I set you up on a blind date, and you've managed to overcome all the weirdness?

Lin Yan slowed his pace, gripped the iron pipe tightly, and shuffled step by step toward the iron gate.

The light coming through the crack in the door wasn't the warm red of a fireplace, but a cold, eerie green. Lin Yan's eyelids started twitching as soon as they met the light.

Get closer, and a strong smell immediately hits you.

Now he knew where the formaldehyde smell on Chen Qing came from.

The taste was so strong that he almost threw up on the spot.

Lin Yan suppressed his churning stomach and peered through the crack in the door.

The underground boiler room was dark, but spacious. Most of the miscellaneous boiler equipment had been dismantled at some point, leaving a large empty space.

Lin Yan's gaze swept across the open space, and the iron pipe in his hand almost slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground.

He considered himself to have seen plenty of bizarre scenes, but the sight before him still made his sanity plummet. He felt a tightness in his chest, a sour taste rose in his throat, and the nausea he had just suppressed surged back up.

Five pieces of skin, in perfect condition, with even the hair and finger outlines clearly visible, were cruelly nailed to the cement floor with steel nails.

Some areas weren't handled properly, causing the edges of the skin to flip up, revealing bits of meat that hadn't been completely removed on the other side.

These skins were clearly stretched, but it was evident that the person who did it tried their best to keep them in their original human form.

Five pieces of skin were pieced together and laid out on the ground in a strange pattern that looked a bit like a magic circle.

Lin Yan noticed that the magic circle was covered with dense runes that were connected together to form patterns.

Looking at it from a distance, it somehow felt strangely familiar.

He wanted to get a better look, but he was afraid of bumping into the iron gate and making a noise that would alert the people inside.

He finally found a perfect peeping spot, and as soon as he saw what the rune looked like, he almost jumped up.

Those twisted lines, those grotesque scribbles drawn with human blood... they're so familiar!

He's seen this pattern before!

In the southern suburbs of Jiangcheng in the real world, there is the 704 air-raid shelter buried deep underground, and the altar built with hundreds of awakened bone cones.

The runes they used were exactly the same as the blood-skin magic circle in front of them!

However, the altar inside the air-raid shelter was much larger and more elaborate.

What's in front of us is primitive and rough.

A thought flashed through Lin Yan's mind, his expression changed several times, and finally darkened.

Five students have gone missing.

A case that shocked Jiangcheng thirty years ago.

At that moment, he finally understood what had happened.

It turns out that all of this was meticulously planned!

That is a bizarre worshipper who feeds on traffic and fear, and attempts to distort the divine with human intervention.

They remained in hiding in the city for much longer than the Bureau of Folklore had estimated.

They began preparing for all of this at this school as early as thirty years ago.

And Chen Qing, the teacher who always has a smile on his face and teaches students to be sociable, is very likely the core member!

In this closed school, he used his position to select students who were isolated and lacked love, gradually driving them into the abyss of despair.

In his eyes, human life was no different from a piece of paper; they were merely tools he used for his creative work.

And this was just for the purpose of conducting an experiment.

Lin Yan looked down.

The names that had been lying in those files for thirty years, and the bizarre Bai who had turned Jiangcheng upside down, all crawled out of the paper.

If Chen Qing succeeds tonight, Su Hong will repeat the same mistake.

Once this formation is truly activated, the chain reaction it triggers will be far more than just the birth of a senior student in red.

"Old dog Chen..."

Lin Yan gritted his teeth, his killing intent rising.

He now somewhat hoped that his senior had truly brought him to the past, and not just dragged him into some kind of illusion.

Lin Yan no longer concealed his whereabouts and kicked the iron gate hard!

With a loud bang, the iron door was kicked open by Lin Yan, and a stench immediately poured out of the room.

"Chen Qing!"

Lin Yan yelled and strode into the boiler room.

But when he saw the scene inside the magic circle, his heart still skipped a beat.

The center of the magic circle.

Xiao Ya, who should have been dead, was now wearing Xu Ran's human skin, like a giant spider, her limbs pressing tightly against Su Hong.

Su Hong was pressed down in the center of the array, but she did not struggle.

Or rather, she had lost the strength to struggle.

Her eyes were lifeless, and next to her was the warm-hearted Teacher Chen, whom the students had mentioned.

Chen Qing held a scalpel in his hand, and as he raised and lowered it, the blade gleamed with a faint light.

Lin Yan's arrival seemed to have no effect on him.

He was still looking at Su Hong, looking at his most perfect work.

"It's perfect."

Chen Qing's voice trembled uncontrollably as he spoke.

"I've spent so much time slowly stripping you of your friends and crushing your confidence."

"You were still a little short of the mark, but this new dorm supervisor really helped me a lot."

He crouched down and gently ran the back of a scalpel across Su Hong's cheek.

"Do you know Su Hong?"

"How fast did you run when Xu Ran and your dorm supervisor were almost beaten to death while searching for clues?"

"That kind of unwavering trust is truly astonishing."

Chen Qing's smile grew increasingly morbid as he pointed to the so-called new friend who was pressing down on Su Hong.

"But unfortunately, there is no such thing as kindness without a reason in this world."

Why do you think Xu Ran would help you?

"Because she's the one who's always been jealous of you and wants to ruin you, Xiaoya."

"She willingly peeled off her own skin and put on this new one, just to personally trick you onto this altar."

"Being manipulated by your best friend, and then deceived by the new friend you trusted most..."

"Su Hong, can you feel it now?"

"That kind of despair of being abandoned by the whole world and betrayed by everyone?"

Chen Qing turned around, opened his arms, and laughed loudly, tilting his head back:

"Yes! That's the look in their eyes! That extreme resentment!"

"Only a soul forged through countless trials, only a work like yours, its peeled-off skin, is the perfect vessel to welcome the divine!"

Lying in a pool of blood, Su Hong's last glimmer of light in her eyes finally went out.

There were no tears, no anger. People say that the greatest sorrow is a broken heart, but she didn't even have the strength to die of heartbreak.

The whole world is fake.

All the good intentions were only to push her into an even deeper abyss.

Where is the man who told her to just be herself?

Perhaps they've already run away.

Just like everyone else.

The resentment of betrayal began to take root and sprout in the deepest part of her soul, then rolled wildly and devoured everything.

"Are you ready to welcome the gods?"

Chen Qing's smile faded.

He gripped the scalpel in his other hand, aimed it at Su Hong's neck, and raised his hand to stab her!

"I welcome your mother!!!"