Electric Fan
Hearing the scream approaching, Lu Congxing froze for a moment. The voice sounded familiar, but he didn’t have time to think about it—he jumped up and ran outside.
Yingying quickly leapt down from the table and hurried after him on her short little legs. “Ying! Master, wait for me!”
The woman who had screamed came running down the stairs and immediately spotted Lu Congxing searching around in the hallway.
She nearly screamed again out of fear, but under the faint moonlight, she recognized his face just in time and managed to swallow the scream back down, tears welling in her eyes.
When it came to running into the supernatural, Lu Congxing had always been unlucky. He’d wandered into more illusionary realms than he could count on both hands. But this was the first time he’d ever encountered someone he actually knew inside one.
He glanced at the shadow her feet cast in the moonlight, and once he confirmed it wasn’t fake, he raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. “Wen Yi?”
Wen Yi, panting heavily, rushed up to him and grabbed his sleeve. “Wuwuwu, Xing Cub! Did you come to save me?!”
Her hands and feet were ice-cold, and her face was pale—clearly terrified. That earlier scream had come from her. Luckily, she wasn’t the type to freeze up in a crisis. Screaming and sprinting at the same time, she’d just set a personal best in the 100-meter dash from upstairs to downstairs.
Lu Congxing thought for a second and replied with complete honesty, “No, I just fell asleep and ended up here.”
Wen Yi’s grateful expression immediately faded. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “Same here. I just went to sleep and suddenly ended up here too.”
Lu Congxing fell into thought.
He’d heard of cursed beds before—anyone who slept on them either died or went insane. It turned out those beds would drag people into an illusionary realm. Eventually, one of those beds had been recovered by an exorcist.
But the bed he slept on belonged to Bai Ze, a divine beast known for warding off evil. There was no way it should’ve caused something like this. Aside from the bed, he couldn’t think of any other reason why just sleeping would trigger entry into an illusionary realm.
Some people called the illusionary realm they were in the “inner world,” while the normal world was the “outer world.” If you died inside the inner world, your real body in the outer world would also perish—soul and all. Scientifically speaking, it would be brain death.
And entering these realms wasn’t easy either. It required not only a powerful malevolent ghost to construct the realm, but also a specific trigger condition.
For example, the only reason Yingying had been able to set up an illusionary realm in the apartment building before was because it had been lurking there for a long time, laying traps. It used the corridor button as a connection point between the inner and outer worlds to lure Lu Congxing and Bai Ze inside.
Usually, demons weren’t easily pulled into illusionary realms. But Lu Congxing had a special constitution that made him almost guaranteed to get caught up in this kind of thing.
Lu Congxing thought for a moment and decided to dig for more details. “You mentioned you’ve been having nightmares recently. Is this what you meant?”
Wen Yi shook her head hard. “No, not exactly. It’s more like… I keep having dreams where I feel like I’m suffocating, like someone’s chasing me and cursing me. But when I wake up, I don’t remember the dream at all—just that my whole body aches and my head is spinning. It’s worse than pulling an all-nighter.”
Basically, it felt like she hadn’t slept for days.
And sleep deprivation? That’s basically torture.
Wen Yi pitifully pinched her own cheek and let out a small yelp. “Yup, definitely not a dream.”
She looked at him nervously. “Xing Cub… this whole thing—this crossing over—this isn’t the same as the nightmares from the past few days, right?”
She’d read a lot of web novels and had already translated the experience in her head as “crossing into another world.” And honestly, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Lu Congxing gently raised his hand and patted her head. “No, it is the same. You can think of the nightmares from the past few days as the buildup—the prelude to the malevolent ghost dragging you into this illusionary realm. The nightmares were just the appetizer. This realm? This is the real deal.”
Wen Yi felt even more upset after being treated so gently. “Then didn’t I waste your precious dried Ranyi fish? I soaked and ate all of it tonight…”
She remembered the amount Lin Yang mentioned and felt a pang of regret.
The more she thought about it, the sadder she got. Her voice was choked with tears. “I even dragged you into this.”
She had been having nightmares for days before being pulled in—it was clearly premeditated. But Xing Cub had only helped her once and got pulled in the same day. It was hard not to feel like it was her fault.
Lu Congxing slowly shook his head. Other people usually needed repeated nightmares and several warning signs before they were drawn into something like this. But he hadn’t done anything at all and still got pulled in—ultimately, it was because of his cursed constitution.
In the end, Wen Yi didn’t manage to cry for long—because she suddenly heard an eerie, unsettling “ying ying ying” sound growing louder and louder, as if it were deliberately trying to outdo her.
Terrified, she grabbed Lu Congxing’s arm and tried to run—but she couldn’t move him. Confused, she turned back and saw Lu Congxing twitch the corner of his mouth with a blank expression and scold, “Stop trying to scare people.”
A ghostly figure peeked out from behind him, looking extremely wronged. It had big scribbled eyes like yarn balls and muttered, “I wasn’t trying to scare anyone…”
It just wanted to prove to its master that it could cry even more pitifully than this strange woman who had suddenly appeared.
Ying ying ying.
Wen Yi was just an ordinary person—her birth chart might be a bit heavy with yin energy, but under normal circumstances she wouldn’t be able to see Yingying. However, in this illusionary realm, all malevolent ghosts take on physical form, so she could see it perfectly.
