“Using the living to raise a ghost?”

Nana Toki’s brows knit like inked willow leaves, the thought settling like frost on a windowsill. It wasn’t baseless; if it was as the Protagonist Lord said, then every off-note in this ghost school fell into rhythm.

Only—

“If someone really is feeding a ghost with the living, then what about that Red Robed Wraith we saw in the old campus, the one with its own will?”

“I don’t know.” Lu Ming shook his head, the motion like a lantern dimming in fog. “Raising a ghost is taboo, a sealed shrine no one should touch. Whoever dared use a whole school as a vessel isn’t gentle; they’re a knife hidden in a sleeve. And from the records, using the school—and using the living—started back in the old campus.”

“So the method’s still over there.” Nana Toki lifted her eyes to him, her gaze like a blade glinting in shallow water. “How’d you find those files in the office?”

Why would something that important sit in an office, like tinder left by a brazier?

“I stumbled on them while hunting a keycard...” Lu Ming shivered, as if a draft slid under a door. “That office is crooked as a crab; I nearly had an accident the moment I stepped in.”

“It’s just a teaching building—how ‘crooked’ can it be?” Nana Toki eyed the Protagonist Lord, her tone like a fan’s dry snap. “All your yin-yang arts, wasted?”

“You don’t get it.” Lu Ming’s face went pale as paper in rain. “What I ran into in there isn’t in the league of my arts at all. Without Kexin Li, I’d still be trapped.”

He drew an exaggerated shape in the air, his hands slicing like gulls over gray water. “You know this as a ghost: a usual ‘ghost wall’ only muddies your mind and your sense of direction, makes you circle like a moth around a lantern. It doesn’t really hurt you. What I hit was the extreme. It came silent as snow and felt inevitable, and I didn’t even realize I’d stepped into it. Same as on the Soul Carriage.”

“So you’re saying the thing that controlled you on the Soul Carriage is now in that teaching building?”

“Possible, but not likely.” Lu Ming fished out a photo, the paper thin as a shed snakeskin, and handed it over. “Look at this. I found it while walking the ghost wall. You’ll see what’s off.”

“Isn’t this just a class photo?” Xuduo leaned in from Nana Toki’s left, curiosity rising like steam from a cup. “What’s there to gawk at?”

The photo was old; the frame had yellowed like old bamboo, yet the students’ faces were clear as stars in a winter pond.

“No—Ling Jiang, doesn’t this boy look familiar?” Xiaoxiao Ji pressed close and tapped a face, her finger light as a dragonfly on water. “Didn’t we see him on the No. 14 bus before?”

Her voice rang like a pebble in a well, and it pulled Nana Toki’s focus taut as a bowstring.

“That guy... is he a student who escaped the old campus?”

Thoughts burst through Nana Toki’s mind like crows from a pine. The Red Robed Wraith in the old campus; the ordinary ghost on the Soul Carriage waiting for a friend; the clean slice of amnesia. At first glance, no threads showed.

But what if the Red Robed Wraith isn’t guarding the old campus—what if he can’t leave it at all?

Nana Toki dared a leap, lightning across a dark sky. Maybe that boy on the Soul Carriage once stumbled on someone in the ghost school using the living to raise a ghost. The keeper feared exposure and caged him forever on the Soul Carriage, a fish jar sealed with wax.

As for the Red Robed Wraith in the old campus—those lips sewn shut like black centipedes, those eyes gouged into empty wells—each wound hints at what he saw and what he can never say.

And the clothes in the photo looked familiar, like an old song on a new lute. Was that the old campus uniform?

Speaking of that—Nana Toki remembered the Red Robed Wraith’s blood-soaked clothes, the cut and collar twin to the boy’s uniform; back then the red was too heavy, a sunset poured over cloth, and she hadn’t linked them.

Now it looked likely: the Red Robed Wraith in the old campus and the boy on the Soul Carriage were tied by the same string. Both were probably students once, and both were dragged to this end for catching the ghost keeper’s tracks.

“Ling Jiang, what are you thinking?” Xiaoxiao Ji watched Nana Toki’s face shift like a sky before rain, worry fluttering like a sparrow. “Did you find something?”

“I can’t spell it out yet,” Nana Toki said, voice steady as a blade on stone. “But the outline’s there. If we confirm whether the ordinary ghost on the Soul Carriage and the Red Robed Wraith in the old campus are linked, the truth will surface like a carp in clear water.”

“Then... how do we confirm a link between the Soul Carriage ghost and that Red Robed Wraith?” Xiaoxiao Ji stammered, her confusion foggy as breath on glass, yet the idea felt sharp.

“Simple. We board Route Fourteen again.”

Nana Toki smiled, and cold climbed the three mortals’ backs like ice vines. “Practice is the only measure of truth.”

“But we already boarded once.” Lu Ming’s frown creased like plowed earth. “Go again, and the other thing on that bus will notice. The one that drags people into dreams—that’s a hornet’s nest.”

“What’s hard about this?” Nana Toki’s eyes slid to Xuduo, her smile like a crescent blade. “We’ve still got someone who hasn’t ridden the Soul Carriage. To save a school drowning in fire and water, you won’t refuse so easily, right?”

Xuduo: “...”

Three humans and one ghost set the plan like stones around a brazier. That afternoon, Nana Toki would secretly ride Route Fourteen with Xuduo. If the two ghosts were truly linked, the Red Robed Wraith in the old campus would be the weak seam in this side quest.

With the plan forged, they let time bank like coals for the strike.

Next morning, seven o’clock. After the class assembly, Xiaoxiao Ji and Lu Ming were called off by Teacher Chen, his tone stiff as a ruler. Last night he’d apparently misassigned dorms for Xiaoxiao Ji, Lu Ming, and Yue Zhao; the boys’ and girls’ dorms had vacancies, yet he sent them to three dorm blocks the school had abandoned for years. He called them in to ask if anything happened there, because the patrol reported damage on a mag-lock door in the abandoned block, a crack like a fingernail on lacquer.

Luckily, Yue Zhao had no memory of last night, a blank page in a storm. The ones who knew—Xiaoxiao Ji and Lu Ming—glossed it over like ink over a scrape.

“Are we really leaving the school from here?” Xuduo trailed behind Nana Toki, unease crawling like ants. They stood on a slope behind the new campus; some teachers said this used to be a cemetery, a hill of quiet tablets and cold incense.

“No way around it.” Nana Toki led, her steps sure as a cat on a wall. “During the exchange trip, students can’t leave by the main gate. If you could turn invisible and walk through walls, I wouldn’t take this route either. Last night we slipped past cameras because the night gatekeeper stepped away. In broad daylight, be a little understanding.”

Xuduo: “...”

Nana Toki took Xuduo over the back hill. They soon dropped past the wall of Longvine Academy like shadows crossing a threshold.

“When did this huge wasteland show up?” Xuduo stood on the bald earth, the ground yellow as baked clay, puzzlement rising like smoke. She remembered a bustling commercial street on her ride in; where would a barren lot fit in that picture?

“Enough gawking.” Nana Toki scanned the emptiness, her gaze a compass needle. “We’re on the old campus’s outer ring. Heavy yin pools here; land stripped of green makes sense, like frost burning leaves overnight.”

Xuduo: “...”

“Why does heavy yin mean no plants?” she asked, her voice small as a reed flute.

“In ghost novels, that’s how it goes.” Nana Toki glanced over, her smile wry as winter sun. “Didn’t you know?”

“...I really didn’t.”

“If I’m right, Longvine Station should be close, like a stone’s throw down this way.” Nana Toki pulled out the map she’d asked the System for, the paper whispering like dry leaves. “Let’s look. Maybe we’ll even spot colleagues in broad daylight. Though—doesn’t the sun feel too fierce today?”

Xiaoxiao Ji had said the forecast was overcast, a sky with its lamp dimmed.

Hand shading her eyes from the spear-bright light, Nana Toki walked east with Xuduo across the yellow dirt, their footprints like fish bones on sand. They didn’t know how long they’d gone when Xuduo suddenly shivered, a leaf in a cold draft. “Ling Jiang, don’t you feel it? The air dropped, like someone pulled the warmth out.”

“Dropped?” Nana Toki looked up at the sun glaring like a brazier pushed against her face. This heroine felt cold?

“Got heat-addled and started hallucinating?” She eyed Xuduo hugging her shoulders, the pose a closed flower. “It’s noon—yang at its peak, a drum at full beat. How could it feel cold?”

“But it’s really cold...” Xuduo shuddered again, the tremor a ripple on ice. “I feel like my body’s about to freeze stiff.”

“Did you bring something unclean back from the dorm last night?” Nana Toki frowned and reached for Xuduo’s arm, her hand a crane beak. Before she touched skin, a surge of Spirit Energy slammed her fingertips, a lightning snap through bone.

“Tss—what the hell is that?” She clutched her stinging fingers, eyes locking on the necklace at Xuduo’s throat, its charm bright as a seed of fire. That burst almost blew her body apart like ash in a gust.

“This is an amulet I got at a temple,” Xuduo said, fingers brushing the pendant like touching a hot coal. “The monk said it’d keep filth away.”

“You... okay?” Her voice was careful, like setting a cup on thin glass.

“I’m fine.” Nana Toki’s face shifted like cloud over a mountain. If the heroine had a built-in buff and still felt the cold, then the cold was real. So why didn’t Nana feel it?

She looked up at the sun that made her skin crawl, that bright coin too sharp, and her pupils tightened like a knot pulled hard.

Don’t tell me... this is an illusion.