THEY ALL SAY I'VE MET A GHOST

Chapter 37

A Fan Translation

CHAPTER 37 - Principal Zhang (Part 3)

+++
I had a lot of questions for her, but I didn't know where to start.

Unlike Teacher Liu and the other ghosts, Principal Zhang was still alive, but not in good shape.

"Her living soul is leaving the body," Ning Tiance said after checking Principal Zhang's eyes and the top of her head. "The Yang fire on her head has gone out."

"What Yang fire?"

Teacher Liu explained: "Humans have three lamps, one on top of the head, and one on each shoulder. These are flames lit by Yang energy. It's hard for ordinary people to see with the naked eye. Yang energy is weak at night. If you turn your head suddenly, the lamp on your shoulder will go out, and Yin energy will be able to invade your body. Ghosts will be able to control the human's mind and spirit. So when we're dealing with humans, we usually think of a way to make them turn around. The first time Mu Huaitong saw you, she was hiding in the corner of the stairwell. She'd heard you had cut Yuanyuan's hair and had quite fierce Yang energy. She knew you would be hard to deal with, so she thought of that method for extinguishing your soul lamp."

"So has mine been extinguished?" I looked left and right, then held up my phone to take a picture of my head, trying to see whether there was a lamp.

"Yours..." Teacher Liu paused, then went on: "If the soul lamp of an ordinary person is an oil lamp that can be blown out by a breath of air, then yours is a forest fire. The more the wind blows, the fiercer the fire becomes."

"Then..." I looked at Principal Zhang's haggard face. "Can I use some of my fire to light the lamp on Principal Zhang's head?"

"No," said Xiao Ning. "Her life span is coming to an end. Even her living soul won't last long. Anything you have to say, you should say it now."

I quickly sent a message to Principal Zhang: Principal, what can we do to make Xiao Duan leave her body? What is her obsession?

Lying in the hospital bed, Principal Zhang didn't move, but her phone seemed to be controlled by an invisible hand, typing on its own.

Duan Youlian was part of the first group of boarding students I enrolled when I was principal of Benevolence Middle School. After her father's car accident, I asked her mother if she wanted her child to move out of the dormitory and switch to day schooling. Her mother asked me about the advantages and disadvantages of boarding and day schooling. I told her that day schooling meant her daughter could stay with her family, so that her mother wouldn’t be too lonely. As for boarding, the school environment was simpler, and the child would be more likely to overcome the homesickness of leaving her relatives. Her mother said she would choose what was best for the child, and had Duan Youlian stay at the dormitory. But I never expected that the innocent cruelty of children could sometimes be more ruthless than society.

After I read out Principal Zhang's message, Duan Youlian said, "The dormitory teacher thought I stayed in the dormitory every night, but it was really my roommates pretending. They chased me out of the dormitory. I always spent the night at an Internet cafe. It was cheap, and I could pass the time by going online. But it was a very disordered environment. I went every day, and soon someone got their eye on me. One night when I left the school by the back door to go to the Internet cafe, I was attacked. I got knocked out in the struggle. The riverbanks weren't fully covered by security cameras then, so they threw me in the river. At first it was very painful. Then suddenly I became very strong and swam up from the bottom of the river. I stood on the shore. My head was full of water. Even my brains poured out of my ears. That was when I knew I was dead."