Chapter 13 The Crying of a Newborn

Whether to trust a teammate’s ability or to trust one’s own judgment… under a time constraint, Feng Bujue had to make a choice. This internal struggle was another form of pressure exerted by the system, in addition to fear. Regardless of the outcome of Feng Bujue’s decision, he had already lost this game between the system and the player. By allowing himself to be distracted by something that could not be accurately determined, he was only endangering himself.

Just then, the sudden sound of a baby’s cry rang out, reaching Feng Bujue’s ears. He turned his head, following the sound, and saw a dark, empty corridor ahead. The sound came from the corner at the end of that corridor.

He didn’t rush over. Instead, he glanced at his phone; the time was 40:27. In eighteen seconds, he would miss the opportunity to dial.

In the end, he pressed the speed dial button. Even though they had only been through one script together, he was willing to trust Si Yu’s strength. Besides, he felt that if he didn’t make this call, then she would suffer a similar psychological pressure over the next fifteen minutes.

At this point, he had completely figured it out. He had to dial if he could. Whether they could connect successfully or not, dialing would at least indirectly prove that one of them was safe. Mathematically speaking, as long as a call was initiated, there was a 50% chance that neither of them would be hunted by ghosts. But if they didn’t dial, one of them would be 100% certain to be hunted.

Beep—

After only one ring, Si Yu answered, “I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Mm…” Feng Bujue was indeed happy to hear her voice, but he immediately said, “Didn’t you say… not to ask the other person if they were okay?”

About two seconds of silence…

Then, a "beep" sound actually came from the phone. The next second, the call was disconnected.

There was only one explanation for this situation… Si Yu, without any intention of insult, very unhappily said a censored word to Feng Bujue and then proactively hung up the phone.

Listening to the busy signal, Feng Bujue stood there dumbfounded, numbly bringing the phone to his eyes. “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean? Hanging up on me! You were the one who said not to ask each other if we were okay! Now you’re even swearing at me! And the fact that you could successfully swear means you felt justified!” He widened his eyes and roared at the phone, but the call had already been disconnected; Si Yu couldn’t hear him. He was just venting one-sidedly. “Idiot? Moron? Fool? It’s just one of those words, isn’t it! What did I even do! You didn’t have to hang up after swearing at me! I knew I shouldn’t have called!”

Ahead of him, the baby’s crying grew louder and louder, constantly drilling into his ears, just as the nursery rhyme sang: “Waaah, waaah… the sound of a baby’s cry echoes in the ear.”

Feng Bujue closed his flip phone, held it in his left hand, passed the flashlight into the same hand, and then drew the kitchen knife from his knapsack, gripping it in his right hand, and strode forward.

Turning the corner of the corridor, he immediately saw a basket on the ground, like the kind of shoe-shaped wicker basket used for picnics. Inside the basket lay a baby, its body wrapped in a white towel, with only its head exposed. Its face didn’t look abnormal; it looked like a newborn, with its eyes closed and features still undeveloped.

Feng Bujue exhaled a long breath, then squatted down, looked at the baby, and said calmly, “What do you want? Say it. If you can’t say it in thirty seconds, your head’s coming off.”

The baby continued to cry, and it cried even harder. The “waaaah” sound became incredibly shrill, like the sound of fingernails scratching across glass, making one’s heart crawl.

“Cry!” Feng Bujue raised his voice. “Crying counts as time!”

His bandit-style interrogation method yielded very bad results. The baby slowly opened its eyes, and the eyes under its eyelids were like pools of crimson amber. Its squeezed-together features also revealed a hideous smile.

According to legend, a newborn child’s three souls and seven spirits are not yet settled, and they all possess yin-yang eyes. If such a baby dies, its resentment will be extremely heavy, more fierce than an ordinary earthbound spirit.

Before Feng Bujue, the cradle containing the baby, in the blink of an eye, transformed into a human torso. The dead man’s face was full of horror, and all his limbs were gone. His internal organs had been scooped out and were scattered on the ground around him. And the baby was lying inside the corpse’s hollowed-out torso, leering at Feng Bujue.

