Cataclysm Chapter 37: Crimson Embroidery Shoes 4; Channeling

Chapter 37: Crimson Embroidery Shoes 4; Channeling

Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations 

Editor: Karai

 

There were three kinds of Passing Hell Soldiers. One of them is to catch unjust spirits that have gathered together. Chen Yang thought this was the case, but after looking at the situation for a few more minutes, he thought it was wrong. Just then, he heard the screams of students from the campus. He immediately turned around, “Someone is there. Let’s go and have a look.”

Kou Xuanling went back to the dormitory room and brought out the talismans. When he passed by room 405, the door was oddly opened. Qiu Shengming was panicking inside and wanted to grab Chen Yang’s arm. Chen Yang evaded. After standing still, he asked, “What’s the matter?”

Qiu Shengming, “Help my sister. Please help my sister.”

Chen Yang looked at the inside of the room  around Qiu Shengming’s shoulders as he pushed him into the room. Qiu Shengmin was lying flat on a single-person bed, her face turned blue and motionless with black palm prints on her neck. It was as if she was trapped in a nightmare. On the bedside table next to Qiu Shengmin was a bowl of rice with three sticks of incense in it. There were some burnt paper money ashes on the ground.

“When I woke up, I saw my sister lying in bed with a pale face,” explained Qiu Shengming. I can’t wake her up at all. I’m really anxious.”

Chen Yang asked, “Have you moved her?” Seeing Qiu Shengming’s confused face, he said in detail, “when you called your sister, did you push her?”

“No.” Qiu Shengming shook his head, “this had happened to my sister before. I gave her a push. She was so angry that she warned me that I should never push her if she didn’t wake up again.”

“What’s the matter?” Kou Xuanling came in and asked.

Chen Yang didn’t look good, “Astral projecting.” After that, he took out a talisman and stuck it on Qiu Shengmin’s forehead. He lifted his hand and decided to recite the mantra. Then he straightened the shoes at the bed of Qiu Shengmin and turned them over upright. With the forefinger and middle finger, he held the three sticks of incense and broke off the upper parts.   He then stabbed them back into the rice.

After a while, Qiu Shengmin woke up. Qiu Shengming raised his head in surprise, “Sister, what’s the matter with you? It scared me to death.”

Qiu Shengmin comforted her younger brother and expressed gratitude to Chen Yang. If he had not called her soul back, she would have been stuck outside forever.

 Chen Yang said, “It’s not clear what’s going on in Jinshui secondary school. You know that Jingshui secondary school is too clean, but you still rashly did an astral projection?”

At the moment of entering the door, Chen Yang knew that she was performing an astral projection when he saw the three sticks of incense in the rice, the paper money ashes, and shoes on the floor near Qiu Shengmin’s bed. The so-called astral projection means that some people with special physique are separated from the body and can communicate with the ghosts in their sleep. When performing it, the shoes under the bed would have one upright and one upside down, which indicates that she is performing astral projection.  If both shoes were flipped upside down, it indicated that her soul can not come back. If you turn it right again, she will be able to wake up. People who are performing astral projection should not be moved or pushed, as it will disturb them.

“I just have a strong premonition, so I wanted to try…” She had a look of fear on her face, “I found that as soon as I got out of the dormitory, I began to walk uncontrollably towards the open space behind the basketball court fence. I saw a lot of ghosts along the way. They disguised themselves as Hell soldiers. However, I felt something was wrong when I wandered around the campus. Even people revere Hell, let alone ghosts? Whenever ghosts hear that Hell Officers are coming they would all want to run away. How dare they pretend to be Hell soldiers and pass by as Hell soldiers? I realized something was wrong and wanted to run away, but I couldn’t come back. Those lonely souls and wild ghosts seemed to have noticed the Yang aura in me, so they surrounded me and pushed me towards the back hill space. I just knew that if I entered the back hill space, I would never be able to come back. When I was in a pinch, you called me back.”

Chen Yang handed her two talismans, “Your spirit is unstable, hide in the dormitory and don’t go out.” After saying that, he looked at Kou Xuanling and left their dormitory room. Both heading for the teaching building.

“As soon as the school gates open tomorrow, we are leaving immediately,”  Qiu Shengmin said to her brother.

“Sister.”

“Immediately!”

