Hide and Seek: The Mad Girl Sees All novel Chapter 117

Chapter 117

Chapter 117

Lyra had a dream.

KITA

Gray mist covered the ground beneath her feet. She kept walking for what felt like ages, and when the mist finally cleared. the Ghost Wall appeared before her.

A dense crowd of souls stood shoulder to shoulder, all facing outward, just like what she saw in daylight.

She stood before the crowd of ghosts. She didn’t approach, just watched from where she was.

Suddenly, Lyra spotted a woman’s soul. Just like the others, she looked empty and lost, but her lips moved as if she was trying to speak.

All the other souls kept their mouths shut, but her lips kept opening and closing, mouthing something in silence again and again.

Lyra took a couple of steps forward, hoping to hear what she was saying.

But she couldn’t hear anything.

She moved closer.

Still, nothing.

The soul’s lips moved even faster. Her eyes were vacant, her face turned toward Lyra, and her mouth kept forming the same shapes again and again.

Lyra stared at her lips, trying to make out each word.

“Lyra… Lyra…” she mouthed.

Lyra realized: she was calling her name!

Lyra shot up in bed. The Decoy Doll by her pillow had rolled to the corner of the bed, its two black bead eyes staring up at

her.

Outside, the sky was a dull gray, and the dorm was so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat.

She touched her face. There was no sweat, but her fingers were ice-cold.

“Just a dream… Lyra muttered to herself.

She leaned back against the headboard, closed her eyes, and tried to remember. The face of that soul was unfamiliar to her.

It wasn’t Red, Sister Jo, or Dr. Hanson. It wasn’t any ghost she’d ever seen before.

It was a stranger, calling her name from within the Ghost Wall.

Was this dream really mine? Or was someone trying to send me a message? Lyra wondered.

If it was someone else’s doing, Dream Butterfly should’ve kicked in and protected her automatically.

Unless it wasn’t an attack at all.

Lyra couldn’t get back to sleep. At dawn, she washed up and went to the cafeteria. She had just finished two breakfast rolls when her phone buzzed.

15

7

O

m

|||

O

<

14:11 Tue, Jul 7 M TEEA

Chapter 117

[Zoe sent her a link with a note: The news is out.]

Lyra tapped the link with one hand, still chewing the last bite of her roll.

It was a pinned announcement from the Defense Ministry’s official account:

[Nationwide Call for Rare Ghost-Hunting Books and Folk Traditions)

The post was short and to the point: if you have any ancient books, handwritten notes, or oral stories about exorcism, spirit communication, the three souls and seven spirits, or soul cultivation, please reach out to your local authorities.

Contact info for each province and a 24-hour hotline were listed below.

Lyra scrolled down and saw the comments section.

The top comment had 30,000 likes.

[Is the Defense Ministry recruiting ghost hunters now?]

The second one had 28,000 likes.

[My grandma’s coffin lid can’t hold her down anymore, she spent her whole life saying our house was haunted, nobody believed her, and now the government’s finally proved her right.]

The third one had 19,000 likes.

[So all those cultivation novels were actually real?]

Lyra kept scrolling, and the comments just got wilder and wilder.

[My ancestors were spirit mediums. Does that count? Need an answer ASAP, kinda urgent.]

[My grandpa left behind a whole box of yellow talisman paper covered in symbols I can’t even read. I almost used it to prop up my table.]

[You seriously thought about it? Do that now and you’re basically public enemy number one!]

[I’m cracking up! My mom found a handwritten book full of talismans. Turns out my great-grandma drew them, and we’ve been using it as scrap paper under a storage jar for years.]

[A storage jar?! Get that thing out, sis! That’s an ancient artifact!]

[I took it out, but it still smells sour.]

Lyra almost choked, wiped her mouth, and kept scrolling.

[I’m a Taoist priest at a temple. We’ve got a few old scriptures, but honestly, most of the stuff in them never really worked for us.]

There were hundreds of replies under that comment, so Lyra clicked in to take a look.

[Master, maybe it never worked before because there weren’t any ghosts around. Now that the world’s changed, maybe those scriptures will finally come in handy.]

[What if those scriptures only work under special circumstances?]

[You think this is some kind of game? Trying to ‘unlock’ ancient texts?]

[Damn right it is! It’s a game with billions of players all over the world!]

23

7

O

m

O<

Tue,

Chapter 117

Lyra glanced at the comment, then at the username BornToCuss. She smirked and thought, ‘Honestly, he has a point

She kept scrolling, past several screens, until she finally spotted a comment with hardly any likes, buried way down at the bottom.

The poster’s username was Mountain Kid.

There was a photo attached: a yellowed sheet of paper, with a corner missing, written in vertical lines of calligraphy, wobbly strokes, some faded, some dark.

Lyra zoomed in on the image, trying to make out each character one by one.

… There are three souls and seven spirits, and the Vital Flame is split into top, middle, and bottom…”

“… The upper flame protects the soul, the middle flame protects the spirit, and the lower flame protects the essence…”

…If all three flames go out, the living will be pulled into death…”

Lyra’s finger froze on the screen.

Spirit Flame, Soul Flame, Body Flame, the Vital Flame values.

The way it was described on this page matched the Vital Flame values system they were using, down to the last detail.

She took a screenshot and sent it to Lana.

Three seconds later, her phone rang.

“I saw it,” Lana said, speaking quickly.

“Lana, what’s on that paper lines up perfectly with our Vital Flame values panel,” Lyra said.

“The network team’s already reached out to the poster,” Lana replied.

“Don’t worry, the tech team’s set up keyword alerts. We won’t miss a single lead,” Lana added.

Lana hung up, and Lyra closed the call window before going back to scrolling through the comments.

Less than half an hour after the announcement went up, the comments had already hit 500,000, and shares topped a million. Every major platform was blowing up with it.

The hashtag (Defense Ministry Ghost Lore Call] shot straight to the top of the trending list.

People were already flooding the feeds with videos.

An old man sat in his village house, an old book laid out in front of him. The cover was so smoke-stained, the title was completely faded.

“This was passed down from my great-grandfather,” he said.

“My dad almost used it for firewood back then, but my mom stopped him. She said you never burn something passed down from your ancestors.”

He flipped to the inside pages. Most of the sheet was taken up by a hand-drawn outline of a human body, with red lines connecting several points, and the words “Spirit Pathways” scrawled beside it.

The comments under the video were all saying the same thing: [Sir, stop flipping! Call them! Call right now!]

Another video showed a middle-aged woman holding up a yellowed piece of paper, creased from being folded so many

35

7

O

m

14:11 Tue, Jul 7 MAA

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify