“We’re here.”

They slipped through a grove of withered trees, branches like bone fingers, and reached the outskirts of Longvine Academy’s old campus.

The layout matched what Lu Ming and Nana Toki had seen days ago, yet the pressure from deep within pressed heavier, like a millstone on the chest.

“Let’s go in.”

Lu Ming and Xuduo traded a look. They followed Nana’s lead, footsteps tight as drums. Up close, it was Lu Ming’s first real view of the old campus.

They edged toward the nearest teaching block. The abandoned corridor was dim and airless; walls charred and cracked like scabbed bark after a blaze.

Old test papers lay scattered like dead leaves. Every classroom door yawned open. Some rooms had desks lined in rigid rows; others looked like a battle had torn through, chairs strewn crooked and broken.

A cold wind slid from nowhere. Papers kissed the floor and skated with a soft rustle.

Light inside was thin as dusk. For the sake of the two living, Nana Toki didn’t go deep—she hovered between the two outer classrooms, combing for clues.

“The yin aura here is thick, like a nest of ghosts.”

Anxiety first, action after—Lu Ming’s fingers trembled as he fished out his usual exorcist tool, seeking comfort in its rough charm.

Beside him, Xuduo clutched the pendant at her throat. Her beautiful eyes swept the room, worry rippling like wind over grass.

She couldn’t say why, but the dark felt inhabited—someone quietly watching from behind the night.

The mold-stink clung to their senses. Nana told them to check each desk drawer. She drifted to the storage cabinets in back, flipping books; pages whispered like moth wings.

The Red Robed Wraith had shown up instantly the last two times. Now it delayed. The pause needled her—had something shifted inside the old campus?

Silence curated every sound: the tap of their shoes, the dry page-turns. The temperature slid downward like a slow blade. The mood tightened, and then the footsteps behind Nana stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

Blocked by Xuduo, Lu Ming lifted his head, confusion snapping like a twig. He followed her gaze to the window.

Outside, a figure in a white school uniform stood, silent as a scarecrow. Even for someone used to storms, Lu Ming sucked in a breath. A mannequin?

When had it appeared?

He steadied himself and gripped the Talisman Nana Toki had given him. He stepped for the door, wanting to see.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the black hallway—empty seconds ago—was packed with uniformed mannequins, still as gravestones.

Some clustered in twos or threes. Some leaned out half a body from classroom doors. Some paused mid-run. Some stood with backs to him.

Yet every gaze, painted or implied, pinned Lu Ming at the doorway, like needles to a map. A few heads rotated a full one-eighty, joints creaking like owls.

“You okay?” Xuduo reached the back door and caught Lu Ming as he stumbled back several steps, his breath ragged.

“What did you see?” her voice shook, and a chill rose in her chest like frost forming on glass.

“The hallway’s packed with mannequins.” Lu Ming’s cheek twitched; his face lost color. He’d braced for it, but the jolt still struck.

Why would the old campus hold so many eerie mannequins? And when they walked in, none of these were standing there.

“Mannequins in the hallway?” Nana Toki murmured, a red-covered book in hand. She slid it back and drifted toward the door. “You two wait here.”

She floated out, counting as she went, her voice a soft bead-drop in the dark. One… two… three… four… five… twenty-six… twenty-seven… twenty-eight… twenty-nine.

She nearly traversed the entire first-floor corridor. At its end, Nana finished the count: twenty-nine mannequins, no more, no less.

“Show me the photo from the other day.”

Back in the first room, Nana took Lu Ming’s phone. “Exactly the same.”

She opened the album, found the old class group shot, and counted. Excluding the boy on the Soul Carriage and the Red Robed Wraith hiding somewhere, there were thirty-one.

“The mannequins are the students who once studied here.” The Red Robed Wraith had placed this display before them—what message was it spelling in silence?

“What do we do now?”

Lu Ming had steadied, though a thread of strain still tugged at his face. He took his phone back, eyes drawn to the stair to the second floor like a moth to a darker flame.

“Should we check upstairs?”

Nana asked lightly, gauging their will. “Maybe the answer waits on the second floor.”

“Mm. We’ve come this far; we don’t quit halfway.” Lu Ming nodded. Even while the mannequins rattled him, the urge to press on had only sharpened.

Xuduo disliked agreeing, but with Lu Ming’s stance clear, she wrestled with herself and then nodded hard, resolve like a nail set in wood.

“Then we keep going.” Nana pulled a flashlight from her hidden space, the beam a clean blade, and led.

“Back to our earlier topic,” she said as they moved. “Lu Ming mentioned exchange trips with other schools. Why would they do that?”

“To find vessels suited for ghosts. Or… to harvest students’ vital essence as food.” A seasoned exorcist, Lu Ming had studied the darker curricula.

“The first is unlikely. The second fits.” Nana checked the time on Lu Ming’s phone. “It’s almost midnight. The moment when yang flips to yin is near. Other ghosts should appear.”

She didn’t believe the ghost school’s master hadn’t noticed—twice she’d boarded his Soul Carriage and even erased one of his ghosts. Now they needed to find the Red Robed Wraith fast and learn who sat behind the curtain.

Two humans and one ghost reached the second-floor landing. Even before they stepped out, a coppery stench gone sour rolled over them like rot.

This level was nothing like the first.

A rust-bitten iron gate blocked the link between stairs and corridor. Stopped, Nana raised her beam and cast it along the hall. The walls were smeared with graffiti, letters like thorns.

“Is that… written in blood?” Lu Ming gripped the bars, the metal gritty as old coins. He forced down a swallow. The air felt ready to freeze.

The stench made the stomach revolt. The walls wore mad sentences in crawling script. As Nana lifted the beam higher, the blood-words multiplied, thickening like a locust swarm in light.

“The ghost school’s master is a lunatic.” Lu Ming had fought plenty of ghosts; facing a human ghost-keeper tested mind and will like a grindstone.

“The gate isn’t locked. Come in.”

Nana slid between the bars, flashlight first. Lu Ming shoved the gate.

Rust flaked from the seams. The pushed iron shrieked, a sound like someone being torn open. The blood-stench grew heavier, a miasma coiling low.

“Don’t lose me,” Nana said without looking back, drifting ahead like a pale kite. “The yin aura’s dense. If you get separated, pray for yourselves.”

“This place is wrong.”

Lu Ming reached for the wall, curiosity snagging him. His palm met texture like a mummified scalp—dry, wrinkled, human.

Numbness shot through his limbs. Cold drilled up into his skull. His body felt iced through; a sick tide rose in him.

“Move. Don’t linger. If you brush the filth the master left, we’ll pay for it.”

Nana studied the design of this floor. Compared to the classroom template below, this level felt like a slaughterhouse dressed as a school.

Windows looking inward were boarded shut with rough planks, as if to stop those inside from escaping. Through narrow seams she glimpsed cage-like rooms, bars and shadows.

This old campus was never only a school.

The blood-words thickened as they advanced, crowding close like nettles. Following Lu Ming, Xuduo felt the script on both sides stir as if alive.

Even the air held a weight—pressure and despair, a lid over a pot.

Something had been locked here.