Qiu Shengming immediately nodded and agreed, “I’ll pack my things now, and I’ll leave as soon as there is sun in the morning. But do you want to inform them?” “Them” was referring to Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling. After all, they had just saved his sister and they were very dependent on each other. For moral reasons, he felt like they needed to inform them at least.

“They know this is dangerous.” Qiu Shengmin was silent for a moment. Seeing the two pieces of talismans in her hand, Qiu Shengmin went soft, “Before we leave, we should go tell them first. If we can persuade them to leave with us then that’s the best. If we can’t, then we should see if there are things we can help them with.”

Qiu Shengming nodded and helped her sit down, his eyes wide open until the sun came out.

Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling on the other hand, ran to the door of the teaching building, and the screams they heard came from there. When they arrived at the door, they found that the iron gates of the teaching building were open. They pushed the door in and faced the big mirror in the hall.

There are also four big characters engraved beside the mirror, “taking people as a mirror”. At this moment, the large mirror made people feel uneasy. There were no lights in the teaching building, there was only a dim yellow street lamp outside. It was tens of meters away from the entrance of the teaching building, so the light couldn’t shine in at all. “I’ll go to the left, you can go to the right and we can have a look separately,” Kou Xuanling said to Chen Yang after turning on the light of his mobile phone as he glanced at the large mirror.

Chen Yang nodded and took out his mobile phone for lighting as well. The teaching building was in a straight line orientation. There was a main hall after coming in from the gate. There were two flights of stairs on both sides of the hall. As soon as the two separated, Kou Xuanling ran up the stairs on the left and disappeared from sight. Chen Yang also walked up the stairs on the right. After taking a few steps, he heard the sound of “crackling”.

Chen Yang stopped, turned back to look at the mirror and raised his phone light. He looked back and forth and found a crack in the middle of the mirror. He stopped for about two minutes to check the surroundings but he didn’t find anything wrong, so he turned back. He did not see that when he turned around, the ‘him’ in the mirror suddenly turned its head around showing an auspicious smile.

Chen Yang went straight up to the fifth floor and heard a scream as he stepped up the last step. He ran to the classrooms where he ran into Kou Xuanling who just got there as well. They both ran towards the classroom where people were screaming. Just as they arrived at the door of the classroom, it opened  and three students came running out of it.

As soon as the three students ran into Chen Yang, they immediately burst into louder screams. Chen Yang covered his ear, “Stop screaming!”

They still screamed in horror, and Kou Xuanling, who couldn’t bear it,  kicked the door, “Stop screaming!”

That stopped the three scared people from screaming. They stared at the two men with blank eyes. Chen Yang frowned and asked, “Are you students? Why did you come here in the middle of the night? What are you doing here?”

Three people paused, after a look at each other, they pulled the two into the classroom., “Are you the two new teachers that just arrived? Please, help us.”

Chen Yang looked back and saw a third person closing and locking the door. The person looked at Chen Yang and smiled, but he didn’t intend to open the door for them. Chen Yang looked back and said calmly, “We are not teachers. I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

“It doesn’t matter if you are not a teacher, as long as you can play games.” The girl in the three quickly said, “Help us. Help us play this game. If we don’t, we’ll all die.”

Chen Yang refused. One of the boys said, “I know you’re here to investigate the school homicides. If you want to know what’s hidden, play the games with us.”

“We’ll find out for ourselves. Besides, I don’t know whether the so-called “hidden things” in your mouth are what I want to know or have already known.”

“Do you want to know about the supernatural events in the open space behind the school?”

“You know?”

“He knows. The person who died on the basketball court was his roommate. The story that his roommate went to pick up basketball in the backyard came from him.” Another boy said.

Chen Yang still refused, “I know everything that was spread around already. There’s no need to listen to them again.”

The boy quickly stopped him, “he’s been to the back hill space!”

Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling both looked back at the boy who had been to the space. The boy’s face was not very good-looking, but he still nodded and admitted, “I have been there, but I’ll say this first. I will only talk about the situation in the back hill space. If you want me to take you there, don’t even think about it.”

Looking at his fear, he did seem to have been to the back hill ground. Chen Yang agreed to their request and asked what the game was.

“Channeling.” A girl named Li Hui stared at Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling. The other two boys blocked their way of leaving and seemed to be worried about their escape. Li Hui took two steps to the left. Behind her were the objects needed for Channeling. “Five people are needed, just right.”

