The Thirteen Trials of the Deceptive Monk

Fang Mo snapped, "You still have the nerve to be sarcastic and sarcastic? Go stop them!!"

Kano looked at him with an innocent expression.

"Why? I don't want to."

"You were all so enthusiastic about giving advice before, and now you're backing out?!"

"Go ahead and do your own plan!"

Fang Mo was even angrier: "If I could go out, why would I need to look for you!"

“Indeed, you have your reasons, but ultimately this is Fang Mo’s plan. I’m just offering my help out of friendship. If I were to get involved… well…” Kano said sadly, “It’s too shameful to bully freshmen. I don’t want to do it.”

Fang Mo was practically fuming; he knew he had to go all out this time.

"My printing factory recently received a batch of blonde cowgirl compilations," he said, emphasizing each word. "And a special edition with office lady outfits too!"

Kano was taken aback: "You...you have great taste...!"

"I was planning to give you these exquisite items for free anyway. After all, we're such good friends, how could I possibly charge you?"

Kano was deeply moved and grasped his hand firmly.

"Fang Mo, we're such good friends, how could I not help you? Don't worry, I'll take care of this!"

·

Three hundred meters away from the two, Lü Wenjun was about to rush out of the archway of the Thousand-Year Cave when he suddenly felt a blur before his eyes.

A "high school student" blocked his way.

This person has neatly trimmed black hair and an endearing baby face. Despite being in university, he wears a pure black Japanese high school uniform, looking like a typical Japanese high school student straight out of a manga.

He crossed his arms and shouted, "That's enough! I am Kano E, the leader of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Thousand-Year Cave. You two will be dealt with by me—how dare you ignore me like this!"

Without pausing, Lü Wenjun bypassed him and rushed out the door. He dared not have any further involvement with his senior classmates; his priority was to find a teacher for help.

However, with one step, the sensation beneath his feet abruptly changed. One second he was standing on loose, sandy mountain path, the next he was treading on solid, square white stone bricks. Lü Wenjun quickly turned his head, only to see locked doors on his left and blurry windows on his right. He had clearly just stepped out of the Thousand-Year Cave, yet now he was back inside the dormitory building!

"Clang clang~ I'm stuck in a maze."

Kano was leaning against the wall, holding up one finger to them.

"That won't do. You should at least say hello to the senior when you run into him."

Lu Wenjun clicked his tongue inwardly, realizing this was probably a troublesome fellow. He said seriously, "Senior Kano, we have no grudge against you, why are you making things difficult for us like this?"

Kano sighed: "To be honest, I didn't want to get involved... but your senior, Fang Mo, bribed me with erotic pictures..."

"Senior, your standards are so low!" Linggong exclaimed.

Lu Wenjun pulled out his phone: "Whatever he gives you, I'll pay double!"

"No way! You have to love what you do. Once you've taken a bribe from your own people, you can't ask your enemies for it!" Kano raised his hand in refusal. "As compensation, I won't personally steal your box. Good luck to you guys~"

He created a series of artificial echoes, turned around, and disappeared. Lu Wenjun was stunned for a long time before realizing that he was still holding the cheese box in his hand.

Ling Gong stared at him intently: "Sure enough, there's something strange about the box..."

"At this point, can we please stop mentioning the box..."

Lu Wenjun muttered to himself as he observed his surroundings.

The entire floor was eerily quiet; there was no sound of tides or explosions, not even the slightest noise. All the doors in the long corridor were tightly shut. There was no garbage, takeout containers, or other household trash, nor any footprints or watermarks—the usual signs of daily life.

"It feels so sinister... Every inch of space seems to be permeated with evil energy..." Ling's nostrils twitched slightly. "There's evil energy behind every door. This floor seems to be full of people."

"I can roughly guess what it is, but it doesn't feel like an ambush."

Even if it's to prepare for the new students, is it really necessary to clean the corridor this thoroughly beforehand? It looks like no one has left the room for months…

Ling Gong's mind raced, and she remembered the post on the school forum describing evil spirits. But before she could think about it further, she coughed twice.

"...By the way, Wenjun, how long are you planning to keep hugging me?"

The incident happened suddenly, and Ling Gong couldn't keep up with his speed because she didn't have the spring-like legs to transform. So when Lu Wenjun went out, he picked her up by the waist and hasn't put her down at all.

