Entering the Art Building by Night

The academic schedule at Gao Shan High School was punishing.

After morning exams, the afternoon was dedicated to self-study while the teachers graded the papers. The evening self-study session was then spent going over the test results.

By the time they finally dragged their exhausted bodies back to the dormitories, it was nearly midnight.

They had twenty minutes until the dorm manager's inspection.

Baili Dao's expression was grave.

"Does everyone understand the plan?"

This operation would determine the success or failure of their Instance quest. The Art Building could only be entered at midnight. If they failed to get in tonight, their chances of discovering the runaway's identity would be slim.

After all, the Instance never said the person was escaping on the final day.

"Right," Tuxing Sun said with confidence. "Leave the stealing to me. Big Bro Baili and Shi Gandang will keep watch, and Brother Wu Wang will meet us at the Little Black Room."

Today's exam had been torture for him.

He was practically illiterate, one of the few who had slipped through the cracks of the nine-year compulsory education system.

Thankfully, one of his skills was related to theft. It allowed him to secretly copy the answer sheets of the top five students in the class. Otherwise, his homeroom teacher would have likely sent him to the Little Black Room to be disposed of like trash during the evening session.

Shi Gandang silently grabbed a handful of pebbles from his pocket and tossed them onto the bed.

In the blink of an eye, the pebbles transformed into stone sculptures in their images, lying quietly on the beds and pretending to be asleep.

Skill 【Scatter Stones to Make Soldiers】!

Baili Dao walked to the window. His pupils gradually changed, narrowing into sharp slits like a hunting eagle's. Even the whites of his eyes were faintly tinged with yellow.

【Eagle Vision】!

This was his Title Skill. It allowed him to easily observe distances and micro-expressions invisible to the naked eye. It was also how he had previously noticed Wu Wang's upward glance.

"There's one security guard on each floor of the Teaching Building, but none outside the principal's office," Baili Dao said. "The stairwells are all guarded, though. Brother Shi, are you sure you can handle them?"

The tall figure replied in a low, muffled voice.

"Mhm. I have an item that can knock them out for half an hour. We have to be quick. Grab what we need, leave, and lock the door. We can't let them notice anything is wrong when they wake up."

At first, they had actually considered just knocking out the security guards.

But during evening self-study, they happened to see two of them on patrol. They were nearly two meters tall, with muscles straining their uniforms to the bursting point. They had bloodshot eyes and rotting skin on their faces.

They looked exactly like the Gargantuars from Plants vs. Zombies, just short of carrying an imp on their backs.

They knew winning a fight was likely impossible.

These things were clearly not human. They were ghosts whose entire brains were stuffed with muscle and pure Strength.

No wonder students couldn't just climb the walls to escape.

If you were caught, you'd be beaten to death on the spot.

"Alright!" Baili Dao announced. "Operation start!"

"My shoes are torn, my hat is torn, my cassock is torn~"

Wu Wang hummed the little tune as he arrived at the Little Black Room.

At his feet lay a corpse, somewhat swollen from being soaked in water. It dragged a wet trail across the empty ground.

This was Li Yang's body.

Wu Wang had previously hidden it at the bottom of the school's lotus pond. He had even tied stones to its limbs to stop it from floating to the surface. To get to the Art Building tonight, he had expended a great deal of effort to haul the corpse back ashore.

"Buddy, since you can turn into a ghost in the Little Black Room, you should be able to do it in the Art Building too, right?"

He muttered this as he dragged the body toward the area behind the Little Black Room.

This was something he had just pieced together.

Principal Wang was worried about the tentacled ghosts escaping the Little Black Room. The monster's tentacles were multicolored like oil paint. The strange phenomena in the Little Black Room belonged to neither the ghost school's faction nor the students'. They were related to the Art Building, a place that did not exist in the normal flow of time.

Putting all this fragmented information together, Wu Wang came to a conclusion.

What Principal Wang truly feared was the tentacled ghosts getting into the Art Building, which might trigger some kind of change.