“Bones for a cradle, skin for a bag, huh?” Feng Bujue also smiled at the other party. Not only was he not afraid, but he also felt somewhat annoyed.

As he spoke, he caught sight of something else out of the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw that the corridor was now filled with similar corpses, all with their internal organs scooped out and their limbs missing, their deaths extremely gruesome.

“You’re a hermit crab in reincarnation,” Feng Bujue said. “Let me guess… hmm… your mother was a student here. She was played with by some teacher or boy, and after being pregnant for nearly ten months, she came to the school to beg him, but she was still rejected ruthlessly. In the end, she could only commit suicide in this corridor, and before she died, she resentfully dug you out with her own hands?”

A novelist is a novelist, and his ability to concoct plots and transform them into language is truly strong.

After hearing this, the ghost infant’s laughter stopped abruptly. The next second, it transformed into a heart-wrenching shriek. This sound was extremely terrifying, shattering all the window glass on one side of the corridor. Feng Bujue’s Survival Value also decreased accordingly.

It seemed that this monster couldn’t be dealt with through peaceful means. Feng Bujue quickly raised his knife and stabbed down at the ghost infant. However, the tip of the knife failed to land successfully; his wrist was suddenly grabbed by something. He turned his head and saw that an arm had stretched out from the wall, stopping his attack. It seemed that the limbs of these corpses were still nearby…

Fortunately, the ghost infant’s high-pitched screaming was limited in time; it stopped after seven or eight seconds. Otherwise, Feng Bujue’s Survival Value might have been drained completely. But the situation was still very bad. On both sides of the corridor walls, many hands and feet were successively stretching out, and each one could move…

Feng Bujue knew that delaying was not in his favor. He decisively slashed back, using the kitchen knife to chop at the arm. Unfortunately, a human arm wasn’t so easy to cut off, and neither was the arm of a corpse.

The blade of the kitchen knife embedded itself in the flesh of that ghostly arm, and a large amount of blood flowed down, pouring into the corpse’s torso and onto the ghost infant. The infant actually laughed again, and the sound it made drilled into his ears, causing a heart-wrenching feeling. If the game hadn’t limited the degree of pain, Feng Bujue might have already fainted.

Seeing that he couldn’t break free, Feng Bujue quickly put down the flashlight and phone in his other hand, took out Mario’s pipe wrench from his knapsack, and swung it down with lightning speed, directly striking the ghost infant’s head. This time, he succeeded, and he was fortunate enough to trigger the [Concussion] effect.

After the monster’s main body was affected by the skill, all the moving severed limbs stopped their movements. Feng Bujue seized the opportunity to break free of the restraint with his right hand, using both hands to beat the ghost infant in the “corpse cradle” mercilessly. The scene could be described as a bloody mess; it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it had some anti-human tendencies.

Soon, all the limbs protruding from the walls disappeared. It seemed that the monster was already unable to maintain itself. He thought that this was a sign that the ghost infant was about to be eliminated, but immediately, new anomalies appeared.

Feng Bujue discovered that the face of the corpse holding the ghost infant suddenly became blurred. Gradually, the image of that face changed into his own. And it even opened its mouth to speak, and even its voice was the same as his: “It hurts… stop it… stop it!” The corpse’s voice changed from a moan to a roar, struggling to twist its back and trying to move its torso.

Just as Feng Bujue hesitated slightly, the ghost infant disappeared right before his eyes. Only an empty abdominal cavity and some internal organ debris remained in the corpse’s torso.

Feng Bujue knew that he had been tricked. The monster had undoubtedly used a trick, traded for a moment to catch its breath, and taken the opportunity to escape elsewhere. He immediately put away the kitchen knife, picked up the flashlight on the ground, stood up, and scanned the hollowed-out corpses in the corridor with the beam of light, trying to find where the ghost infant had fled.

“Hehehe…” Another chilling laughter sounded. This time, the laughter didn’t sound like it came from a baby at all, and the most terrifying thing was that the sound came from… very close.