"Keep holding me until I'm too tired to continue," he said. "This isn't a test; there are no teachers watching. It's better to be embarrassed than to get hurt."

Ling Gong puffed out her cheeks: "But I can't help you in this state... At least carry me on your back, that way I'll still have room to draw the bow."

"Please consider my awkward situation. It's really hard for me to concentrate if I'm being carried."

"Why... Ah!" Ling Gong crossed her arms in front of her chest, her face slightly flushed. "You really are possessed by an evil spirit! Give me that box!"

"So, I've had absolutely no idea what the box-closing thing was about since you walked in the door—"

The two stopped talking at the same time.

Sometime during the night, a strange silhouette appeared in the corridor ahead.

It was a cotton quilt.

The blanket had a bulge in the center, which, from the side, resembled a snake that had swallowed an elephant. The blanket was moving slowly, as if the swallowed creature was controlling its movements. There was a fist-sized opening in the front of the blanket, directly facing a plate of cookies.

The strange blanket slowly moved towards the biscuit. With a whoosh, a biscuit vanished. A chewing sound came from inside the blanket.

With a whoosh, the second cookie disappeared. Then came the sound of chewing, followed by coughing. And then it was just coughing all the time.

...It seems to have choked.

Lu Wenjun lowered his voice: "I must admit today that my knowledge is too narrow, and I have no clue about this thing."

Linggong said in a very low voice, "I feel the same way, because I didn't recognize it either."

"Can you smell where it came from?"

"I can't smell anything... I can only roughly judge that it hasn't eaten anything for a long time..."

"I can do that too..."

The quilt monster coughed painfully for a while before finally catching its breath. It wriggled from side to side, seemingly looking for water, and two golden eyes gleamed from its mouth.

The two points of light were aimed directly at the two people whispering to each other.

Lü Wenjun tried to greet him: "Hello? Domo?"

The quilt shivered. A faint sound came from the opening.

"No...no...no no no..."

Linggong listened intently: "Excuse me, what did you say?"

A terrified scream came from under the blanket.

"A stranger—!!!!"

Lu Wenjun and Ling Gong simultaneously felt their vision go black. The scream was extremely piercing and penetrating, like a grand chorus of ten thousand female ghosts. The scream formed invisible sound waves, sweeping away the dust on the ground in concentric circles.

Amidst the terrifying screams, pinkish evil spirits appeared. They resembled flattened octopuses, slightly larger than Ling Gong's fox spirit, their small eyes squeezed into a >< shape.

Pink evil spirits swirled wildly, numbering in the thousands at a glance. Most of them screamed and retreated into the blankets, while a few charged at the two of them indignantly!

With decorative iron claws on his transformed arms, Lu Wenjun extended his left iron claw and grabbed at the nearest evil spirit.

The iron claws passed right through the evil spirits without any resistance, as if striking thin air. Upon seeing this, he immediately turned and ran, with hundreds of pink evil spirits hot on his heels.

"I remember now!" Ling Gong recalled the gossip she had seen on the forum, "The third level of the Thousand-Year Cave is the territory of Polly, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, known as 'Autistic Impulsive'!"

"What a terrible nickname! What unique skill does this person have now?!"

Ling Gong quickly flipped through the jade pendant: "Legend has it that her usual method is a saturation attack by a cluster of evil spirits..."

Lu Wenjun stared at the approaching evil spirit and swallowed hard: "What would happen if you encountered an evil spirit?"

Ling Gong gasped: "The forum says that once you're struck by an evil spirit, you'll become a socially awkward, reclusive person who loses all desire to go out!"

"This is terrifying!"

Lu Wenjun jumped up and down, trying to find the stairwell back downstairs. However, the illusion of being trapped in a maze seemed endless, with doors leading to seemingly endless corridors no matter where he ran.

At that moment, all the doors in the three-story corridor swung open simultaneously, and angry roars erupted from within: "You have disturbed His Holiness the Pope!"

The mysterious residents finally appeared, disheveled, covered in grime, with huge bags or dark circles under their eyes, and dressed in sportswear, pajamas, and casual clothes that hadn't been washed in years. A stench of decay wafted out as the door opened, instantly making the air in the hallway unbearably foul!

