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Yay Zhongxia was startled by the sudden approach of a stranger—who in their right mind would care about the time in a creepy place like this? Something felt off. Xin-Cheng Liu’s face had gone pale, while Yuni didn’t even look at the girl...
Yay instinctively clutched her protective charm and, together with Xin-Cheng, quietly hid behind Director Mei-Xin Lin before mustering the courage to Script-read the girl’s description—definitely not human! This was a campus ghost story!
Legend had it that if you were stopped by a ghost girl asking for the time, you must not answer carelessly, or you’d be dragged into the pond. Yet Yay also remembered reading another version: only a specific answer could keep you safe. She didn’t have time to figure out which to believe—her eyes were already burning from the strain.
Xin-Jie Wang, who was closest to the girl, didn’t answer. Instead, her expression turned grave—scarier than the ghost itself. “What are you doing here so late? What class are you from?”
The girl didn’t reply. Her features twisted, and water began to bead and drip from her head. In the next instant, it was as if she were standing in a torrential downpour: her body soaked, her thick black hair hanging wet and tangled like waterweed around her arms, her eyes gray and lifeless. She stretched out a pale, bony hand and lunged at the principal. Xin-Jie Wang swiftly dodged, making no move to counterattack.
Luckily, as the principal moved, the ghost drifted further from the group. Then, Xin-Jie Wang wrote in midair, sending a blinding flash that drove the ghost girl back.
A bestial wail echoed through the darkness, and a black shadow charged at the principal.
Xin-Cheng Liu couldn’t help but let out a tiny gasp, but Xin-Jie Wang seemed almost to have been waiting for this—she grabbed the ghost girl and hurled her at the black shadow.
The instant the shadow touched the ghost, it went wild, the two creatures locked in a furious struggle.
Yay recognized the shadow as the same black monster that had chased them earlier. Now, as if triggered by the ghost, it darted with insane speed straight at her. Countless black words began to spill from its body, swarming like bees and engulfing the ghost: words of resentment—“unfinished,” “abandoned,” “why did you get finished,” “what makes you worthy of being finished”...
Given that both were terrifying, Yay guessed they might be the same kind of creature. She remembered Marelin’s term for the thread-doll and asked, “Are these all Story-Blights?”
Mei-Xin Lin, eyes fixed on the battling monsters, replied, “The black one is a Story-Blight. The ghost girl is a Story-Command born of a campus legend.”
Yay blinked, her mouth stuffed full of question marks—so that was a Story-Command?
Before she could fully process it, Mei-Xin Lin snapped, “Any story that’s widely spread can become a Story-Command. But a Story-Blight? That’s just some unfinished garbage—another lazy idiot dumping their trash in here. Seriously, when did this place turn into a goddamn landfill?”
Yay’s brain was still trying to distinguish between “completed” and “unfinished” forms when Mei-Xin Lin shot her a cold glance. “You’re not the kind to leave stories unfinished, are you?”
None of the freshmen really understood what kind of crime that might be, but Mei-Xin Lin’s tone was intimidating enough that they all shook their heads frantically.
Just then, Xin-Jie Wang returned, as relaxed as if she’d just gone for a stroll. “Let’s go.”
She had barely picked up her pen when, at the far end, the ghost girl and the shadow creature reached a conclusion. The shadow was ensnared by the ghost girl’s hair and dragged into the pond. The ghost, meanwhile, appeared right behind Xin-Jie Wang, her waterweed hair whipping forward like spider silk, trying to ensnare her.
But the moment the hair touched her, it slid right off—as if starring in a conditioner commercial.
Yay almost felt embarrassed for the ghost. She noticed a line of script on Xin-Jie Wang’s arm—Unauthorized contact will slide off.
Xin-Jie Wang casually flicked out a new description, which sounded just like a conditioner ad. The ghost’s waterweed hair instantly became sleek and shiny; a breeze blew by, making it float as if in a movie scene.
Yay seriously suspected the principal was just playing around with ghosts.