A little girl in red. A crying little girl. A little girl whose face had only scribbled-on eyes and a mouth—no other facial features.
She was so scared she froze on the spot and muttered, “So this really is a dream, huh…”
Then she pinched her cheek even harder—and yelped louder in pain.
Lu Congxing explained helplessly, “That’s my shiki ghost. It won’t hurt anyone.”
Yingying took the opportunity to make a face at her—its round scribble-eyes stretched into flat ovals, and its thick curved mouth stuck out a crimson tongue.
Creepy—but not completely terrifying.
Miraculously, Wen Yi wasn’t afraid anymore. She nodded. “Th-then, how do we get out of here?”
She trusted Lu Congxing completely.
Lu Congxing looked around, even knocked on the wall. Every bit of feedback pointed to the same thing—this illusionary realm was incredibly realistic.
The more realistic the dreamscape, the harder it was to break out of it.
This place looked just like a school. An empty school at night with a chill that clung to your skin—it made everyone feel uneasy.
He asked, “Why did you scream just now?”
Wen Yi’s face went pale. Trembling, she pointed upstairs. “Up there… someone died. When I woke up, I was in an empty classroom. There was someone in the room next door. I wanted to leave with him, but suddenly the fan started spinning on its own—and then it fell and chopped his head… clean off.”
She barely managed to get the last few words out.
She might be timid, but she wasn’t one of those dumb horror movie girls who just freeze in place. The moment it happened, she bolted.
Lu Congxing nodded. “You did the right thing.”
Otherwise, she might’ve been the next one to die.
Just from talking to him, the heavy death aura around Wen Yi had already begun to thin significantly.
Just now, she’d practically brushed shoulders with death. Maybe even that malevolent ghost controlling the fan was stunned—it probably didn’t expect someone who looked so small and delicate to run that fast once she panicked.
Lu Congxing handed her a protective talisman. “Let’s go upstairs and take a look.”
His instincts told him that the three of them weren’t the only ones who had entered this illusionary realm. If they kept moving, they might run into others.
Everyone who ends up in this place has been targeted by malevolent ghosts. In other words, their best shot at survival is to stick together and break through the boundary as a team. As long as one person succeeds, the rest can make it out alive. But if no one does, even if one person survives to the end, they still won’t be saved.
Although Wen Yi was scared, she didn’t refuse. Instead, she took the initiative. “It’s on the second floor—Class 3, Grade 11.”
She silently encouraged herself not to hold the group back.
Yingying glanced at the frail human girl and gave a dismissive snort.
Before heading upstairs, Lu Congxing paused to glance at his own classroom—Class 1, Grade 10.
Although the moonlight wasn’t particularly bright, the entire school seemed to be covered in a faint glow. Even in the middle of the night, an ordinary person could still make their way around without being completely blind.
And since Lu Congxing wasn’t exactly human, his vision was even sharper.
When they reached the entrance of Class 3, Grade 11, Lu Congxing realized the description hadn’t been exaggerated at all—“sliced off” was painfully accurate.
The nameless corpse inside had been decapitated. The cut at the neck was clean and smooth, clearly done by the still-spinning blades of the fan. The head had flown a good distance before landing on the podium, eyes wide open in death, staring directly at the classroom door—as if watching every single person who walked in.
The body had collapsed further back in the room. The fan had landed on it, and the surrounding desks and chairs were in disarray. Fresh blood still stained the white blades.
A chilling atmosphere spread throughout the room.
In the dim lighting, fear festered more easily. Lu Congxing hesitated for a moment before reaching for the light switch.
Wen Yi, her voice tense, warned, “Be careful!”
Earlier, the fan had been triggered by some unknown force flipping the switch—then it had spun out of control and fallen. She was terrified the lights might come crashing down too.
Click.
The lights came on. Nothing happened.
Wen Yi let out a sigh of relief—only to realize that in her panic, she’d grabbed onto Yingying’s pigtails.
The little girl was clearly not happy. Being short, she had to tiptoe and tilt her head from the tug. She didn’t throw a fit only because her master was present.
Wen Yi quickly let go and apologized.
Yingying glanced at Lu Congxing, let out a little “hmph,” and vanished—obediently returning to the golden bell on his wrist.
Shiki ghosts could stay hidden within their master’s Qiankun Space. If it hadn’t been for that terrifying Bai Ze, Yingying wouldn’t have only dared to linger outside the door before.
The lights here stood out starkly in this lifeless, gloomy school, and it wasn’t long before Lu Congxing heard the sound of several chaotic footsteps approaching.
He gently pulled Wen Yi behind him. “Someone’s coming.”
Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, a rather reckless group of people stepped onto this floor. Their pace slowed as they hesitated, suspiciously trying to see who would dare turn on the lights in such a creepy place.
Or maybe they just wanted to confirm whether the people inside were still alive.
The young man leading the group gripped a talisman tightly in his hand, his eyes sharp as he strode forward. “Who’s there?”
Cautiously, he approached the window, alert and tense. When he finally saw the two people inside the classroom, he froze in disbelief. “Yiyi?!”
Author’s note:
When I was in school, I was so scared that those big ceiling fans in the classroom would fall down—especially the old, rickety ones QAQ
Taw’s note: Me too author QAQ