Mysterious Revival - Chapter 8 - The Strange Tree

Yang Jian quickened his pace, continuing forward in the darkness.

“Step, step~!”

Yet the clear sound of footsteps behind him remained steady, following closely.

No matter how fast Yang Jian moved, he couldn’t shake off the footsteps, and as time passed, they seemed to draw nearer.

At first, the footsteps felt like they were five or six meters behind him.

Then, they seemed to be about three meters away.

As he moved forward, the footsteps were almost just a meter behind him.

Yang Jian gripped his phone tightly, unwilling to let the screen go dark, ready at any moment to play the audio file.

If that ghost attacked him again, the knocking sound from the audio file was his only means of survival.

His body was tense, prepared to fend off the ghost at any moment.

However, things did not go as Yang Jian expected; the footsteps remained precisely one meter behind him, neither retreating nor advancing.

Whether Yang Jian sped up or slowed down, the footsteps maintained that peculiar distance.

“Could it be waiting for my phone battery to die?”

Suddenly, Yang Jian’s face changed as he looked at his phone’s battery, which was less than ten percent, feeling increasingly uneasy.

If that were true, dying at the hands of the ghost was only a matter of time.

Escaping alive seemed impossible.

He checked the phone screen again: 7%.

“Below 5% battery, it could shut down at any moment.”

Yang Jian regretted playing with his phone during the day, draining the battery.

“But now is not the time to think about that. If I don’t want to die here, I have to get out of this haunted place before the battery runs out, otherwise…”

With a determined bite of his lip, he started running.

He sprinted towards the direction of the tick-tock sound of dripping water.

“Step, step-step~!”

The footsteps behind him followed closely, unrelenting.

Yang Jian could even feel the cold, eerie chill behind him, along with a faint smell of decay.

The ghost pursued him relentlessly, like a shadow.

As he ran with all his might, the sound of dripping water grew closer.

But at that moment, his phone screen lit up automatically.

Battery: 5%.

It displayed: To prevent automatic shutdown, please charge your phone.

“Damn it.”

Yang Jian panted, sweat pouring down his body. He glanced at the screen, growing more panicked.

Despite being exhausted, he dared not stop.

Stopping meant waiting for death.

He continued to run desperately.

Suddenly, a faint glimmer appeared in the darkness ahead.

This light was a soft red, standing out clearly in the dark, like a spark in the night-weak, yet conspicuous.

“Is that…”

Yang Jian’s eyes lit up, his heart filled with joy, as if he saw a glimmer of hope for survival.

But at that moment, his phone vibrated, the screen lighting up again.

It displayed: Shutting down automatically.

Though there was still a bit of battery left, the phone began to forcefully shut down.

Just as the phone screen went completely dark, Yang Jian felt a chilling presence envelop him, the footsteps rapidly closing in… that thing moved from a meter away to right behind him.

In the darkness, though he couldn’t see, he felt a cold, pale hand reaching out, brushing past his ear, aiming for his neck.

No matter how he ran, he couldn’t shake off this hand.

“Am I going to die here…” Yang Jian felt the cold fingers touch the skin on his neck.

The icy chill spread through his body, raising goosebumps.

A faint smell of decay lingered at his nose.

There was no way out.

In the darkness, that red glow became even more prominent.

Suddenly, the footsteps behind him stopped, disappearing instantly, the cold hand that had just touched Yang Jian’s neck froze, not gripping him.

Yang Jian, who had run a few steps forward, felt the presence behind him pull away.

It seemed the ghost had stopped pursuing him.

“What just happened…”

After running a bit further, Yang Jian couldn’t run anymore, stopping to catch his breath, drenched in cold sweat, still shaken.

Recalling the perilous moment before.

He was sure that surviving wasn’t due to sheer luck, but because the ghost had given up chasing him. But why?

He listened carefully.

The footsteps that had been following him were gone.

He seemed temporarily safe.

“Never mind, since that thing isn’t chasing me, it means I’m okay for now. I need to get out of here as soon as possible.” Yang Jian caught his breath, looking at the source of the red glow, then walked towards it.

Soon, he reached the spot emitting the red glow.

“A light bulb? Glass bead?” Yang Jian was puzzled, unable to see clearly in the darkness.

He tried to reach out and touch the spot emitting the red glow.

“Ah~!”

Instantly, Yang Jian felt a sharp pain, quickly withdrawing his hand.

“This isn’t a light.”

But what terrified him was seeing the glass bead emitting the red glow stick to his hand, wriggling furiously, burrowing into his hand.

Cold, painful, enveloping his body instantly.

Yang Jian fell to the ground, the pain causing him to convulse, as if his soul was being torn apart.

But amidst the painful struggle, Yang Jian noticed a change around him.

The darkness surrounding him began to recede quickly.

He could see clearly…

Everything around him became visible.

It was as if he suddenly gained night vision.

The pain came quickly, and left just as fast.

The struggle lasted less than three minutes before Yang Jian felt the pain recede like a tide.

He lay on the ground, nearly exhausted, gasping for air, his muscles still twitching from the earlier pain.

“What is going on?”

After a while, Yang Jian regained some strength, sitting up as if he had narrowly escaped death.

But when he saw everything around him clearly, his eyes widened, his face showing horror.

In front of him was a tree.

A pale tree, seemingly made of bones.

Hanging from the tree were tattered human skins, filthy cloth strips, and dried corpses’ heads, bizarre paper talismans… But what terrified him even more was the four-meter-tall figure lying on the tree trunk.

No, not a person.

But a shadow, a silhouette resembling a human, seemingly formed from darkness.

This tall shadow hung motionless on the tree, head facing the ground.

Looking closely, he saw a thick iron nail, the size of an adult’s arm, driven into the shadow’s chest. No, it was a coffin nail, commonly used in funerals, rusted and seemingly about to break.

“Tick-tock, tick-tock~!”

Black blood dripped from where the shadow was nailed.

The dripping sound he had followed in the darkness was this.

But when Yang Jian saw the shadow’s head, he felt a chill run through him.

The shadow’s head had no facial features, only a hollow indentation, seemingly where its eyes should be. The red glow earlier seemed to be its eye.

Yang Jian looked at his hand.

“Gulp~!”

The split skin revealed a red eye, turning a few times, a strange perspective appearing in his mind.

It was as if an eye had grown on his hand, transmitting its vision to his mind.

Eerie, bizarre, or perhaps an unknown ability.

But Yang Jian looked at the strange bone tree, the human skins, dried corpses, and the giant shadow nailed to the trunk.

“This place is creepy. No matter what this tree is, it’s better to leave quickly.”

He sensed that the giant shadow nailed to the tree was even more terrifying than the Old Man.

Moreover, he felt the hollow eye sockets of the dried corpses hanging on the tree seemed to be watching him.

A chilling sensation crept over him.

He glanced at the red eye on his hand, a shadow looming over his heart, impossible to shake off.

But now was not the time to dwell on this.

The surrounding darkness seemed to have receded, allowing Yang Jian to see everything clearly.

It was a dim, endless space, empty except for the bone tree.

Like another world, completely unlike the school he knew.

But when he looked back, he saw a door in the direction he came from-it was the restroom door.

The door was so close, yet he hadn’t noticed it before.