Bang, bang, bang—"
The door kept ringing.
"Let me out, I know I was wrong... I won't do it again... Woohoo... Mom... I know I was wrong..."
An indistinct voice came from behind the door, a child's pleading mixed with terrified sobs.
This villa is not the same as what Li Xiu remembers.
The floor is smooth and bright, all the furniture is wiped spotlessly clean, the walls are covered with light pink rose vine wallpaper with a nostalgic classical style, and the antique vases are filled with imported roses and jasmine delivered every morning.
The air was filled with an elegant fragrance.
Servants in uniform came and went on the second floor, silently maintaining the luxury and elegance of the house.
However, the crying still lingered in the villa.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I won't dare to do it again..."
The crying gradually became weaker.
Li Xiu frowned. He didn't understand why he appeared in this strange place, and he didn't understand why no one paid attention to the crying coming from inside the door.
The child's voice was completely hoarse and his breath was even weaker... Was he about to collapse?
As an ordinary high school student, Li Xiu had never been fond of children. However, as a normal human being, hearing such wailing made her body instinctively panic. No one but a sadist could tolerate seeing a child being abused so close to her.
Li Xiu unconsciously began to move, but his body felt strangely heavy. His feet felt like they were sinking into a winter swamp, and every step required all his strength. But the desperate cries echoing in Li Xiu's ears were like an invisible whip, constantly lashing him out, urging him to open the door quickly and rescue the poor little creature.
Finally, Li Xiu arrived at the door with great difficulty.
He put his hand on the door handle.
But for some reason, the moment he opened the door, Li Xiu suddenly felt his hair stand on end.
An inexplicable instinct ran through the boy's spine, freezing him in place, unable to move.
"What are you doing? You want to let that bastard out before the time is up?"
At this moment, a strange and sharp sound was heard. Li Xiu turned around and opened his eyes wide in horror.
He saw a woman with a swollen body.
The woman walked out of the master bedroom. At this moment, she stood at the door, staring at Li Xiu with her completely cloudy eyes.
She was already dead.
Decay had blurred her facial features, with only a few strands of hair remaining on her scalp. As she moved, the scalp easily fell off her bones and hung loosely behind her neck.
However, the woman was completely unaware of this. While she was talking, densely packed pale yellow maggots were wriggling in her chest, which was exposed outside her pajamas, and in her swollen and bursting abdominal cavity.
Li Xiu screamed.
He retreated in panic, but behind him there was only the closed door.
At the same moment, he suddenly heard a very unfamiliar voice whispering cautiously beside him.
"But, Madam, this is already the third day. If we keep locking him up like this, the child might not be able to hold on..."
Li Xiu turned his head, panting, wanting to see who was talking, but he saw nothing.
"He must have been stealing food from the kitchen before he was locked up, right? That's what the bastards brought back from outside are like. They have the same temper as that bitch, and the only thing they do is steal."
The woman, who had already shown signs of gigantism, seemed to pay no attention to Li Xiu. She continued talking to herself, and every word squeezed out of her rotten throat was filled with immense resentment.
"Really? If I don't discipline this bitch properly, the offspring of this bastard will only bring shame to the family."
As she spoke, the woman staggered towards Li Xiu... no, rather, towards the door.
Li Xiu gasped in fear and sobbed as he tried to escape from the door.
However, he had no way to escape because a pair of hands were firmly stuck on his shoulders.
["Shh——"]
A gloomy and creepy voice sounded in Li Xiu's ears.
Li Xiu began to tremble all over.
The scene before my eyes seemed to have happened before.
Li Xiu thought.
He froze in place like a fool, his breathing became rapid and quick, and the hairs on his neck stood up one by one.
Don't look.
Don't look, don't look, don't look...
Don't look back.
The voice in my head began to become urgent and rapid.
However, no matter how he tried to escape, Li Xiu still caught a glimpse of the "thing" that was pressed against his face out of the corner of his eye.