“With whom?” Chen Yang asked.

“The President.” Li Hui laughed, “just ask the president a few words and then we can send her away.”

“Fine.”

After Chen Yang agreed, Li Hui handed them two red cards, “You need to have a card to play the game. Use the numbers on it. It’s easy to distinguish people with the numbers when playing. What’s more, I’ve heard that if the ghost hears people’s name while channeling, you’ll be caught by the ghost. So, let’s use the numbers to replace each other’s names.”

Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling took the cards, which had the numbers 45 and 67 respectively. Holding it in the palm of their hands, they found that the card was extremely cold. He looked at the pure dark red on it as if blood was spilled onto the card.

Li Hui went to the table and said, “Come here.” The two other boys also gathered around the table. Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling walked over. There was a basin of water, an alcohol lamp and a small bowl of yellow oil on the table.

Kou Xuanling suddenly grabbed Chen Yang, his face was very ugly, “Someone’s dead.”

Chen Yang followed his gaze and found that two students were dead behind them. There was a lot of blood flowing on the ground. They couldn’t see them until they got close to it. Chen Yang said coldly, “did you kill them?”

Li Hui shook her head and denied, “No.”

Chen Yang was surprised by their indifference. It seemed that under their feet were not the corpses of their classmates, but two human figures. He asked calmly, “Why are they dead?”

“They were useless.” Li Hui didn’t care and said, “Let’s play. There’s not much time left. Oh, by the way, now even if you don’t want to play, you can’t. Once you have the card, you will have to play.”

Chen Yang didn’t plan on stopping, “Why? Anyway, since we are one of you now, tell me ” After a short pause, he continued, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t, but if the game goes wrong, you’ll die too. After all, it’s a ghost game.”

Li Hui snorted, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

Taking advantage of the opportunity to examine the two corpses on the ground and the tools on the table, Kou Xuanling stood up and pointed to the oil, “This is corpse oil.” He also pointed to the two bodies on the ground, “It was obtained by burning them.”

Chen Yang suddenly stares at the three people on the scene, and their faces are still indifferent and disapproving, “there was no other way. Channeling needs corpse oil. We can only use the materials here. They are dead anyway. Besides, if they hadn’t knocked over the oil I prepared beforehand, they wouldn’t have died. They were stupid and useless, but still wanted to trap us. It doesn’t matter for them to do me a favor since they are our classmates.”

They were horribly cold.

“What does this game have to do with cards? You have to play the game when you get the card. Where do you get the card? How many people have this card? What are the rules of the game? Spit it all out.” Chen Yang asked. 

“Are you sure you want to hear this now? It’s troublesome.”

“Speak!”

Li Hui was startled. Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling were black faced and extremely unhappy. Li Hui shrugged her shoulders. Sooner or later, they will know that kindness is useless, being alive is the most important.

“The game is a thing that the ghosts require of everyone in the school. Every night from Monday to Thursday, everyone who gets the card must participate, including the teachers. The cards and the type of game are drawn at 10 o’clock every night. Those who are picked must finish the game between 12 to 3 o’clock. Those who fail will die.”

“When did the game begin?”

“Last month. At first, it was just a few members of the student union, then it gradually expanded to the whole school. It will continue to expand. I don’t know how many people are involved now. If you don’t pass the game, you will die. The boy who got hanged to death in the basketball court and the president both died after losing the game. That’s why they died.”

Li Hui said as she cut her finger with a knife and dropped blood into the water. Then she handed the knife to the boy next to him. The boy also cut his finger to drip blood and continued to pass it to the next person.

“The cards and game were drawn at ten. In just two hours, where did you collect the corpse oil?” Kou Xuanling remembered Li Hui saying that the original corpse oil was knocked over by the dead.  His question attracted Li Hui’s attention, so Chen Yang took this opportunity to collect blood from the ground.

Fortunately, the classroom was dark with only an alcohol lamp on the desk switched on. If you step back a little bit, you can’t see the figure clearly.

“From other corpses of course.” Li Hui was surprised and said, “You must think that only two people died in the school?” She showed a sarcastic smile, “The speed of the school to clean up the corpses is really fast. The ability to hide information is as good as ever.”

Chen Yang took the knife and made a fake stroke, dropping the blood of the dead on the ground into the water. As he passed the knife to Kou Xuanling, Chen Yang applied the blood to his fingers. Then he said, “Since you’ll die if you stay at school, why don’t you leave?”

