Chapter 36

After confirming this speculation, Gu Yi'an didn't feel good about it.
Because this person was the counselor who had always been very kind to her. Even if she might have ulterior motives, she had treated her well.
For a moment, Gu Yi'an didn't know what to say.
The counselor glanced at her, then shifted her gaze to the sky opposite.
She said, "I know you might suspect that I hinted for them to play with the spirit board because the original spirit was my sister. I didn't do that. Yi'an, I'm a teacher. How could I do such a thing? Initially, I didn't even believe in ghosts."
Gu Yi'an listened in silence. The last person who deceived her like this had turned into a notebook lying in her backpack.
The bus arrived.
The counselor smiled at Gu Yi'an and said, "Let's not talk about these irrelevant things for now. Let's go back to school."
They boarded the bus and remained silent throughout the journey. When they reached the school gate, the counselor took the initiative to say, "I took leave to come out, and I still have work to handle."
They bid farewell there.
The counselor walked toward the office building.
After walking a short distance, she suddenly saw a notebook floating in mid-air in front of her, moving forward as she moved.
The counselor stopped and looked around. The pedestrians nearby seemed unable to see the floating notebook, or even her, but they subconsciously avoided her as they passed by.
The notebook opened automatically, revealing a sentence.
"You've been discovered."
Seeing these words, the counselor could no longer control her expression.
She said angrily, "When you told me to protect her, you actually meant for me not to harm her, right? Do you know how much I want to take action against her?"
Having been exposed so directly, the counselor nearly lost control.
The notebook ignored the counselor's current anger and leisurely displayed another sentence.
"You can't touch her."
The counselor regained some rationality and said, "Yes. I can't touch her. I even have to make Qiaoqiao not harm her. Demon, what exactly do you want me to do? What kind of deal do you want me to make? Will you revive Qiaoqio?"
The notebook didn't answer the counselor.
It disappeared into the air again.
Its appearance seemed only meant to witness the counselor's breakdown.
The counselor stood dazedly in the middle of the road.
She had truly encountered a demon.
Gu Yi'an watched the counselor's retreating figure for a while. Not noticing anything unusual, she eventually withdrew her gaze.
Gu Yi'an walked a short distance along the main path of the campus and spotted a bench by the roadside.
She took a tissue from her backpack, spread it on the bench, and only then sat down.
First, Gu Yi'an used a messaging app to notify the student union member who had previously given her information to come to the school gate to retrieve the protective charm.
The other person seemed to be on their phone and immediately replied, "Be right there."
Gu Yi'an set down her phone and then took out her notebook and earphones.
She put on the earphones so that passersby would assume she was on a call rather than talking to a notebook.
The notebook sensed Gu Yi'an's low spirits and, abandoning its earlier pretense of being lifeless, automatically flipped open to display text.
"Don't trust her. Trust me."
The "her" clearly referred to the counselor.
That one sentence shifted Gu Yi'an's mood from gloomy to amused.
She’d rather trust anyone else, just not the notebook.
Lu Zize had deceived her far more times than the counselor, who had only withheld one thing.
Gu Yi'an still didn’t want to recall her experience in the previous game.
She had been thoroughly frightened by Lu Zize.
Whenever she thought back, her mind would flash with scenes of various accidental deaths.
In short, Lu Zize was not to be trusted.
His words were to be taken lightly, not seriously.
The notebook observed Gu Yi'an's reaction.
As if feeling wronged, a line of text appeared on its page.
"I have never lied to you."
Gu Yi'an chuckled and said, "That statement itself is a lie."
The notebook, magnanimous, didn’t argue with her and instead displayed new text.
"Is there anyone more worthy of your trust than me?"
Gu Yi'an replied casually, "You’re not a person. You’re a ghost now."
The notebook felt even more aggrieved.
It challenged her.
"Do you not want to talk to me?"
Gu Yi'an denied it. "No. If I didn’t want to talk to you, why would I have taken you out?"
The notebook seemed to ponder this seriously, and after a moment, it let the matter drop.
A new line of text appeared.
"Do you need me to provide you with new clues?"
Gu Yi'an paused and asked, "Do you know what clues I’m looking for?"
Gu Yi'an herself was a bit confused about what she was going to look for next.
All she knew now was that her deceased roommates had turned into ghosts and were still trying to kill her.
But with the notebook around, they couldn’t harm her.
Her own safety was completely assured.
The only thing she might need to worry about was the safety of the players.
Although Gu Yi’an had spoken with them at noon, she didn’t know much about their tasks.
On the surface, their tasks were related to the spirit of the pen spirit, but what they actually needed to do remained unclear.
Gu Yi’an guessed that they might have to resolve all the spirits of the pen spirit to complete this round of The Game of the Gods.
