Chapter 26: The Ghost Forum
While on the car, Chu Jiang received a phone call from home. It seemed like something was wrong and his parents had noticed.
However, Chu Jiang didn't answer the call. He just comforted them a bit through WeChat voice messages and said that he had received help from the police. He mentioned that today, the police would come to his house to talk.
Then, his little sister sent him a voice message, crying and promising to behave in the future. It made Chu Jiang both cry and laugh.
In short, Chu Jiang didn't completely cut off contact with his family. In this day and age, mobile phones were too convenient.
......
After a two-hour car journey, Chu Jiang arrived in Luozhou City.
During the trip, he kept reflecting on the ghostly incident that happened at Luoxi No. 7 Middle School.
Chu Jiang believed that Slender Man might not be a ghost who indiscriminately killed people, but rather he himself had no understanding of the rules and didn't think in that direction at the beginning.
Let's not forget, besides Chu Jiang and the other four, there was also a Zhang Haoran who managed to survive until the end. Although he had some mental issues, it didn't seem to be caused by ghost attacks.
So Chu Jiang was thinking, perhaps Zhang Haoran just happened to avoid the Slender Man's killing patterns?
But upon further thought, it didn't seem right. Avoiding the patterns might temporarily ensure not being killed, but it didn't mean one could freely escape Slender Man's Ghost Domain.
The so-called Ghost Domain refers to places where ghosts frequently appear. There is a quote from Li Zhi's "Ji Wu Si Wen" during the Ming Dynasty that says, "Therefore, those without heirs are called ghosts without sacrifice, and those with heirs are also called ghosts with sacrifice, but they never leave the Ghost Domain."
In the new recruit handbook provided by the research institute, this term was used to broadly refer to the special abilities of certain powerful ghosts, like Slender Man who possessed the Ghost Domain.
The common phenomenon of people encountering walls caused by ghosts could be considered the lowest level form of the Ghost Domain, as it could trap ordinary people in one place.
In reality, encountering walls caused by ghosts was not a particularly rare ability.
However, once it formed a Ghost Domain, it became different. Slender Man, for example, possessed a terrifyingly powerful Ghost Domain, and trapping people was just the simplest variation.
In the Ghost Domain, everything could be either real or false, and ghosts could even change the physical laws of reality.
For example, the spatial displacement that Chu Jiang and the others initially witnessed, where the first-floor restroom and the eighth-floor rooftop of another building were fused together.
Even Chu Jiang himself had to think hard and rely on the special abilities of the Ghost Diary to lead everyone out of the Ghost Domain.
As for Zhang Haoran's escape, it remained a complete mystery.
Not to mention, Zhang Haoran was not included in the Ghost Diary's survival list. Sometimes Chu Jiang felt scared just thinking about it – was that person who came out really a classmate he had known for years...?
Setting Zhang Haoran aside for now, if Slender Man really had a pattern of killing, Chu Jiang figured it must be related to that eerie bell sound.
The answer certainly wasn't that ghosts would kill as soon as the bell sound was heard, that was analyzed early on.
Chu Jiang speculated that it was possible that anyone who heard the bell sound would be killed, without any particular order.
Initially, both his classmates and he heard the bell sound; the ghosts also heard the bell sound, while constantly searching for it.
If we reason from this direction, Slender Man might have a possessiveness towards the bell sound, so he kills anyone who hears the bell.
Of course, all of this was just speculation, and Chu Jiang couldn't confirm it now. He was just preparing in case Slender Man found him again, thinking about how to deal with it.
By the way, why did the ghost shadow go to the school, it couldn't be that it randomly chose a place every time, right? Were the people in his own school really that unlucky?
Wait, suddenly a school bell engraved in Chu Jiang's DNA rang in his mind, "Waiting, waiting, waiting ~ Wait, Deng Deng ~".
This bell was used by many schools in the country, it was nothing special, and there was nothing strange about it, but it was indeed a type of bell.
Assuming that the mysterious bell sound was a supernatural force, or even a ghost, it should also have its own patterns.
Would it instinctively run to places where bells frequently ring?
If this assumption was true, then Chu Jiang should stay away from places where bells frequently ring in the future.
So as not to be killed by Slender Man again due to a chain reaction, this time he was not confident that he could come back to life.
......
After leaving the train station, Chu Jiang used his phone to book a ride on a car service, getting ready to go to a nearby affordable hotel to stay for a while.
If it wasn't for Li Buhuo transferring fifty thousand over before, he would probably have looked for a shared bicycle nearby.
Soon, a driver accepted the request, and as soon as Chu Jiang got in the passenger seat, he buried his head in his phone. The chatty older driver understood and stayed quiet.
He was an experienced driver and knew that some passengers didn't like to talk.
Chu Jiang was doing alright, he was just browsing a forum on a supernatural website. New users could post and reply, but some advanced sub-forums were inaccessible.
[Dangerous Wind City! Want to join a three-person team? Please don't come if you're about to die, thank you.]
[So miserable, I feel like ants are devouring my flesh and blood. I wish to die!!]
[Important reminder: don't go to Endless City recently, there are rumors of a Grade B ghost haunting the place.]
[I am new here, is there a big brother who can show me around?]
[I am Ye Wen, I want to fight ten people, is anyone up for a challenge?]
[If you need someone to work for you, as long as you pay and it's not illegal, you can come to me.]
[Shocking news, there seems to be a very scary ghost in Luoxi City. It has already destroyed a whole school, leaving nothing behind!]
......
Chu Jiang casually browsed through the posts and noticed that most of the titles were not very reliable. For example, the person who wanted a fight, his post got locked by the administrator.
The person below him, however, seemed smarter. He clearly stated that he wanted money and didn't care about whether it was legal or not.
But if he didn't include certain keywords, his post might get locked, so he decisively added them. As long as he could privately negotiate with a potential buyer, he had nothing to worry about.
Finally, the haunting incidents at Luoxi No. 7 Middle School quickly spread online.
Chu Jiang clicked on the popular post and took a look. Many people were discussing, but they had not actually been to the school. They were just imagining and guessing.
To Chu Jiang, a useful point was that it seemed like outsiders didn't know there were survivors. They thought everyone in the school had died.
This was a good thing, otherwise there might be interested people who would come looking for the few survivors.
......
Overall, in the main section of this supernatural forum, occasionally there might be some valuable information. But most of the time, you could only get some garbage information or information that had passed through many hands.
So Chu Jiang didn't plan to waste too much time on it. If he could hire someone, maybe he could find a person to help him search for valuable information on the forum every day.
But the problem was that he only had this one account and he had to be verified with a face recognition all the time to prevent the account owner from transferring it to others. So for now, he decided to forget about it.