“I can’t run. No one can walk to the foot of the mountain. You can die on the mountain, or come back here.” Li Hui took a drink of the water mixed with blood, “OK, after drinking the water, close your eyes, recite ‘let me see you’, and those things will come. Don’t open your eyes when you recite. Otherwise those things will find us.”

“If those things can’t see us, how do you ensure that what you summoned is the President, and how do you ask it questions?” Chen Yang said.

Li Hui took out a small bottle of corpse oil from her pocket, poured out a little and smeared it on her own forehead, “This is corpse oil of the President. There is a fire at the forehead. Smearing the corpse oil on it will cover up human auras and the president will find us.”

Chen Yang suddenly felt that Li Hui was more terrible than ghosts. It was very normal in her mind to obtain the corpse oil from her former classmates. Just now she said that the two dead people on the ground died because of them spilling the corpse oil. She also had other corpse oil but she did not take it out thinking to refine the corpses of the two dead people again. It’s creepy to do these things.

The other two drank the water mixed with blood but Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling did not. Several people closed their eyes and recited ”’let me see you”’. After reciting dozens of times, the temperature in the classroom dropped sharply and became extremely cold.

The game Li Hui played was called Channeling, which can also be called the ghost summoning game. The game went: In an empty classroom, several people gather, each drops a drop of blood into the water, and then drinks it. Turn on the alcohol lamp and put the corpse oil on the table. Close your eyes and wait for the smell of the oil to spread. Everyone in the classroom begins to recite “let me see you”. You can’t open your eyes, but you can ask questions.

When he felt the cold air around his neck, Chen Yang opened his eyes suddenly, slightly tilted his head, and looked up at a female ghost floating behind his neck. The ghost was stunned, then suddenly bared her teeth and jumped up.

Chen Yang calmly pinches the Vajra gesture to subdue the ghost. The ghost screamed and went away. Kou Xuanling next to him also encountered the same situation. He also pinched his hand and drove away the ghost.

They did not drip blood in the water, nor drink the water. The ghosts who were summoned could see them. But for some reason, these ghosts were not driven away by their Taoist exorcizing gestures. Seeing that, they rushed forward fearlessly. Generally speaking, unless the evil spirits are very fierce, ordinary ghosts would be afraid and retreat when they see Tianshis.

At present, this group of ghosts did not feel afraid and did not seem to be manipulated by someone. On the contrary, they can see that they were quite angry and pounced on them one after another. Chen Yang was getting impatient and was about to open his mouth to drive them away. The next moment, he saw them leave as if they were running away in fear.

After that, Chen Yang heard the sounds of “Dong” and “Dong” which came from outside of the corridor and gradually approached the classroom. Li Hui and the rest seem to have heard it too. Although they can’t see anything with their eyes closed, the psychological pressure caused by the inability to see but only hear was even greater. Their expressions became frightened and twisted, their forehead exuded cold sweat, and their lips trembled. Still they still did not flee or give up the soul calling.

Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling both turned to look at the door. The sound stopped at the door. The ‘Dongdong’ sound disappeared but there was a faint drip of water. Of course, Chen Yang was not stupid enough to think that it was the sound of water drops. He remembered that the President was dismembered.

Things were quiet for a few seconds, then the door of the classroom was suddenly pounded on. One of the three boys couldn’t resist the shock and called out. The action of hitting the door outside was stopped, and the next second it became more crazy. Accompanied by the crash, there was a thump. Finally, the door failed to hold up and was knocked open.

A slender, slightly twisted shadow appeared at the door. The shadow jumped forward and made a sound of “thumping” on the floor. The three behind them were so frightened that they did not dare to open their eyes or make a sound.

The shadow stopped at the door and darted up in front of Chen Yang. The lights showed her face. Her face was blue and black, and there were worms crawling in her eye sockets. Her body was covered with red clothing. Her limbs were naked outside and uncoordinated. With her approach there were more and more clear sounds of  water drops. Chen Yang looked down and caught a glimpse of blood dripping from the red cloth she was wearing.

She stared at Chen Yang, as if puzzled by not being able to smell human aura but could smell her own corpse oil on him. She jumped in front of him, very close to his face, and observed him carefully. When she jumped, the red cloth wrinkled in a strange way, as if she had no body trunk.