Feng Bujue realized something. He lowered his head and looked at his chest. The scene that entered his eyes was enough to make anyone’s heart break… The blood-soaked ghost infant was curled up, lying on its side inside his abdominal cavity, one small hand clinging to one of his ribs, and bursts of lewd laughter were coming from inside his body.

“You want to make me commit suicide with this illusion?” Feng Bujue said calmly, completely ignoring the scene, and reached out to touch his knapsack. He knew that what he saw was just an illusion; his sense of touch was not affected. He could still feel his clothes and the backpack slung across his body.

He took out the Eye of Hatred and put it on while saying, “I almost forgot about this thing.” At this moment, he happened to remember another use of this equipment.

After Feng Bujue put on the equipment, he scanned every corpse and every corner of the corridor with the beam of the flashlight. As long as the ghost infant was still creating illusions, it would definitely be exposed.

Sure enough, when his gaze fell on a seemingly hollowed-out corpse, the Eye of Hatred reacted. There was a monster here that was targeting the player.

Feng Bujue strode over and, without hesitation, raised the pipe wrench and brought it down. This time, the heavily injured monster was indeed helpless.

[Main Quest Progress Updated]

[Explore Jie High School, break seven paranormal phenomena. Current progress: 3/7]

[Main Quest Progress Updated]

[Explore Jie High School, break seven paranormal phenomena. Current progress: 4/7]

Almost simultaneously, two system prompts popped up. This indicated that at the moment Feng Bujue finished off the ghost infant, Si Yu had also completed the thirteenth step’s task.

“Hmph…” Feng Bujue snorted coldly and mocked himself, “Looks like I worried for nothing.”

…………

In the main building, Si Yu sat on the ground with her back against the corridor wall.

Looking down the corridor beside her, there were countless ghostly corpses all the way down. The floor was covered in blood, and the heavy smell of blood and the strange stench emanating from the monsters were enough to make anyone avoid it.

But at this moment, she had no strength to move anywhere else.

The lantern and longsword were placed on the floor beside her. Her right hand held her phone, and her left hand was covering the wound on the right side of her waist. The blood from the wound had not yet stopped, and it was still seeping out between her fingers.

Once you stepped into this floor, connected by the thirteenth step, there was no escape, and nowhere to hide. The space was filled with a large number of monsters, some of which could cause people’s Fear Value to skyrocket just by their appearance. Those who came in were either killed and became one of those evil spirits, or, like Si Yu, killed them all…

In fact, Si Yu’s condition was already very bad during the last call. She was lying to Feng Bujue when she said, “I’m fine, don’t worry.”

Around 40:00, Si Yu was in the middle of a battle break. Although she was already injured at the time, she consciously adjusted her breathing and quickly answered the phone at the first opportunity. She also knew very well that even showing any abnormality would only become a mental burden on her teammate.

Now, Si Yu had finally cleared the monsters in this space, and she needed to rest for a while. Her Survival Value and Stamina Value needed to be restored, and the bleeding status could not be treated temporarily. Only by maintaining this still state and pressing down on the wound could she stop the loss of Survival Value.

In this situation, the system would not judge it as “passive gaming” because the player was forced to stop moving due to specific circumstances. On “Normal” difficulty, the system would not force a player who was already near death to continue moving. As for “Nightmare” difficulty, that was another matter…

Si Yu paid attention to the time on her phone. There were still ten minutes until the next call, and she didn’t want to face any “ghost hunting” in her current state, so she had to complete the dialing during the next call.

After the previous call, Feng Bujue felt annoyed, while Si Yu felt wronged. Objectively speaking, both of them were responsible for this matter, but the main responsibility… still had to be placed on Feng Bujue’s head. Who told him to be so tactless and reply with such an embarrassing line?

At any moment, even if a man is completely in the right, it’s best not to correct a woman’s inconsistencies…

Drip… drip…

Just as Si Yu thought she could finally catch her breath, in the darkness far away, the sound of water droplets quietly rang out…