Chapter 145: The Female Teacher's Game

The footsteps in my ears grew clearer. Someone was sprinting down the corridor, making a massive racket.

"Brother, do you think it could be the master of the Dream Realm?" the younger brother asked. He pulled a Precept Blade from his clothes and smeared Buddhist lamp oil onto the tip.

The older brother wasn't so sure. "The yin energy is rushing right at us like underworld soldiers borrowing the path. It's unstoppable. We'd better be careful."

The two slowly approached the door, just in time to see me sprinting past with Huang Xue in tow.

"You? The guy Lu Xing wants to kill!"

The twins spoke in unison. Their sudden appearance had startled me, too. "Move! Don't block the way!"

Since these two knew Lu Xing, they were definitely bad news. I launched a flying kick at the older brother with the large birthmark on his face.

He was clearly a trained fighter and dodged nimbly, leaving my kick to strike empty air.

"You're the one who killed the Death Spirit Divine Fiends last time, and now you're here to snatch the Heavenly Yi Noble! Just who are you? How do you know the secret of the Eight Characters Divine Fiends?!"

The brothers were thoroughly shocked, but I didn't have time to answer their questions. Dragging Huang Xue, I darted right between them. "Nice to meet you. Just to be polite, I'll warn you: I've got a bunch of naive kids right behind me."

I flashed the twins a radiant smile and immediately picked up the pace.

"Naive kids?" The two were baffled. Suddenly, they felt a dense wave of resentment pierce their skin and make their hearts pound. Only then did they turn to look.

At least several dozen students with mutilated bodies and twisted faces crowded the two- or three-meter-wide corridor. They glared with hollow, pitch-black eyes and stretched their mouths wide open.

"What day is it today? Why are there so many newcomers?"

"These two guys look too much alike. We should find a way to tell them apart."

"How about we chop off one's hands and the other's feet?"

"Good idea! I agree!"

The massive horde of yin souls and vengeful ghosts openly discussed these hair-raising ideas right in front of the twins, completely ignoring how the twins might feel about it.

"Brother, what do we do? We've cultivated for so many years and never run into a situation like this." The younger brother gnashed his teeth as he glared at my retreating back. Vengeful ghosts entering a dream wasn't uncommon, but dozens of them all at once? Who could handle that?

"We can't fight them head-on. I'll cover the rear; you chase after that guy. Lu Xing mentioned his name is Gao Jian. Remember his face. That woman next to him is very likely the master of the Dream Realm." The older brother was more composed. With a sweep of his broad sleeves, he pulled out five sheets of Grey Talisman Paper.

"Heaven-Moving Five Ghosts, manifest as Nether Children, guard my sides, reveal yourselves at once!" He bit the tip of his tongue and spat out a mouthful of lifeblood. His hands formed incantation seals, casting the five talismans in accordance with the Five Elements of heaven and earth.

The Grey Talisman Paper bore ghost runes drawn through heretical means, designed to communicate with the evil gods and demonic entities of the world. Thus, every time the spell was cast, it required blood to awaken the spirits.

Once cast, the five ghost talismans drew upon the dense yin energy to rapidly take shape, transforming into five grayish-white brutes. "Nether Children awaken, guard my body!"

He flicked another drop of blood, and the five ghostly figures immediately blocked the middle of the corridor.

The older brother's evil arts brought the horde of students to a halt. They began to murmur among themselves, their gazes shifting as they looked at him.

"The newcomer is a Daoist priest?"

"He doesn't seem to want to hang out with us."

"Then let's chop off his legs, and take the other one's hands."

The dozens of students awkwardly dragged their mutilated bodies forward, completely unfazed by the five ghostly figures the older brother had conjured. After a brief pause, they swarmed ahead once more.

The scene was truly horrifying. The dozen or so students at the front tore their mouths open and viciously bit into the five ghostly figures. The sight of all those furiously gnashing maws made the twins' faces turn extremely ugly.

"Amitabha. Li-po-li-po-di, qiu-he-qiu-he-di, Sin-Extinguishing True Word!" The younger brother, wielding his Precept Blade, chanted Buddhist scriptures. A faint, dark-golden light began to emanate from the five ghostly figures. If other cultivators in Jiangcheng were to see this scene, they would undoubtedly be astounded.

The older brother practiced heretical ghost arts, while the younger brother cultivated Buddhist salvation. Born of the same mother, these two were actually able to stack the effects of Buddhist and Daoist spells together. This was a complete subversion of traditional cultivation. Put nicely, it was groundbreaking innovation; put harshly, it was pure heresy!

