The Double

Even if Ye Shengge wanted to pretend that incident never happened, it didn’t mean the “wild man” standing in front of him wanted to do the same.

Inside the principal’s office.

At some point, the curtains around the room had been drawn open. Moonlight streamed through the glass windows into the office, dispelling the darkness.

“Keep going. Weren’t you quite the talker just now? Why the sudden silence?”

The youth wearing Zhou Yue’s shell stood before Ye Shengge, looking at him with a brilliant smile.

Ye Shengge knew he was doing this on purpose, but he couldn’t find the words to retort. After all, those words had indeed come out of his own mouth.

“Well, you shouldn’t have pretended to be someone else to lie to me, either,” Ye Shengge finally muttered, clutching the dungeon boss’s only mistake as his defense.

The youth wasn’t angry. Instead, he said with a grin: “Is that so? Then I truly must apologize to you.”

“An apology isn’t necessary. Just step aside; I want to leave.”

Ye Shengge signaled the dungeon boss—still wearing Zhou Yue’s skin—with his eyes, his tone trying to remain as calm as possible.

What had just happened had truly frightened him.

Ye Shengge had not forgotten that this dungeon boss harbored the malicious intent of keeping him in this dungeon forever. However, he didn’t dare show any sign of being unsettled, fearing the boss would realize it and take desperate measures.

“Impossible.”

The youth wearing another’s skin spoke as if he had heard something hilarious. The upward curve of his lips widened.

“Now that you’ve been caught by me, you are mine. I can’t let you keep running away.”

“I never ran away.”

Hearing the boss’s words, Ye Shengge was a bit confused.

If anyone was prone to running away, it was the dungeon boss. One could tell just from the result of their previous meeting in the woods.

He could guarantee that he had never once attempted to flee in the boss’s presence.

At most, he only dared to think about it in his mind.

“Is that so? Then why weren’t you in the sports equipment room?”

The youth’s appearance slowly began to change, shifting into the outfit Ye Shengge had seen him in at Zhou Yue’s dormitory.

As the dungeon boss’s form shifted, Ye Shengge focused his attention on the man’s face.

Unfortunately, that eerie mask blocked the dungeon boss’s entire face.

Aside from two pitch-black eyes, Ye Shengge could see nothing.

“Your two roommates are truly pitiful. They finally managed to shake off that female ghost and ran back with great anticipation to pick you up, only to find not even a shadow. They thought you were caught by the ‘cat’ and started searching the whole campus without a second thought. Guess what they would think if they knew you were here?”

As he spoke, the man’s tone was full of anticipation.

Hearing this, Ye Shengge felt a surge of guilt. His long eyelashes trembled incessantly, but he still gathered his courage to speak: “This matter has nothing to do with you.”

“It has nothing to do with me now, but it will very soon.”

The man seemed to have taken the wrong medicine today; not only was his tone eccentric and sarcastic, but his words were incredibly vicious.

He muttered to himself: “Tell me, if I were to give your two roommates’ positions to that female ghost and tell her to go capture them… then, right in front of your eyes, torture them to death bit by bit, would it have something to do with me then?”

Ye Shengge looked at him in disbelief: “You are crazy! They have not done any bad things, how did they offend you for you to treat them like this?!”

He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but upon hearing him defend his roommates, the man’s mood seemed to improve significantly, though he quickly returned to his eccentric tone: “They indeed haven’t done anything bad, but they offended me.”

Before Ye Shengge could speak, the man continued: “You are mine. How can you kiss and sleep with others every day? They have to pay the price for their actions, don’t you think?”

Ye Shengge: “…”

Ye Shengge didn’t understand why the topic kept circling back to this.

“I am a very kind person and I don’t ask for much. Since you don’t want them to die, how about we just slash them once for every time they kissed you? What do you think?”

The man’s voice was full of mirth. As he spoke, he even flexed his wrist as if he were eagerly looking forward to personally carving into Mu Jinran and Jiang Yan.

This moody lunatic!

Ye Shengge stared at him in disbelief.

“Since you aren’t talking, I’ll take it as your consent.”

The man didn’t care at all about his image in the youth’s heart, continuing to spout extreme, crazed nonsense.

If an outsider saw this scene, they would surely think his wife had been stolen, which was why he was being so extreme.

Ye Shengge looked at the man with fierce eyes and shouted angrily: “No! Are you sick?!”

Having said that, as if he had reached the peak of his irritation, he shoved the man’s chest, turned, and ran out.

The man didn’t chase him. He stood where he was, his eyes full of laughter.

If Ye Shengge had looked back, he would have seen a figure slowly emerge in front of the man.

The female ghost in the blood-stained school uniform suddenly appeared. She lowered her head and asked curiously: “My Lord, he has run away. Are you not going to chase him?”

