Nan Yue pondered for a moment. "Fifty percent. Currently, there are no clues pointing directly to Director Wu, but she is the only one we can infer it to be."
"It is not her."
A crisp voice broke into their conversation.
The two people who were discussing froze, then slowly turned in unison to look at the speaker.
"You... you can speak!!"
Zhu Xi Ning's eyes widened, and she looked at Bai La La with a somewhat dazed expression.
"I never said I could not speak."
Bai La La tilted her head. "I never said I was a deaf-mute."
Zhu Xi Ning was speechless. That seemed to be true.
"Then why did you..."
Zhu Xi Ning looked at the small notebook by Bai La La's hand. Bai La La rested her chin on her palm. "Oh, that. It is just a personal habit. Some scavengers are very annoying, and I do not want to waste my breath on them."
Nan Yue covered her head, feeling a bit amused.
"You did it on purpose, did you not?"
Bai La La looked at Nan Yue and suddenly narrowed her eyes into a smile. "Yes. Being a deaf-mute avoids a lot of trouble, and... there are benefits."
Nan Yue understood immediately. "The NPCs also took you for a deaf-mute?"
Bai La La smiled. "Yes."
She recounted the conversation between the two NPCs to Nan Yue in its entirety and added her own analysis at the end.
"So at least it is not those two, and it is definitely someone in the school."
"Is it possible it is Engineer Yang?"
Bai La La looked at Nan Yue. "Jiang Mu was killed by him."
Although Director Wu and the others were happy to see them run into trouble, they at least had not directly set a trap like Engineer Yang had.
"...I still feel like something is wrong."
But Nan Yue did not know exactly what felt wrong.
The person in charge must be in the photo—either it was a teacher who had already undergone a ghostly transformation but was not actually dead, or it was Engineer Yang.
While Nan Yue was thinking, the lights went out. Zhu Xi Ning sighed in the darkness.
"We will ask the others if they have any other clues tomorrow. The path through Director Wu is a dead end."
There was no other way, so the three of them could only go to bed.
Five minutes before this.
Guan Qing and Zhou Zhou had already finished inspecting most of the dormitories.
"Four or five rooms left."
Guan Qing silently cheered herself on.
"I feel like the Dormitory Inspection seems quite redundant right now."
Zhou Zhou spoke in a low voice beside her. "It does not provide any clues at all."
Guan Qing also felt something was wrong. She was not a newcomer anymore, and her intuition told her that the place with the most rules given by Director Wu should be the most dangerous.
But so far, there had been no problems.
As they spoke, they finished inspecting a few more rooms. Only the last one remained, and both of them breathed a sigh of relief.
Knock, knock, knock.
This time, the door did not answer as quickly as before. Zhou Zhou knocked again.
Creak.
The door opened. "The teachers are here for the Dormitory..."
Zhou Zhou stopped mid-sentence. Her intuition told her something was wrong, and her human instinct made her take a small step back.
"Inside the room... why is it dark?"
Guan Qing's voice beside her was trembling. They looked at each other and saw the fear in each other's eyes.
A dormitory would only be dark if the lights were out, and the lights only went out after the deadline.
But... that was impossible!
They had been keeping a close eye on the time; it could not have passed!
The two had no time to think. A dense, creeping fear and sense of danger screamed in the air. Without hesitation, they turned and ran.
"Ah!!!"
But Zhou Zhou was closer to the door, after all, and was a step too late.
Guan Qing glanced back and saw Zhou Zhou being dragged into the bottomless darkness behind the dormitory door.
Zhou Zhou's lower body was dragged into the darkness, while her hands desperately gripped the door frame.
She screamed piercingly, pleading with Guan Qing for help.
"Save me... please..."
Guan Qing gritted her teeth and ran without looking back.
She did not know how long Zhou Zhou held on, nor did she have the time to feel guilty. She ran toward her own dormitory as hard as she could, the sound of her footsteps and panting echoing through the corridor.
Guan Qing became more and more desperate because the distance that was not originally very far now seemed impossible to cross.
She was constantly circling in the corridor.
A ghost loop.
Guan Qing did not dare to stop. No matter what that thing was that had just snatched Zhou Zhou away, she could not handle it.
A sweet, metallic taste of blood rose in her throat, yet she continued to run with all her might.
"Huff... puff..."
"Huff... puff..."
Guan Qing was drenched in sweat. Her brain, numbed by fear, finally sensed something unusual.
She seemed to... hear two sets of breathing.
"Huff... puff..."
This was hers. She had been running for nearly ten minutes, relying entirely on willpower to persist.
"Huff... puff..."
This sound overlapped perfectly with her own breathing. It was impossible to distinguish without listening carefully.
But...
This was not her breathing!
The sound she heard did not come from her. It was half a second slower than her own breath, and... there was a heavy trace of imitation in it.
It was as if... something was extremely close to her, mimicking her breathing.
Guan Qing slowly came to a halt, but she was still breathing heavily due to exhaustion.
"Huff... puff..."
There was no mistake. That thing... was mimicking her.
Her eyes were full of despair. Finally, she turned her head slightly and discovered that at some point, a child had appeared on her shoulder.
The child was lying on her back, its head resting on her shoulder. Its face was pale and stiff, and its blood-red eyes stared at her without blinking.
The child's bright red mouth split into a bizarre smile. Combined with its expression, one could see a malicious excitement mixed within.
"Huff... puff..."
The child's eyes were fixed on Guan Qing as it grinned, mimicking her breathing.
"Huff... puff..."
.
Nan Yue was woken up the next day by the sound of knocking. The person knocking was Zhao Zhenzhen, whose eyes were completely bloodshot.
"Gone, they are all gone..."
Zhao Zhenzhen's eyes were wide when she opened the door. Her words were vague, giving Nan Yue a start.
She thought a corpse had come to the door.
Although she did not have a good impression of Zhao Zhenzhen, she knew something had definitely happened given her appearance.
"What is gone?"
Zhao Zhenzhen frantically picked at her hands. "Gone. Three people from the dormitory are gone."
Nan Yue's heart sank. Since Shi Yu's death, Zhao Zhenzhen had moved into the dormitory with Zhou Zhou and the others.
"What did you say? Zhou Zhou and the others did not return from the Dormitory Inspection?!"
Zhao Zhenzhen nodded frantically. "No, no, they did not come back."
"They did not come back, and Xie Qi Qi was gone this morning too."
Zhao Zhenzhen repeated some unimportant words, looking very neurotic. Her behavior caused the other scavengers to gather around.
"How could it be... three people?"
Xu Yuan was somewhat despairing. Previously, accidents happened one by one. How could three people have met with an accident last night?
"Split up and search!"
Leaving those words behind, Nan Yue ran toward the classroom.
Based on Bai La La's drawing class, this was the only confirmed location of death.
There, they found Xie Qi Qi's corpse.
Xie Qi Qi stood stiffly on the podium, her body pinned with countless compasses and triangle rulers.
Those rulers were very blunt, and it was unknown how they had been thrust into her body.
At first glance, she looked like a giant scarecrow, her body covered in teaching tools.
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