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Join the Server“Seven floors… and your school… doesn’t even have an elevator…” He rested both hands on his knees, panting like a dog.
Xiaoqi stood off to the side, her expression completely unchanged, and her breathing as steady as if she had just woken up from a nap.
She turned her head slightly, her gaze falling upon the door at the end of the corridor.
It was the only door in the entire hallway.
It was a set of double doors—dark wooden panels with a carved lintel, and embedded into the wood was a brass doorplate.
The four digits on it gleamed with a dark red hue under the dim corridor lights: 1314.
The numbers were wet.
Dark red liquid seeped from the grooves of the digits, dripping down from the doorplate to draw four thin trails of blood across the wooden panels, flowing all the way down to the threshold before seeping into the cracks between the floor tiles.
“Forever and always?” Xiaoqi furrowed her brows slightly. “Who with who? What a strange name for a room.”
Just as she was about to step forward, she caught a glimpse of the wall next to the doorframe from the corner of her eye.
Pasted to the wall was a sticky note; the paper was yellowed and the corners were slightly curled, with handwriting in dark red, as if written in blood.
[Door Opening Rules: You must unlock the door with the key three times and knock three times before entering. Otherwise, you will be obliterated by an unknown force!]
[Signed: S-Rank Aberration, Zhang Tingting.]
Xiaoqi’s pupils contracted slightly.
Zhang Tingting, the language teacher.
Of course she recognized this name.
Zhang Tingting was the most outstanding figure among the academy’s younger teachers; her supernatural powers could manifest countless venomous vines, and the slightest bit of carelessness would see an enemy torn to shreds by vines striking from all sorts of tricky angles.
Just last year, an A-rank aberration had caused a disturbance in her class, only to be impaled by a single venomous vine and obliterated into ash on the spot.
Since then, no one in the entire school dared to let their mind wander during her classes ever again.
Rules left behind by her had to be followed without question.
“What’s wrong, cousin?” Jiang Xiaoyu straightened up and leaned in, squinting.
All he saw was a yellowed piece of paper stuck to the wall, the handwriting as blurry as a smudge of dark red blood.
“The rules for opening the door: you need to unlock it three times, and knock three times.” Xiaoqi looked at him seriously. “We cannot afford to make a single mistake. These should be the survival rules discovered by Teacher Zhang.”
Jiang Xiaoyu blanked for a moment before bursting into laughter.
“Passing your own door three times without entering? Cousin, I was quite tired to begin with, but your joke really helped lighten the mood.”
“It’s not a joke,” Xiaoqi kept her voice very low. “It’s the rules.”
Seeing her serious expression, Jiang Xiaoyu raised both hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, whatever you say, cousin. Unlock three times, knock three times.”
He inserted the silver key into the keyhole.
“Click. Once.”
He pulled the key out and knocked on the door panel once.
“Thud!”
The muffled sound echoed through the hallway.
“Click. Twice.”
He pulled the key out again and knocked again.
Click. Three—
Before Jiang Xiaoyu had even turned the key halfway, the lock cylinder suddenly clicked on its own, and the door silently slid open a crack.
There was no light slipping through the gap; it was so dark that it seemed to swallow up all the light from the corridor.
Jiang Xiaoyu looked down at his hand, still clutching the key, and then at the door that had opened itself.
“Cousin, you can’t blame me for this one. This high-tech… automatic door.”
Xiaoqi’s expression changed at the sight.
Black flames erupted violently from her body, and the temperature in the corridor plummeted in an instant.
She half-clenched her right hand, and the black fire within her palm stretched and solidified, transforming into a slender, elongated lightsaber.
She took a single stride to stand in front of Jiang Xiaoyu, shielding him with her shoulder.
The tip of her sword pointed down, searing a charred black streak into the floor tiles.
“There’s an unknown aberration! Stay behind me.”
Jiang Xiaoyu froze, then grinned.
He couldn’t see anything unusual; all he saw was his cousin suddenly stepping in front of him, adopting a posture as if she were facing a formidable enemy.
“Have you been reading too many horror novels, cousin? Jumping at shadows like that.” He shoved the key back into his pocket and hoisted his backpack. “But… this isn’t bad either. Having a quirky cousin around will definitely make school life a lot more fun.”
Xiaoqi ignored him. Taking a deep breath, she reached out and pushed the door wide open.
In the exact moment the door fully opened, the black lightsaber in her hand trembled—not out of fear, but… shock.