The man didn’t answer.

Judging by his voice, he seemed to be in a good mood.

The female ghost looked bewildered: “What?”

“Nothing. No need to chase.”

The man was in a pleasant mood and even added an extra sentence: “I will soon have what I want. You go back to ‘collecting debts.’ Don’t forget the deal between us.”

Female ghost: “…”

If the female ghost’s face weren’t covered in blood, her expression at this moment would surely be quite spectacular.

If she weren’t so timid, she really would have wanted to yell at this unscrupulous trading partner who discarded her after use, just like that youth had.

Meanwhile.

Ye Shengge didn’t expect to run out of the principal’s office so smoothly.

Moreover, the dungeon boss wasn’t chasing him!

Discovering this, Ye Shengge excitedly said to the system: [Did the dungeon boss get shocked into clarity by my yelling? Did he think I was right and was too ashamed to face me, so he let me go?]

The system, which saw everything from a God’s eye view but couldn’t say a word: […]

The system swallowed all the words it had prepared to praise Ye Shengge for his quick thinking: [Mm, hurry up and find a place to hide.]

Ye Shengge scanned the surroundings and found not a single person. After a few seconds of silence, he tentatively asked: [Should we go find Mu Jinran and Jiang Yan?]

The system rejected him without hesitation: [Hide by yourself.]

[Why? Do you not trust them?]

Ye Shengge keenly sensed something and subconsciously tried to fish for information from the system.

But his methods of fishing were all taught by the system; how could it not notice?

The system wasn’t angry. Instead, it spoke calmly and hit the nail on the head: [It would be better if you used these little schemes on other people.]

Ye Shengge’s face flushed at its words. Too embarrassed to keep asking, he lowered his head and walked forward.

But he had just stepped down the stairs and walked a few paces when the system suddenly said: [Careful, there are people ahead.]

Before Ye Shengge could speak, he heard a series of ear-piercing screams.

“Ahhh! There’s a ghost!!!”

“F*ck! Isn’t Zhou Yue dead? Why did he appear again?!”

“Maybe he’s looking for revenge against the people who bullied him?”

“At a time like this, can you guys please shut up and just run!”

Along with the screams came several sets of panicked footsteps getting closer.

Clearly, they were running in Ye Shengge’s direction.

Realizing this, Ye Shengge’s first reaction was to leave.

He was also afraid of ghosts.

But his speed was too slow, and he couldn’t compete with the people behind him who actually had a ghost chasing them.

In the next second, those people spotted Ye Shengge up ahead.

At this moment, they didn’t even stop to think whether this thin youth could save them. Their first reaction was to scream in anticipation: “Help!”

Hearing these hopeful cries, Ye Shengge understood that the ghost must have spotted him too. In this situation, he absolutely couldn’t escape. Even if he didn’t give up and kept running, it would be a pure waste of energy.

Thinking of this, he simply stopped. He steeled his heart, gritted his teeth, and turned around to look at the two people and one ghost running toward him.

One look and he was startled.

He wasn’t very familiar with the two people running toward him, but he was all too familiar with the ghost chasing them.

Wasn’t this face the exact same one he had seen on the dungeon boss just a few minutes ago?

Ye Shengge subconsciously asked: “Why are you using this face again?”

The ghost with Zhou Yue’s face froze and looked at him blankly. An unnatural flush appeared on his pale, terrifying face, and he stammered: “Wh-what?”

The people who had run over panting and realized Ye Shengge’s identity were stunned. Before they could show despair, they immediately hid behind Ye Shengge and whispered: “New student, you know him?”

“That’s great! Hurry and tell him we didn’t mean to bully him. Besides, didn’t he do plenty of bad things himself? You can’t be so double-standard.” Another male student followed up quickly.

Ye Shengge ignored the two people hiding behind him. Instead, he focused on the male ghost, frowning and testing in a small voice: “Are you… the real Zhou Yue?”

It wasn’t surprising he asked. Although at first glance Zhou Yue’s appearance was very similar to the previous dungeon boss, in terms of temperament alone, there was a huge gap between them. It was easy to tell the difference.

But Ye Shengge still didn’t dare confirm it, because the other ghosts maintained the horrifying appearance they had in the final second of their lives, whereas this one was different.

Zhou Yue looked almost the same as before he died. Not only was he not missing any limbs, but even the marks from being beaten on his face had completely disappeared.

It was very strange.

So strange that Ye Shengge didn’t dare believe it.

“I-I-I am Zhou Yue…”

Zhou Yue’s gloomy, pale face was now full of confusion.

He didn’t understand why Ye Shengge would ask that.

Could there really be a fake Zhou Yue?