and Shen Mengyun agreed. In their current predicament, they had no choice but to try anything.
"That Ghost is easy to recognize—it's wearing a red bridal veil!" After the three of them finished discussing, they turned around together, ready to search the Sculpture Hall for the Ghost.
But as soon as they turned, all three froze in shock.
In the Sculpture Hall, every statue within their field of vision was wearing a red bridal veil. A gust of cold wind swept through the hall, lifting the edges of the veils to reveal gray-white chins beneath.
(End of the Chapter)
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