Wang Zhuo lay on He Hao’s bed like a giant infant. He reached out for the breakfast lying on the desk He Hao had dragged over and lazily ate it. When he was done, he pulled the e-reader out from underneath He Hao’s pillow. When he opened it, it was open to the horror novel He Hao was reading yesterday. Wang Zhuo added a bookmark to the current page, then started reading from page 1.

Wang Zhuo was a playful sort, and his disposition was like that of a monkey; he could not sit still. So even though he was not stupid, his grades were unimpressive and he usually lagged in the bottom half of the class when it came to grades. Once in a while, he would outdo even himself and score among the lowest 10 in class. If not for He Hao keeping a close eye on him, who knew what sorry state Wang Zhuo would have ended up in.

Wang Zhuo read quickly, and finished a dozen chapters at once. The female lead still had not appeared, and the story was just the male protagonist and the male sidekick making eyes at each other. The ghost parts were also not scary. Wang Zhuo grew bored the longer he read. Besides, he was ill, so he really was physically tired. So he yawned, put the e-reader aside, lay down again and continued sleeping.

Thinking of how his classmates were attending Old Zheng’s class right now, Wang Zhuo slept even more sweetly!

Five minutes later, half-asleep, Wang Zhuo anxiously tugged at the blankets, pulled them up from his chest to his chin, and curled up under them.

He suddenly felt very cold.

A chill seemed to emanate from his very bones and wrap him like a shroud. Wang Zhuo paid closer attention and noticed that it was not a chill induced by the fever or something he was feeling with his whole body as a result of the low temperature outside. It seemed more like a cold-blooded little living creature – wherever it moved to, Wang Zhuo felt cold. It curled up on Wang Zhuo’s calf, so Wang Zhuo felt his calf grow cold; it lay on Wang Zhuo’s stomach, so Wang Zhuo’s stomach felt icy; it stuck to Wang Zhuo’s back...

“Hss–” Wang Zhuo flinched and jolted awake from the cold.

He reached out and slapped his lower back. As expected, he did not catch anything, but as his hand landed on his back, he faintly heard a baby’s cry. It was weak and soft, and by the volume and the way it sounded, it seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall. But...

Several seconds passed in silence in the dorm room. Wang Zhuo reached out to scratch his back again. That spot really felt uncomfortable, a numb sort of itching, as if gooseflesh had risen and was rubbing against his clothes, but the problem was that he was not wearing anything on his upper body.

As Wang Zhuo reached for his back, the infant’s cry came again. This time it was a little clearer, as if the invisible wall between it and Wang Zhuo had grown thinner. This cry made Wang Zhuo’s hair rise. He cursed out loud, turned, and thought about running out of the dorm room. But perhaps due to the fever and his diarrhea, the moment Wang Zhuo set foot on the ground he found that his legs were as soft as noodles and could not support his weight at all. The moment he stood up he fell down again, making the bed creak. At the same time, the infant’s strange cry came again. “Ga-ga... ga-ga-ga...”

This time, the infant was laughing.

It was a child’s laugh, bright and crisp, as if the desolation of Wang Zhuo collapsed on the bed was entertaining.

The infant might have been entertained, but Wang Zhuo was scared out of his mind, because this sound was now a little closer than it had been before, again. He struggled to stand up again, but in the moment his butt left the bed, a child’s voice gurgled softly, “Daddy.”

It sounded like an infant of about one year old learning to talk, and this time the sound was right next to Wang Zhuo’s ear...

Too close!

Without warning, the bone-deep chill rushed through Wang Zhuo again. Wang Zhuo, the realist who was afraid of nothing, was now so frightened he collapsed in a dead faint.

An hour later.

It was the last ten minutes of the last morning class. The subject was literature, Lin Feiran’s least favorite. He stared attentively at the blackboard but his mind was wandering. A lazy summer wind made the white curtains billow, and the curtain blocked Lin Feiran’s view of his surroundings for several seconds. By the time the curtains floated back down, Lin Feiran found there was one more person at the podium at the front of the classroom.

A translucent Wang Zhuo.

More accurately, that was Wang Zhuo’s spirit.

He only wore a pair of loose pajama pants, his hair a rat’s nest. He looked as if he had just woken up. There was a wild look in his eyes, as if he had lost the ability to think clearly.

“How did he...” Lin Feiran suddenly turned pale.

Wang Zhuo was dead? Wasn’t he ill because of a fever? Did he die from his fever after just one morning?!

Lin Feiran felt his heart sink drastically. He stood up suddenly, and in his hurry his thigh hit the side of the desk. The desk scraped against the floor, making an earsplitting screech, and the whole class turned to look at him.

“Teacher, I’m going to the toilet!” Lin Feiran pushed Gu Kaifeng, who quickly got up to get out of the way, and dashed out like a gust of wind.

“Class is about to let out! Why are you going to the toilet?” the literature teacher fumed.

Lin Feiran paid no attention. As he passed the podium, he grasped Wang Zhuo’s wrist with the hand Monk Cheng Guan had left a mark on, and dragged Wang Zhuo out of the classroom. The momentum of Lin Feiran’s tug made Wang Zhuo’s spirit fly into the air. He drifted horizontally behind Lin Feiran like a weightless balloon. The literature teacher was about to reprimand Lin Feiran when Gu Kaifeng suddenly said, “Teacher, I’m going too.”

He followed Lin Feiran out of the classroom. He did not have his Yin-Yang eyes open and did not know what was going on, but he knew that Lin Feiran must have seen something.

The literature teacher’s angry shouts echoed alongside Lin Feiran and Gu Kaifeng’s footsteps in the quiet corridor. A boy complained, “Are they that hungry?” and the rest of the class began giggling and laughing.

“Whoo... whoo...” Lin Feiran dashed towards the dormitory building like he was running for his life. In his grandfather’s notebook chronicling his life-saving exploits, Lin Feiran had read a story that a very small proportion of people who had recently died could still be brought back to life. For example, people who had died suddenly. Even though their spirits had left their body, if the spirit was stuffed back in their corpse before it had gone completely cold, and emergency resuscitation was performed on them, they might still live.

Gu Kaifeng was hot on his heels. “RanRan, what happened to you?!”

“I’ll tell you later!” Lin Feiran did not look back as he ran.

It really was strange. Usually, when Lin Feiran touched ghosts, the Yin energy from the spirits would chill him to his bones, even if he touched them with the hand Monk Cheng Guan had drawn the symbol on. He had tried before: the only difference the symbol made was that he could touch the ghosts. The chill they had caused before still remained. But, right now, he was tightly gripping Wang Zhuo’s wrist, yet his hand did not feel cold at all. Aside from being weightless, Wang Zhuo’s spirit seemed entirely like a living person: it was warm, and Lin Feiran could even feel a pulse from Wang Zhuo’s wrist...