In an instant, Brian Cooper's body stiffened, every muscle tensed. He suddenly turned on his phone's flashlight and looked back.

The light illuminated about a meter behind him, but there was nothing there—only thick darkness.

Yet the footsteps were drawing closer and closer.

“It absolutely can’t be Ryan Morgan and Kevin Reed...” Brian Cooper's expression froze slightly.

No living person could follow him so precisely in the dark.

If it wasn’t Ryan Morgan and Kevin Reed, then it was almost certainly the ghost lingering in that bathroom.

“Hurry up.”

Feeling the footsteps getting closer, Brian Cooper felt a chill in his heart and hurriedly quickened his pace.

Chapter 8: The Strange Tree

Brian Cooper sped up and continued forward in the darkness.

“Step, step~!”

But the clear footsteps behind him remained steady, neither fast nor slow, following closely.

No matter how much Brian Cooper sped up, he could never shake off those footsteps. And as time passed, they only drew nearer.

At first, it seemed the footsteps were five or six meters behind him.

But soon, they felt only about three meters away.

As he walked further, the footsteps were almost just a meter behind.

Brian Cooper gripped his phone tightly in his palm, not daring to let the screen go dark, always ready to play that audio file at any moment.

If that ghost really attacked him again—

The knocking sound from that audio file was his only means of survival.

His whole body was tense, ready to fend off the ghost at any moment.

Yet things didn’t go as Brian Cooper expected. The footsteps behind him always stayed about a meter away—never leaving, never getting closer.

And no matter if Brian Cooper sped up or slowed down, the footsteps maintained that subtle distance.

“Could it be that thing is waiting for my phone battery to run out?”

Suddenly, Brian Cooper's face changed dramatically. Seeing his phone’s battery at less than ten percent, he grew even more uneasy.

If that was true, dying at the hands of the ghost was only a matter of time.

There was no way he could leave here alive.

He checked the phone screen again: 7% battery.

“If it drops below 5%, it could shut off at any time.”

Brian Cooper now regretted messing around on his phone during the day and draining the battery.

“But now’s not the time to think about that. If I don’t want to die here, I have to get out before my phone dies, or else...”

Gritting his teeth, he started to run.

He sprinted as fast as he could toward the direction of the dripping water sound.

“Step, step step~!”

The footsteps behind him followed relentlessly, impossible to shake off.

Brian Cooper could even feel the chill of cold air behind him, and a faint smell of corpse.

That ghost was like a shadow, pursuing him without rest.

As he ran with all his might, the sound of dripping water grew closer and closer.

But at that moment, his phone screen lit up automatically.

Battery: 5%.

A message appeared: To prevent automatic shutdown, please charge your phone promptly.

“Damn it.”

Brian Cooper panted, sweat streaming down his body. He glanced at the screen, panic rising in his heart.

Even though he was exhausted, he didn’t dare stop.

Stopping meant waiting for death.

He gritted his teeth and kept running.

Suddenly, a faint glimmer of light appeared ahead in the darkness.

The light was a faint red, standing out clearly in the dark—like a spark in the night, weak but especially eye-catching.

“That is...”

Brian Cooper's eyes lit up, his heart surging with joy, as if he’d seen hope for survival.

But just then, the phone in his hand vibrated, and the screen lit up again.

It displayed: Shutting down automatically.

Though there was still a bit of battery left, the phone had already started to force shut down.

And at the very moment the phone screen went completely dark—

Brian Cooper felt a wave of icy cold air envelop him from behind, the footsteps rapidly closing in... that thing instantly closed the one-meter gap.

Right behind him.

He couldn’t see in the darkness, but he could feel a cold, deathly pale hand reaching out, brushing past his ear, grabbing for his neck.

No matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t shake off that hand.

“Am I going to die here...” Brian Cooper could already feel those icy fingers touching the skin on his neck.

The chill, like ice, instantly spread through his whole body, raising goosebumps.

A faint corpse stench filled his nostrils.

There was nowhere left to run.

The red light in the darkness grew even more distinct.

Suddenly, the footsteps behind him stopped and vanished in an instant. The cold hand that had just touched Brian Cooper's neck suddenly froze, not tightening around him.

After running a few more steps, Brian Cooper sensed that thing behind him had pulled away.

It seemed the ghost was no longer chasing him.

“Just now, what... what was that...”