1 My name

In a corner of a mediocre university campus in Yanzhou City, Jianghai Province, stood a tall, somewhat sinister-looking young man.

His body trembled slightly, seemingly startled by something significant. Instinctively, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one with trembling hands before exhaling deeply.

Who would have thought that his dorm mate, the clownish fool, would meet such an inexplicable end?

Complex emotions flickered across the young man's face, tinged with a hint of unease and fear.

Meanwhile, fifty meters away, a crowd had gathered in front of the dormitory building, the campus buzzing with excitement, punctuated by gasps and commotion.

On the other side of the campus gates, the wail of police sirens echoed.

Police cars and ambulances pulled up directly in front of the dormitory building. From his vantage point, he could faintly see his roommate being covered with a white sheet and lifted onto the ambulance stretcher.

Then came the police cordoning off the scene. As he snapped back to reality, his phone suddenly rang.

"Zhang Yaoyang, where are you?" It was the voice of their counselor, Wang Yi.

"I'm in the small grove, taking a smoke to calm down," the young man's voice was somewhat hoarse.

"Hurry over, the police are looking for you. You were present when Li Dazhuang jumped, weren't you?"

"Yeah, I was. I'll be there in a moment."

Zhang Yaoyang quietly hung up the phone, released his grip, allowing the cigarette butt, now halfway burnt, to fall freely to the ground. He stamped it out forcefully before briskly heading towards the direction of the police car.

...

...

Zhang Yaoyang, a 20-year-old sophomore student at Yanzhou College.

Because he shares the same name with a Hong Kong celebrity and has a similarly fierce appearance, he was jokingly called "Crow" by his dorm mates.

Three hours later, Zhang Yaoyang walked out of the police station feeling somewhat numb.

It was just a matter of giving a statement. As an eyewitness to Li Dazhuang's suicide by jumping off a building, Zhang Yaoyang simply recounted what he saw at the time, answered a few detailed questions, and then was able to leave calmly.

He still remembered that there were seven or eight people present when Li Dazhuang jumped off the building, and everyone could see the madness in Li Dazhuang's eyes.

Li Dazhuang seemed half-crazed, screaming incoherently, and then jumped off the six-story dormitory building in front of everyone, followed by a dull thud, turning into a meaningless pile of flesh.

And this case would probably soon be classified as a suicide case caused by mental disorder, and it would be left at that.

However, Zhang Yaoyang vaguely understood that things were probably not that simple...

Because this was the third suicide case this month.

Walking back to the school, the dormitory buildings in the distance were already brightly lit, with murmurs faintly emanating from inside, no different from usual.

But after experiencing what happened in the afternoon, Zhang Yaoyang felt as if a strange shadow had settled over the dormitory building, inexplicable and eerie.

Pushing open the creaking wooden door of the dormitory, the dimly lit room revealed a slender young man sitting blankly on the lower bunk bed by the east wall, near the door.

Upon seeing Zhang Yaoyang, he forced a smile, "Crow, Big Strong's relatives were here just now and they've cleared out Big Strong's things."

Hearing this, Zhang Yaoyang glanced at the lower bunk bed by the west wall, indeed, there was no bedding on the bed, only an empty bed board, even the dilapidated wooden table in front of the bed was missing quite a few things.

Without saying anything, Zhang Yaoyang just nodded and walked to his own bed, sitting down heavily, sinking into silence.

The dormitory where Zhang Yaoyang lived was a standard one provided by the school, facing north and south, with four bunk beds and eight beds in total, arranged in the four corners of the room, with two wooden tables in the middle.

Zhang Yaoyang's bed was the lower bunk by the window on the west side, with Li Dazhuang's bed right next to it at the foot.

The dormitory was not fully occupied, usually only six people lived there, and now with Li Dazhuang gone, the spacious dormitory only had five people left.

Apart from Zhang Yaoyang himself and Liu Yang, the slender youth opposite him, there were still three people presumably still at the police station giving statements.

The room gradually fell into an eerie silence.

Seemingly unable to bear the heavy atmosphere, Liu Yang sighed and walked out of the dormitory. Zhang Yaoyang silently glanced at Li Dazhuang's bed, feeling weary as he lay down, but the next moment, he immediately sat up, looking puzzled behind him.

