Chapter 52
Chapter 52
Qi Jiajia took a piece of paper from inside her clothes and handed it over. It had been tucked into an exercise book, crumpled, then flattened again. Several words were written in pencil.
“So scary. That dream was so scary. In that laboratory… tap, tap…”
Someone had scribbled over the paper, and the pencil marks were faint. Most of the words were invisible, while those that remained made little sense.
“Thank you.” Cheng Miao thanked Qin Musong. He shrugged and remained silent as she passed the note to Chen Yu and the others gathering around.
Qi Jiajia wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve and returned the jump rope. Cheng Miao inspected it. Three uses remained. “No danger?”
Qi Jiajia shrugged. “It didn’t work.”
When Qi Jiajia and Qin Musong reached the classroom, Brother Zhang’s bloodied corpse was still impaled on the chair. The room stood empty. Students’ laughter drifted through the windows from the athletic field, but it seemed to come from another world, creating an eerie sense of separation.
Qin Musong unzipped his leather jacket and drew the handgun tucked at his waist.
Qi Jiajia’s eyes lit as she studied it. Qin Musong glanced back at her. “Children aren’t allowed to play with guns.”
Her face darkened. She reached out, intending to shove him directly into the classroom. Who knew what taboos waited inside? If he insisted on treating her like a child, he could die first.
Her fingers nearly touched his clothes before she remembered that Cheng Miao hated people who harmed the innocent. Her hand stopped just in time.
Oblivious to the little girl’s attempted betrayal, Qin Musong prepared to force his way inside. Qi Jiajia suddenly darted past him into the room.
His pupils contracted. Before he could stop her, Qi Jiajia began strolling leisurely between the desks and muttering, “I should come back for my textbook. I can’t waste time. I need to study hard.”
Qin Musong stared in confusion.
Qi Jiajia continued talking as she wandered. Outside the door, Qin Musong remained tense, his gaze fixed on her like a leopard ready to spring.
After circling the room, Qi Jiajia discovered a stack of student exercises on the class monitor’s desk.
She pretended to search for her own work while talking to herself, flipped through every book, and found the note.
Before leaving, she grabbed a random exercise book from the pile. A convincing performance required commitment. If the rule demanded good students, Qi Jiajia did not mind playing a child who loved learning.
As she reached the doorway and appeared seconds from escaping safely, both of them relaxed slightly.
Then the hinge at the top of the classroom door seemed to loosen by itself. The entire door silently toppled toward Qi Jiajia.
“Move!” Qin Musong barked, reaching for her with one hand.
Qi Jiajia reacted instantly. Qin Musong caught her left arm, and she turned with the force of his pull. In the next instant, her right hand had already lashed one end of the jump rope toward the falling door.
The rope slapped uselessly against the floor. Qi Jiajia frowned and allowed Qin Musong to drag her behind him.
As soon as she cleared his body, he raised his handgun toward the classroom door. Three sharp shots rang out. The door crashed harmlessly to the floor with a deafening bang.
Teachers drawn by the sound stared at the half-fallen doorway. Qin Musong had already concealed the weapon. He invented an excuse and slipped downstairs with Qi Jiajia.
“Even if that door had hit me, it couldn’t have killed me. At worst, I would’ve been injured.” Qi Jiajia rotated her left arm. Qin Musong was so strong that he had nearly dislocated it when he pulled her away.
Cheng Miao examined the jump rope again, then the note returned to her hand. “You did find a loophole, but not the whole thing.”
Qi Jiajia stared at her with stormy feline eyes. Only two things truly mattered to her: Cheng Miao and the Game.
She had believed she found the loophole. Why had the door still fallen? She could not understand.
Cheng Miao asked Qi Jiajia to show her the book taken from the desk. It bore an unfamiliar girl’s name, not Qi Jiajia’s.
“We’re only here to investigate. Our names can’t possibly appear on the students’ books. You took someone else’s, so your excuse wasn’t convincing enough.”
The rule had not tried to kill Qi Jiajia. It had merely delivered a warning, one written in blood.
“Then your Items didn’t activate?” Once Cheng Miao knew Qi Jiajia was safe, her attention returned to that detail.
Qi Jiajia touched the hair clip on her head. “Neither worked. My clip can block one attack from a ghost or monster, and it didn’t activate either.”
Qin Musong, silent until now, spoke. “Same here. My handgun targets supernatural entities. It had no effect.”
Cheng Miao glanced at the ash-gray barrel visible at his waist and felt deeply envious. His Item was a handgun. Hers was a dagger woven from hemp rope. It was unfair.
“Does that mean a ghost really isn’t killing people?” Chen Yu exclaimed. Freckles, standing beside her, remained unusually calm as she analyzed the situation.
“I thought triggering a rule removed the ghost’s restraints and allowed it to kill. Now it seems the rule itself may be killing people. Is that possible?”
Qin Musong considered this before nodding. His every motion radiated masculine confidence. Although he was somewhat older, Chen Yu and Freckles still blushed.
Cheng Miao appreciated the sight too, but she was too embarrassed to show it. With a cold expression and an inward flutter, she listened to his explanation.
“It’s possible, but rare. I’ve only encountered it once, and I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.”
Qin Musong crouched, picked up a branch, and drew on the ground. “When rules kill directly, the instance is usually centered on pattern recognition. The rules have little connection to the setting, are extremely difficult to discover, and must be tested with one life after another.”
He looked at the deaths of Xiao Zhao and Brother Zhang that he had sketched, then raised his eyes to Cheng Miao. “This instance is called Tan Tao’s School Life, and the rules are obvious. They’re easy to connect with Tan Tao himself. I don’t think this is merely a pattern-finding instance.”
Cheng Miao nodded thoughtfully. “So although a ghost isn’t doing the killing, the deaths still point to something we haven’t found.”
Old Yu, who had been listless nearby, perked up. “Now we know ghosts aren’t killing anyone. We don’t need to worry about vengeful spirits attacking. We only have to obey the rules.”
“It won’t be that simple.” Chen Yu’s features were ordinary, but she had a youthful air especially suited to the school setting. “Many actions are instinctive. Brother Zhang must have encountered something that made him lose control.”
As silence settled again, Lin Zhu squeezed beside Cheng Miao. “I found something.”
“Tan Tao originally belonged to the liberal-arts class. His grades were good enough for either track, but he transferred into the science class halfway through. Ever since, the two classes have maintained a strange rivalry.”