Chapter 20: The Silhouette of a Ghost
"Why did you open the coffin? You already touched it..." Shigure Kira muttered.
"Opening it makes it easier for you to observe the corpse. If there are any abnormalities, we can handle it in time. As for me touching the black coffin... Actually, I don't know either. It was purely a gut feeling. My gut feeling tells me that it's fine for me to touch it," Li Mo's tone remained calm. It hadn't changed since a few hours ago, completely devoid of emotion.
"A gut feeling? That's rare. I thought you were all about the evidence. This is the first time I've heard you admit that your actions are purely based on gut feeling," Shigure Kira said in surprise, her mouth agape.
Li Mo looked at the corpse in the black coffin and paused. "I'm also not sure of the reason. If I had to give one, then it would be that the headless male corpse in the black coffin is exactly the same as my body."
He didn't say anything else. Such a reason was too lame, but Li Mo really had a strange feeling in his heart.
Was this funeral burying himself?
So, was he currently holding a funeral for himself?
"Oh, right, I'll tell you another piece of bad news." Li Mo suddenly turned his head. In just a few short words, he completely blew everyone's minds.
"Don't tell me that the ghost is going to start killing people! Noooo...!" A girl with little self-control wailed, holding her head.
"Wouldn't it be that the second grave incense is going to be extinguished too? No way. Why are we so unlucky? Every time we draw a card, it's a guaranteed bottom, and every time we carry out a mission, we're always interrupted. Even ghosts are bullying me!?" A resentful Valkyrie protested indignantly.
"Y-y-you... Speak up quickly, I'm not afraid..." A timid girl stuttered.
"Gloomy Man, stop beating around the bush and say it already! You're going to kill me with suspense. Don't waste any more time. What if the bad news comes true immediately? If we die, we might as well die knowing what's going to happen!" Shigure Kira impatiently urged.
Li Mo found the reactions of the crowd to be quite good.
Because the more energy they had, the less bad this news would be.
"I was thinking too much, and just now my thoughts wandered elsewhere. But that's not important. What's important is that this bad news isn't too bad," Li Mo said slowly. "Tonight and tomorrow night, we can't sleep. This is the tradition of the night watch. Because we aren't sure if today or tomorrow is actually the second day, for insurance, we can't sleep for both nights."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Okay, okay, you scared me." Shigure Kira breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that another anomaly had appeared.
Staying up for one or two nights wasn't difficult for S-rank Valkyries. If they were sleepy, they could just stimulate themselves with Honkai energy to forcefully stay awake.
But the other Valkyries couldn't reach Shigure Kira's level. They were just like the students and could at most stay up for one night.
"Since you all seem to have quite a lot of energy now, then this isn't too bad of a news. As long as you can endure until 7 AM, you can sleep, and then I'll take the people who can still stay awake to gather enough supplies..." Li Mo scanned everyone.
Seventeen students, seven Valkyries including Shigure Kira, and finally himself, making twenty-five people in total.
The convenience store had a door that meant death if they went through it, so it wasn't the first choice.
Then the only place left was the teaching building, which was full of corpses. In the offices and classrooms, there should be a lot of food and drink left behind by the deceased.
Although the search would be difficult, and most of the things they found would be as meager as mosquito legs, there wouldn't be much danger.
Li Mo had already verified this during the daytime. As long as they didn't enter the classroom through a door, they would be safe.
It seemed that the doors in St. Freya Academy were simply ghost doors that led to the underworld!
It wasn't just one door, but all the doors in this area were ghost doors.
The living couldn't enter the underworld, only the dead could. That's why going through the doors meant death, and that was consistent with the reason for Li Mo's first death.
Unable to resist, unable to contain.
Without knowing the rules, ten out of ten people would die.
Li Mo realized that he seemed to have discovered a clue to the source of the anomaly. Although it was just a guess, making bold guesses was what Li Mo was good at.
After that, he would just have to carefully seek evidence.
But there was no need to seek evidence right now. First, he had to find a way to complete the funeral and find the rules of the anomaly behind the funeral and create a conflict to make it crash. That was the highest priority.
Even if it meant risking dying once more, completely losing himself, or even sacrificing everyone here, including himself, he had to do it…
It was just a matter of time.
No matter the price, even if it meant burying more people, he had to completely remove the anomalies from this world and send them back to where they came from.
Li Mo knew that his thoughts were extreme, but he didn't think too deeply into it.
In his rational and cold personality after dying twice, being able to make such a judgment was obviously illogical.
Li Mo himself didn't know, and it was difficult to realize that even if he did, it would be quickly ignored. If an accident didn't happen, he would never know—
Why did the behavioral patterns of a vengeful spirit appear on him?
The most obvious change was:
The more he died, the faster he would go mad…
Perhaps it was because the first day's rituals were carried out perfectly and the pre-conditions of the second day's rituals hadn't been met.
Nothing too strange happened on the first night.
The only thing that made Li Mo pay attention was a gust of wind that blew from the darkness, carrying a stench of corpses.
Everyone stayed in this stench, as if they were staying up all night in a pile of corpses, while staring at the black coffin.
The smell of corpses was exactly the same as the smell of the black blood. He didn't know the reason. The current situation couldn't support everyone to explore it.
Even he didn't dare to leave the illuminated area of the fire, even half a step, before the second day's anomalies appeared.
In the large auditorium, it seemed that only the area near the black coffin was safe. He couldn't see outside the windows, nor could he see the scene outside the door.
There were several blurry figures in the darkness, but they were too far away, and he could only vaguely see a silhouette. They stood at the door of the auditorium, staring at Li Mo and the others without moving...
It was very quiet and very strange.
That complete figure silently stood in the darkness, with its long arms touching the ground.
There was an indented area in the middle, like a human joint.
But the darkness obscured his vision, and the blurry silhouettes didn't provide any more information.
Li Mo's eyesight was much better than everyone else's. He could vaguely see the scene in the darkness. The flaw was that it wasn't complete. There were only unclear silhouettes.
Outside the window, there was also a dark silhouette of an upside-down head, with white eyeballs and a spine connected to something like a grotesque worm.
It and the complete silhouette at the door of the auditorium stood in the darkness, looking at the crowd in the firelight, without moving.
It seemed to know that Li Mo and the others were inside, and it never tried to enter.
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The "Mourning" Period (守夜, shǒu yè): This is a traditional practice in Chinese funerals where family members stay awake for a specified period of time (usually during the night) to mourn for the deceased and also to ensure that their spirit isn't left unattended or vulnerable to evil spirits.