Chapter 59
Chapter 59
“Ma Yuan, do you know any gossip about our Dean?” Cheng Miao’s voice woke Ma Yuan. He was about to lose his temper, but when he met her dark brown eyes, glistening as if filmed with water, all his anger abruptly vanished.
“What kind of gossip?”
“I heard the Dean treated Tan Tao especially well. No one seems to know why.” Cheng Miao sounded casual, but her gaze never left Ma Yuan’s face.
Sure enough, Tan Tao’s best friend froze for a split second and looked away before recovering. “There’s nothing to it. Tan Tao had excellent grades. Of course teachers liked him.”
Cheng Miao was about to press him when the athletic young man announced that class was about to start and he still needed to use the restroom. Then he ran off.
As a student athlete, Ma Yuan did not return once he left. He clearly knew something. Cheng Miao had to search the Dean’s office during the long break, so she could only ask Qiao Jin and the others to track him down.
Cheng Miao took Lin Zhu and Qi Jiajia to the Dean’s office. Only after opening the door did they discover that the Dean had converted it into a private dorm room. She must have worked long hours and often slept here.
Qi Jiajia was small enough to avoid notice, so she stood guard at the door while Cheng Miao and Lin Zhu slipped inside.
The office was sparsely furnished. A single bed and bookcase occupied an inner room, while the desk outside was covered in teaching materials.
Every cabinet was locked. Cheng Miao had no time to find someone who could pick locks. She drew her dagger and hacked at one of them.
After its latest upgrade, the Fishbone Dagger had gained a proper blade and become exceptionally sharp. Sawing through a lock posed little difficulty.
While Cheng Miao worked on the lock, Lin Zhu searched the room for clues. Then he suddenly tilted his head, sensing that he had overlooked something.
After looking around again, all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his head.
In a corner he had already searched, a pair of black high heels sat in perfect silence.
Cheng Miao followed his gaze. She picked up one shoe by the heel and tapped it against the floor, imitating the sound of a person walking.
Tap… tap…
The crisp clicks sounded sinister in the cramped room. Lin Zhu bit his lip. “That’s the sound. There’s no mistaking it!”
Those clicking heels had come from nowhere, yet inspired an inexplicable terror.
The others had been so shaken by the nightmare scenes that few remembered the high heels that had announced the nightmare’s beginning.
Lin Zhu remembered.
For the past two days, he had listened carefully for the same footsteps wherever he went.
Students were forbidden from wearing high heels to school. Most teachers were also required to avoid them while teaching so the noise would not disrupt their classes.
A few teachers wore shoes with heels, but those produced dull thuds, nothing as crisp as this.
After hearing Lin Zhu’s explanation, Cheng Miao returned the shoe to its original position. “I’ll inspect the ritual traces Qiao Jin mentioned in the inner room. You keep working on the lock.”
Inside, she found a circular array painted in blood on the floor beside the bed.
The blood had dried until it looked carved into the floor.
Cheng Miao knew nothing about ritual arrays, but she had seen plenty of similar scenes in movies and stories. This did not resemble an array meant to summon ghosts or target a particular victim.
The circle was completely bare. There were no photographs, no hair or nail clippings, not even ashes left from anything burned.
Cheng Miao studied the circular design. What had the Dean used this array for?
Lin Zhu called from the outer office. The lock was open.
Contrary to their expectations, the cabinet held nothing bloody or shameful. It contained only a thick stack of documents, all concerning Tan Tao.
They recorded what Tan Tao did each day, whom he spoke to, and how he performed on his exams.
The documents appeared to have been reconstructed after the fact rather than recorded in real time. Many dates did not align, and some entries were vague and muddled.
They still showed that Tan Tao had indeed been a diligent, obedient, and kind student.
He exercised strict control over himself but never forced the same standards on others.
Notably, Tan Tao had argued with his former liberal-arts classmates when he transferred.
They believed he had switched because he thought their class was inferior to the science class. Their class was part of the honors track as well, and its proud students refused to accept that science ranked above liberal arts.
