Horror Movie Set: This extra is too good at playing the tricks.

Chapter 35: Exploring the "Abnormal"

The entire dormitory building seemed to come alive. A series of clicking and clattering sounds filled the air.

The human skins hanging from the ceiling now filled the corridor. They had no skeletal support and moved in extremely bizarre ways. Some slid along the walls, some floated in mid-air like inflated balloons, and others wriggled on the floor like mollusks, using both hands and feet.

Lu Dan moved around, using the blind spots in the dormitory door frame to frantically run back and forth.

"Huff, huff."

He tried his best to control his breathing. Just as he rushed through the door of room 302, a fluttering human skin crashed into him. On the empty skin, the features were twisted and squeezed together.

Lu Dan tumbled and crawled into dormitory 301.

"Bang!"

He slammed the door shut, and before he could even catch his breath, the door was slammed shut by the crowd of people outside.

"Wow, so enthusiastic! Is this what they call a fan meeting?"

Lu Dan leaned against the door, forced a smile, and wiped the blood from his eyes. "We can't stop. This is a dead end." He glanced at the balcony, the only way out.

Fortunately, the outer balconies are connected.

Lu Dan climbed over the balcony railing of apartment 301 in a clumsy manner.

A cold wind carrying a foul stench rushed towards him, making his tattered clothes flutter loudly.

Ahead was that damned open-air counseling station, a white table standing alone in the darkness, the withered dried flowers on it seeming to mock his helplessness.

I checked the time; there were only a few minutes left before the mandatory check-in time. If I'm not mistaken, those few minutes were the countdown to his last words.

Lu Dan suddenly leaped and landed on the second-floor balcony.

This was like adding insult to injury; he felt like his whole body was about to shatter. He slowly crawled to the white table, panting heavily, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose.

"Order, this damn school is all about order." Lu Dan muttered to himself, a desperate glint in his eyes. "Since you want order, then I'll give you order. This is a security guard's check-in point, not some damn psychological counseling station!"

With trembling hands, he pulled out his patrol log from his pocket. The pen touched the paper, and because his hand was shaking so badly, it left a long ink mark.

He took a deep breath, bit his tongue, and used the excruciating pain to forcefully steady his wrist.

He no longer writes those whitewashed "everything is normal" articles.

Since the security guard's duty in this script is to patrol and maintain order, they should have an obligation to correct obvious mistakes. He wrote:

Something that shouldn't be there was found on the second-floor balcony.

After writing this sentence, Lu Dan's finger hovered in mid-air, his heart pounding—he was breaking the rules. The security manual had previously stated that ignoring any abnormalities was forbidden. But if he continued to ignore them now, he would surely die.

Then we'll have to risk our lives.

A fierce glint flashed in Lu Dan's eyes, and he added three more words at the end:

This is abnormal!

The world froze for a second the moment the exclamation mark landed. Immediately afterwards, a dizzying tremor came from beneath our feet.

"Boom—" The ashes in the sky began to peel away, and the balcony space where the open-air psychological counseling station was located began to distort violently. The clear white tables and chairs became blurry and began to flicker wildly.

"Buzz." In an instant, the white table disappeared and was replaced by a rusty red mechanical time clock.

The next second, the time clock disappeared again, turning back into a table. The two flashed alternately at a high frequency, as if two worlds were vying for control of this territory.

Lu Dan lay tightly on the ground to avoid being thrown out by the spatial turbulence. Looking at the scene of frantic convulsions before him, a crazed glint appeared on his bloodied lips.

"That's more like it! I was fucking frustrated earlier!"

Table World, Women's Dormitory 304.

The tremor came without warning. "What's going on? An earthquake?" Zhang Kai lost his footing and fell to the ground with a thud, desperately protecting Su Ke, who was still disoriented after changing her skin.

"No, it's space that's folding."

Li Mu, the blood-soaked man standing at the front, suddenly burst out of his muscles, and countless bright red tentacles shot out, weaving into a blood-red cocoon that enveloped Su Ke, Zhang Kai, and Bao Ping on the ground.