That was why he needed Li Yang.

The other party had no objections and followed without a word. The only problem was that a waterlogged corpse was a bit heavy to carry.

A moment later, Wu Wang arrived.

Where there was once only an empty, spacious area behind the Little Black Room, a small, three-story building now stood.

Atop the building, the three large characters for "Art Building" were traced in gold leaf. It looked like the place had been abandoned for a long time. The gold leaf had dulled and was now covered in moss and dry leaves.

Gurgle… gurgle…

Wu Wang felt something squirming under his clothes. He couldn't help but lift his bulletproof vest to take a look.

He was just in time to see the 【Bloodstained School Uniform】 undergoing a change. The colorful graffiti on it was crawling and flowing across the fabric as if it were alive.

On the long-sealed iron gate before him, a large amount of colorful graffiti flowed in response.

Just as I thought.

By wearing this uniform, he could enter the Art Building without that blasted oil paint box.

"Now, the game officially begins!"

He grinned, a wild smile spreading across his face as he approached the main gate.

Stepping through this entrance, the core of the Instance would finally unveil its mysteries to him.

Everything before was just child's play.

Shimmer...

Wu Wang reached out. Without even needing to push, his entire body sank into the large, dust-and-graffiti-covered iron gate. It was like passing through a thin curtain of water. Ripples spread across the gate's surface.

He, along with the corpse he was dragging, was sucked into the building.

Whoosh!

The moment he entered, a pungent, dusty smell assaulted his nostrils. It was something like cheap oil paint, or maybe the formaldehyde from spray paint.

He surveyed the environment on the first floor.

The lighting was extremely dim, with only a faint, pale yellow glow that allowed him to make out the general shapes of things. Wu Wang was quite surprised by this. He had assumed the building would have no power or light at all.

He observed more closely.

All sorts of desks, chairs, and benches were piled together in a chaotic mess in the hallway. The junk on his left was stacked all the way to the ceiling, making it completely impassable.

On either side, he could see many classroom doors, some open, some tightly shut. Faintly written on them were words like "Vocal Music Classroom 1" and "Vocal Music Classroom 2."

It seemed this floor was for music classrooms.

"Hehehe… heehee…"

In an environment so quiet you could hear a pin drop, a strange laugh suddenly echoed down the hallway like a demon's whisper, lingering long after.

There's someone in the Art Building!?

Wu Wang's expression turned serious.

No, this damn place doesn't seem like anyone lives here.

It's most likely something unclean, probably related to the Art Building's ghost story.

It was the laugh of a ghost!

An even more abrupt voice came from his feet.

"Are you… Chu Yuxun? Where are we?"

Wu Wang snapped his head down.

Li Yang was awake.

Not only was he awake, but he had also returned to normal. His head, shattered from the fall, and his limbs, swollen from a day of being submerged, were completely healed.

He sat on the floor rubbing his head like a living person, his eyes filled with bewilderment.

Wu Wang tilted his head.

"Uh, buddy, do you remember what happened before you came here?"

Li Yang just frowned.

"I remember I was in class," he said in confusion. "Teacher Yao called on me, and then… I appeared here."

As expected. He doesn't remember that he died.

Wu Wang didn't plan on telling him.

God knows if this guy, upon remembering his own death, would suddenly split his skin and turn into one of those tentacled ghosts Baili Dao and the others described. After all, Qinghe Yikan had warned them before he fainted that the strange phenomena in the Little Black Room were related to the students who had jumped from the building.

Wu Wang reached out and pulled the other boy to his feet.

"Do you know about the school's Art Building?"

He continued, "When I was a kid, there was this guy named Neil on a kids' TV show who believed in me more than my own mom. He was always telling everyone to go make art."

"We're in the Art Building right now. I bet this place has that special kind of white glue I could never find back then. Wanna try it out with me?"

Hearing this, Li Yang looked a little stunned.

A moment later, he pointed a finger behind Wu Wang.

He asked with some uncertainty, "I don't really mind, but… did that person come with us too?"