The inhuman creature with a blue-gray face had bloodshot eyes, and the corners of his mouth were stretched to the sides, revealing a chilling and satisfied smile.
The scarlet lips formed a sharp contrast with the bloodless face of the dead man.
It stared at Li Xiu with a smile, its neck stretched out so long that it could put its face right in front of Li Xiu. Now, Li Xiu could no longer escape its gaze.
The morbid gaze seemed to be real, licking Li Xiu's skin.
The cold arms wrapped around Li Xiu's body like a python wrapping around its prey, and the boy fell backward uncontrollably. It was at this moment that Li Xiu discovered that the door, which had been closed, had actually opened without him noticing.
Countless pale, skinny figures poked out of the room, their fingertips without nails as soft as the tentacles of anemones, but every touch permeated the breath of death deep into his bones.
All of Li Xiu's screams and struggles were trapped in the sticky, cold and filthy darkness behind the door.
"A Xiu... you're so good..."
A familiar whisper dripped from the monster's wet tongue.
Li Xiu only felt as if a rope was pulling hard inside her body.
You shouldn't have opened this door—
In the dark, a shrill and hoarse voice screamed at Li Xiu from the depths of his soul.
*
"...You students, you're really screwed, aren't you? We usually pay people to come here, but they refuse, and look at you, you're coming here to get yourself killed."
"I know I was wrong, teacher. I will take the punishment myself when the time comes. My classmate fainted and I need to take him to the infirmary now."
"You know your classmate fainted, and you know how dangerous this place is. What's the point of rushing now? This building hasn't been repaired for years, and we don't know what could have gone wrong. If you ran in and fell or got hurt, who's responsible? The school has warned you countless times, right? I told you not to come to places like this, and you just ignored them, right?"
"I'm sorry, I—"
"Wait a minute, don't leave yet. Your classmate, Teacher Xu, has already checked it out for you. There's nothing wrong with him, so don't keep using him as an excuse to get out of this situation. The most important thing now is, why are you two here?! Do you think this is just a simple violation of school rules and regulations? I'm telling you, strictly speaking, you're trespassing on someone else's private property. That's illegal!"
…
When Li Xiu woke up from the nightmare with a splitting headache, the first thing he heard was the continuous scolding of several people.
Fang Qianan's voice responded to those people's words from time to time, and it sounded very unfamiliar.
As far as Li Xiu could remember, he had never heard Fang Qianan speak to anyone in such a restrained, almost servile voice.
Of course, after spending the past few days with Fang Qianan, even in a daze, Li Xiu could sense that beneath Fang Qianan's flat voice, there was a rage that he could no longer suppress.
"If there's really nothing wrong, why is he still unconscious?"
"Don't worry. Teacher Xu said he's fine, so your classmate is definitely fine. Besides... there's no way he could wake up so soon..."
…
The powerful voices of the middle-aged men made Li Xiu feel more and more dizzy.
He vaguely remembered the horrific scene before he fainted.
"Fang Qianan..."
Before her mind began to function, Li Xiu instinctively reached out her hand, trying to find the tall boy.
At this moment, Li Xiu did not notice that the moment he made the sound, others looked at him in surprise.
"A Xiu! Thank God, you woke up!"
An excited shout exploded in his ears, and then Li Xiu felt as if he was hit by something - before he could come to his senses, he was hugged in someone's arms.
At that moment, some memories from the nightmare suddenly flooded into Li Xiu's mind. He shuddered violently and his body subconsciously tensed up.
Fortunately, in the next second, the high school boy's warm body temperature and the hug that was so strong that it almost strangled her to death made Li Xiu completely sober.
"Ahem, let go of me."
Li Xiulian patted Fang Qianan on the back several times before Fang Qianan let her go.
After taking a few deep breaths, Li Xiu realized that he had been lying on the lawn in front of the Xiao family's villa. Fang Qianan was holding him, letting his head rest on his knees. Seeing Li Xiu wake up, Fang Qianan was almost moved to tears.
Not far from them were several middle-aged men.
