On the other side of the bookshelf, Zhou Zhou was seriously searching for books when a white flash suddenly appeared in the corner of his eye.
When he looked in that direction, he didn’t see anything.
Recalling the white shadow he saw in the elevator, it was gone by the time he turned his head.
Zhou Zhou walked towards where he saw the glimpse, his footsteps light, making almost no sound as he moved.
Standing in the hallway, he looked left and right. Apart from the neatly arranged bookshelves, he was the only one there.
After standing dazed for a moment, Zhou Zhou’s gaze suddenly shifted downward to the right.
On the right side, two tall bookshelves stood back-to-back, with a narrow gap in between. At the very bottom, something like a white paper strip was stuck there, revealing only a small oval.
Zhou Zhou squatted down, his expression one of curiosity, and pulled the white paper strip outward.
The small thin strip grew larger as he pulled, until a head emerged.
Zhou Zhou: ?
“I died so miserably~”
The paper-thin white head actually spoke.
Zhou Zhou blinked his eyes, confusion in his gaze. He was grasping the head by its ear, so he continued pulling it outward.
In the end, he pulled out a person from the bookshelf gap.
This person had a somewhat rugged appearance, with their entire body, including their hair and eyes, being white and semi-transparent. You could even see the bookshelves behind them through their body. Viewed from the side, they were as thin as a cicada’s wings, and their lower half had no feet.
“I died so miserably~”
If Zhou Zhou knew what a ghost was, he would have known what was in front of him.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know, and only felt that holding the other’s ear was impolite, so he let go.
As soon as he let go, the ghost slowly floated upwards, chanting “I died so miserably~” as it drifted.
The voice was faint and mournful, extremely eerie.
Seeing that the ghost was about to float away after being released, Zhou Zhou quickly grabbed the bottom of the ghost’s body, the cone-shaped wisp.
The ghost had almost no weight, so Zhou Zhou easily pulled it down, an NPC and a ghost facing each other.
It was Zhou Zhou’s first time seeing this kind of “person”, so he curiously observed it for a while before politely asking, “Hello.”
“I died so miserably~”
“My name is Zhou Zhou, what about you?”
“I died so miserably~”
“Can you say anything else?”
“I died so miserably~”
Realizing that this “person” could only mechanically repeat that one sentence, Zhou Zhou squatted there, holding a section of its body with both hands and observing it closely. He pulled and stretched it, finding that it could be elongated like rubber and would snap back to its original shape when released.
It could also be squeezed into a ball, and would still return to its original state after being released.
Bouncy and stretchy.
Zhou Zhou: It seems… kind of fun.
Squatting there, he spent a while flattening and squeezing the ghost into various shapes. During this time, the ghost continued to repeat its only line.
“I died so~ miserablyyyy~~~”
When stretched, the pitch rose; when squeezed into a ball, the pitch lowered, turning the single line into a roller coaster of intonation.
Zhou Zhou played with it like a child who had found a new toy. After a while, he remembered that he had come to find books, so he bundled the ghost into a ball and put it in his pocket.
He would show it to Xue Li and Ke Li later.
“Ahhh, a ghost!”
“Hey, what are you doing!”
As soon as he stood up and pocketed the ghost, he heard screams coming from nearby, Xue Li and Ke Li’s voices.
Zhou Zhou immediately headed towards the source of the sound. After turning a couple of bookshelves, he saw Xue Li holding a book as thick as a brick, raising it high to smash it onto Ke Li’s head.
Ke Li had one hand pushing against the book almost hitting his head, moving his head back as far as he could.
“I thought you called me because something happened and I needed to rescue you, but it turns out you just want to kill me?”
Seeing who it was, Xue Li lowered the book with a lingering sense of shock, “It’s you. You really scared me just now.”
Ke Li snorted disdainfully, gesturing with an exaggerated arc, “I was the one who got scared. If I didn’t react quickly, you would have killed me with that super thick book.”
Xue Li looked around, and seeing both Ke Li and Zhou Zhou nearby, she explained, “I called out to you guys for a while, but you didn’t respond at all. Then I saw some strange things, like something white, I’m not sure what it was.”
“You saw what? All I saw was you trying to kill me.”
