Chapter 47

What do they mean by “one wave barely settles before another rises”? That was exactly the situation now!

A minute ago, Lu Ping had been thrilled about debunking the “female ghost” rumor, but before he could fully relax, he heard the sound of nails scraping against metal from the ceiling above!

Lu Ping clutched Shen Yuze’s arms tightly with both hands. If he could, he would have shrunk down a hundred times over, turned into a little doll, and burrowed into Shen Yuze’s pocket.

“Shen Yuze, l-let’s get out of here!” Lu Ping whispered urgently. “Just pretend we didn’t hear anything and go!”

Jiaojiang No. 1 Middle School’s Teaching Building had been around for ages without any renovations. The ceiling overhead was still the trendy aluminum strip suspended panels from twenty years ago—older than Lu Ping himself. Because of the heavy moisture in the toilet, the panels near the walls had rusted, with edges curling up and paint peeling away, exposing the thick pipes hidden inside.

Now, that eerie nail-scraping sound came from directly above them, and with each scrape, countless specks of dust rained down on them.

The Women’s Toilet had windows too, and at that moment, the lightning and storm outside became the perfect backdrop for this campus ghost story, cranking the terror to maximum.

At the same time, the light above the Women’s Toilet flickered suddenly.

Logically: It was due to aging wiring causing unstable voltage.

Emotionally: Run for your life—!!!

Lu Ping didn’t dare delay any longer. He grabbed Shen Yuze and bolted toward the exit, but Shen Yuze stood rooted to the spot and yanked Lu Ping back, stopping him from moving.

Shen Yuze looked deadly serious. “Lu Ping, there’s something in the ceiling.”

Lu Ping gritted his teeth. “Isn’t that obvious?!”

Shen Yuze: “Where’s a ladder? I need to go up and check.”

Lu Ping: “…”

Lu Ping: “???”

Lu Ping: “!!!”

Lu Ping suspected that if Shen Yuze wasn’t crazy, then he must be—or maybe they both were.

Seeing Lu Ping trembling in fear, Shen Yuze decided to demonstrate with actions.

Conveniently, the last stall in the Women’s Toilet was a storage room filled with the cleaning lady’s tools. Shen Yuze quickly found an old wooden ladder inside.

Ignoring his usual germaphobia, Shen Yuze dragged the ladder out and instructed Lu Ping, “Hold the ladder steady for me.”

Lu Ping: “No way!” He was both sulky and anxious, tears squeezing out. “Shen Yuze, who does that? Being brave doesn’t mean you can be reckless! What if there’s really some ‘dirty thing’ up there and it curses you?”

Shen Yuze: “If you don’t hold it, I’ll die from this old ladder collapsing before any ‘dirty thing’ can curse me.”

As he spoke, Shen Yuze gave the ladder beside him a nudge.

The wooden ladder’s four legs were uneven lengths, making it wobble unsteadily when opened—an ancient relic from who knows where.

With that, Shen Yuze ignored Lu Ping’s protests and started climbing.

The ladder was indeed too old, its wood brittle. Shen Yuze had only climbed two rungs when it began swaying wildly.

Lu Ping’s heart leaped into his throat! Without thinking, he rushed forward and hugged the ladder’s legs.

Shen Yuze glanced down at him. He didn’t say a word, but his eyes clearly said, “I knew you wouldn’t leave me hanging.”

Lu Ping muttered, “Your name has so much ‘water’ in it—too much yin energy… Hey, don’t laugh! There’s logic to this! Your birth chart is light, so you attract that stuff easily; mine’s heavy, so I can ‘weigh it down’ for you… If there’s really something dirty up there, we’ll face it together!”

Good brothers shared hardships—Lu Ping couldn’t just watch Shen Yuze go off to die alone.

Finally, under Lu Ping’s tense gaze, Shen Yuze reached the top rung. During this, the scraping from the ceiling paused for a few seconds, as if startled, then suddenly shifted from the center toward a corner.

Lu Ping urged anxiously, “Quick! Quick! It’s getting away!”

Shen Yuze: “…Didn’t you just say we should stay far away from it?”

“One thing at a time,” Lu Ping said in a broken-jar-falls tone. “If it really is a ‘dirty thing,’ it’s too late to run now anyway—we might as well figure out what’s haunting us before we die. If it’s not—”

“If it’s not, what then?”

