WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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Chapter 64: The Terrifying Old Teaching Hall (1)

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The Terrifying Old Teaching Hall (1)

That night, in the middle of the Hour of the Dog. At the far eastern edge of Changcheon Martial Academy stood a building sealed off from the very entrance of its approach. Cadets called it the Old Teaching Hall. The paths leading to the Old Teaching Hall had been closed off, but security around it was surprisingly lax. Maybe it came down to the assumption that no one in their right mind would ever try to get in there anyway.

Shh!

Five shadowy figures were creeping quietly along the back path of the Old Teaching Hall. Only two warriors guarded the front approach, so slipping in wasn't much of a challenge at all. Dressed in black, the five figures made their way to the side door of the Old Teaching Hall without being seen. They were Mumu and his friends.

"There's barely any security. Wasn't hard at all," Hae Ryang said, glancing around.

At his words, Tang So-so grinned.

"Of course. Most of the cadets won't even come near this place because of the whole ghost commotion from last year, the ones who died." "That would explain it. But is it really all right for you to be here, senior?" "Me?"

At Hae Ryang's question, Tang So-so glanced over at Mumu. Truth was, she hadn't had any lectures held in the Old Teaching Hall when the incident happened last year, so it hadn't concerned her much, and she wasn't the type to believe in ghosts to begin with. But,

"Oh, please. I'm a woman too, so of course I'm scared. But if Mumu's in trouble, I obviously have to help."

She planted both hands on her hips and gave a satisfied little "hmph." Anything involving Mumu, and she just couldn't help wanting to lend a hand.

"Thanks, So-so."

Mumu said it with a bright smile. At that smile, Tang So-so clamped a hand over her nose and whipped her head away.

'That's just lethal.'

For a second there, the excitement nearly made her nose bleed again. This cursed constitution of hers... she really needed to do something about it. Just then, Jin-hyeok scolded Mumu.

"Calling a senior by her first name like that, how rude can you get. Sorry, senior. Mumu's a little immature." "No, no, it's fine, we're only a year or two apart, what does senior and junior even matter. He can just call me by name." "How could we possibly do that to a senior?"

'Same brothers, and yet total opposites.'

If Mumu came across as simple and easygoing, Jin-hyeok felt polite but rigid by comparison. Still, if there was one thing they had in common, maybe it was that both of them seemed like good people. Maybe that was why So-so liked the two brothers.

'No rough edges among pretty stones. Hehe.'

Jin-hyeok expressed his gratitude to Tang So-so at that.

"Thank you again. Not only did you lend us this precious antidote pearl, but you're helping us search for the seedling too. I'm truly grateful."

At Jin-hyeok's words, Hae Ryang's shoulders sagged. He'd gone to the trouble of gathering all that information and offering up his cherished antidote pearl, only for his own contribution to get buried thanks to Tang So-so. Then Hae Ryang's eyes landed on Mo Il-hwa.

"Miss Mo?" "......" "Miss Mo~" "Wh-what!"

Mo Il-hwa's eyes kept darting around without pause. Her face was tense as she scanned every direction, and Hae Ryang smirked, teasing her.

"Miss Mo. Are you scared, by any chance?" "Wh-what are you talking about, scared? I'm not scared of ghosts or anything like that. Look, Mumu's having a hard time so I came to help, didn't I? What would I have to be scared of. I'm not scared of this stuff at all."

The words tumbled out in a rambling stream. Watching her, everyone thought the same thing.

'She looks scared.'

But nobody said it out loud. Teasing her about it might have gotten them in worse trouble. By now, months after being sealed off, the Old Teaching Hall had clearly gone without any upkeep, and a distinctly gloomy air hung over the place. Patchy weeds poked up here and there across the building, and cobwebs covered everything. Hae Ryang asked everyone,

"So how should we do this? Splitting up and searching separately would probably save more time..." "No!"

Mo Il-hwa shot the idea down immediately.

"Why not?" "I, I mean, going alone is fine and all, but what if something happens? If we split into pairs or threes..." "Miss Mo, we don't have that much time to spare."

Jin-hyeok, ever the rigid one, shook his head and objected to her suggestion.

"With five of us, splitting into pairs would definitely waste time," Tang So-so agreed, nodding.

It was the middle of the Hour of the Dog right now. They needed to find the seedling before roll call at the latest, so splitting into pairs or trios wasn't efficient.

"Ugh, seriously, you should have at least asked where Master Dan Baek-yeon's old research room was."

At Mo Il-hwa's scolding, Mumu scratched his head apologetically. But given that they'd snuck in without permission in the first place, he hadn't exactly been in a position to ask her about the location.

"Then everyone splits up and..."

Just as Jin-hyeok moved to settle it, Mo Il-hwa clasped her hands together and spoke in a pleading voice.

"Sorry! Then at least one of you come with me. I-I’m not scared of ghosts or anything, but I really don't like wandering around a place like this alone."

At that, Hae Ryang smiled wryly.

"No helping it then. I'll go with you, Miss..." "Not you." "Huh?" "You're just going to mess around and try to scare me, aren't you. No."