Otherwise, the spirits would keep hunting them down.
As for Gu Yi’an, she was a native of this world.
Whether she completed the game or not, she would continue living in this world.
Gu Yi’an felt that her role in this game wasn’t that of a player, but more like a plot character providing clues.
She didn’t need to play the game; it seemed she only had to watch the players play.
So, Gu Yi’an didn’t know what clues she needed either.
Just then, the notebook that claimed to provide clues leisurely revealed a line of text.
"I don’t know."
Though they were just words, Gu Yi’an could vividly imagine the gentle yet teasing tone Lu Zize would use when saying this.
She felt the notebook was a bit in need of discipline.
Fortunately, the notebook didn’t deliberately keep her in suspense. Bold, flowing characters appeared one by one on the page.
"But if you want to know the truth, then follow her and investigate."
The "her" in the notebook’s words clearly referred to the counselor.
With the notebook’s confirmation, Gu Yi’an knew she hadn’t been mistaken.
Her roommates’ summoning of the pen spirit spirit was definitely connected to the counselor.
But deep down, she still hoped it wasn’t the counselor.
The counselor was one of the rare people at the university who had always been kind to her.
Before her roommates died, they had once shared a period of closeness, but as time passed, someone, or perhaps everyone, had changed.
Gu Yi’an and her roommates gradually drifted apart.
Recalling how they had once invited her to play the pen spirit game together, she wondered if that had been an olive branch, a signal for reconciliation, hoping she would join the group and face things together.
Shared secrets often serve as the bond that holds a small group together.
At the time, Gu Yi’an had firmly refused their invitation and even tried to dissuade them from playing the game. Looking back, she felt her approach had been particularly cold. If she had persuaded them more gently, perhaps things would have turned out differently.
Maybe her roommates wouldn’t have ended up playing the pen spirit game after all.
But her roommates were already gone.
Gu Yi’an had no way of knowing what their true intentions were when they invited her to play the pen spirit game. And now, as ghosts, they had clearly become "them", no longer possessing the rationality they had as humans, but instead committing numerous murders.
The notebook shifted, flipping a page and gently brushing against Gu Yi’an’s fingertip.
Her gaze fell upon it.
Only one sentence was written on the page.
"It wasn’t your fault."
It always seemed to guess Gu Yi’an’s thoughts.
It knew she was blaming herself.
Then, new words appeared in the notebook.
"They were caught in someone else’s trap. You couldn’t have saved them."
Reading this, Gu Yi’an felt a stir in her heart.
She said, "So, it was the counselor?"
Though phrased as a question, her tone was definitive.
The notebook's pages trembled slightly, as if stirred by a breeze.
It probably hadn't expected Gu Yi'an to snap out of her emotions so quickly and guess the truth outright.
The notebook unabashedly displayed another sentence on the page.
"I didn't say anything."
You've already said it all.
Gu Yi'an smiled faintly.
Her mind now turned to another question.
She wondered just how much the notebook had done behind her back to know so many secrets.
Just as Gu Yi'an and the notebook were locked in a subtle standoff, a boy in casual clothes approached her.
"Hey. Gu Yi'an."
Gu Yi'an turned toward the voice to find an unfamiliar face before her.
If she wasn't mistaken, he was likely the student union official who had provided her with information.
She nodded slightly and said politely, "Hello."
The boy was adept at reading people and immediately noticed that Gu Yi'an didn't remember his name.
Unbothered, he cheerfully introduced himself and sat down at the other end of the bench.
Gu Yi'an handed him the protective talisman she had just bought.
Taking the talisman, the boy looked at Gu Yi'an and said, "I just heard some new information."
Gu Yi'an obligingly showed curiosity.
The boy continued, "The monks the school hired didn't capture all the ghosts. I heard a few escaped, and one even committed a murder at a restaurant."
At the mention of a restaurant, Gu Yi'an felt a sense of foreboding, perhaps something had happened to those players.
Seeing Gu Yi'an frown slightly, the boy quickly reassured her, "You have a protective talisman, so you'll be fine."
Gu Yi'an thanked him for his concern.
Noticing her relaxed demeanor and finding her approachable, the boy grew more at ease.
His mind began to wander, and he first asked, "How much did the talisman cost?"
"Five hundred."
Without hesitation, the boy handed over the money, then said in a familiar tone, "You've been waiting a while, haven't eaten yet, have you?"
The evening glow painted the sky in brilliant hues as dusk gradually settled.
Gu Yi'an replied bluntly, "I've eaten."
In truth, she hadn't had anything yet.
Undaunted, the boy pressed on, "How about some late-night snacks? My treat."
Gu Yi'an apologized, "I'm on a diet. Thank you for your kindness, but you don't need to treat me. After all, you were the one who helped me."