“That’s because you scared me. I was already scared after hearing those weird noises and seeing those white things.”
Xue Li glared at her brother. This guy must have done it on purpose. She turned the corner with the book raised, only to find Ke Li shining a flashlight on his face and rolling his eyes out while sticking out his tongue. If it weren’t daytime, she would have smashed that brick of a book right onto his head before she could stop herself.
Ke Li sheepishly rubbed his nose. He had found another flashlight in a corner of the library, not knowing which player had discarded it here. It seemed similar to the one they had before, probably also an item they exchanged for.
He originally wanted to scare Xue Li a bit, but before he could make any noise, she almost killed him.
At the mention of white, Zhou Zhou remembered the talking ball he had bundled up and reached into his pocket, only to find it empty, with nothing inside.
Had it run away?
He looked on the ground and didn’t find it, nor was it on the ceiling. Zhou Zhou withdrew his gaze with regret, as he had intended to show it to Xue Li and Ke Li. But now it was gone.
Xue Li described her experience earlier, though unclear about what exactly was in the library, there was definitely something strange.
So in the end, the three of them searched for books together, staying within each other’s line of sight. Although slower, nothing strange happened again.
Finally, the three found the book – ‘Greek Mythology’.
The book looked very old, the words on the cover and spine were blurred, and they had to search several times to find it.
Opening the book, a green heart-shaped gem hovered above the pages, very similar to the one Zhou Zhou had obtained earlier.
After getting the gem, the main quest on both Ke Li and Xue Li’s task panels showed as completed.
Immediately after, another line of text appeared on the panel.
[According to the borrowed book’s clues, proceed to the location of the next clue.]
“According to the book’s clues? Are the clues in the book?”
Ke Li flipped through a couple of pages, then put the book down in frustration, “Too much, we’ll be done with the game by the time we finish reading it.”
“I’ll do it.” Xue Li took the book and started searching from the first page for clues, her expression calm and confident.
After a few minutes, she looked up at Zhou Zhou with an awkward, ingratiating smile, “Why don’t you take a look instead?”
Ke Li also chuckled twice, standing behind Zhou Zhou and patting his shoulders ingratiatingly, “The two of us really can’t think, why don’t you give it a try?”
In the previous instances, it was Zhou Zhou who found the clues. They had noticed that although Zhou Zhou looked like an innocent youth, his mind was truly sharp, definitely much better than the two of them.
Without taking the book Xue Li handed over, Zhou Zhou merely glanced at it and said, “It’s in the woods behind the dorm building.”
The two of them widened their eyes in disbelief, “Why would it be there?” He hadn’t even looked at the book.
“Because the picture on the cover shows it,” Zhou Zhou was very familiar with every tree and blade of grass on campus. Just a glance told him that the blurry image in the middle of the cover depicted a scene from the school.
“Really?” Ke Li tried to recall what the woods behind the dorms looked like but couldn’t remember.
However, if Zhou Zhou said so, it must be true.
Ke Li held the book, ready to head to the destination, but stopped after taking two steps. He turned back and asked hesitantly, “How do we… get downstairs?”
The stairs below were locked, did they have to take the elevator again?
Xue Li: “We definitely have to take the elevator again, it’s not like we can jump out of the window.”
Ke Li said desperately, “…Are there any other options?”
A few minutes later, Ke Li entered the elevator apprehensively, immediately grabbing onto Zhou Zhou as he stepped in, while Xue Li did the same, clutching Zhou Zhou’s arm.
The brother and sister sandwiched Zhou Zhou between them, their expressions tense as they stared at the elevator buttons.
Good-natured Zhou Zhou allowed them to crowd around him, occasionally looking left and right, as if searching for something.
After the elevator doors slowly closed, it began descending smoothly.
This time, there were no incidents, and they arrived safely on the first floor.
As Ke Li and Xue Li exited the elevator, they looked surprised, “We really just came out like that?”
Zhou Zhou nodded, “Mm.”
It was just a shame that the “person” who had floated away when he let go earlier was now gone. He hadn’t gotten a chance to show Ke Li and the others. Zhou Zhou pondered this as he followed the two out of the library at a brisk pace.