Mo Il-hwa glanced back and forth between Mumu and Jin-hyeok, weighing her options, then looped her arm through Jin-hyeok's.

"I'll go with Jin-hyeok."

At least right now, she'd decided the serious one seemed more trustworthy. He didn't seem like the type to pull pointless pranks either. The instant Mo Il-hwa linked arms with him, Jin-hyeok stiffened without meaning to, his face reddening.

'H... her arm...'

She'd pressed in so tightly that her generous chest brushed against him, and it left him flustered. Hae Ryang noticed and couldn't hide his envy.

'Young master Jin-hyeok. I'm jealous. So there was a method like that. In that case, I should...'

He glanced over at Tang So-so, then let out a faint sigh and shook his head. As if all his hopes had just crumbled. Something about his reaction irritated her strangely, but,

"We don't have time, let's hurry."

At Mumu's words, everyone had no choice but to get down to the actual search for the seedling.

* * *

The Old Teaching Hall building had six floors total. Five above ground, one below. Split into four groups, they decided each would take one floor, starting from the top. The topmost floor, the fifth, went to Mumu. The fourth to Hae Ryang. The third to Jin-hyeok and Mo Il-hwa together. The second to Tang So-so. Once everyone finished searching their assigned floor, they'd regroup on the first floor and search together from there. Hae Ryang, assigned to the fourth floor, rubbed his reddened cheek.

'Ahh. Her hand still stings something fierce, Miss Mo.'

He probably shouldn't have pushed the joke so far. The whole way up the stairs, he'd been teasing her about some accident supposedly happening on the third floor, some story about a ghost sighting there, and he'd ended up with a slap for his trouble.

"Sheesh."

His cheek ached, but either way, he needed to get on with finding the seedling. The key was locating Dan Baek-yeon's old research room. Hae Ryang walked slowly down the corridor.

Creak!

The floorboards groaned with every step he took. Left untouched for so long, unmaintained and ungreased, that was probably why. It made for a thoroughly eerie mood.

'This atmosphere's pretty convincing, huh.'

He wasn't particularly afraid of this sort of thing, but it was gloomier than he'd expected, and a chill ran down his spine.

'...A chill down my spine?'

Hae Ryang frowned after a few more steps. It was mid-spring, the night air wasn't even that cold, so why were the hairs on his arms standing up? Something about it felt off.

'Just my imagination, probably.'

Telling himself that, Hae Ryang stepped into the first office he came across. The moment he opened the door and took one step inside,

Shhk!

A wooden plank dropped from the ceiling, landing just barely in front of his right foot. Hae Ryang swallowed hard. The plank, rusted nails jutting out, had driven straight into the floor.

'...Just a coincidence, right?'

Something about the timing felt too precise, and it left him unsettled. Hae Ryang shook his head and held his firelighter up into the empty office. The office looked thoroughly ransacked, as if bearing witness to whatever had happened back then.

'No way to tell whose room this was from this mess.'

The search was probably going to take a while. Hae Ryang stepped inside and started with the cluttered desk. While he was searching, something black flitted past the gap in the open door.

Shh!

Hae Ryang looked up, frowning at the gap in the door.

'...What was that?'

It felt completely different from the presence of a person. Hae Ryang swallowed hard without realizing it.

Meanwhile, at the same moment, on the fifth floor of the Old Teaching Hall. Mumu shuffled down the corridor and opened the door to an office. Stepping inside, he began looking around, searching for the seedling. The place was thick with dust and cobwebs, gloomy enough to unsettle anyone, but Mumu rummaged through it without a second thought. Just then, a large bookshelf behind him started to shake. Then,

Creeeak!

it toppled over onto Mumu, who was bent over at the waist. As luck would have it, the falling bookshelf held not just books but a pile of sharp blade fragments crammed inside. But,

Bang!

Mumu stood in the middle of the shattered bookshelf, looking around with a puzzled expression. The sharp blade fragments hadn't even scratched him, let alone cut him. They just scattered across the floor, unable to pierce his skin.

'Why'd the bookshelf fall over?'

Puzzled, Mumu scratched his head and went back to searching. Just then, a black shadow on the ceiling stared down at Mumu with a pair of bloodshot red eyes. The bloodshot eyes rolled strangely in their sockets, glaring at Mumu.

"Hm?"

Mumu looked up. He lifted his firelighter, but there was nothing on the ceiling. He could have sworn something had just been watching him. Strange. Mumu tilted his head.

At the same moment, on the third floor of the Old Teaching Hall. Mo Il-hwa, trembling, spoke to Jin-hyeok as he searched through an office.

"Hey. Doesn't something feel off?" "What do you mean?" "It's colder in here than outside, my spine's all prickly. Look, my arm's got goosebumps."

At her words, Jin-hyeok let out a quiet breath. He understood she was scared, but since the two of them had come together, he'd hoped they could actually search together, and yet she just kept glancing around nervously. Jin-hyeok shook his head and said,

"Miss Mo. There's no such thing as ghosts in this world. Try not to be so frightened, and let's just focus on finding the seed..." "Eek!"

