Chapter 309: [Spooky School Terror] Watching a Movie
Zzzzt! The lights in the classroom went out.
The sky outside was dismal and overcast. The moment the lights snapped off, the room turned pitch-black.
Then the giant screen lit up.
It almost seemed as if they were genuinely watching a movie, complete with a film dragon logo flashing across the screen.
It was more than a little ridiculous.
Bai Cha smoothly opened her livestream room.
[Huh?]
[Holy crap, anchor is back in the game again???]
[Didn’t she just get out? She took a nap and came right back?]
[Wait, what are they doing, watching a movie? Is this a cinema dungeon?]
[No, it’s a campus dungeon!]
The female teacher’s figure had vanished at some point. Only the large screen before them flickered a few times before footage began to play.
The players were all somewhat tense.
Quite a few people had played campus dungeons before, but none had ever entered a campus dungeon like this.
Starting off like this right off the bat? So direct?
On screen was a picture-perfect view of a grassland.
It didn’t look like anywhere domestic.
An off-road vehicle drove across the terrain.
The camera remained at a wide angle, advancing alongside the vehicle until a solitary villa gradually appeared ahead.
At this point, the camera began to zoom in, cutting straight to the interior of the villa.
The entire shot felt like a single, continuous long take.
When the camera reached the villa, the female protagonist appeared.
She was cradling her child, coaxing the infant in her arms to sleep.
Hearing the sound of a car outside, she walked out with a pleasantly surprised expression.
Her husband had returned. The two wrapped each other in a warm embrace.
Since the baby was fast asleep, their voices were hushed. After carefully placing the infant onto the bed, the couple began whispering sweet nothings to each other before heading into the kitchen to cook dinner together.
They prepared a salad and steaks. The entire sequence could be described as extraordinarily heartwarming and cozy.
It hardly felt like a horror film—more like an advertisement promoting a comfortable domestic lifestyle.
The camera even gave a close-up shot of the steak cooking, sizzle-searing on the grill pan so vividly that everyone almost felt they could smell the aroma.
Up to this point, nothing problematic had occurred on screen, standing in stark contrast to what everyone had anticipated.
The only peculiar aspect was that the couple spoke in such low voices that hardly anyone could hear what they were saying, and there were no subtitles, either.
Everyone’s attention was dialed in with high tension as they stared at every single detail on screen. The harder it was to hear, the more they strove to catch the audio.
They still remembered that this was a class—what if the teacher decided to quiz them later?
On screen, after finishing the meal, the couple sat at the dining table to eat, continuing their quiet conversation.
They seemed to be chatting with immense joy, breaking into smiles every now and then.
Yet it remained undeniably difficult to hear what they were saying.
After finishing their conversation, they cleared up the household chores.
The child woke up from a deep sleep and began to cry, prompting the two to hurry over to soothe the baby and mix formula.
One could say the film was entirely documenting an entire day’s mundane routine.
It was so long, drawn-out, and trivial that it began to border on boring.
No one could maintain a state of hyper-vigilance for an extended period.
Even though everyone realized this might be an intentional tactic to lull them into relaxing before dropping something terrifying on them, they still inevitably began to lower their guard.
They merely exercised caution by holding onto their items or applying protective measures onto themselves.
The movie of mundane daily life dragged on.
The couple on screen even took an afternoon nap.
And the camera remained focused on them as they slept.
It was far too long—altogether too long.
After waking up from their nap, they chatted some more. The husband read a book and played games, while the wife scrolled through her phone.
Then the baby cried again, prompting another round of coaxing.
The bullet chat comments kept complaining endlessly.
[Holy crap, what is this garbage? Is it ever gonna end?]
[Who directed this movie? What a box-office bomb!]
[So boring…]
The footage progressed from day to night.
The small child had fallen asleep once more. Now in the dead of night, the couple lay down to sleep as well.
Because so much time had elapsed on screen, no one knew how much time had passed outside, yet everyone felt as though they had genuinely sat there watching a movie for an entire day.
This caused quite a few people to grow drowsy.
They quickly jolted themselves awake, resuming their vigilant stare at the screen, though a few NPCs nearby had already dozed off.
Evidently, it wasn’t just the players who found it boring—the students here felt the same way.
Logically speaking, now that the footage had reached the dead of night, issues ought to start popping up, right?
Yet the lens remained fixed right on the two fast-asleep figures.
Bai Cha felt sleepiness washing over her as well; the more she watched the screen, the sleepier she got.
It wasn’t necessarily that she herself felt tired—more likely than not, the footage before them possessed some sort of hypnotic quality.
This kind of sleep-inducing video wasn’t half bad; it would be great if such a thing existed in reality, considering how severe her real-world insomnia was.
Just like her, several players nearby couldn’t hold out any longer, their heads nodding rhythmically.
Shen Qingchen let out a massive yawn as well.
It was as if sleepiness were contagious; everyone began yawning incessantly, to the point where tears streamed down their faces, their eyes too heavy to keep open.
Yet the more this happened, the clearer everyone realized that once they fell asleep, they would likely be dragged into some sort of nightmare.
Thus, every single person fought with all their might against the overwhelming drowsiness.
Right at that moment, the footage changed.
Out of nowhere, in a film that had been overall quiet—as if the volume were turned down to one—the female protagonist let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
That sudden screech nearly scared the soul right out of everyone.
Everyone instantly snapped their eyes wide open to look at the screen.
In the footage, a monster had appeared out of nowhere.
No—rather than calling it a monster, it was more like an unidentifiable substance.
Yet everyone simply knew it was a monster.
Everyone’s focus had been pulled straight into the screen, as though every person sitting there had become that female protagonist in that exact instant.
It was so vivid that their entire hearts and minds were swept up by the woman, experiencing the sheer terror right alongside her.
They had completely forgotten that they were merely watching a movie.
The husband took the brunt of it, caught in the monster’s jaws first.
He let out agonizing screams, trying to run as he cried out, but failed to escape.
Very quickly, the husband’s body was gnawed away piece by piece.
The key was that this footage dragged on for an exceptionally long time.
At this moment, everyone was the woman herself.
Shrieking in terror, she began fleeing outward.
After taking a couple of steps, she suddenly remembered her child was still inside. In a chaotic panic, she turned around, only to trip and fall flat onto the ground.
With great difficulty, she gathered the child into her arms and scrambled out.
Yet by then, her husband was completely gone.
The woman knew with absolute clarity that she couldn’t escape.
Looking down at the child in her arms, she hid the baby beneath a pile of rags.
Right at that moment, the door burst open.
Backing away continuously, the woman stared in terror at that blurred shadow.
The shadow lunged forward abruptly, drilling directly into her body.
It was an excruciatingly agonizing experience, as if her skin were being forcibly peeled away by something.
Transformations began to sweep across the woman’s face. Both her pupils dilated completely into pitch-black voids, while unidentified scales and bulges sprouted all over her body—resembling deep-sea fish from the ocean’s depths, hideous and grotesque.
When the transformation concluded, the woman had turned thoroughly horrifying.
She lowered her head to look at her hands and let out a shriek.
This time, everyone finally heard the words she spoke—because the sound originated directly from their own mouths.
“No… please no… I don’t want to be like this…”
Breakdown, despair, agony—these emotions swirled like a vortex, swallowing everyone’s minds whole.
Right at that exact second, the infant who had been hidden beneath the rags—who hadn’t cried until now—suddenly let out a loud wail.
The woman’s body went stiff. Slowly, inch by inch, she raised her head toward the crib.