He led Lin Xiaoxiao and ran towards the second-floor balcony.

The time clock, which had been standing quietly there, was now flashing wildly, and each flash transformed into a set of exquisite white tables and chairs.

Lin Xiaoxiao leaned against the corner of the wall, trying to suppress the dizziness, feeling a burning sensation in her pocket. She pulled out a yellowed piece of paper, the handwriting on it grotesque and messy.

This is abnormal!

These three words struck Lin Xiaoxiao's heart like a heavy hammer.

"A madman! This guy is a complete madman! How could he write something so abnormal?"

Having been on set for so long, all the seniors and guides have been telling her one thing: in rule-based fantasy scripts, no matter what you see, you have to pretend not to see it, you have to comply, and you have to write "everything is normal" to numb the rules.

But that's exactly what he did.

As the words took effect, the originally warm and bright beige filter began to fade, a hint of bloodiness filled the air, the surrounding space began to turn grayish-white, and some semi-transparent shadows began to appear faintly in the background of the empty dormitory building.

To her horror, she saw countless withered human skins hanging like wind chimes in the corridor amidst overlapping phantoms, swaying wildly with the vibrations of the space.

"The two worlds are beginning to merge."

Li Mu's trembling voice came through: "He broke the boundary, forcibly sewing the two worlds together."

The Otherworld, the Balcony.

Lu Dan felt as if his internal organs were being pulled apart by different forces of gravity. His eyes were fixed on the wildly flashing light: the table... the time clock... the table... the time clock, and the frequency was increasing.

It's now!

Just as the white table disappeared and the red metallic outline had not yet fully solidified, Lu Dan put the crumpled card in his mouth.

Without needing to exert force with his legs, the dark shadow at his left ankle suddenly sprang up, transforming into a tremendous thrust that slammed hard into Lu Dan's buttocks.

"Get out of here!"

Lu Dan shot out like a cannonball, accurately pouncing on the machine that was between reality and illusion.

The moment the machine solidified, the card was forcefully inserted.

"Snap!"

"Ding!"

The crisp sound of gears meshing was followed by a pleasant electronic tone.

Check-in successful, last-minute finish.

Lu Dan crashed heavily to the ground, and with a "ding," the frantic spatial tremors around him ceased.

But he did not return to his original world; everything around him had changed. The once-dark walls began to glow with a warm, beige hue, and the stench of blood in the air faded, replaced by a pleasant fragrance.

"It worked?"

Lu Dan lay on the ground, unable to get up due to the excruciating pain throughout his body.

He gasped for breath, trying to recover from the rollercoaster-like thrill.

Lu Dan slowly raised his head and looked out through the thick glass railing of the second-floor balcony.

The world is currently in a bizarre superposition state; he can see the gray sky of the inner world and the beige paint of the outer world.

Downstairs, a person stood in a thin layer of mist. The person was wearing a dark blue security guard uniform, which, although somewhat worn, was buttoned up meticulously, and the brim of the wide hat was pulled low, obscuring most of the face. This outfit was exactly the same as the one worn by Lu Dan.

"Our colleagues have arrived."

Then, he saw what the man was holding: a pale white paper lantern with a flickering green flame inside. He could also clearly see a twisted, slender, dark shadow on the security guard's back, like a giant, greedy leech frantically sucking something from his spine.

The leech seemed to sense Lu Dan's gaze. It slowly poked its head out from the security guard's back and silently grinned at Lu Dan, who was lying on the ground, through the glass.

The security guard slowly raised the lantern in his hand, illuminating his face under the brim of his hat—a face devoid of skin.

On the glass railing, Su Ke's bloody handprint began to twist wildly, forming a line of bloody words: Real or fake security guard, the only post.

Lu Dan looked at the monster on the other side of the glass, then looked down at the restless shadow on his left ankle.

"Okay, it seems that painting is real."