Lu Ping gnashed his teeth. “Then I’ll smash it with my materialist iron fist!!!!”

Shen Yuze wasn’t sure whether to laugh. He coughed, put on a serious face, and gently pushed aside one of the ceiling panels above.

Dust poured down on him instantly, covering him head to toe. But what hid in the ceiling was far more than dust—a slender something tumbled out from the gap, brushing past Shen Yuze and Lu Ping before hitting the ground.

Lu Ping looked down. Even with mental preparation, he jumped in shock.

That shape, that color… “Is this a bone?”

The bones were very thin, with dark red bits of flesh clinging to them, gnawed to fragments—but overall, they looked like bones from some small animal.

After removing one panel, Shen Yuze didn’t find the noise-maker. He stayed calm and removed the adjacent ones. Sealed away from light for years, with southern monsoon humidity trapped inside, the ceiling reeked of nauseating decay. Shen Yuze, who hated dirt, nearly gagged.

Just as he hesitated whether to continue, the scalp-tingling nail sounds erupted again from deeper in the ceiling!

Shen Yuze whipped his head toward it. In the dark, cramped corner, a pair of startlingly bright eyes gleamed!

Shen Yuze: “!!!”

The eyes floated mid-air, bodiless, utterly silent.

Before Shen Yuze could react, the eyes charged straight at him!

Wherever they flew, the entire ceiling rattled with bangs. The dilapidated panels shook violently, dropping one after another toward the floor!

Lu Ping could do nothing but grip the ladder’s legs with all his strength to keep it steady, preventing Shen Yuze from falling. Instinctively, he ducked his head to dodge the falling debris…

The “disaster” lasted a full half-minute. Spiderwebs, pooled filth, and small animal bones rained down relentlessly, kicking up clouds of dust.

When the haze finally cleared, the Women’s Toilet was a wreck. Lu Ping’s face and hair were caked in grime. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and struggled to look up.

“Shen Yuze… cough cough cough… You okay? Unhurt?”

“I’m fine, but it’s not.”

“?” Lu Ping focused and saw Shen Yuze as filthy as him—his neat appearance gone, wet hair plastered to his forehead in strands.

In Shen Yuze’s arms, a familiar fluffy little creature poked its head out, fur matted and reeking.

Jet-black all over, with snow-white paws, a metal mousetrap clamped firmly on its tail…

“Meow-ow-ow~” The little one wailed pitifully.

“—Zhaocai?!” Lu Ping exclaimed in shock, hurriedly taking the bedraggled cat from Shen Yuze.

He felt its fur—damp, as expected.

After the typhoon hit, the little black cat had nowhere to hide and crawled through the vents into the Teaching Building, somehow ending up in the Women’s Toilet ceiling, where the mousetrap got its tail. The nail-scraping they’d heard was Zhaocai thrashing in pain.

The small bones that fell were rat remains—some eaten by Zhaocai, others killed by the trap.

As the two fussed over the cat, a blinding flashlight beam suddenly pierced the Women’s Toilet from outside.

Lu Ping squinted against it and peered toward the door—

There stood the grade director, the PE teacher, and their class teacher Wu Yingxia like three towering mountains, staring in shock at the “ruins” inside.

“Lu Ping, Shen Yuze, explain yourselves,” Wu Yingxia said, her face ashen. “Why are you two, in the dead of night instead of sleeping, demolishing the Women’s Toilet?”

Lu Ping: “…”

Shen Yuze: “…”

Little black cat: “Meow~”

……

“Wonderful, did you sleep well last night?” In the morning Gymnasium, Zhou Yue neatly folded her blanket and mat while glancing at her deskmate Chen Miaomiao.

Chen Miaomiao stretched lazily. “The Gymnasium was too cold—I woke up freezing several times… But no matter how bad it was, it beat the night before!!”

Zhou Yue nodded in agreement.

The two girls had both endured that “supernatural” night together, sharing the trauma. Luckily, the teachers had swapped the boys’ and girls’ rest areas yesterday, or they wouldn’t have dared sleep in the Teaching Building last night!

After two days of pounding rain, the typhoon passed, and the downpour eased to a drizzle. Dawn’s faint light filtered in, carrying a fresh scent in the air.

“Great, the rain’s lighter—we can finally go home today!” Chen Miaomiao bounced along from the Gymnasium to the Teaching Building under her plaid BBK umbrella, in high spirits. “I haven’t bathed in two days—first thing home, I’m soaking in a tub.”

