Chapter 134: The Eerie High School

H City’s XX High School is a moderately famous secondary school. Its location is excellent, situated almost exactly in the center of the entire city. It boasts not only an outstanding teaching environment but also a faculty comprised of many highly qualified, renowned experts. The students here are models of excellence in both character and academics, serving as a standard that scholars throughout H City strive to emulate.

"Tsk..."
"This is a prestigious school, after all. The admission cutoff is very high."
"I wanted to get into this school when I took the entrance exams back in the day, but... I didn't make the cut."

On this day, an unremarkable black sedan slowly pulled up in front of the key high school. Two ordinary-looking middle-aged men hopped out of the car. One of them gazed at the school gate, unable to help but sigh with emotion. Both men had the kind of average, forgettable faces that would be impossible to pick out in a crowd.

"We didn't come here for you to reminisce about your salad days," the other man said, clearly unimpressed by his companion's sentimentality. "There will be other chances to dwell on the past. Right now, our primary goal is to complete the mission assigned to us by headquarters."

"Fine, fine, I get it," the first man replied, sounding a bit dejected. "You really are a killjoy."

"Enough talk. Let's just go in," the second man said.

The two walked toward the school gate one after the other. Before they could get close, a thin, elderly security guard popped out of the gatehouse.

"Who are you two?" The guard’s eyes were filled with wariness. "It’s class time, and the students are in session. Outside visitors are forbidden from entering the school right now."

"Sir, we’re teachers here at the school. Please let us in," the first man lied, his tone unhurried.

"Liar!" The guard looked indignant. "I’ve been the gatekeeper at this school for over ten years. I know every teacher here. You two are fresh faces; don't think you can pull a fast one on me."

"Sir, let's discuss this. We are here on official business," the second man said, realizing the old man couldn't be fooled and deciding to tell the truth. "If you just make an exception and let us in, we’ll be out in less than two hours."

"Don't even think about it!" The guard rejected the request without a second thought. "You two look shifty; you don’t look like good people at all. Trying to sneak into the school like this—you’re probably up to no good. If I let you in and something goes missing from the school, or if any students get hurt, the responsibility would be on me. If you really want to get in, go find our leadership. If they give the word, I’ll let you in immediately."

Seeing the guard’s firm stance, the duo, blocked at the gate immediately after arriving, found themselves in a predicament.

"Brother, why didn't we think of this before we came?" the first man whispered to the second. "If we had cleared this with the school's leadership beforehand, we wouldn't be stuck outside the gate."

"Should we show him our credentials? We are legitimate civil servants, after all. We should be treated with priority wherever we go."

"Absolutely not!" the second man retorted. "Our Bureau of Disaster Investigation is a secret organization unknown to the public. Even if we showed him our badges, he probably wouldn't recognize them and might just kick us out as frauds. Besides, even if the old man did let us in, it would defeat the purpose of our visit. You know we're here to execute a secret mission, right? Do you know what a secret mission is?"

He looked mysterious. "A secret mission is a mission that no one else can know about."

"If we reveal our identities to this old man, is it still a secret mission?"

The first man was speechless. So, their true identities and their purpose here could not be known by a third party?

"Then what do you suggest we do?" the first man asked, losing patience with his stubborn companion. "If we keep this up, we won't even get through the gate, let alone investigate the hauntings at this school."

"Life is about overcoming obstacles!" The second man spoke with a fervent, heroic expression, as if ready to sacrifice himself at any moment. "The 'Iron Man' Wang Jinxi once said: 'If there are conditions, we go; if there are no conditions, we create them and go!' If there’s no way in, we’ll invent one. Problems can always be solved..."

Ten minutes later, two sneaky figures were clinging to the iron fence on the perimeter of the school. They looked around suspiciously, and upon seeing that the coast was clear, they scrambled to climb over.

"Brother, is this what you meant by 'creating conditions'? Jumping the fence?" The first man looked incredibly embarrassed, feeling as though a proper assignment had been reduced to a farce. Two civil servants, front-line fighters against calamity, and unsung heroes of the people, were actually... jumping a fence because they couldn't get through the front gate while on an investigation. Just thinking about it was ridiculous. They must be the most pathetic investigators in the entire Bureau.

