??Chapter 201: 200. Didn’t you all see it?_1
Chapter 201: 200. Didn’t you all see it?_1
The short film had no additional twists, and as soon as that beam appeared in the sky, a group quickly arrived near the ruins.
“This set must have cost a fortune.”
Bai Qiquan remarked.
As the last rays of the evening sun fell on the silver dunes, a corner of the ruins finally ca into view.
Above the desert, a magnificent and splendid city.
Even in its destruction and erosion by the wind, one could still glimpse its forr luxury and grandeur.
Bai Qiquan had heard others ntion the Loulan Ancient City, but had never paid it any attention. Now, seeing these desert ruins, he truly felt what a grave for a civilization looked like.
He seed to sll the dry hot wind mixed with sand. In his small phone screen, the grand ruins seed to leap out, transporting Bai Qiquan right into the midst of it all.
In the study room at midnight, he actually felt a touch of dry heat.
He took off his jacket and saw that several people had already entered the ruins to explore.
The buildings had collapsed and eroded, but there were no signs of people to be seen.
“Were they evacuated, or…?”
Bai Qiquan murmured, pondering to himself.
Of course, he didn’t forget this was a Lu Ban movie. He pulled the phone away a bit, fearing that sothing like a dried-up corpse would suddenly pop out from behind the walls of these ruins to scare people.
To his surprise, there was none of that.
Absolutely nothing.
The city seed completely dead, giving off an even stranger vibe.
Bai Qiquan’s heart hung in suspense until Lu Ban in the film discovered fire.
It was the other Wasteland Hunters.
“I get it, classic trope. Soon they’ll definitely start fighting, and might even get captured and forced to explore.”
Bai Qiquan thought to himself.
He was, after all, a student at the Academy of dia Arts and had watched many films.
Just as Lu Ban stood on the second floor of the building, observing the opposite side, preparing to go back and report to his teammates, the cara turned, and a pale figure suddenly appeared in the center of the fra.
“Fuck!”
Bai Qiquan had thought Lu Ban wouldn’t do such a thing anymore and had let his guard down, but he didn’t expect such a sudden shock. Caught off guard, he subconsciously threw the phone away. It landed on the desk with a loud noise.
For a mont, everyone left in the study room looked over.
“Sorry, I didn’t hold it steady…”
Bai Qiquan said, then looked at the phone screen on the desk.
The figure was an androgynous person with black hair and pale skin; the eyes were pitch-black, devoid of any whites, which was quite chilling to look at.
Bai Qiquan knew this was probably triggering the uncanny valley effect; entities that resemble humans but are not quite human tend to easily provoke panic and unease in people.
He steadied himself and then saw the pale figure mimicking Lu Ban’s every move, which looked both eerie and funny.
“Is it learning human behavior patterns to replace humans once it’s mastered them?”
He speculated internally.
The pale figure in Lu Ban’s viewpoint disappeared, and as he returned to his companions and was explaining, the cara turned to a girl nad Shia.
Bai Qiquan saw that behind her, the figure in white reappeared.
“!”
He almost dropped the phone again, but this ti he mostly had it on the desk. Bai Qiquan only made a crisp clicking sound, drawing a glance from the person at the next table.
“Can only the protagonist see this thing? Could there be so secret?”
Bai Qiquan felt that the figure in white didn’t seem like a human, but rather like sothing more familiar that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Just looking at it made him uncomfortable, a kind of instinctual repulsion.
He continued to watch as Lu Ban put forward a strategy, and successfully clashed with that group of Wasteland Hunters, managing to enter the cave at the center of the ruins.
“Turned into a treasure hunting movie, huh? There wouldn’t be a mummy down there, would there?”
Bai Qiquan rembered “The Mummy,” which was also one of his childhood nightmares. When he went ho for the sumr holidays, even his younger cousin in elentary school hadn’t seen these movies from the past century, which made him feel quite nostalgic.
The group moved through the underground passages, and as Bai Qiquan watched them talk, he suddenly felt that sothing was off.
“Is soone missing?”
He paused, stepped back, and took another look.
Indeed, there was one person less.
Yet the group in the movie seed not to notice at all and continued their conversation as normal.
“There’s a problem.”
Bai Qiquan saw that with every few lines of dialogue, a person disappeared, but they were completely unaware.
The eerie atmosphere made the hairs on his neck stand on end. Bai Qiquan kept rewinding the video, double-checking, indeed soone was missing, and it was not just a trick of his eye.
Eventually, only Lu Ban and another person remained. After Lu Ban spoke a sentence, the entire movie plunged into profound darkness.
Then, in the midst of the darkness, that pale figure in white suddenly appeared.
“Damn, I knew it, soone really is missing!”
Bai Qiquan couldn’t help but mutter under his breath before hurriedly closing his mouth and looking up to make sure he hadn’t disturbed anyone else.
However, he realized that there seed to be fewer people in the study hall.
“Huh?”
He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if people were indeed missing, but the study hall seed much emptier and quieter.
Bai Qiquan looked at the adjacent seat to find that the person who had been sitting there had disappeared without a trace.
Or was there really soone there before?
Influenced by the plot of the movie, Bai Qiquan was also unsure.
“Should I go back to the dormitory…”
He glanced outside at the pitch-black campus and swallowed hard.
At that mont, Bai Qiquan suddenly noticed a white-clothed figure at the classroom’s window, seemingly looking at him from behind the glass.
“!!!”
Every hair on his body stood on end, and a jolt of electricity shot up his spine. Bai Qiquan instinctively stood up, making a loud noise.
“Outside…”
He pointed towards the window, prompting several people to look over.
“What’s wrong with outside?”
Soone in the front asked.
“Didn’t you see it?”
Bai Qiquan countered.
He looked back at where the figure had been, but there was nothing there anymore—just the utterly dark campus, dim and lightless.
“There’s nothing there…”
Sowhat frightened by Bai Qiquan’s expression, the person followed his gaze and saw emptiness.
“Maybe you’re too tired, my friend. Why not head back to the dorm and rest?”
Soone suggested.
“I’m fine.”
Bai Qiquan sat back down.
He felt the figure might have been just an afterimage left on his retina from staring at his phone too long. After all, it was just a movie; it couldn’t affect reality.
He continued watching as Lu Ban followed the figure forward, saw the mural beco clearer, and then, as the screen transitioned through the mural, images of an ancient ti erged—a grand sacrificial ceremony, a prosperous city, a dazzling civilization—all breathtakingly magnificent.
But no one knew why this place had been destroyed.
Was the reason for this destruction at the end of this road?
As Bai Qiquan pondered, he looked up at the classroom again.
He then saw a person in white clothes, with black hair, standing right in front of his desk, staring intently at him.
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