Chapter 136: Chapter 54: Non-compliant Training
"A memetic urban legend called the Rainy Woman has suddenly appeared in Shanghai. It spreads rapidly, and due to a dereliction of duty by the Spirit Disaster Bureau’s intelligence department, it went unnoticed in the early stages. The legend has been festering and spreading in the shadows for quite some time, only recently being detected.
"Vengeful spirits that propagate through sight, sound, or a concept are collectively classified as ’memes.’ They are quite widespread in Japan, Southeast Asia, and the southern United States. The local Ghost Hunters there have already developed a mature mechanism for tracing, isolating, and creating counter-memes. Our personnel at the Shanghai Spirit Disaster Bureau, however, still lack understanding of and practical experience with this type of spirit.
"We’ll begin by understanding the Rainy Woman’s transmission mechanism and killing pattern. After that, the primary mission for every department will be to handle this urban legend and prevent it from erupting fully, lest it become the next S-Level legend like the ’Gap Woman’ from Japan."
The Ghost Hunters in the audience began to whisper among themselves.
The Rainy Woman? Many of them remembered that name. The Special Containment Division had been sent to deal with it. They returned with a detailed report confirming that the memetic entity had been contained.
To think it wasn’t contained at all. Did the Special Containment Division submit a false report?
If the report’s conclusions are ultimately proven false, that’s a felony warranting a court-martial.
So much time has passed, and the Rainy Woman is inherently highly contagious. It’s no wonder the top brass at the Spirit Disaster Bureau issued a mandatory summons for all Ghost Hunters, even those on active missions.
Sitting in the back row, Ai Ning relaxed slightly. This explanation made all the recent abnormalities seem much more plausible.
"Next, we will be showing a video of about five minutes on the projector. Including my commentary, the entire lesson will be around ten minutes. It won’t take up too much of your time.
"Please turn off all cell phones and any other communication devices to prevent light pollution from affecting the viewing experience.
"You in the back, please lock the rear door. And while the video is playing, no one is to leave the classroom for any reason."
While the middle-aged man was speaking, a young woman in a black suit was already adjusting the projector. A patch of light hit the blackboard at the front. The image was blurry. Before the background could even be made out, the patter of rain mixed with static began to drone from the speakers.
It looked like the video was quite old. The resolution and picture quality didn’t seem to be from this era.
The "one in the back" mentioned by the middle-aged man was none other than Ai Ning, who had been the last to enter the classroom and was now sitting beside the door.
As the instructor had requested, she was supposed to lock the door. But she had just rushed over from the training grounds in a hurry, and her bladder was already full. Now that she had sat down and relaxed, Ai Ning felt a cramping pain in her abdomen that was quickly becoming unbearable.
She was too embarrassed to raise her hand and ask to use the restroom. The instructor had just forbidden anyone from leaving, and if she raised her hand now, it would show a terrible lack of discipline. As a rookie, she didn’t want to make a bad impression on her colleagues and superiors on her very first day at headquarters.
’I’ll just have to hold it in.’
Ai Ning tried to distract herself. The training session was only ten minutes long, after all.
On the patch of light projected onto the blackboard, the camera viewpoint was constantly shaking. Raindrops occasionally spattered against the lens, making the already blurry picture even more unwatchable.
At the center of the frame was a country road, its location unidentifiable.
The sky hung low, a blanket of endless gray. Silken threads of rain slanted into the mud, slicing the road into countless shimmering, dark puddles.
In the center of the frame, a woman in gray stood in the rain. She held a pure white umbrella, motionless in the distance. Rainwater streamed down the umbrella’s ribs in fine lines, splashing in murky circles at her feet.
She was unnaturally tall; her torso was large, but it was paired with a set of disproportionately short legs. The brim of her umbrella was pulled down low, obscuring most of her face and revealing only a slash of red lips, as if they were bleeding.
With each flicker of the screen, the Rainy Woman’s figure jumped from near to far. At times, she would suddenly flash right in front of the lens, then, without her feet moving at all, she would slowly recede back into the distance.
The scene was more than a little unsettling.
As the video played on, the scene never changed—just the gloomy sky, the rain, and the Rainy Woman. There were no substantive plot developments, nor was there any professional narration explaining her killing patterns.
The Ghost Hunters watching in the classroom gradually realized something was wrong and began to murmur among themselves.
Some of them could no longer hold back:
"Hey, did you put on the wrong video?"
"Are you sure this recording isn’t memetically contaminated? Did you grab the wrong tape?"
"Showing a video with a contamination risk to trainees without any protective measures... Isn’t that a violation of Article 313 of the Safety Code?"
"I demand that you stop this video immediately! This is against regulations."
"What class of instructors are you guys from? Your professional standards are terrible. Have you even been through training?"
...
In the middle of the room, the woman in the suit standing by the projector remained motionless, completely ignoring the complaints. It didn’t seem like this was the wrong video.
Ai Ning felt she had reached her limit.
Taking advantage of the commotion, she stealthily opened the classroom door, planning to slip out and run to the restroom at the end of the hall.