Outside, the sun was already slanting westward. The flow of time in the game differed from reality; only two or three hours had passed in the real world, but it was already almost a full day in the game.
And the first player to complete the Love Academy instance had already emerged. If Zhou Zhou saw them, he would definitely recognize the person who had helped him at the dorm building.
Behind the dorm building, there used to be a large laurel forest, the lush evergreen trees making it one of the most popular spots in Love Academy’s heyday.
But now, the laurel trees were bare, without a single leaf. A vast expanse of gnarled, winding gray-brown branches crisscrossed, making the scene look even more desolate.
Ke Li checked the book against the scenery several times. Although the image on the cover was worn, it was still clearly a dense forest, but this place was far too barren.
However, Zhou Zhou was certain this was the location depicted in the book.
Xue Li did notice some similarities – despite the lack of leaves, the textures and shapes of the tree trunks were recognizable.
This was the location of the next clue, and the group discussed that there should also be a heart-shaped gem somewhere here.
Without any leaves obstructing the view, there were no heart-shaped objects visible at a glance, so it might be buried underground or in a tree hollow.
The three searched side by side. At some point, Zhou Zhou, who had been trailing silently behind the other two, found himself sandwiched between them.
In an instant, the sky turned dark as night fell.
Zhou Zhou was already used to these sudden changes, but Ke Li and Xue Li were not accustomed to the abrupt darkness, immediately clutching Zhou Zhou’s arms.
Like a mother hen comforting her anxious chicks, Zhou Zhou reassured them, “It’s okay, it’s just bedtime.”
Ke Li quickly took out his flashlight and turned it on, “Bedtime? I get all jittery when it turns dark like this.”
Xue Li huddled on the other side, “Yeah, it’s pitch black, I keep feeling like something is going to suddenly jump out.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a white figure suddenly dropped in front of the three, standing out starkly in the faint flashlight beam.
“I died so miserably~” The mournful, plaintive words seemed to echo right beside them.
Xue Li screamed in terror, “Ahhhhh!”
Ke Li’s eyes rolled back, “Mommy!”
Only Zhou Zhou’s eyes revealed a hint of pleasant surprise, “Oh?”
On the other side of the bookshelf, Zhou Zhou was seriously searching for books when a white flash suddenly appeared in the corner of his eye.
When he looked in that direction, he didn’t see anything.
Recalling the white shadow he saw in the elevator, it was gone by the time he turned his head.
Zhou Zhou walked towards where he saw the glimpse, his footsteps light, making almost no sound as he moved.
Standing in the hallway, he looked left and right. Apart from the neatly arranged bookshelves, he was the only one there.
After standing dazed for a moment, Zhou Zhou’s gaze suddenly shifted downward to the right.
On the right side, two tall bookshelves stood back-to-back, with a narrow gap in between. At the very bottom, something like a white paper strip was stuck there, revealing only a small oval.
Zhou Zhou squatted down, his expression one of curiosity, and pulled the white paper strip outward.
The small thin strip grew larger as he pulled, until a head emerged.
Zhou Zhou: ?
“I died so miserably~”
The paper-thin white head actually spoke.
Zhou Zhou blinked his eyes, confusion in his gaze. He was grasping the head by its ear, so he continued pulling it outward.
In the end, he pulled out a person from the bookshelf gap.
This person had a somewhat rugged appearance, with their entire body, including their hair and eyes, being white and semi-transparent. You could even see the bookshelves behind them through their body. Viewed from the side, they were as thin as a cicada’s wings, and their lower half had no feet.
“I died so miserably~”
If Zhou Zhou knew what a ghost was, he would have known what was in front of him.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know, and only felt that holding the other’s ear was impolite, so he let go.
As soon as he let go, the ghost slowly floated upwards, chanting “I died so miserably~” as it drifted.
The voice was faint and mournful, extremely eerie.
Seeing that the ghost was about to float away after being released, Zhou Zhou quickly grabbed the bottom of the ghost’s body, the cone-shaped wisp.
The ghost had almost no weight, so Zhou Zhou easily pulled it down, an NPC and a ghost facing each other.
It was Zhou Zhou’s first time seeing this kind of “person”, so he curiously observed it for a while before politely asking, “Hello.”