Kou Xuanling didn’t make much noise, so she jumped to the next person and continued to explore. In addition to Li Hui, the other three people’s psychological endurance was not very good, and they were almost scared to death by the president.

When the president walked around to Li Hui’s side, her eyeball fell out and fell on Li Hui’s shoulder, rolling down with a trace of blood. Li Hui seems to be aware of something, but also showed a look of fear. But she still asked, “Last year, who told the top management of the school about me, leading to my parents being invited here?”

The president stared at Li Hui directly and said in a hoarse voice after a long time, “Guan Xinyu.”

Li Hui clenched her cheek abruptly, showing a very angry expression. But the president’s rigid and rotten face showed a slight smile. The president’s name was Guan Xinyu.

Then Chen Yang asked the president, “where is your body trunk?”

“Back mountain.” The president’s face was gloomy.

Kou Xuanling, “Where are the ghosts in the school during the day?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do the ghosts in the school dare to pretend to be Hell soldiers?” Kou Xuanling asked.

“Ignorance and fearlessness.”

Li Hui yelled, “Only ask one question each, don’t waste time!”

So it was the next person’s turn to ask a question, and he asked an unimportant question. When it was the last person’s turn, he was too nervous, his head was blank and he stammered. The boy blurted out, ” Who killed you?”

In an instant, the classroom became cold and terrible. The president suddenly became ferocious and terrifying, and rushed at the boy, “You killed me!”

Summon the ghost and ask the ghost, you can not ask about their regretful deaths, and the death method. That was in order to avoid the ghost entanglement. The last boy just committed a taboo, especially when she died so miserably.

Li Hui yelled, “Let her go! Leave! Guan Xinyu, please leave! Guan Xinyu, please leave!”

It’s easy to invite ghosts, but not to send them away. The President found out about their camouflage, ¹ so it was even more impossible for her to leave easily, “You tricked me!! Give me your body. Give it to me. Give me your body!!!”

Seeing that they couldn’t get rid of the president, Li Hui and another boy took advantage of the time when the president was entangling the third boy and quickly opened the classroom door to escape. Anyway, it’s the fool’s own fault for making the ghosts angry. Why should they stay and be killed?

Chen Yang frowned, but did not have time to pay attention to Li Hui and the other boy. He grabbed the boy who was dragged away by the ankle by the president. He took out the Wulei talisman drawn by Mao Xiaoli and threw it on the president. He held up his hand to form a gesture and detonated the five thunder talismans. Kou Xuanling took the opportunity to stab his peach wood sword through the president’s body but found that he had stabbed nothing.

“She doesn’t have a body trunk,” Chen Yang reminded him.

Kou Xuanling picked up the red cloth on the president’s body and saw that there were only limbs and head, the body was empty. The president seized the opportunity to break the glass and run away. Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling wanted to catch up with her, but they were held by the frightened boy, “Help me! Masters, help me.”

Chen Yang was so angry that he kicked the boy aside and ran to the window but he didn’t see the president’s body. They ran out of the classroom and went downstairs to look for the president. As for the boy, his legs were weak and he followed them with tears all over his face.

It is strange that on the way down the stairs not a single ghost has been spotted or sensed. The Yin aura soared to the sky. However, when they were in the dormitory, they saw the Hell soldiers passing by. Although the Hell soldiers were just ghosts, they should still be emitting a lot of Yin aura, yet they could not sense any of it at the moment.

When they ran downstairs, they suddenly found a body falling from the top of the building. Looking down, they found Li Hui’s corpse, whose eyes were wide open, full of fear. At the moment, her body trunk disappeared, and blood quickly bled out of her.

Chen Yang looked up. There was a figure on the top of the building. It was the president. They thought the president was running downstairs. They didn’t expect her to head to the roof. They could only blame it on the fact that they could not sense the ghostly auras here, even the compass was out of order.

Kou Xuanling, “We can’t catch up to her now, it’s almost dawn.”

Three more people died in one night. However, they were still confused about the happenings in Jinshui secondary school. There were additional questions of ghosts who pretended to be Hell soldiers and the so-called games now. One wave had not ended and another was rising.

Chen Yang, “There is another boy who should not have died yet. He’s been to the back hill. We can go there to see for ourselves at dawn.”

 

 

 

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