Just as he lay on the neatly folded blanket a moment ago, it seemed like something hard nudged him.

Zhang Yaoyang furrowed his brow. He didn't remember stuffing anything into the blanket. Instinctively, he reached into the gap of the blanket and instantly felt something cold and prickly.

Casually pulling the object out, illuminated by the dormitory lights, he immediately saw clearly what was in his hand.

However, upon seeing it, he shuddered abruptly, feeling a chill shoot straight into his palm.

A palm-sized, exquisitely crafted figurine lay quietly in his hand.

Figurines, also known as models, typically refer to character dolls modeled after anime characters and are a type of anime merchandise that often appears in the homes of anime enthusiasts.

However...

Although this figurine could be considered exquisite, it had to be said that its design was rather repulsive—much like the kind of monster with stark contrasts like "Haiyin".

The prototype of this figurine should be an anime-style girl, with delicate waist-length hair, watery large eyes, delicate neck, and curves, but its arms were replaced by two bizarre tentacles.

Slippery and filled with black-green slime, like wriggling maggots, incredibly lifelike.

Not only that, beneath its watery large eyes, there was suddenly half a face missing, replaced by a jaw resembling arthropod mouthparts, filled with nightmarish weirdness and absurdity.

Moreover, it even had a pair of long and terrifying insect exoskeleton-formed legs, with knees bent backwards and sparse spikes, giving people goosebumps...

Just seeing this figurine made Zhang Yaoyang feel unwell.

How did this thing end up in his blanket?

Zhang Yaoyang frowned, resisting the urge to curse. Generally, this kind of grotesque figurine wouldn't bother him, but this one was so exquisitely detailed and realistic that it could easily make people uncomfortable.

It was like the densely circulated horror images on the internet; you might not be afraid, but you'd definitely feel nauseous and repulsed.

Furthermore, Zhang Yaoyang had watched Li Dazhuang spend a whole month sculpting and painting this figurine from scratch.

Yes, Li Dazhuang was a shut-in, and a skilled one at that in sculpting figurines.

The figurine emitted an ominous aura all over, and he vaguely remembered that Li Dazhuang had started making this figurine a month ago, and his personality had become increasingly strange since then.

Taking a deep breath, Zhang Yaoyang wanted to throw the figurine into the trash heap, but hesitated in the end.

"Forget it, after all, this figurine is the last trace of Li Dazhuang left in the world. I'll ask the counselor for Li Dazhuang's family's phone number tomorrow and return it..." Zhang Yaoyang muttered to himself softly, tossing the figurine onto the table before lying down with his clothes on and closing his eyes.

Unbeknownst to him, Zhang Yaoyang slipped into a dream.

In this dream, he found himself in an immensely grand palace. Deep within the palace, within a dark and profound cavern, he heard intense murmurs and whispers...

"Boom, pressure release!"

"Boom, pressure release! Pressure release! Pressure release…"

The murmurs grew stronger, eventually transforming into fierce roars, as if something indescribable was struggling and howling inside, desperate to break free!

And this voice, unexpectedly, echoed eerily similar to the desperate cries of Li Dazhuang before his death!

"Boom!"

"Pressure—release—!"

"Hehehehe!"

"Hahahaha!"

Zhang Yaoyang abruptly opened his eyes, sweat beading on his forehead. It took him a while to regain his senses, realizing that he had fallen asleep.

Moreover, the dormitory lights had been switched off at some point, shrouding the entire room in darkness.

His memory lingered on the final scene of his dream: a colossal eyeball resembling an abyss appeared within the cave. What a menacing eye it was...

Filled with malice and cruelty, bearing deep-seated hostility towards life, this single eye alone seemed as large as the entire cavern! Zhang Yaoyang couldn't fathom the sheer magnitude of the creature to which that eye belonged.

Furthermore, those ominous murmurs, not resembling any human language, strangely seemed to bewitch him, probing him with indescribable malevolence.

Fortunately, it was just a dream...

Zhang Yaoyang let out a sigh of relief, attempting to sit up, only to realize something was wrong.

His body.

He couldn't move...