“I died so miserably~”
“My name is Zhou Zhou, what about you?”
“I died so miserably~”
“Can you say anything else?”
“I died so miserably~”
Realizing that this “person” could only mechanically repeat that one sentence, Zhou Zhou squatted there, holding a section of its body with both hands and observing it closely. He pulled and stretched it, finding that it could be elongated like rubber and would snap back to its original shape when released.
It could also be squeezed into a ball, and would still return to its original state after being released.
Bouncy and stretchy.
Zhou Zhou: It seems… kind of fun.
Squatting there, he spent a while flattening and squeezing the ghost into various shapes. During this time, the ghost continued to repeat its only line.
“I died so~ miserablyyyy~~~”
When stretched, the pitch rose; when squeezed into a ball, the pitch lowered, turning the single line into a roller coaster of intonation.
Zhou Zhou played with it like a child who had found a new toy. After a while, he remembered that he had come to find books, so he bundled the ghost into a ball and put it in his pocket.
He would show it to Xue Li and Ke Li later.
“Ahhh, a ghost!”
“Hey, what are you doing!”
As soon as he stood up and pocketed the ghost, he heard screams coming from nearby, Xue Li and Ke Li’s voices.
Zhou Zhou immediately headed towards the source of the sound. After turning a couple of bookshelves, he saw Xue Li holding a book as thick as a brick, raising it high to smash it onto Ke Li’s head.
Ke Li had one hand pushing against the book almost hitting his head, moving his head back as far as he could.
“I thought you called me because something happened and I needed to rescue you, but it turns out you just want to kill me?”
Seeing who it was, Xue Li lowered the book with a lingering sense of shock, “It’s you. You really scared me just now.”
Ke Li snorted disdainfully, gesturing with an exaggerated arc, “I was the one who got scared. If I didn’t react quickly, you would have killed me with that super thick book.”
Xue Li looked around, and seeing both Ke Li and Zhou Zhou nearby, she explained, “I called out to you guys for a while, but you didn’t respond at all. Then I saw some strange things, like something white, I’m not sure what it was.”
“You saw what? All I saw was you trying to kill me.”
“That’s because you scared me. I was already scared after hearing those weird noises and seeing those white things.”
Xue Li glared at her brother. This guy must have done it on purpose. She turned the corner with the book raised, only to find Ke Li shining a flashlight on his face and rolling his eyes out while sticking out his tongue. If it weren’t daytime, she would have smashed that brick of a book right onto his head before she could stop herself.
Ke Li sheepishly rubbed his nose. He had found another flashlight in a corner of the library, not knowing which player had discarded it here. It seemed similar to the one they had before, probably also an item they exchanged for.
He originally wanted to scare Xue Li a bit, but before he could make any noise, she almost killed him.
At the mention of white, Zhou Zhou remembered the talking ball he had bundled up and reached into his pocket, only to find it empty, with nothing inside.
Had it run away?
He looked on the ground and didn’t find it, nor was it on the ceiling. Zhou Zhou withdrew his gaze with regret, as he had intended to show it to Xue Li and Ke Li. But now it was gone.
Xue Li described her experience earlier, though unclear about what exactly was in the library, there was definitely something strange.
So in the end, the three of them searched for books together, staying within each other’s line of sight. Although slower, nothing strange happened again.
Finally, the three found the book – ‘Greek Mythology’.
The book looked very old, the words on the cover and spine were blurred, and they had to search several times to find it.
Opening the book, a green heart-shaped gem hovered above the pages, very similar to the one Zhou Zhou had obtained earlier.
After getting the gem, the main quest on both Ke Li and Xue Li’s task panels showed as completed.
Immediately after, another line of text appeared on the panel.
[According to the borrowed book’s clues, proceed to the location of the next clue.]
“According to the book’s clues? Are the clues in the book?”
Ke Li flipped through a couple of pages, then put the book down in frustration, “Too much, we’ll be done with the game by the time we finish reading it.”
“I’ll do it.” Xue Li took the book and started searching from the first page for clues, her expression calm and confident.
After a few minutes, she looked up at Zhou Zhou with an awkward, ingratiating smile, “Why don’t you take a look instead?”
