Chapter 67.2: First High School (26)

Ruan Qing, lost in thought, lowered his gaze and subconsciously picked up the water cup on the table. However, in the next second, his heart skipped a beat as he threw the cup away directly.

Because the reflection in the water cup once again showed ‘him’ smiling at him, just like before.

The cup was made of glass and shattered into pieces when Ruan Qing threw it, hitting the ground.

The sound of the glass cup shattering was loud enough for Su Zhiwei, who was still on the phone outside the French window, to hear.

Su Zhiwei raised the phone and looked back at Ruan Qing, furrowing his brows slightly. After speaking a few more words on the phone, he hung up and then pushed open the French window and walked in.

Fortunately, the players knew they couldn’t open the file cabinet and had already returned to their original positions. They were discussing their next steps using their phones, so when Su Zhiwei looked over, they weren’t in a hurry. They just silently put away their phones.

Ruan Qing, on the other hand, sat on the sofa, his gaze lowered, biting his lower lip tightly as if he had been frightened.

But Ruan Qing wasn’t actually scared; he was simply concealing his emotions beneath his lowered gaze.

Because he... could read lips.

And when Su Zhiwei looked over just now, the first thing he said was,

“—Did you scare him again?“

“I’ve told you countless times not to scare him.“

“It’s almost time.“

Su Zhiwei... indeed knew the monster in the mirror.

Not only did he know it, but Su Zhiwei was highly likely using the students of the entire First High School to nourish the monster.

Almost time for what?

Was it almost time... to succeed in nurturing it?

Not good, it’s really not good. A sense of unease welled up in Ruan Qing’s heart.

In fact, the original owner had no intention of attending this First High School at first. After all, he was unruly and had poor grades. It was under the persuasion of Su Zhiwei that his parents sent the original owner to the First High School.

Originally... didn’t Su Zhiwei chose the original owner as the host for the monster from the beginning?

Clearly, they couldn’t afford to take risks now. It had already been the third day since entering the instance. Taking into account the time it would take to clear the instance and Su Zhiwei’s statement of ‘it’s getting closer,’ at the latest, something irreversible was bound to happen by the tenth day.

Perhaps even earlier.

Once the monster came out, they probably wouldn’t survive for more than ten days. The only way to clear the instance might be to submit the answer to the main task.

So they didn’t have much time to waste. They must find out the answer quickly, or else they would truly die in the instance.

Another reason why Ruan Qing was initially reluctant to take risks was because he wasn’t sure if he could find any useful clues here in Su Zhiwei’s office. After all, there were other avenues to explore, such as checking the name lists, gathering information about the school, and accessing the archive room, so there was no need to take risks here.

But now it’s obvious that Su Zhiwei and that monster had some kind of connection. The possibility of finding clues around him was definitely high.

In other words, even if they had to gamble, they must obtain the key to the file cabinet.

“What happened? Are you hurt?” Su Zhiwei pushed open the French window and hurriedly walked up to Ruan Qing. While speaking, he reached out and pulled Ruan Qing’s hand, checking if he was injured.

There was genuine concern in his tone, without a hint of pretense. It seemed he was genuinely worried about Ruan Qing.

It’s just unclear whether he was worried about this body being injured or simply worried about Ruan Qing as a person.

Ruan Qing felt that the former possibility was more likely. He directly pulled his hand back, with no change in his expression from before. “I’m fine.”

Su Zhiwei glanced at the broken glass on the floor that was obviously thrown away. It was indeed unlikely that he was injured, so he retracted his hand directly. With a meaningful tone, he spoke, “Why are you so careless? Glass cups are still dangerous. If you get cut, it’ll hurt.”

Ruan Qing ignored Su Zhiwei’s words directly and casually glanced at him.

Su Zhiwei still had the appearance of a refined gentleman, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, a white shirt, and suit pants. He looked clean and scholarly, giving no indication that he would do something like raising a monster using an entire high school.

Ruan Qing’s gaze casually swept over Su Zhiwei’s trousers. As soon as he opened the office door, he put the keys into the left pocket of his trousers.

The summer trousers were close-fitting, and the keys were attached together in a cluster, adding some weight. It would be difficult to take them away unnoticed.

Unless... Su Zhiwei took off his pants.

Under what circumstances would someone take off their pants? Ruan Qing glanced around with the corner of his eye and finally focused his gaze on a bottle of ink on the office desk.

It was evident that Su Zhiwei liked to write with a fountain pen. The bottle of ink was already halfway used up, but the remaining half would be sufficient.

Now the question was... how could he openly pour the ink on him?

Perhaps because Ruan Qing ignored Su Zhiwei for too long, Su Zhiwei sighed helplessly and spoke with a sincere tone, “You are already in high school. Why are you still so immature?”

Su Zhiwei had the appearance of someone scolding Ruan Qing for his own good. “Look at your classmate, Xiao Shiyi. He is the same age as you, performs well academically, and has a stable and reliable personality. How can brother and sister-in-law trust you with the company?”

Ruan Qing remained silent for a moment. This was probably the standard speech about other people’s children being more outstanding. It was something that rebellious teenagers couldn’t stand to hear.

Moreover, it was said in front of the original owner’s lackeys. If it was the original owner, he would definitely explode.

It seemed that he didn’t need to find an excuse. The original owner was simply arrogant to the extreme, and it wasn’t surprising for him to pour ink on his own uncle.

So Ruan Qing angrily stood up, walked to the side of the desk, picked up the ink, and threw it at Su Zhiwei, coldly saying, “You better take care of yourself first. It’s not your turn to lecture me.”

