Chapter 7: Why Am I the One Who Is Confused?

“Cousin? It’s time to change the rules now, isn’t it?”

“Cousin, I’m coming out.”

There was no response. The apartment was dreadfully quiet.

Jiang Xiaoyu poked half his body out of the kitchen doorway, squinting as he looked out.

His vision was so blurry he couldn’t make out a single thing clearly, but he could tell that the living room was no longer bathed in that silvery-white cold light.

Instead, it had shifted to a different hue—warm and golden, like autumn sunlight spilling in through a window and illuminating the entire room.

“The living room lights even have color-changing functions? Cold light one moment, warm light the next. Pretty high-class.” He clicked his tongue in wonder and stepped out of the kitchen.

“Cousin?” he called out again.

The living room was empty; Xiaoqi was nowhere to be seen.

The door on the right, which had previously been tightly shut, was now open. Golden light spilled from the doorframe, dyeing that small patch of floor outside a honeyed hue.

“What a bright little desk lamp,” Jiang Xiaoyu nodded. “Looks like my cousin chose this room.”

He walked toward the door of light, laughing as he went.

“Smart girl. South-facing rooms are good; they don’t get damp easily. Perfect for girls to live in.”

Upon reaching the doorway, he turned his back to the entrance and reached inside to knock on the doorframe.

If Xiaoqi were here, she would have seen that the exact spot Jiang Xiaoyu was knocking on was a sticky note pasted to the door.

The paper was far more yellowed than the previous ones, its edges curled beyond recognition.

The handwriting had pressed deeply through the back of the paper, as if written with endless indignation.

[Absolutely do not open this door! In just a single encounter, I used every ounce of my supernatural power and still couldn’t dodge that light of death. It is devouring my life force, and I can feel that I won’t live much longer.]

[—Zhou Xuhai, PE Teacher.]

If Xiaoqi had seen this name, she would have been struck speechless.

Zhou Xuhai—an S-rank aberration of the assassination system, and one of the most terrifying names in all of Huangquan Vocational Institute.

His supernatural power was practically an unsolvable enigma; when activated, his body would transform into a transparent shadow, allowing him to approach his opponents silently.

By the time his prey noticed, the fatal blow would have already landed.

He wasn’t just a nightmare to humans; he was a terror to aberrations as well.

In the entire academy, the number of entities capable of evading his stealth assassinations didn’t exceed ten.

And yet, this very man had opened this door and was transferred away shortly after coming out.

Now, it seemed more than likely that Teacher Zhou had met a grim end!

Jiang Xiaoyu remained oblivious to all of this. With his back still to the door, he knocked twice on the frame with the back of his hand. Hearing no movement inside, he knocked twice more.

“Cousin? Your older cousin is coming in.”

The golden light inside the room began to stir.

The golden rays throughout the room seemed as if grasped by an invisible hand, gathering, compressing, and taking shape toward the edge of the bed.

Clusters of glowing mist coalesced into flowing robes, threads of gold wove into the hem of a skirt, and finally, they condensed into a woman in a long golden dress, sitting quietly on the edge of the bed with her back to the door.

Her silhouette was composed entirely of light.

Her long hair cascaded down her back like molten gold, and a faint, warm golden glow emanated from her body as she sat there motionless.

Squinting, Jiang Xiaoyu only saw a blurry golden figure sitting on the edge of the bed.

“You’ve still got the mood to change clothes? The noodles are clumping together.”

The woman in the golden dress turned her head slightly.

The golden light faded from her face, revealing a pair of distinct, dark phoenix eyes.

She stared at the squinting youth standing at the door, her gaze filled with endless scrutiny.

“You aren’t afraid of light erosion? How interesting!”

Her tone was incredibly soft, carrying a barely perceptible trace of surprise.

Her voice wasn’t cold and detached like Xiaoqi’s; instead, it was far more ethereal, sounding as if it were echoing from some distant, faraway place.

Jiang Xiaoyu blanked for a moment.

Not afraid of light what? Light erosion? What game was his cousin playing now?

He recalled that ever since they entered Room 1314, his cousin had been constantly roleplaying—first breaking out into some ghost dance, then acting out a crisis with a door of light, and now changing clothes to play the innocent-yet-alluring type.

And now, she was straight-up pretending not to know him.

Jokes were fine, and messing around was okay, but what was the deal with skipping meals?

That bowl of hot and sour noodles was getting cold.

Jiang Xiaoyu took a deep breath.

“Fine. Since the soft approach won’t work, we’re doing this the hard way!”

“Ms. Wang Xiulan, possess me!”

He planted his hands on his hips and shouted into the room, mimicking his mother’s tone to perfection.

“You don’t study, and you don’t eat! All you know how to do is play, play, play from morning till night! Just wait and see which boy is willing to marry you when you grow up!”

“Xiao! Qi! Hurry up and come out to eat! Don’t make me repeat myself!”

The woman in the golden dress stood frozen in place, her mouth hanging wide open.

“…Are you talking to me?”

Jiang Xiaoyu’s face darkened. He took a large stride into the room, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her toward the door.

“Of course I’m talking to you! A grown girl like you, hiding in your room every single day? At your age, Ma Jiaqi has already started national tours, and his mother gets to stay home and count the cash! We’re all raised by mothers, so why is there such a massive difference?”

The woman in the golden dress stumbled forward, yanked right off the edge of the bed.

Her dark phoenix eyes widened drastically. She looked down at Jiang Xiaoyu’s hand gripping hers—the golden light erosion washed over his skin, yet left absolutely no impact.

For the first time, panic seeped into her voice.

“You’re not afraid of the light! You’re actually immune to the light!”

Jiang Xiaoyu dragged her out of the room without looking back.

Afraid of light?

He had a 1,500-degree myopia prescription! Without his glasses, everything he looked at was a blur—what light was there to be afraid of?

If anything, his cousin was just way too immersed in her character today. This vocal tone, this phrasing—he didn’t even know which rule-based ghost story script she had pulled this from.

Honestly, this script had quite a bit of fantasy elements mixed into it.