Instance: 《Campus Ghost Stories》 (9)

The three of them sat around the stone table, none of them speaking.

The flame of the ever-burning candle burned quietly, its wax body growing shorter bit by bit.

Zhao Weilai stared at the candle flame and whispered, “I wonder if those two will make it back safely.”

“They definitely will,” Deng Ziwen said, taking her hand. It was ice-cold. “Two people working together is always better than one.”

He said that, but he was just as uncertain.

Even Liu Guilan, walking alone, had barely made it back.

Ding Feifan said nothing.

Leaning against a pavilion pillar, he repeatedly turned over Weng Yang's warning to “watch out for the candle” and Liu Guilan's urge to “get out of here quickly.”

Why watch out for the candle? The candle was clearly the thing protecting them.

Could it be... that the candle would go out?

Or was the candle itself a piece of bait?

He looked up at the lake.

Shrouded in thick fog, the lake water was pitch black, like a block of solidified ink.

The water's surface was dead calm, without a single ripple.

But the calmer it was, the more unsettling it felt.

“Wait.”

Zhao Weilai's brow furrowed into a tight knot. “...Weng Yang told us to watch out for the candle—could it be because the candle is extremely important? Once the last person takes their candle, what if the remaining ever-burning candle used to light it also goes out?”

...

Watching the Instance unfold, Song Mo nodded in approval.

...

Hearing Zhao Weilai's reminder, the other two immediately thought of a possibility.

The mission prompt was: 【It will follow behind you. Shh, do not look back. Be careful, watch out for the candle in your hand.】

What if this wasn't a single sentence, but rather two separate mission prompts?

The first sentence required the participant not to look back.

The second: watch out for the candle.

If the candle in their hand went out while they walked around the lake, they would be punished...

Then by that logic, if the candle in the Lake-Center Pavilion went out—what would happen to them?

The remaining two recalled the bizarre event they had encountered when they first entered the Instance yesterday, and a fine, cold sweat broke out across their backs.

“If the candle in the pavilion goes out...”

“Don't you think,” Ding Feifan suddenly spoke up, his voice slightly hoarse, “this mission has been a trap from the very beginning?”

Deng Ziwen and Zhao Weilai looked at him at the same time.

“What do you mean?”

“It says 'walk around the lake once while holding a candle, do not look back, the candle must not go out.' This made all of us think that the person walking around the lake is in the greatest danger.” Ding Feifan theorized, “But what if, in reality, the person holding the candle is actually safe...”

“As long as the candle doesn't go out, there's no danger to life. But if you don't have a candle—the ones who are truly in danger are those left behind in the pavilion without one?”

Zhao Weilai suddenly stood up with a start. “Weng Yang rushed back then just to warn us?!”

“Yes,” Ding Feifan nodded. “She likely discovered something, which was why she ran back so desperately. And before Auntie Liu left, she said 'get out of here quickly'—could she also have been trying to warn us that the pavilion isn't safe, and we shouldn't stay here?”

Deng Ziwen's face paled as well. “Then what do we do now? We need to get out of here!”

“We can't leave.” Ding Feifan sighed, gesturing with his hands for the two of them to look at the thick fog behind them. “I noticed it just now. The fog is getting thicker and thicker... Stepping into the fog without a candle in our hands would be the most dangerous thing of all. So we can only wait. We have to wait for Fu Qinqin and Tan Moli to return.”

“But what if the two of them don't make it back?” Deng Ziwen asked, his face stark white.

The moment those words left his mouth, a dead silence fell over the pavilion.

...

Time ticked away, second by second.

Ding Feifan checked his watch. Fu Qinqin and Tan Moli had already been gone for forty-three minutes.

Based on Weng Yang's forty minutes and Liu Guilan's forty-seven minutes—no matter how slowly the two of them walked, they should have been back by now.

Yet there was still no sound from the fog.

Forget about seeing anyone, they couldn't even hear footsteps.

“Why aren't they back yet?” Zhao Weilai couldn't sit still any longer. She stood up, walked to the entrance of the pavilion, and peered into the fog.

But there was only a vast expanse of white; she couldn't see a thing.

The rotten stench grew stronger, several times more intense than before.

Taking a breath of the hot, humid water vapor made their chests feel tight and choked.

“If only we had realized the importance of the candle sooner, we should have swapped places with someone,” Deng Ziwen said, standing up and tightening his grip on the mop handle. “Have you guys noticed... the stench in the air is getting heavier and heavier.”

The three of them cast their gazes toward the ever-burning candle on the stone table.

The candle had shrunk significantly, its short body standing on the stone table with a flame that was noticeably smaller than before.

The green halo of light had also shrunk.

In the areas the green light could no longer reach, wisps of white fog began to unravel layers of mist.

The light that had once enveloped the entire pavilion now only illuminated a small area around the stone table.

The three of them were forced to huddle close to the narrow stone table.

“The candle is burning faster than before.” Ding Feifan was incredibly nervous, wiping away sweat continuously. “Something's wrong, something is seriously wrong. I was recording just now—the candle is burning much faster than it did when Weng Yang and Auntie Liu went.”