The younger brother swung his Precept Blade. The two students leading the charge let out agonizing shrieks, collapsing at the feet of the crowd. They twitched a few times before falling completely still.

Seeing this, the other students didn't offer a shred of help. Instead, they swarmed the two fallen bodies and devoured them completely.

"These vengeful ghosts have already grown too powerful! The Nether Children can't stop them at all. Let's go!" Abandoning the five ghostly figures, the twins frantically retreated.

Thanks to those two Good Samaritans buying us time, Huang Xue and I temporarily escaped danger.

"It doesn't look like they chased after us." I stood in the emergency stairwell, unable to tell which floor we were even on.

"That was way too close. I can't even imagine what would happen if those monsters caught us." Huang Xue gripped my clothes tightly. Even though we had gotten away, she still didn't dare to let go, terrified I might leave her behind. "What do we do now?"

"It's a bit of a problem." Vengeful spirits and ghosts had blocked the ground floor of the Laboratory Building, leaving me no choice but to drag Huang Xue upstairs. Consequently, we were getting further and further away from the Laboratory Building's exit. "We'll have to play it by ear. Running away blindly will only leave us entirely on the defensive. First, we need to figure out what their ultimate goal is."

Huang Xue cast me a skeptical glance. "Hey, that wasn't what you said half an hour ago."

"Nothing has a fixed solution. We have to learn to analyze every advantage at our disposal and then pick the optimal plan." I confidently kneaded Huang Xue's stiff shoulders. "Don't be nervous. I still have a trump card that can turn everything around. Once we seize the initiative, we'll be the ones setting the rules for this life-and-death game."

Huang Xue unceremoniously smacked my hands away. "Listening to your brilliant theories just reminded me of something my sister told me before she went abroad."

"Let's hear it."

I assumed it would be about Huang Xue's childhood or perhaps some secret regarding the Huang Family. To my surprise, Huang Xue let out a deep sigh and helplessly grabbed the hem of my shirt once again.

"Before she left, my sister warned me over and over: she said it's better to believe there are ghosts around you than to trust a man's mouth."

I couldn't help but laugh, looking at her pretty face. "Well, at least she got the first part right."

Having caught my breath a little, I pulled out my phone and stepped out of the stairwell, with Huang Xue following closely behind me.

"We're on the fourth floor." Illuminating the floor sign with my phone's flashlight, I hugged the wall and slipped into the pitch-black corridor.

The wails and curses of yin souls and vengeful ghosts drifted up from downstairs from time to time, but this floor was deathly quiet.

Reaching the middle of the corridor, I noticed light spilling out from one of the rooms.

"Most of the classrooms are locked; this is the only one with someone inside." Huang Xue and I peeked through the door. A shirtless, blindfolded old man was tied to a chair.

"Should we save him?" Huang Xue gently nudged me with her elbow. I immediately looked back and signaled for her to stay quiet.

The moment she made a sound, the tied-up old man heard it. He wobbled his greasy, fat head. "Teacher Wen, is that you? Are you back?"

I held my breath and pulled Huang Xue into an adjacent inner room, giving the man a wide berth.

"He's tied up over there! He must be a victim of this nightmare too. We might be able to get something useful from him!" Huang Xue looked at me stubbornly. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend. We can team up and escape together."

"Friends?" I shook my head, pulling Huang Xue down to hide under a desk. "In this nightmare, I'm the only friend you have."

Noticing Huang Xue's unconvinced expression, I had no choice but to explain. "The point of tying someone up is to restrict their movement. But the ropes on that man are only tied around his ankles and arms. If he really wanted to break free, it'd be incredibly easy."

"Then why doesn't he run?"

Meeting Huang Xue's innocent gaze, I felt compelled to educate her on some basic common sense. "A moderate sense of restraint can stimulate a person's arousal points. This man is obviously playing a game that goes far beyond friendship with this Teacher Wen he mentioned."

A few minutes later, the clack of high heels echoed from the corridor outside, and the long-haired female teacher walked into the room.

"Teacher Wen, you're back? Hurry! Let's continue!"

The old man squirmed in his chair like a dog, his fat jiggling. The female teacher sauntered over to him and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. "What kind of reward do you want?"

She casually cast a glance toward the inner room, the Buddha Head Pendant around her neck faintly flashing with red light.