She was wearing a Supernatural Artifact called the Mist Necklace. As long as its wearer had no killing intent or aggressive desires, it would lower their presence to an absolute minimum.
Ai Ning planned to use the artifact’s effect to slip out of the classroom for a moment without disturbing anyone. After taking care of business, she could slip back in just as unnoticed.
’Who knows how long this pointless video is going to run anyway,’ she thought. ’I only need three minutes.’
Hearing the classroom door click shut behind her, Ai Ning quietly sighed in relief.
Just as she’d hoped, no one in the classroom had noticed her leave.
’Let’s see... the restroom should be over there, right?’
...
「Four minutes later」
Ai Ning emerged from the restroom, feeling much refreshed.
She started back the way she came, heading for classroom 103.
As she walked down the hallway, Ai Ning felt that something was off.
When she had passed through earlier, every classroom on the first floor had been packed with Ghost Hunters summoned by the level-three alert.
How could it be that after just one trip to the restroom, every single classroom was now completely empty? Had everyone vanished?
Had the training session ended while she was in the restroom, and everyone had been dismissed from headquarters?
Something felt very strange.
Ai Ning grew wary. Her hand went to the custom silver pistol at her waist, and her pace slowed considerably.
Still, the idea that this building had been attacked by some kind of supernatural force was almost laughable.
The entire floor was filled with Ghost Hunters. For a ghost to be able to spirit away an entire floor of them... how absurd would that be?
But if a ghost *could* take away an entire floor of Ghost Hunters...
A thought struck Ai Ning like a physical blow.
Back in the training session, when the Rainy Woman video was playing, someone had questioned whether it was compliant with safety regulations to show a mentally contaminating video so directly.
Could it be... that when the "instructors" played the video, everyone watching that strange, umbrella-toting woman in the rain had been infected?
The more Ai Ning thought about it, the more suspicious everything seemed. With a sense of dread, she returned to classroom 103.
Sure enough, it was empty too. Everyone had vanished.
On the floor, Ai Ning saw severed limbs, fingers, eyeballs, and other human organs.
The floor was splattered with blood, as if there had been a chaotic struggle.
She bent down and picked up a severed, bloody finger. As she felt its lingering warmth and the texture of its flesh, Ai Ning’s mind reeled.
Her worst fear was confirmed.
While she was in the restroom, everyone in the classroom had watched the "Rainy Woman" video and fallen victim to the memetic contamination. An entire room full of people, wiped out in one go.
Because Ai Ning had a sudden urge to use the restroom, and because of her special Supernatural Artifact, she had somehow managed to escape the disaster while she was away.
Ai Ning’s heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it in her own ears.
’What in the world is happening?’
’Those two "instructors"... what were they?’
’Why didn’t any of the Ghost Hunters in the class fight back?’
’No, that’s not right. Looking at the state of the classroom, many of them did fight back. But it was useless. The Rainy Woman had grown too powerful, too quickly.’
’If this was a trap from the very beginning... then who was it that sent out the "level-three emergency alert" to gather all the nearby Ghost Hunters?’
’The most terrifying possibility was that something unclean had infiltrated the highest levels of the Spirit Disaster Bureau. Something with extremely high clearance, able to issue a level-three alert and order so many Ghost Hunters to follow its command. It gathered everyone at headquarters, played the Rainy Woman video for them all, and then... in an instant, everyone who watched and was infected was wiped out.’
She left the classroom and walked down the deserted first-floor hallway of the headquarters.
Ai Ning’s mind was in turmoil. She was the sole survivor at headquarters, and she had no idea what to do next.
This single event had eliminated at least several hundred of Shanghai’s Ghost Hunters. To what extent had those ’things’ infiltrated the Spirit Disaster Bureau’s command? What was their ultimate goal?
’And what was she supposed to do now?’
’That’s it! The "Abyssal Echo" camp. There’s a professional unit stationed there, an army dedicated to fighting spirits. The Ghost Hunters at headquarters are all but wiped out; they’re Shanghai’s last line of defense.’
As if she had found a glimmer of hope in the abyss, Ai Ning forced herself to rally. She steadied herself against a sticky, crimson wall and tried to make her way out of the Spirit Disaster Bureau headquarters.
When she stepped out onto the street, she saw that the familiar city had transformed.
The traffic lights at the intersection were shattered. Not a single pedestrian crossed the street. Cars lay crashed together, belching thick smoke as alarms blared incessantly.
On the massive LED screen of a distant shopping mall, a makeup ad featuring some starlet had been replaced. Now, it showed the Rainy Woman, holding her umbrella, walking down that muddy path. Every public screen in the city was looping the same meaningless, memetic video.
Countless black streaks, like falling stars, shot across the sky, heading toward the distant high-rises. That part of the city was a sea of fire and rubble. Thick smoke billowed from skyscrapers, and the sound of sporadic gunfire would occasionally ring out, only to quickly fade to silence.
It was as if, overnight, the world had been plunged into the eve of its own destruction.
Comments