Zhao Weilai's heart sank heavily.

She hadn't paid attention earlier, but looking closely now:

Sure enough, while the candle had burned very slowly before, now the wax was dripping down like water, accumulating in a thin layer on the stone table.

At this rate, the candle would burn out in twenty minutes at most.

Twenty minutes.

Could they hold out until Fu Qinqin and the other girl made it back?

Once the Lake-Center Pavilion was completely enveloped by the white fog, would the thing in the fog... come inside?

The sound of bubbling on the lake's surface grew increasingly dense and loud, sounding almost like boiling water.

The three of them looked toward the lake at the same time.

On the pitch-black surface, bubbles constantly welled up.

The bubbles burst, splashing tiny droplets of water that drifted upward from the surface along with the mist.

“There's something in the water,” Deng Ziwen said, his voice filled with regret and terror. “...Someone just looked at me from the bottom of the lake.”

Zhao Weilai and Ding Feifan shuddered simultaneously.

Just as he finished speaking, they heard a loud creak.

It was the sound of a wooden plank on the Nine-Bend Bridge being stepped on.

The sound was very light and very slow.

It was absolutely not the footsteps of Tan Moli and Fu Qinqin.

Zhao Weilai's heart instantly leaped into her throat.

She gripped Deng Ziwen's hand tightly, her fingernails nearly sinking into his flesh.

The sound drew closer and closer.

It was accompanied by heavy, wet footsteps.

This time, the footsteps were even clearer than the previous two times.

One step, two steps, walking toward the Lake-Center Pavilion just like that.

The three of them held their breath, staring fixedly in the direction of the pavilion's entrance.

Within the thick fog, a bloated dark silhouette slowly emerged.

It was very tall and very wide, like a moving wall.

The dark silhouette walked to the entrance of the pavilion.

It stopped.

Immediately after, the first wet footprint appeared on the concrete floor at the edge of the halo of light.

The footprint was huge, swollen and deformed with splayed toes, looking like a bloated mantou bun.

Then came a second, a third...

The footprints extended step by step into the halo of light.

Something invisible was walking inside.

...

“The candle, the candle is still burning, how... how did it get in?!” Deng Ziwen's voice was shaking uncontrollably.

Ding Feifan panicked as well.

“We can't leave the light!” Zhao Weilai jumped onto the stone table, pulling Deng Ziwen and Ding Feifan with her.

The two men pressed themselves tightly against the stone table, with Ding Feifan placing one foot on a stone stool.

The three of them couldn't see the thing in the fog at all.

But the footprints showed that the thing was still walking forward.

When its entire form stepped into the area illuminated by the candlelight, the three of them finally saw what it looked like.

It was a severely bloated corpse.

Its belly was highly distended, looking like a rotten watermelon that would burst at the slightest touch.

Zhao Weilai and Deng Ziwen let out a short shriek in unison, then quickly covered each other's mouths.

Ding Feifan shuddered violently, his back pressed hard against the stone table, his legs shaking non-stop.

In his twenty-odd years of life, he had truly never seen anything so disgusting.

A moving, rotting corpse.

It easily made one think of bloated, boneless chicken feet... Zhao Weilai covered her mouth to keep herself from throwing up.

This was simply not an image a normal person could imagine.

The water ghost stood just outside the halo of light, seemingly sizing the three of them up.

It did not attack immediately.

Instead, it seemed to be playing with its prey.

As the halo of light shrank, the lake's surface also began to churn violently.

Water splashed against the shore with loud slapping sounds.

Looking at the massive corpse of the water ghost in front of him, Ding Feifan's mind went completely blank, leaving only one dazed thought:

Run.

He couldn't stay here and wait for death.

Ding Feifan glanced left and right, knowing that right behind the pavilion was the lake water.

If he jumped in and swam to the shore, perhaps there would still be a slim chance of survival.

In any case, it was better than staying here and being torn to shreds by the water ghost once the candle went out.

Once this thought surfaced, he could no longer suppress it.

Ding Feifan took half a step back, climbed over the railing, and was about to jump down—

“Instructor Ding! Don't jump!”

Deng Ziwen and Zhao Weilai reacted quickly, grabbing his arms and dragging him back with sheer force.

“Are you crazy?! Look closely! Jumping down will only kill you faster!”

Ding Feifan instinctively glanced at the lake. With just that one look, the blood in his entire body turned cold.

“Ghosts... Oh my god...”

Floating on the lake's surface was a dense, packed crowd of pale human faces.

Uncountable numbers of them, old and young, men and women.

Every single face was bloated and white from being waterlogged, their eyes tightly closed, the corners of their mouths curled up as if they were smiling.

Their hair spread out in the water like black weeds, bobbing up and down with the waves.

There was no end in sight.

The faces floated on the water, slowly drifting toward the Lake-Center Pavilion.

“We're doomed...” Ding Feifan crouched on the stone stool in despair, clutching his head and murmuring to himself, “If they don't come back soon, we're all going to die here.”