The young man could sense Gu Yi'an's attitude and said, "Where are you headed? Do you need me to walk you part of the way?"
Gu Yi'an declined again, explaining that she had a class to attend.
Hearing this, the young man realized there was no chance to spend more time together. He understood her firm refusal and didn't press further, instead bidding her farewell gracefully. He mentioned that if she ever needed to inquire about anything, she could still come to him.
Gu Yi'an nodded and parted ways with him at the fork in the main road.
After leaving, the young man turned back and glanced into the distance at Gu Yi'an's figure.
The sky was dim, and he could only make out her slender silhouette.
Just as he was about to step forward, he suddenly stumbled and fell face-first onto the ground, a classic flat-ground fall!
The pain from his face made him push himself up immediately after the fall.
He reached out to touch his face, then brought his hand in front of his eyes.
It was blood.
He had disfigured himself!
Passersby gave him strange looks.
How could someone fall so badly on flat ground? Was he acting in a TV drama?
He looked into the distance again.
The sky had darkened, and with people coming and going on the road, there was no trace of her anymore.
Suddenly, he remembered something he had always dismissed.
Gu Yi'an was particularly unlucky, her roommates had all died, yet she alone was living just fine.
In other words, anyone who got close to her ended up with bad luck!
Before this, he hadn't believed in such superstitions, but after falling flat on his face and accidentally disfiguring himself, he had no choice but to believe.
Beauty was alluring, but life was more important.
Clutching his wound, he headed to a small clinic.
He didn't know that, under a distant roadside tree, Gu Yi'an stood watching him leave.
Some men might seem decent on the surface, but they often harbored ulterior motives.
Gu Yi'an had encountered similar people before and had grown cautious.
Only after confirming that the young man had left did she take a different route.
She did have a class that evening, but it was still early, there was half an hour to go.
Right now, Gu Yi'an wanted to find Brother Zhang and the others. She was worried they might have run into trouble.
The sky wasn't completely dark yet, but the streetlights had already turned on.
Even in the small grove, one could still see the trees not far away.
At that moment, Brother Zhang was trying to stop a female player who was wildly hacking at a tree with a kitchen knife.
"Han Qiu, snap out of it. That's not a ghost."
He glanced outside the grove, where a group of students passing by cast suspicious looks their way, and felt both exasperated and exhausted.
He had thought this female player would die, but who knew that when pushed to the edge, a person could be fiercer than a ghost?
Back at the internet cafe, this player named Han Qiu had chopped up a monitor after seeing a ghost.
After they finally managed to shake off the people from the internet cafe and hide in the grove, a white ghostly figure suddenly appeared before them. Han Qiu, the female player, directly swung her kitchen knife and struck the ghost's body.
Only when the knife hit did everyone realize that what they had seen was an illusion, it was actually a tree.
The male player was so frightened he hid behind Brother Zhang, while the other female player was pale with fear but still far braver than the cowardly male player.
Brother Zhang observed the three players: one was a madwoman, one was dead weight, and the other was relatively normal.
He sighed and said, "Right now, the top priority is to meet up with Little Gu. She must have some information. Otherwise, we won’t even know why the ghost suddenly attacked us."
"Han Qiu!" Brother Zhang raised his voice, emphasizing, "Stop chopping the tree. That’s not a ghost!"
The female player Han Qiu, who had been frantically hacking at the tree, was jolted back to her senses by his shout. She stared blankly at Brother Zhang and said, "The ghost hasn’t left. It’s here."
Brother Zhang also knew there must be a ghost nearby, otherwise, how could they explain the white-clad ghostly figure they had seen?
He avoided looking into Han Qiu’s eyes.
"I know," he said. "Let’s get out of this place quickly. The signal here is terrible, I can’t make any calls. Once we find Little Gu, she’ll definitely know how to deal with these ghosts."
Han Qiu was persuaded. She tightened her grip on the knife handle and pulled the cleaver out of the tree trunk.
With a fierce expression, she declared, "Let’s go."
Her demeanor made the other female player too afraid to approach her, worried that she might snap and turn on her companions.
Not only did the female player think this way, but Brother Zhang did as well. He positioned Han Qiu at the front, while he, the male player, and the other female player followed behind.
The forest floor was covered in fallen leaves, and the soil itself was soft, muffling the sound of their footsteps.
The players focused on the path ahead, failing to notice that right where they had just stepped, a pale human hand emerged from the soil.
The hand stretched out, longer and longer, swiftly closing in on the female player at the rear.
Then, it grabbed her ankle and yanked hard.
The female player gasped.
"There’s, ah!"
Before she could finish her sentence, she was dragged into the soil by an irresistible force.