Ke Li also chuckled twice, standing behind Zhou Zhou and patting his shoulders ingratiatingly, “The two of us really can’t think, why don’t you give it a try?”
In the previous instances, it was Zhou Zhou who found the clues. They had noticed that although Zhou Zhou looked like an innocent youth, his mind was truly sharp, definitely much better than the two of them.
Without taking the book Xue Li handed over, Zhou Zhou merely glanced at it and said, “It’s in the woods behind the dorm building.”
The two of them widened their eyes in disbelief, “Why would it be there?” He hadn’t even looked at the book.
“Because the picture on the cover shows it,” Zhou Zhou was very familiar with every tree and blade of grass on campus. Just a glance told him that the blurry image in the middle of the cover depicted a scene from the school.
“Really?” Ke Li tried to recall what the woods behind the dorms looked like but couldn’t remember.
However, if Zhou Zhou said so, it must be true.
Ke Li held the book, ready to head to the destination, but stopped after taking two steps. He turned back and asked hesitantly, “How do we… get downstairs?”
The stairs below were locked, did they have to take the elevator again?
Xue Li: “We definitely have to take the elevator again, it’s not like we can jump out of the window.”
Ke Li said desperately, “…Are there any other options?”
A few minutes later, Ke Li entered the elevator apprehensively, immediately grabbing onto Zhou Zhou as he stepped in, while Xue Li did the same, clutching Zhou Zhou’s arm.
The brother and sister sandwiched Zhou Zhou between them, their expressions tense as they stared at the elevator buttons.
Good-natured Zhou Zhou allowed them to crowd around him, occasionally looking left and right, as if searching for something.
After the elevator doors slowly closed, it began descending smoothly.
This time, there were no incidents, and they arrived safely on the first floor.
As Ke Li and Xue Li exited the elevator, they looked surprised, “We really just came out like that?”
Zhou Zhou nodded, “Mm.”
It was just a shame that the “person” who had floated away when he let go earlier was now gone. He hadn’t gotten a chance to show Ke Li and the others. Zhou Zhou pondered this as he followed the two out of the library at a brisk pace.
Outside, the sun was already slanting westward. The flow of time in the game differed from reality; only two or three hours had passed in the real world, but it was already almost a full day in the game.
And the first player to complete the Love Academy instance had already emerged. If Zhou Zhou saw them, he would definitely recognize the person who had helped him at the dorm building.
Behind the dorm building, there used to be a large laurel forest, the lush evergreen trees making it one of the most popular spots in Love Academy’s heyday.
But now, the laurel trees were bare, without a single leaf. A vast expanse of gnarled, winding gray-brown branches crisscrossed, making the scene look even more desolate.
Ke Li checked the book against the scenery several times. Although the image on the cover was worn, it was still clearly a dense forest, but this place was far too barren.
However, Zhou Zhou was certain this was the location depicted in the book.
Xue Li did notice some similarities – despite the lack of leaves, the textures and shapes of the tree trunks were recognizable.
This was the location of the next clue, and the group discussed that there should also be a heart-shaped gem somewhere here.
Without any leaves obstructing the view, there were no heart-shaped objects visible at a glance, so it might be buried underground or in a tree hollow.
The three searched side by side. At some point, Zhou Zhou, who had been trailing silently behind the other two, found himself sandwiched between them.
In an instant, the sky turned dark as night fell.
Zhou Zhou was already used to these sudden changes, but Ke Li and Xue Li were not accustomed to the abrupt darkness, immediately clutching Zhou Zhou’s arms.
Like a mother hen comforting her anxious chicks, Zhou Zhou reassured them, “It’s okay, it’s just bedtime.”
Ke Li quickly took out his flashlight and turned it on, “Bedtime? I get all jittery when it turns dark like this.”
Xue Li huddled on the other side, “Yeah, it’s pitch black, I keep feeling like something is going to suddenly jump out.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a white figure suddenly dropped in front of the three, standing out starkly in the faint flashlight beam.
“I died so miserably~” The mournful, plaintive words seemed to echo right beside them.
Xue Li screamed in terror, “Ahhhhh!”
Ke Li’s eyes rolled back, “Mommy!”
Only Zhou Zhou’s eyes revealed a hint of pleasant surprise, “Oh?”
