The chain bound around his wrist. Li Biao couldn’t even chop off his wrist to free his hand. He could only watch as he was dragged into the big dog’s mouth. To his shock, he saw a human face inside the dog.
“Why is the face familiar?”
Darkness consumed him. Li Biao felt all the sounds and lights fading away. When he was eaten by the dog, everything else was eaten too.
“They seem to be different from the ghosts I’ve encountered.” Gao Ming studied the heart he took from Li Biao. The child whom the heart belonged to had long died. The thing that kept the heart beating was a determination of the child to see his mother. He wanted to see his mother before he died. Sensing the intense determination from the heart, Gao Ming’s eyes shone with shock. All the ghosts he had met stored their consciousness inside a scenario. Every big ghost had its own resentment room but the owner of this heart compressed all of his resentment and memory into his heart so that he became a ghost with a ‘heart’.
The other investigators saw Gao Ming eat Li Biao and take away his core. The command fell onto the second team leader. They didn’t panic. They rearranged their formation. While they ensured everyone could influence the red raincoat, they were cautious of anything that could get close to them.
Gao Ming knew that it would be so much harder to strike at the investigators again. He didn’t stay on the basement first floor. He held the child’s heart and urged the big dog to move further down the building. The human bricks shattered. The crying faces struggled helplessly but their fates had been written. They couldn’t escape from the building. If something happened to the building, they had to rush over to fix it. If the building collapsed, they would lose their final resting place. From the moment they were turned into human bricks, the fate of these students were sealed. This was the best script fate had written for them.
“Sometimes, I feel like fate is a lazy scammer. He gave the majority a normal script but liked to come up with a few miracles so that the common majority would have hope. Little did they know that everything had already been written by fate.” The big dog was pessimistic. After he saw the human bricks, he was sad. He envisioned his former self on them.
“That’s why I want to fight against fate so that everyone can write their own destiny.”
“What’s the point? All the future you’ve seen are the future fate is willing to show you. Even if one day you jump out of the surface and see a different scenery, you are merely moved by fate into a bigger fish bowl.” The big dog avoided the human bricks and carried Gao Ming to the basement second floor. They saw the foundation of the lab building.
Underneath the compound of the school, various living humans were ‘planted’. These former students grew roots like plants. Thin vessels grew out of their bodies that stretched into the darkness. They fed the world with nutrients. Everyone used the things that made them human, like youthful appearance, strong bodies, longevity, health as well as love, happiness and kindness to trade for the things the school needed from the shadow world.“Is this the ritual of ‘afterlife longevity’ that Situ An has planned?”
Si Sui Apartments worshipped the God of Flesh and Blood with blood sacrifices; there was no actual divinity at Han De Private School. Situ An directly sacrificed the school to the shadow world. He turned the school into the sacrificial table and everyone who entered the school into sacrifices. What he needed in return was simple. He wanted to be the manager of this sacrificial table. Situ An had a sick obsession with power and a blind confidence in himself. He believed that if he managed to control everything, he could even change fate.
Gao Ming was deeply stunned by the underground room. The way to destroy Han De Private School was simple. It was to kill every living ‘root’ in the basement and destroy every human brick.
“This place makes me very uncomfortable. When can we leave?” The big dog didn’t even want to stay, much less bite the roots.
“Now is not the time to leave.” Gao Ming heard the sound of fighting from the surface. The red raincoat killed without mercy. Once combat started, it would not stop until one party was vanquished.
“Gao Ming!” A familiar voice came from the distance. Liu Yi and the girl with the birthmark on her face sneaked underground too. They had the same idea as Gao Ming.
“I found the real president of the student council. Her name is Yan Shaoyu. She is Headmistress Yan Xizhi’s adopted daughter.” Liu Yi spoke quickly. She didn’t waste time. “She knows where the ‘soul’ of the school is.”
As they walked down the human steps, they saw more roots poking out of the human bricks. The roots bound together as they reached deeper into darkness. With Yan Shaoyu’s guidance, Gao Ming’s group walked through the dried-up students and came to the main root branch.
Gao Ming looked down and saw a familiar figure.
At the bottom of Han De Private School was the corpse of Yan Xizhi. The first human brick buried there was hers. Her hair was silver, and she was impeccably dressed. She stood under all the human bricks and held up the school.
“Headmistress Yan?”
Headmistress Yan had gone missing many years ago in real life. In reality, she was murdered in the storage room. Her body was buried deep underneath the school. She was the first piece of sacrifice offered by Situ An to the shadow world.
Her eyes flickered open. Headmistress Yan returned to her corpse.
“Have you been trapped by Situ An? I’ll come to rescue you!” Gao Ming tried to climb down, but Headmistress Yan shook her head.
The rotten lips slowly opened. The serious Headmistress Yan spoke through her non-human and non-ghost body, “I came back here of my own volition. Something has happened to the school. I heard the kids under here crying.”
“But, how can you shoulder all of these on your own?” Gao Ming didn’t expect Headmistress Yan to make this decision. The school had been taken over by Situ An and Gao Yun. They just wanted to destroy the other. Only Headmistress Yan cared about the human bricks underground.
“They are all my children. They are good children. It was me who taught him how to be a good person. I failed to protect them.” Headmistress Yan’s voice was calm and severe. “Figure out a way to save some of the kids. Don’t forcibly sever their connection to the school. Use the letters I gave you to awaken their inner selves.” After that, Headmistress Yan turned to Yan Shaoyu, “Xiao Yu, do you still remember why I gave you that name? Even though rain was born in the dark clouds, it could fly through the sky. She is the cleanest and purest water. She is not afraid of wind and thunder. She will use her life to nourish the land to cultivate new life.”
The resentment in Yan Shaoyu’s eyes faded away. She wanted to get close to Yan Xizhi but was pushed back.
“You are the student council president. What you need to do is to help the other kids. There are many people who need you.”
Education was not creating machines; it was helping the kids become their best selves.
The fight between the raincoat and You Liang soon reached the underground. More human bricks crumbled. Gao Ming grabbed the big dog’s fur and flew through the bricks. Even without the reminder from Headmistress Yan, he wouldn’t harm these human bricks.
Gao Ming held the death portrait of the flood. The death portrait contained the student ID the PE teacher, Zhong Long, and Zhang Ding had salvaged at the activity building. The owners of these IDs were sent underground after being turned into human bricks by Situ An. Now was the perfect time to use them to awaken these pained souls.
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