Su Zhiwei, seeing something coming at him, reacted quickly and elegantly sidestepped, so Ruan Qing could only watch the ink splash onto nothing.

Ruan Qing: “...”

...That’s why he really hated people who were skilled and had fast reflexes.

Ruan Qing silently looked at the ground stained black by the shattered ink bottle, contemplating the possibility of charging and knocking Su Zhiwei into the ink.

However, with Su Zhiwei’s skills, he would probably miss and end up falling into the ink himself.

Moreover, there were glass shards from the broken ink bottle in the ink. If he fell on it, it would definitely pierce into his flesh.

Ruan Qing only took less than a second to think before giving up directly. He then walked out of the office, completely ignoring Su Zhiwei’s shouts from behind.

Several players and Mo Ran, and Xiao Shiyi immediately chased after Ruan Qing. The entire office was left with only Su Zhiwei.

Su Zhiwei walked slowly to the front of the desk and lowered his gaze, looking at the documents that were slightly off angle on the table. A faint laughter echoed in the office.

Su Zhiwei seemed to be in a somewhat pleased mood. He picked up the photo frame placed openly on the desk.

Then, in a calm and unhurried manner, he took down the photo inside, tore it into several pieces, and threw them directly into the nearby shredder. Afterward, he turned on the shredder.

The torn and fragmented photo was slowly shredded, and the parts that hadn’t been shredded yet could vaguely be seen as a photo of two people.

One of them was Su Zhiwei, and the other...

***

After Ruan Qing walked out, he expressionlessly leaned against the wall at the corner of the corridor. The group almost passed by when they chased after him.

Mo Ran looked at Ruan Qing, who had no expression, and cautiously spoke, “Brother Su, are you alright?”

Xiao Shiyi also spoke, “Brother Su, don’t take it to heart. Actually, you are much better than me. I’m just a bookworm.”

“But you know, in the minds of those elder people like the principal, grades represent everything. That’s why they think I’m better than you, but in reality, grades don’t really matter.”

The rest of the group nodded in agreement.

Ruan Qing didn’t need comforting; he completely ignored the words of consolation from the two and looked directly at Xiao Shiyi. “Where is the archive room in our school?”

Ruan Qing’s tone didn’t carry any trace of anger. Xiao Shiyi was slightly taken aback but immediately spoke. “Come with me.”

Several players also thought that the archive room might have some information, so they all followed along.

The archive room was locked, and it seemed that the staff didn’t work on weekends.

Just as the other players were thinking about finding other ways to get in, the short-haired player refused to give up and took out his wire again, poking it into the keyhole.

This time, it quickly opened.

The short-haired player glanced at the others and was the first to enter the archive room.

The others followed suit, and the person at the back gently closed the door.

The side of the archive room facing here had some backlighting, so even with the bright sun outside, it was still a bit dim, but it didn’t affect visibility.

The archive room was very large, almost filled with all the materials from the past hundred years since the establishment of the First High School. It was almost comparable to a small library.

Upon seeing this, everyone immediately split up and started searching. Some people looked for information about the students who graduated from the school, while others searched for materials from ten years ago.

There was just too much information about the First High School, and after searching for over an hour, they still hadn’t found any useful information.

There was a data sheet for the graduating students, which also included contact numbers. The players tried calling some of them, and some calls went through while others didn’t.

It was understandable that some calls couldn’t go through since those were high school numbers and they were probably changed a long time ago. As for the calls that did go through, the players pretended to be classmates and asked about the situations of other classmates. No one had gone missing or died.

Everyone seemed to be doing well.

Although this was the case, Xiao Shiyi still felt that something was off. Even though there were no cases of death or disappearance, were the students who graduated from the First High School really the same ones who entered the school in the first place?

Since the players were not searching for information about the recent graduates, as they realized that starting with the graduates did not provide any significant leads, they decided to shift their focus to the materials from more than a decade ago.

Everyone focused on the data from over a decade ago, picking out any slightly abnormal information.

Mo Ran and Xiao Shiyi also joined in.

Although they were fortunate enough to leave that eerie examination room, it didn’t mean they were safe. After all, none of them had forgotten the terrifying presence that had appeared in the end.

Moreover, the attitude of those students and teachers towards Ruan Qing at that time, as well as the indelible white candle, all indicated Ruan Qing’s uniqueness.

Clearly, he was being targeted.

If they couldn’t find a way to deal with it, the teenager before their eyes would eventually become someone else.

Ruan Qing searched for a while and finally found a list of faculty members from over a decade ago. He took a photo of the list with his phone.

The faculty list of the First High School was publicly available, and by comparing it, one could determine who was still teaching at the school.

“I think I found a newspaper article about the First High School from over a decade ago.” The short-haired player emerged from the corner, holding up a newspaper with an excited expression.

The article recorded the mysterious fire that occurred at the First High School.

The fire broke out in Class 1-1, during an ongoing exam. Suddenly, a massive fire engulfed the classroom, resulting in the deaths of fifty-three people. Among them were all fifty-two students of Class 1-1 and the math teacher who was also the class teacher.

The police investigated for a long time but couldn’t find the cause of the fire. It seemed as if it had ignited out of nowhere, making very creepy.

After all, in a typical fire, even if people were scared, they would struggle to run towards the windows, even if it started burning from the entrance.

But the students of Class 1-1 didn’t do that. They seemed to have just sat there, foolishly allowing the fire to consume them. The police felt a chill as they surveyed the scene.

Since they couldn’t find the cause after searching for a long time, they ultimately classified the fire as an accident.

 

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