"Didn't you love reminiscing about your youth? Isn't jumping a fence the easiest way to recall the bits and pieces of your school days?" the second man teased. "I don't believe you never jumped a fence when you were in school."

"I did, but..." the first man said sheepishly, "it's too dangerous. I stopped doing it later. I remember one year, I was being naughty and tried to take a shortcut, so I jumped a fence. I ended up getting spiked in the thigh by the top of the iron railing and hung there. My femoral artery was punctured, and I lost so much blood I went limp and couldn't move. I had to wait in despair for some kind soul to find me and pull me down. It was already class time, and there wasn't a soul around. I hung there for over an hour before I was found... I only remember that the day was freezing, but my heart was even colder. Even now, I have a deep scar on my thigh that reminds me that impulses come with a price."

"Alright, alright," the second man said, unable to stand the whining. "We truly have no other choice. This is the only way to sneak into the school silently in the shortest amount of time without bothering the Bureau."

Afterward, the two exchanged a look and landed on the other side, successfully completing a textbook-standard infiltration. Just as they were about to high-five in celebration, the old security guard came running over, cursing.

"Hey, you two! Why are you jumping the fence? Get out of here right now!"

"Oh no, we've been spotted," the two men exclaimed in unison. "Wasn't he patrolling by the gate just now? How did he get over here so fast?"

"Blast it, no time to think!" The first man shoved the second. "What are you staring at? Run!"

Without waiting for a response, the first man bolted, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.

...

"Beep, beep, beep, beep!"

The pink fairy wand began to emit a shrill sound, and a red light flickered on its indicator. It was a wand topped with a heart shape, featuring a pair of small, outstretched wings just above the handle. It looked exactly like a magical girl’s wand from a cartoon, overflowing with a pink, girlish aesthetic.

The first man held the cute wand with a look of utter shame, wandering aimlessly through the outdoor men's restroom of the school.

"I have to ask, do we really have to carry this thing every time we go on a mission?" he whispered in protest.

"It can't be helped," the second man sighed with weary resignation. "Though I don't like carrying this thing either. We have to rely on this wand to measure if there are any traces of calamity in the air."

"A bunch of grown men wandering around with a wand that only little girls would like—it really is a bit perverted. If anyone sees us, they'll think we’re mentally ill. I wouldn't be surprised if the police come to arrest us later."

"The gear team has terrible taste," the first man complained. "It's not them walking through the streets with this thing. They could have made it look like anything else. That memory-eraser from the *Men in Black* movie looks great—it’s high-tech and cool. Only something that stylish is worthy of our status as disaster investigators. What is this? A child's toy? Are they trying to embarrass us on purpose?"

"Alright, alright, stop complaining," the second man patted his shoulder, half-comforting, half-admonishing. "Our mission is finished; we can report the findings to the Bureau. Normally, the wand wouldn't make this noise. When it starts beeping and flashing red, it means it has detected the aura of a calamity. Katerina and her team were right—there are signs of calamity in this school. Although the residual aura is weak, almost to the point of being negligible, we shouldn't let our guard down."

Suddenly, as he finished speaking, the frequency of the red light accelerated, and the warning buzz sounded like a broken brake. The flashing red light became blinding, and the sharp, rapid noise made their ears go numb.

"Oh no!" The second man’s expression changed drastically. "The aura of the calamity is intensifying rapidly. There is only one reason for this: a calamity is approaching us. Prepare for combat. We must be ready to repel the entity and escape."

Just as the two braced themselves for battle, a massive swarm of mosquitoes flew into the sky above them. It was a dense, dark cloud of them—at least several thousand. The first man swore that in all his life, he had never seen so many mosquitoes.

"Our opponent is... a swarm of mosquitoes? Did we get it wrong?" The first man stood frozen, at a loss.

The mosquitoes swarmed toward them and, while the two were still stunned, descended upon them in a frenzy. The men swung their arms frantically, trying to swat them away, but they were outnumbered. In an instant, they were completely swallowed by the swarm.