There were no light sources in the living room, yet the entire space was as bright as day.
The light seeped out from the walls, cascaded down from the ceiling, and surged up from every groove in the floorboards.
It was silvery-white, soft yet profound—like moonlight, but not moonlight; like a river of stars, but far closer.
The entire living room seemed to be encased in a massive block of silver amber.
Countless tiny specks of light drifted through the air, like fireflies on a summer night or a sky full of stars reflected on the surface of the water.
They flowed slowly through the air, tracing invisible paths.
Occasionally, a few specks would cluster together before scattering apart, as if performing some ancient dance.
Standing in the doorway, Xiaoqi froze entirely.
Over the past century, she had witnessed mountains of corpses and seas of bones under blood-red moons; she had seen countless indescribable aberrations.
But the room before her was unlike anything she had ever seen.
It wasn’t horror; it was beautiful—an unreal sort of beauty.
She couldn’t help but reach out her hand.
A speck of starlight drifted away from its flowing path and fluttered lightly into her palm.
It bounced playfully a few times in her hand, as if sizing her up.
Then, with evident joy, it sank into her skin.
Xiaoqi’s body jolted violently.
“Her supernatural power—it actually increased.”
Although it was merely a minuscule trace, she felt it with absolute clarity!
‘This… just like embracing my cousin, can also boost my supernatural power! But… why on earth is this happening?’
Jiang Xiaoyu followed her inside, casually closing the door behind him. He squinted as he looked around the room, instantly cheering up.
“It was pitch black all the way here; we’ve finally found a well-lit place. The decor might be a bit plain, but it’s way better than I imagined. School dorms should have this kind of minimalist style anyway.”
Xiaoqi turned around, waving her hand up and down in front of Jiang Xiaoyu’s eyes.
“Blind?”
Jiang Xiaoyu choked with frustration.
“Nearsighted! Nearsighted, it’s called nearsighted! Honestly, what kind of girl talks about her cousin like that? It’ll be fine once I get a new pair of glasses tomorrow.” With that, he took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the sofa.
Xiaoqi: “How did you blind your eyes?”
Jiang Xiaoyu gave a dry laugh: “By… studying, of course. I just didn’t pay attention to eye care, and it ended up like this.”
Xiaoqi clearly didn’t believe him. Jiang Xiaoyu chuckled sheepishly, casually pointing at a piece of paper pasted on the wall near the door.
“Cousin, come check out these dorm rules so we can keep an eye on the academy’s regulations.”
Xiaoqi walked over and saw that the paper on the wall was larger, whiter, and the handwriting was much fresher than the sticky note outside.
There were only eight large, blood-red characters written across it:
[The kitchen is the only safe zone!]
[Signed: Su Yunfei.]
Xiaoqi’s brows knitted tightly together.
“Signed by the principal!”
The principal of Huangquan Vocational Institute was a peak S-rank aberration, one of the most formidable entities in the entire academy. Even someone like him had left behind a rule in this room—the kitchen was the only safe zone.
What did that imply? It meant that inside this unreally beautiful room, beneath this starlight that could boost supernatural power, everywhere outside the kitchen was hazardous.
Zhang Tingting had discovered the rule to enter the door, while the principal had found the survival rule. Yet the rules they left behind were likely just the tip of the iceberg of all the secrets contained within this apartment. Behind those flowing specks of starlight, there certainly lurked entities that forced even the principal to steer clear.
Xiaoqi turned her gaze toward the deeper parts of the living room.
Three doors stood ajar, the light spilling through their cracks each bearing a different hue—warm yellow, cold white, and dark red. The kitchen was at the very back, its door half-open, pitch black inside save for a tiny patch above the stove illuminated by moonlight through the window, resembling a solitary island.
Jiang Xiaoyu flopped down onto the sofa with a yawn, sinking completely into the soft cushions.
“Cousin, it’s been an exhausting day. You pick a room first, and I’ll take whatever’s left. As for the spare room… we’ll turn it into a gaming room. Your cousin brought his gaming laptop, so we can play games together whenever we’re free.”
Xiaoqi did not reply.
She stood in the center of that swirling river of stars, her white dress gilded with a silver edge by the celestial glow. A few specks of starlight broke away from their orbits, slowly revolving around her.
This cousin she had to protect him at all costs.
You’ve got to see this next! The Only Ice Flower will keep you on the edge of your seat. Start reading today!
Read : The Only Ice Flower
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