Thriller Zone: From the Mental Hospital to the Ghostly World

A loud bugle call woke Chen Ji.

He rubbed his eyes, feeling a little dizzy, and his arms felt sore and numb. He then realized that he was lying on a desk.

The old light bulbs on the ceiling shone with a glaring white light, and the air I breathed in was cold and damp.

"you're awake."

A cold female voice rang out.

Chen Ji looked up and saw that the white walls around him had turned yellow, with several encouraging slogans pasted on them. At the front was a podium with a blackboard hanging on it.

This was a classroom, now completely empty, with fewer than ten people sitting there.

But judging from their age and appearance, these people are clearly not students.

Chen Ji frowned, rummaged in his pocket, and found the boat ticket was still there.

But this is not the river he stepped into.

Is this the high school for repeat students, the destination on the boat ticket?

Is this the real world?

Chen Ji suddenly asked.

The woman who had just spoken had short hair, wore a tight-fitting long-sleeved top, and had a pale, expressionless face. She was wearing baggy school trousers and had her arms inside an equally loose school uniform jacket.

Beside her sat a girl already dressed in her school uniform, with her hair in a ponytail, looking blank and lost in thought.

On the desk near the blackboard, a burly man shook his head, his expression clearly showing impatience.

"Another newbie."

The woman ignored him, glanced at Chen Ji's hospital gown, and then said to him:

"This is the 'domain'."

"A domain, simply put, is a mirror world where anything can happen."

The woman gave a rough explanation of the rules of the domain. In short, time is chaotic here; it could be a projection of reality or a fictional space.

The prerequisite for being pulled into the domain is receiving that old ticket.

Once you've been here, you'll definitely want to come back again.

No one knows how many "domains" there are, but what remains unchanged is that each domain is dangerous. Only by finding the patterns and completing the tasks can one pass through and return to the real world.

She didn't say what exactly would be inside the domain, or whether entry could be refused.

After listening, Chen Ji simply nodded, showing little surprise, which instead drew the woman's attention.

He walked to the window and gazed at the dark outside. The sun had not yet risen, and only some dim streetlights illuminated the outside of the teaching building. He could vaguely see a circle of figures running below.

"They are the students here."

Beside Chen Ji, a young man in pajamas came over and looked out the window as well: "It should be time for morning exercises now."

"This is a school."

The woman walked to the podium, flipping through a stack of flyers in her hand.

"It looks like a private educational institution," she said after taking a closer look.

"It's called diligent learning education."

The burly man went up and took a flyer, and Chen Ji also took one, and they looked at it together with the man in pajamas next to him:

[Qinxue Education - Secondary School Retake Program]

A full-time, fully enclosed private training school that has been operating for many years, training more than 3000 students, with a 99% success rate in getting into a bachelor's degree program.

The school has teaching areas, living areas, and sports areas, with complete teaching facilities and a strong teaching staff, which has earned the trust of students and parents.

Note: This school only accepts students who have repeated their studies for more than two years and still haven't been admitted to university. Students must be adults.

After reading it, Chen Ji had a general understanding. These kinds of cram schools were not uncommon, and some had even been featured in the news.

I just don't understand why they specifically noted that it only accepts adult students.

Just then, the two remaining students who were still slumped over their desks also woke up. One was a boy and the other a girl, both of whom were new students.

At this point, there were seven people in the classroom. Apart from the burly man and the woman, everyone else was entering the domain for the first time.

"What is our mission?" Chen Ji asked.

The indifferent woman shook her head, her face looking very unpleasant; she was annoyed by the middle-aged man who had just woken up.

The latter, dressed in a suit with a large designer logo on his belt, was pot-bellied and shouted after hearing all this, completely unwilling to believe it.

The woman who woke up with the middle-aged man was around 30 years old, dressed in business attire. Although she was also nervous, she had clearly accepted reality.

She was looking around when she suddenly paused, pointed at the blackboard, and shouted, "There are words on it!"

Chen Ji turned around and looked at the blackboard, which had been completely blank. Suddenly, amidst the swirling chalk dust, two lines of large white characters appeared:

As a student, one should act like a student.

[He survived inside the cram school until noon on the third day.]

On the left side of the blackboard, a line of small print appeared:

Today's duty student.

Below is a list of student ID numbers, corresponding to the numbers on each student's school uniform.

A few seconds later, the two lines of large characters indicating the direction disappeared from the blackboard again.

"A survival mission...?"

The burly man said in a low voice, his expression not relaxing, but rather becoming even more serious.

Just then, the middle-aged man, who had just calmed down, suddenly looked at Chen Ji and shouted in a low voice.

"Chen Ji!"

His expression was one of astonishment, as if he had seen something terrifying: "How did you get here?!"

"you know me?"

Chen Ji frowned, and almost everyone turned to look at him the moment they heard his name.

"He's that mentally ill person who was on TV!" The middle-aged man stood up abruptly, looking wary.

"This madman killed his mother, and none of you knew?"

Everyone's expression changed. Chen Ji's case had caused a huge uproar; almost everyone online knew about it.

The burly man glanced at Chen Ji casually and sneered, "It really is you."

"I didn't kill my mother," Chen Ji said calmly and simply. "It was a ghost."

Upon hearing this, the aloof woman suddenly looked up, a hint of inquiry flashing in her eyes.

"Ghosts cannot be killed."

The strong man sneered.

"Chen Ji, you really are sick!"

The middle-aged man trembled, his finger shaking as he pointed at Chen Ji: "Can't you all hear me? He's mentally unstable!"

He glanced at the crowd, and seeing that they didn't react as violently as he did, his expression suddenly changed:

"I know, you're all in cahoots, you deliberately set a trap to harm me, didn't you!"

"What do you want? Money? I'll give you anything. Who sent you?"

In reality, middle-aged men often get rich overnight by taking advantage of the times and through some improper means.

As a result, he developed paranoia, always feeling that someone would harm him for money.

Before Chen Ji could speak, the man in pajamas strode up to the middle-aged man and slapped him, making him stagger.

What happened to him before is irrelevant to this place and has nothing to do with us.

After saying that, he pointed to the clock, which was almost six o'clock: "The mission is about to begin. Our only goal is to find the pattern together and survive. Don't say anything that is not conducive to unity."

The burly man chuckled softly, agreeing with the man in pajamas.

Here, survival is the only goal. At least for him, the middle-aged man who shouts and yells at the drop of a hat is more mentally unstable than Chen Ji, which also means he is more likely to cause trouble.

The room returned to calm, and everyone silently changed into their school uniforms. Even the middle-aged men dared not be different from the others.

At this moment, the girl with the ponytail who had been sitting next to the aloof woman suddenly said softly, "The morning exercises are about to end, shouldn't we... clean up the area?"

She pointed to the blackboard, where the students' student ID numbers were marked with the words "Duty Student".

"Fang Jia is right."

The aloof woman nodded. "The mission instructions also seem to be suggesting that we try to put ourselves in the role of students."

The sounds of people running outside had gradually subsided, and she glanced at her watch again:

"We...only have five minutes."