Seeing such a horrifying scene abruptly at close range, even someone with the best composure would find it hard to withstand.
Wang Liang’s body instinctively tilted to the side, slamming straight into the desk beside him. The desk legs scraped against the floor, making quite a racket.
Behind the desk Wang Liang had knocked askew, Zhao Lei saw that Teacher Wang seemed to be having trouble and had lost his balance, so he hurriedly stood up to support him.
At the same time, there was some doubt in his eyes. Out of the corner of his vision just now, he seemed to have seen a flash of something white appear behind Teacher Wang, but it vanished in an instant. Perhaps it had been his imagination.
“Teacher Wang, are you all right?”
“.I’m fine.”
Wang Liang straightened up again. At this moment, he could already feel a mass of cold gloom within his body.
That was a fierce ghost—a crashed fierce ghost, and one that should never have existed in this world, a fierce ghost from a film and television work belonging to his original world. He had already become a ghost controller.
Compared to the perilous process other ghost controllers went through to control ghosts, his was practically something he had picked up for free. But for the present situation, it had come at exactly the right time.
The system had not told Wang Liang what Sadako’s abilities were. He could only explore them on his own.
But relying on the instincts transmitted by the crashed fierce ghost inside him, Wang Liang felt that he should be able to extend the ghost’s abilities to the glass around him that reflected his figure, as well as to other things that reflected his image.
He simply did not know what the effect of the ability was. Presumably, it would not be simple.
After all, this was Sadako.
“Knock. Knock, knock.”
A dull, strange knocking sounded from ahead. Wang Liang’s attention left the mass of cold gloom inside his body, and he abruptly raised his head to look toward the front door of the classroom.
The moment that murderous knocking rang out, everyone felt a suffocating sense of oppression, as if they had been pressed beneath the water and could not surface.
On the platform, Zhou Zheng noticed the changes in the surrounding environment. After finishing his communication with the headquarters operator, he hung up the phone, turned to look toward the doorway, and faced it solemnly.
Beside Wang Liang, Zhao Lei reminded him in a trembling voice:
“Teacher Wang, someone’s knocking.”
There was no need for Zhao Lei to say it. The moment the knocking sounded, Wang Liang had already started striding quickly toward the front of the classroom without the slightest hesitation.
Although Wang Liang was still somewhat panicked at heart—he had originally been an office worker eating hotpot, only to suddenly find himself facing something like this in the blink of an eye.
But he was now a ghost controller. He had at least some ability to resist.
Faced with this kind of fatal crisis, he could not allow himself to stand by as a spectator and wait for the death brought by the knocking to randomly call his name.
At a moment like this, no matter how afraid he was, he could not hesitate!
Because he could not be certain whether he would die the next time the knocking killed someone.
“Zhou Zheng! It kills by knocking! Stop that old man outside—he’s a ghost!”
The Knocking Ghost’s rule for killing by knocking was a certain-death rule, and the shadow of certain death had already begun to envelop this classroom.
For ordinary people, once they were attacked by a ghost’s killing rule, most would not survive. In truth, there was no need to specially distinguish a certain-death rule.
But the reason certain-death rules could be classified separately and specifically named as “certain death” was precisely because such killing rules were extremely lethal even to ghost controllers, who had controlled ghosts and possessed far more tenacious vitality. They took effect extremely quickly, and some even attacked one’s consciousness.
Even an ordinary ghost controller, without special means, would be killed instantly on the spot. Only then could it be called a certain-death rule.
The knocking had only sounded a few times, yet several students had already collapsed silently onto their desks, their faces deathly pale, their eyes lifeless, their breathing gone.
“Zhou Zheng, it should be knock—”
Based on the clues he had, Yang Jian had already deduced the killing rule in his mind, and the words had already left his mouth. But Wang Liang had spoken first, causing him to look in astonishment at the man who ran past him like the wind.
“Knocking?”
Zhou Zheng was staring solemnly toward the front door. Hearing Wang Liang’s words, his bloodshot eyes shifted and looked at Wang Liang.
Then his pupils shrank slightly, as if pricked by a needle.
He could sense how different this homeroom teacher was at this moment. The cold gloom emanating from his body without the slightest attempt at concealment was extremely obvious to Zhou Zheng, who was also a ghost controller.
“You’re actually a ghost controller too!”
“Act quickly, together!”
As Zhou Zheng glanced at Wang Liang, he noticed the several students who had died silently at their desks, and his expression instantly changed.
Seeing Wang Liang hurrying over with an urgent expression, he had no time to think further about why a homeroom teacher in a school would actually be a ghost controller. He immediately activated the supernatural power within his body.
For the sake of the remaining students, Zhou Zheng chose at this moment to trust this man who was both a homeroom teacher and a ghost controller.
Under the repeated knocking sounds, even more astonishing changes were now occurring within the classroom.
The walls became mottled and moldy. The plaster peeled away, and the cement within weathered away, exposing rust-streaked steel bars inside.
The air was filled with the stench of rot. The books on the desks rapidly yellowed, then curled into lumps as they continued to decay.
The lights in the classroom flickered unsteadily like candles in the wind, as if they might go out at any moment.
Even the slowest person could now sense that something was wrong. Terror appeared on the faces of the students one by one.
Seeing the surrounding scene, and hearing the conversation between Teacher Wang and the man named Zhou Zheng, some cried out in alarm, some trembled, and some noticed the classmates beside them lying motionless on their desks.
They pushed them. No reaction. They checked their breath. Dead!
“Ah! He’s dead, he’s dead!”
After confirming the death, someone was so frightened that they stood up on the spot and retreated again and again, knocking over desks and chairs and throwing everything into chaos.
And at that moment, Zhou Zheng moved. Beneath his wide trench coat, his bulging belly wriggled strangely several times. His body charged out like a frenzied beast. His thin frame, topped by that enormous belly, carried an eerie and abnormal strength.
Bang.
The classroom door was directly smashed apart by Zhou Zheng, and along with it, the old man in a black long gown who had been knocking outside the classroom was knocked away as well.
With a thud, the old man was sent tumbling onto the corridor floor outside the classroom. His body was stiff, lacking the softness a living person should have.
After a brief pause, the old man’s upper body twisted like an ancient, decrepit machine, and he tried to stand again.
“Ah!”
Zhou Zheng roared. The bulging belly beneath his clothes wriggled, and his clothes were stretched until they tore. The outline of a small hand appeared on the surface of Zhou Zheng’s distended belly. Through that thin yet abnormally tough layer of skin, its bluish-black flesh could be seen.
The bluish-black, bizarre hand pressed against Zhou Zheng’s belly and extended outward. It actually stretched more than two meters in an eerie manner and slammed down onto the old man on the ground.
The fluorescent tubes in the classroom and corridor sizzled at that moment, then once again gave off bright light. The rotting on the surrounding walls also stopped at this time.
The Knocking Ghost had been suppressed for a short while, and the ghost domain temporarily disappeared.
But just as Zhou Zheng let out a breath of relief, his eyes suddenly widened, filled with terror.
The old man on the ground, whom he was pressing down, had not been suppressed as he had expected. The old man’s deathly still eyes suddenly shifted, his lifeless gaze staring straight at Zhou Zheng.
At the same time, the old man’s body slowly and stiffly pushed against the bluish-black, bizarre hand pressing down on his chest, sitting up bit by bit.
The surrounding lights began to sizzle again, their glow flickering between brightness and darkness.