Li Xiu looked at them nervously and found that these people looked very unfamiliar. Oh, not completely unfamiliar. Li Xiu knew the chubby man standing at the back of the group. He seemed to be the vice principal of Qiming Middle School.
Li Xiu had only met the vice-president once before, and was deeply impressed by his appearance, where he was surrounded by people, like an emperor on tour. Only then did he remember his rosy and round face.
However, the vice-principal who appeared before them now did not look as imposing as before. He stood hunched over and trembling behind the others, almost groveling.
And those people who could make the vice-president so humble actually didn't seem to be anything special.
At least they didn't have the air of a "leader" that Li Xiu was familiar with. In fact, they looked like any other ordinary man on the street. Some were very young, only in their twenties, while others were in their fifties and looked very energetic. And the leader of this group was a man in his thirties.
The man was very thin, with a delicate and ordinary appearance, a look that would disappear in a crowd in an instant. He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his nose, a dark blue suit that was neither old nor worn, and a pair of sneakers on his feet that looked out of place.
The man had an aura similar to that of a Chinese or political teacher. Moreover, when Li Xiu was half asleep, she seemed to hear other people calling the man "Teacher Xu".
...Is this Qiming's teacher?
Li Xiu was a little confused.
After the shock he'd experienced before, Li Xiu still felt a bit numb in his head. While he was still dazed, Fang Qianan had already grabbed his hand tightly and pushed him towards Teacher Xu.
"Teacher Xu, you, can you take another look at him?"
"Hiss, Fang Qianan, be gentler." Li Xiu frowned and couldn't help but kicked Fang Qianan.
After Fang Qianan finally calmed down a little, Li Xiu subconsciously pulled him behind him, then he raised his head, stood in front of the man, and skillfully gave him a well-behaved and obedient smile.
"Hello teachers. Hello vice principal."
Unlike other students, Li Xiu has never been nervous in front of the teacher.
Sure enough, as soon as Li Xiu opened his mouth, the extremely tense atmosphere between the teacher and Fang Qianan suddenly relaxed.
"You are... Li Xiu, right?"
The vice principal was fidgeting like an ant on a hot pan as he listened to these "teachers" scolding Fang Qianan without any politeness. He knew how powerful they were and naturally didn't dare to offend the "teachers". But the student being scolded...wasn't an ordinary student?!
At this time, he finally heard Li Xiu speak, and he felt relieved instantly. He took out a handkerchief to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead, and quickly changed the subject.
"How are you now? Are you still feeling unwell?" The vice-principal scolded her, "Look at you, why are you here instead of attending class? I warned you before that coming to the Xiao family villa will be a demerit—"
Before the vice principal could finish his words, Fang Qianan interrupted him harshly: "It has nothing to do with him."
Fang Qianan ignored Li Xiu's gaze, stepped forward and stood in front of the young man, his face as stern as the bottom of a pot.
"I dragged him here by force. If there's going to be a reprimand, it should be me, right? Anyway, I don't want to go to this crappy school anymore."
"square..."
The vice principal's face turned pale and blue after being scolded by Fang Qianan, and he was completely speechless for a while.
"Oh, what are you planning to do by dragging him here?"
Fortunately, Teacher Xu suddenly spoke at this time and asked Fang Qianan gently.
"…"
Now, the person with a complicated expression and falling into silence was Fang Qianan.
Li Xiu unconsciously turned her head and looked at the boy next to her. She felt very nervous and was not sure whether she should tell him what had happened.
Before Li Xiu and Fang Qianan could exchange glances to clarify the situation, Teacher Xu sighed again and spoke.
"You students, I really don't understand what's wrong with you. You know that if you just study hard and read diligently, you can be immune to all evil, but you run to places like this to show off your power, scaring yourself to death. When your mind and soul are unstable, won't you be easily bewitched and possessed by evil spirits..."
Li Xiu looked up in surprise and met Teacher Xu's gentle and clear eyes behind the glasses.