Even so, the liberal-arts students had done nothing extreme. Beyond a few sarcastic remarks, they had merely treated the science class as their rival in every competition.
They were proud, hotheaded teenagers, but they had never caused serious trouble.
Cheng Miao was still examining the documents when she heard Qi Jiajia give their code signal outside. Someone was coming.
She did not dare remove anything from the office. She shoved the papers into a drawer at random and hurried out with Lin Zhu.
They had barely locked the door when a male teacher came downstairs. Seeing the three of them outside the Dean’s office, he stopped and asked suspiciously, “What are you doing here?”
Cheng Miao scratched her head and met his gaze with clear eyes. “We needed to speak to the Dean, but she didn’t answer when we knocked. Do you know where she went?”
Understanding dawned on the teacher. “She took leave for personal business. I don’t know where she went. Maybe she went home.”
He raised his wrist and checked the time. “Class is about to start. You should hurry back.”
Cheng Miao’s gaze sharpened. She thanked him and immediately left the academic building.
Before Lin Zhu or Qi Jiajia could ask what she had discovered, Cheng Miao pulled the Swift Running Shoes from her backpack.
“Qi Jiajia, get on.” Seeing Cheng Miao’s grave expression, Qi Jiajia asked no questions and climbed onto her back. Cheng Miao grabbed Lin Zhu with her free hand and managed only one warning: “Hold on.”
The instant she finished speaking, Lin Zhu felt his entire body leave the ground. The scenery streamed backward as if he were aboard a bullet train.
Before the icy wind could choke him, the three of them arrived outside the science classroom.
“What…?”
Ring! Ring! Ring!
The class bell sounded. Lin Zhu’s and Qi Jiajia’s expressions changed at the same time.
Their twenty-minute break had ended after only fifteen minutes.
If Cheng Miao had not reacted so quickly, none of them would have returned before class. And then…
Cheng Miao pushed the two shaken students toward their seats and motioned for them to pay attention before returning to her own desk.
Ma Yuan still had not returned. Even Cheng Miao did not dare let her mind wander during class. She listened and took notes more diligently than she ever had as a real student.
The teacher ran overtime and continued straight into the next period. When class finally ended, the science-class players immediately surrounded Cheng Miao.
“The bell rang early. We were terrified you wouldn’t make it back.” Chen Yu’s face was still white with lingering fear.
She and Freckles had wanted to join the search and had been unhappy when Cheng Miao refused. Now, she realized that if they had gone, an “experienced” player like her with almost no Items and a complete newcomer like Freckles would both have died there.
“How did you know the bell would ring early?” Qi Jiajia sat down beside her. Despite her willful, vicious temper, she genuinely wanted to improve.
Cheng Miao was the only person she admired, so she obediently absorbed every lesson Cheng Miao could teach her.
Cheng Miao loosened her hair and tied it again. With the elastic between her teeth, she said, “I didn’t know. But something was wrong when that teacher warned us class was about to start. We should have had about eight minutes left. His warning made no sense under the normal schedule.”
“The only possibility was that the schedule had changed, and his warning was our sole chance to survive. Better to waste an Item than gamble with your life.”
Cheng Miao knew Qi Jiajia’s approach to instances was reckless and unrestrained. But that only worked when she had already gathered enough information. Otherwise, it was nothing more than suicide.
Qi Jiajia nodded without arguing.
“Did you find anything, Cheng Miao?” Freckles asked sheepishly. She felt that she had contributed nothing all day and merely received clues the veterans had risked their lives to obtain. Unlike the auntie in the liberal-arts class, she did not take other people’s help for granted.
Cheng Miao saw through her guilt and reassured her.
There was no shame in an inexperienced newcomer relying on veterans. As long as Freckles never stopped thinking for herself, she would eventually be capable of standing on her own.
Before Cheng Miao could share what they had found, familiar running footsteps and sobs erupted in the corridor, mixed with a girl’s scream.
“Someone’s dead! Someone else is dead!”