Linggong was taken aback: "So many shut-ins..."

"How dare you call me a shut-in?!" a male resident on the third floor exclaimed angrily. "We are the aristocracy of the solitary sect—"

Just as he was raging, a pink evil spirit crashed into his body. His expression visibly deteriorated, and his body curled up on the ground like a snail. He shuffled into the room, his voice timid: "N-no, I'm so sorry to bother you..."

"No, it's someone I don't know."

"Ah, mine, that, uh... gulp."

"Yes, I'm sorry to bother you..."

"How scary, how scary, how scary!"

The residents on the third floor had barely opened their doors when they were struck by evil spirits one after another, instantly transforming into a group of socially anxious recluses. They shuffled into their rooms, gently closing the doors, with one of the larger men hanging a sign on the door:

I'm so sorry to have let you all see me, I'll leave right away.

"This is too terrifying!" Lu Wenjun screamed.

Linggong felt even more terrified: "If I had arrived a few hours later, you would have turned into one of them..."

"What does this have to do with me? Besides, we'll be crippled in less than a few hours, and these things are everywhere!"

After transforming, Lü Wenjun moved with incredible speed, and although there were many evil spirits behind him, they could not catch up with him. But after Polly screamed, evil spirits began to pour out from all over the three floors, and the walls and ceilings were being dyed pink.

The evil spirits were so numerous they seemed to be everywhere, almost becoming one with the entire floor. Lü Wenjun barely managed to avoid an evil spirit that emerged from the ground, his legs leaving the ground. Ling Gong's hair was blown into a mess.

"Ling Gong, your Demon-Slaying Arrow should be effective, right?"

Linggong squirmed in his arms: "Theoretically, yes... but right now I can't fight at all!"

"Alright, here's a choice for you. Would you prefer an incredibly awkward escape without being hit, or becoming a polite but utterly useless person?"

Linggong sighed in despair, his warm breath brushing against his mask.

"Whatever! It's already awkward enough as it is!"

"That's what you said!"

Lu Wenjun suddenly accelerated, widening the distance between himself and the pursuers. He tossed Ling Gong into the air, and the dazed girl spun around in mid-air, landing perfectly on his shoulder. He grabbed Ling Gong's ankle like a backpack and sprinted forward.

That magnificent back view looked just like an old father playing horseback riding with his daughter!

"This is so embarrassing!!" Ling Gong screamed.

Turning her embarrassment into motivation, she drew the bowstring taut and unleashed the Demon-Slaying Arrow, piercing several evil spirits into fragments. Seeing the attack's effectiveness, Ling Gong fired in quick succession, instantly clearing a space around them. The remaining pink evil spirits screamed and fled, the three-layered encirclement collapsing in an instant!

"It worked!" Lü Wenjun exclaimed excitedly. "Let's just shoot them all down in one go!"

In the blankets cast far behind, the true form of the evil spirits, "Polly," trembled uncontrollably. She felt it; her clones were being destroyed one by one… and the emotions of those little creatures, transmitted to her true form, caused her…

I was even more terrified.

No, I'm not doing this anymore. Strangers are really scary. Strangers are terrifying. Even though I'm starving, a little noise is fine, I need to get home quickly, snuggle into bed, and starve until food falls from the sky—

"Polly-chan~ Polly-chan, can you hear me~?"

Polly poked her head out looking aggrieved and saw Kano loitering nearby.

"A stranger named Kari Kari asked me to go back..."

Kano scratched the back of his head: "By the way, Polly-chan, are you hungry?"

Nodding.

“I considered that, and kindly ordered takeout for you; it was a warm wooden box. But…”

Kano gazed into the distance and waved his hand dismissively: "It seems they took it!"

……

Polly was silent for three seconds, then shrank under the covers and began to tremble.

"How dare they... How dare they..."

"Polly-chan? Calm down~"

"How dare they steal my takeout!!" Polly exclaimed angrily. "Don't go too far, stranger!!!"

Lu Wenjun and Ling Gong heard a roar from afar, and the entire floor began to shake violently. They both looked towards the end of the corridor, and when they saw the source of the anomaly, even Lu Wenjun was stunned.

Ling Gong's eyes widened: "Now... what do we do...?"