At that instant, Mo Il-hwa pressed herself against him. She clung so tightly that her generous chest pressed against him again, leaving him thoroughly flustered.

"Miss Mo. If you could just step back a little..." "D-did you see that just now?" "See what?"

At Jin-hyeok's question, Mo Il-hwa pointed a trembling finger somewhere. Where she pointed stood a skull, treated with some kind of chemical that left it gleaming.

"What about it?" "The skull's eyes, bloodshot red, they moved." "What?"

Jin-hyeok's brow furrowed. Whether that skull was a replica or the real thing, he had no idea, but how could eyes possibly move inside a hollowed-out skull? Jin-hyeok sighed and said,

"You must have seen it wrong." "I didn't. I'm telling you, eyes just appeared out of nowhere and looked right at me."

Mo Il-hwa insisted, sounding wronged. She'd wondered for a second if she'd imagined it too, but those eyes had looked directly at her. No, they'd glared at her like they meant to kill her.

"Miss...... if you're going to keep this up, would you rather just wait outside?"

At Jin-hyeok's words, Mo Il-hwa snapped back irritably.

"You don't believe me? And how exactly am I supposed to go back out of the Old Teaching Hall alone in this situation?"

Going back by herself was the last thing she wanted. Jin-hyeok couldn't understand what she found so frightening about any of this. Just as he was clicking his tongue inwardly,

Shhhk!

something long-haired and drenched in blood slipped past the gap in the open door. It lasted only an instant, but the moment their eyes met, Jin-hyeok's whole body froze stiff.

"Hey! Hey! What's wrong?"

Seeing Jin-hyeok like that only deepened Mo Il-hwa's terror. What on earth had he seen to make him react like that? Right at that moment,

Aaaaargh!

a scream rang out, followed by a crashing thud from the ceiling above. Startled back to their senses, Jin-hyeok and Mo Il-hwa looked up toward the floor above them with wide eyes.

* * *

Hae Ryang, having fallen flat on his backside, couldn't hide his bewilderment at the sight before him. He was so startled that he dropped one of the daggers he'd been holding.

'Wh-what is this?'

Hae Ryang broke out in goosebumps at the sight of something shimmering before his eyes. He'd checked one office and one lecture hall and stepped out into the corridor, and right there in the middle of it, something pale and wavering had appeared. He'd gone to check what it was, and there stood some unidentifiable figure, half its face melted away, staring at him and beckoning with its hand. Startled, Hae Ryang pulled out a dagger and hurled it at the thing. But the dagger passed straight through the mysterious figure.

'Wh-what? Is this really a ghost?'

If it had just been one dagger, maybe, but he'd thrown three, all with the same result. Not a single one hit. They all passed straight through. And somehow, though it had been more than twenty paces away, it had closed to within ten paces without him noticing. It couldn't have been a movement skill, there'd been no sound of footsteps at all. It closed the distance in the blink of an eye.

'No. That can't be right. There's no way ghosts actually exist...'

Thud!

At that instant, the figure with the melted face appeared five paces ahead. As the distance closed, the hideous face grew even more vivid, making Hae Ryang's heart lurch.

"Aaaaargh!"

Hae Ryang screamed and bolted from where he stood. He tore off running with his movement skill at full speed. If this unidentifiable thing really was a ghost, then martial arts meant nothing against it. As he ran, Hae Ryang rushed desperately toward the stairs. But,

"Huh?"

The staircase leading down to the floor below had vanished without a trace. Only the staircase leading up remained.

'Wh-what is this?'

He had no way to make sense of it. Glancing back as he tried to figure it out, he found the mysterious ghost had already closed to within five paces behind him. With no time to think, Hae Ryang bolted up the stairs instead. Reaching the floor above, he ran down the corridor trying to find Mumu, but he was forced to stop cold.

"Eek!"

Hae Ryang doubted his own eyes for a moment.

Skreek! Skreek!

A black silhouette with bloodshot red eyes, limbs bent at grotesque angles, was crawling across the ceiling on all fours, closing in fast.

'!!!!!'

Startled, Hae Ryang froze mid-run.

'D-damn it!'

This was a dead end in every direction. Behind him, the ghost with the melted face was chasing him down, and ahead, some bizarre creature making joints crack like it had some kind of nerve disease was crawling toward him across the ceiling on all fours.

[Don't go in there, not even out of curiosity. There are ghosts in the Old Teaching Hall.]

The words of his dorm roommate flashed through his mind. Were these really the ghosts of the ones who'd died in the Old Teaching Hall? Just as he sank deeper into bewilderment over what to do,

'Hm?'

The creature with the single bloodshot eye, crawling along the ceiling, stumbled slightly, glanced back once, and its eye stretched wide with shock before it bolted across the ceiling again. But right behind it came some strange sound.

Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

Behind the creature, something else came charging along on all fours, like a beast, crawling the same way.

"Wait up!"

At the familiar voice, Hae Ryang lifted his firelighter high. And there was Mumu, punching holes through the ceiling as he crawled after the bloodshot one-eyed creature like a man possessed.

'......What in the world?'

Footnotes:

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