“Stop dawdling,” Mei-Xin Lin said, impatiently writing a new description—Starships occupy the abandoned school, countless massive flying saucers fill the sky.
From her notebook, organized lines of text spilled out, and something seemed to expand from her as the center. The surroundings didn’t visibly change, but a formless vitality filled the once-dead land.
Yay had no time to be afraid of the ghost anymore, because suddenly the sky was packed with flying saucers. Even though she’d never experienced war, the sense of overwhelming terror was immediate.
Xin-Jie Wang reminded her, “Don’t tear this place apart.”
“I won’t,” Mei-Xin Lin replied.
Standing atop a hi-tech looking manhole cover, floating in midair, she directed the smaller saucers to unleash laser bombardment, while the carrier-sized motherships charged up energy that seemed to warp the very air—like they were about to drop a nuke.
The entire pond was blasted into a smoking crater, and the water ghosts were nowhere to be seen.
The battered school building barely survived the onslaught; occasional ghosts floated out, but after being struck by a laser, they were absorbed right back into the saucers. Strangely, the flying saucers’ hulls now bore chalk doodles as if drawn by some unknown force. Chaos reigned, and as a piercing shriek echoed from nowhere, the ground itself began to tremble.
Yay was frozen, feeling like she was watching a horror movie that suddenly got crashed by an alien invasion, the set reduced to sci-fi chaos. She hugged Yuni tightly, both scared of being blown up and wildly excited—was this what Story-Command could do? Unreal!
Xin-Jie Wang seemed used to it, calmly instructing the students amid the bombardment, “Grab my hand.”
Yay barely had time to stack her hand and Yuni’s atop the principal’s before the pen flicked rapidly through the air. That familiar rush of centrifugal force hit, and in the blink of an eye, they were back in a bright, quiet room.
Looking down, Yay saw the lantern in her hand had reverted to the Marelin textbook. She finally exhaled. “We’re back.”
Xin-Jie Wang let go and returned to her world-weary posture, lazily pulling out a pack of cigarettes. She’d barely gotten one out before it was crushed to powder by invisible fingers and blown away.
“Oh, right… we’re on school grounds…” she grumbled, stuffing the box away.
A red line reading “No Smoking on Campus” had flashed for an instant—Yay was certain that was Director Lin’s doing. Nice!
Xin-Cheng Liu was the first to complain: “Where exactly was that place just now?”
The principal, even as she put away the cigarettes, kept taking them out to fiddle with. “Nothing special. Just a glitched area from misusing Marelin. I’ll fix the settings later.”
After watching in silence for a while, Yuni finally spoke up, “You mentioned a reset happened—does that mean that was the school’s original form?”
Xin-Jie Wang was silent for a moment, then smiled. “Sharp kid. You haven’t learned Story-Command yet and already figured that out. Not bad. Yes, that place was based on the ruins of an old academy from a previous era.”
Yay’s eyes widened as she looked quickly around—so that creepy place was the school’s original form? Marelin was a school inside a book, and Yuni could confirm the last place had been a world inside the book; they really did match.
Nervously, Yay pressed, “Does that mean there are ghost girls here too?”
At that, Xin-Jie Wang grinned wickedly. “Maybe! If you ever stay here alone, you just might see one…”
“….” At this moment, Yay desperately wished Director Lin would come and smash the principal’s shin.
Yuni asked, “What do you mean by ‘maybe’? As the designer, shouldn’t you know the answer?”
For once, the principal was left speechless, and Yay couldn’t help but grin smugly.
Then she reported witnessing someone creating a Story-Blight—a monster—in a classroom hallway, suspecting an evil force had taken root in the school.
The principal only smiled. “Oh, that troublemaker…”
Yay sweatdropped. The scene had looked like a classic villain appearance, but to the principal, it was just a troublemaker?
“No need to be afraid of that kid,” Xin-Jie Wang said, smiling beautifully and suddenly seeming much friendlier. “But it’s best not to get too close, either.”
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