Zhou Yue whispered, “Before that… the second I get home, I’m having a massive poop.”

Because of the haunted Women’s Toilet, Zhou Yue hadn’t properly pooped in two full days. Every bathroom trip was a speed run, terrified of being caught by the ghost if she lingered.

Lots of girls were the same—everyone went in groups of seven or eight, scared witless.

When the girls returned to the Teaching Building, they were surprised to see a crowd around the Women’s Toilet. Up close, they saw yellow caution tape across the door and a “Out of Service” sign hanging outside!

Chen Miaomiao, the little megaphone, dashed off to inquire.

A helpful girl explained, “Last night, two brave boys from our dorm class came to the Women’s Toilet in the dead of night to catch the ghost—they demolished the place!”

Chen Miaomiao: “Demolished it?! How?”

The girl: “How else? They pried up the floor, smashed the walls, even ripped off the ceiling!!”

“Really?”

“Totally! The janitors and security just went in—everyone saw. The ceiling’s in pieces!”

With that kind of brute force, good ghost or bad, it had to be obliterated!

Chen Miaomiao was thrilled and shocked, but disappointingly, no one knew who the two heroes were.

Back in class, she wanted to ask Lu Ping for the inside scoop, to see if he knew them.

But oddly, Lu Ping’s seat was empty, and even Shen Yuze next to him was gone.

Huh, where were they?

……

In the Principal’s Office, Lu Ping sat nervously on the sofa, not knowing where to put his hands and feet.

Just now, his homeroom teacher had taken him to the student dorms to take a bath. The clothes he was wearing now were borrowed from a senior in charge of the high school students, and they didn’t fit him perfectly, but they were still better than his old set that was dirty and smelly.

He hadn’t expected to cause such a huge commotion last night. To catch Zhaocai, they had actually demolished the Women’s Toilet!

…The Principal had summoned them—was it to give them a demerit?

Although the Principal hadn’t appeared yet, Lu Ping grew more and more afraid the more he thought about it, his facial features scrunching up together.

Shen Yuze sat at the other end of the sofa, completely calm, even taking the time to comment on the tea in front of him. “Lu Ping, try the tea in the Principal’s Office. It tastes pretty good.”

Lu Ping’s throat was parched. He took a sip but couldn’t taste anything, took another sip and still couldn’t taste anything… So he simply gulped it all down.

He drank too quickly and ended up with tea leaves in his mouth, so he hurriedly spat them out with a couple of “pthoos.”

Shen Yuze: “…Like an ox chewing a peony.”

Lu Ping: “What peony? Isn’t this chrysanthemum?”

Shen Yuze: “…”

When Lu Ping got nervous, he couldn’t stop jiggling his leg. “Shen Yuze, what do you think the Principal wants with us? It’s not to punish us, is it?”

“No, it won’t be.” Shen Yuze shook his head. “It’s just one toilet. If it’s broken, we can just fix it.”

So casually said!

But then Lu Ping thought about it—Shen Yuze had reason to be so casual. His family was rich, so even if they poked a hole through the sky (or the ceiling), they could just throw money at it.

After all, even kindergarten kids knew that any problem that could be solved with money wasn’t a real problem.

Lu Ping let out a breath of relief and said softly, “Then that’s what we’ll say, okay? If the Principal starts grilling us later, you’re the mastermind, and I’m the coerced accomplice.”

Shen Yuze: “…??”

Wait, when had they agreed on that?

“I wonder how Zhaocai is doing,” Lu Ping’s thoughts jumped again. “I saw blood on its tail. It was caught in that mousetrap for so long—who knows if it has a fracture.”

After rescuing the little black cat, they had taken it to the school Infirmary and asked the infirmary teacher to help treat its wounds.

“It should be fine.” Shen Yuze comforted him. “Once the rain stops, we can have the driver take it to the pet hospital to see if it needs surgery.”

Lu Ping shook his head repeatedly. “I hope its tail is just a flesh wound and it recovers soon. It absolutely must not need surgery.”

“Even if the tail is okay, it still needs surgery.”

“Ah? What surgery?”

Shen Yuze: “Neutering surgery.”

“???!!!” Even though it was about a cat, when Lu Ping heard the word “neutering,” he reflexively clamped his legs together.

He had just thought Shen Yuze was a demolition expert… He hadn’t expected him to be a ball-busting expert too!