Era of Magic and Martial Arts-Chapter 361 - 345: Peeking Through the Door Crack, I Saw...

Chapter 361: Chapter 345: Peeking Through the Door Crack, I Saw...

In the bedroom, there was a faint chill amidst the silence.

Cuicui, sleeping near the door, suddenly felt a cool breeze sneak under her covers. She groggily opened her eyes and looked towards the crevice by the door.

"Oh no, did I forget to lock the door before sleeping?"

Cuicui yawned as she slowly crawled out of bed.

Using the corridor light seeping through the door crack, she unintentionally glanced at the neighboring bed and realized that Xiaojuan was not in it.

"Did Xiaojuan go out?"

Cuicui gently opened the door and peeked into the corridor, but saw no sign of anyone.

This girls’ dormitory has been around for some years, with the peeling paint and dim lighting in the corridor giving it a somewhat eerie feeling during the quiet of night.

Especially with the long corridor and the swaying shadows of trees cast through the window at the end, adding to the weirdness.

Cuicui shivered involuntarily and pulled her head back inside.

When she looked back at the dorm room, she was instantly dumbfounded.

The neighboring bed was empty, the opposite bed was unoccupied, and even the bed at the diagonal corner was vacant.

Xiaojuan is not here!

Feng Yuhuai is not here!

Li You is not here!

So they went out to play together at night, without inviting me!

Am I being isolated?

Bullying!!!

Angry as she was, Cuicui was just too sleepy. She crawled back into her warm bed and drifted off with a murmur as if talking in her sleep:

"I’ll deal with you three when I wake up tomorrow."

Although she spoke harsh words to the air, she kindly left the door slightly ajar for the three of them, tightly wrapping herself in the blanket, curling against the wall. Soon, there were steady breathing sounds.

Outside, the concrete steps at the end of the corridor had been corroded over time, creating a pockmarked surface. Going down the worn stairs, the dormitory’s front door was locked at night, with dark green rust overtaking the padlock on the iron door.

The curtain of the dorm supervisor’s room was tightly shut, and the thin wooden door emitted thunderous snoring, rhythmically resonating throughout the corridor.

Further inside were a few uninhabited dorm rooms, often used by the dorm supervisor as storage, piling up desks, chairs, or bedding.

The room numbers on the doors were faded beyond recognition, appearing as if scratched by nails or carved with a knife, telling stories unknown to all.

Tonight, the lock cylinder on the door of the second to last room, which was next to the corridor restroom, was pried open, leaving a gap. A mix of mothball and moldy scents wafted out.

As most of the girls’ dormitories had been renovated, each equipped with independent bathrooms and shower facilities, and since there weren’t many students in the dormitory building, the corridor bathrooms were mostly unused.

At this moment, a faint mist covered the mirror in the public bathroom, and from one stall, there was the constant groaning of a stuck flush valve.

A few strands of grayish hair tangled around the drain, blackish-green liquid seeping from the tiles, with fine cracks appearing on a few tiles, as if something beneath was desperately clawing, ready to break through at any moment.

However, these eerie sounds did not reach Zhang Liyou’s ears, as she was standing at the door of the neighboring storage room, her entire attention absorbed in peering through the crack to witness the horrifying scene inside.

She didn’t see Feng Yuhuai devour Xiaojuan, but she clearly saw Lu Yazhi’s face, dead and resurrected, emerging from Feng Yuhuai’s shoulder.

Soon after, Xiaojuan’s head also slowly emerged from the other side, snuggling close to either side of Feng Yuhuai’s pouty, lovely face.

Although Lu Yazhi’s and Xiaojuan’s faces were not gruesome but meticulously woven in yarn like a lifelike face of a cloth doll, smiling warm and sweet smiles.

To Zhang Liyou, however, those two faces were more distressing, more terrifying than rotting corpses’ heads.

Her face turned pale as paper, one hand gripping the doorknob tightly, the other clamping over her mouth, not daring to make a sound.

Her face was dotted with cold sweat, silently pooling on her skin and trickling down her goosebump-covered chin.

Finally, a bead of sweat dropped to the floor under the pull of gravity.

Drip—

"Who’s there?"

The sweet voice made one’s blood run cold, and the door swung open from inside.

"No one? Did I mishear?"

Feng Yuhuai muttered to herself, her gaze pausing at the staircase around the corridor’s corner, then she looked down at the water stain on the floor before slowly pacing towards the public restroom.

As she glanced around at the spacious sinks, she approached and considerately tightened a loose, leaking faucet. Then she turned towards the stalls, asking softly:

"Excuse me, is anyone there?"

Her voice was sweet and friendly as she politely inquired.

At the staircase corner, Zhang Liyou pressed tightly against the wall, wiping sweat from her chin with her palm, channeling her entire body’s energy and mastering the half-finished [Turtle Breath Technique] she had found at a roadside stand.

Her heartbeat weakened, breathing slowed, and body temperature dropped drastically, seeming to merge into the wall behind her.

Screech—Creak—

Weird scratching sounds came from beneath the tiles.

Feng Yuhuai pushed open each stall door one by one, confirming that they were empty, and her gaze finally lingered eerily on the tiles showing cracks.

Reaching out, her fingers formed sharply lined holes like pinpricks on the tile surface. Then, with a sudden pull, the entire tile obediently lifted from the floor, exposing a vacuumed hole beneath.

The hole was as large as an adult’s waist, pitch-black inside and bottomless, only faintly echoing the sound of trickling water, suggesting some connection to the city’s underground drainage.

Feng Yuhuai flipped the tile in her hand, her pupils instantly constricting into pinholes.

She saw sharp scratches on the tile’s underside, evidently left by a creature below when digging, with its nails accidentally scraping against the tile.

The scratches were ink-green, with some cracks holding semi-transparent keratin fragments, still warm and exuding a bizarre stench.

"Not like human nails, nor like metal tools, more like some kind of wild beast’s claws?"

A judgment formed in Feng Yuhuai’s mind:

"What kind of thing would dig into a girls’ dormitory?"

Standing by the hole, Feng Yuhuai pondered for a moment, then her lips curved into a sweet smile, turning to retrieve the remaining clothes and crushed phone from the storage room, tossing them into the hole.

"Whatever it is, it can help me out. Thank you!"

Feng Yuhuai cheerfully placed the tile back over the hole, her smile growing even brighter.

.......