Chapter 226
Chapter 226
Perhaps it was also because almost nothing major had happened over the past year.
Life had been peaceful and uneventful.
At most, while helping Old Cao carry coffins, I would encounter the occasional corpse that had undergone a transformation–but they were all merely at the “walking corpse” level. A single Corpse-Suppressing Talisman dealt with them easily.
As a result, I had grown somewhat lax mentally, and my sense of danger was no longer as strong as before.
Only after hearing Roundy say tonight that some change might be coming to Lianghe District Middle School did I reflect on myself a little.
I returned to the coffin shop.
There were no coffins to carry or any other jobs that night. I chatted with Old Cao and Wang Hu for a while, then went to sleep.
The next day, I went to school.
I was chatting with Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin along the way, and we had just walked through the school gates.
We were about to turn right and cross the athletic field toward the classroom buildings.
Suddenly!
Woo-oo, woo-oo, woo-oo…
The shrill, piercing wail of police sirens abruptly sounded behind us.
“What’s going on?!”
I turned around in surprise.
Two police cars drove straight through the school gates.
Then they followed the slope behind us all the way uphill.
The Sichuan-Chongqing region is mountainous–especially Yu City, which is also known as the Mountain City.
Lianghe District Middle School was therefore built against a mountainside. Unlike schools in many towns on the plains, the entire campus was neither level nor laid out on one flat plane, but arranged in tiers like steps.
After entering the gates, a right turn led to a large athletic field, with the Second Classroom Building beside it.
Directly ahead of the gates was a steep slope. At the top lay the middle athletic field on the next tier up.
The First Classroom Building stood east of the middle field. On its right, an elevated corridor connected it to the Second Classroom Building beside the large field. On its left stood a separate comprehensive building that housed the school administrators’ offices, lecture halls, multimedia classrooms, and so on.
On the west side of the middle field were the school auditorium and cafeteria. An outdoor sports ground adjoined them, where the school held one sports meet each spring and autumn.
Another slope led from the middle field to the tier above, where there was a small athletic field. The dormitories for boarding students stood there–the boys’ building on the left and the girls’ on the right, two buildings in all.
That was the overall layout of Lianghe District Middle School. Built along the mountain, it had three tiers: upper, middle, and lower.
There were five large buildings, four athletic fields, one cafeteria, and one auditorium!
It was quite remarkable, and probably difficult for people from the plains to imagine…
The sheer number of students in the town back then would likewise be hard to imagine twenty years later, in the present day, when population growth had slowed to a crawl.
But back to the matter at hand.
The police cars drove through the gates and continued uphill. When the students nearby saw them, surprise covered their faces and heated discussion broke out.
“What’s going on? Why are police cars driving into the school?”
“It’s kind of scary. What could someone at our school have done that needed the police?”
“No idea… but morning self-study hasn’t started yet. News will definitely get around after a couple of classes, right?”
“Come on! There’s still some time before morning self-study. Let’s follow them and take a look.”
“Okay! Hurry and catch up.”
People are curious by nature and love watching a commotion.
That was especially true of someone like Wang Dachun, who was always eager to see chaos unfold.
He grabbed my hand and started running up the steep slope.
“Boss! Hurry! Morning self-study doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes. We’ve got time to see what’s happening. Zeng Jin, you come too!”
“Let go! I can run on my own. You’re only slowing me down like this.”
As I spoke, I shook Wang Dachun off and sped ahead using the light-footwork steps of internal martial arts.
In an instant, I left every other student behind and nearly caught up with the police cars ahead…
“Holy crap, who’s that? How can he run so fast?”
“Do you even need to ask? It has to be Wu Zhong. Doesn’t he win the track events at the sports meet every year?”
“And he breaks our school’s records in both the sprints and long-distance races every time.”
“The high-jump record too.”
“Oh, it’s Wu Zhong? Then never mind.”
Hearing the students behind me, I found it rather amusing.
That was right!
Apart from my rather ordinary performance at the autumn sports meet during my first semester of seventh grade, ever since turbid qi entered my body and I began training hard in martial arts, certain events at the sports meets had basically become my personal showcase.
In particular, on Chinese New Year’s Eve half a year ago, I had finally succeeded in drawing pure qi into my Niwan Palace as well, bringing my pure and turbid qi into balance. My martial arts had advanced another step, and I had already reached the peak of overt force!
At last month’s summer sports meet, my times had nearly left the PE teachers holding the stopwatches speechless. After that, they pestered me every day, hoping I would apply to a sports school.
Fortunately, my academic grades also held steady at first in the year. Once I refused and the principal reprimanded them, they stopped pestering me.
I watched the police cars climb the first slope and reach the middle athletic field. They did not stop, but continued driving upward…
Oh?
Something occurred to me.
“Are they heading toward the boarding students’ dormitories?”
Sure enough!
The two cars drove onto the small athletic field at the highest point of the school and stopped in front of the boys’ dormitory.
Several school administrators and teachers were waiting there, their expressions tense and anxious.
As soon as the car doors opened, they hurried forward and seemed to begin speaking urgently.
The people who got out of the second car began putting up yellow police tape, cordoning off and blocking the entrance in front of the boys’ dormitory.
Clearly, no one was allowed inside!
I was the first student to arrive, so naturally I was stopped outside.
“Stop there, student! You can’t go any farther.”
A stern-faced young police officer stopped me and told me not to cross the tape.
Over the past two years or so, every aspect of society had developed rapidly. It would be no exaggeration to say that things changed by the day!
The same was true of Lianghe Town Police Station.
Compared with the time of the hanging deaths caused by the Killer Demon Tree nearly two years earlier, the station now had police cars and quite a few more officers.
“Oh, all right. Officer, may I ask… what happened here?”
“We can’t say right now, and you don’t need to know. Go back and focus on your classes.”
The young officer on guard frowned as he spoke and waved me away.
Of course, I did not dare force my way in.
But I did not leave either.
I stood there and focused my thoughts, circulating the qi in my dantian through my meridians and up into my eyes. Then I raised my head and looked at the boys’ dormitory ahead.
At once, faint wisps of gray vapor appeared before my eyes.
“Is that death qi? A student died in the dormitory!”
My heart jolted.
No wonder there was such a commotion.
Two police cars had driven straight onto the school grounds.
Someone had actually died!
After any living creature dies, it leaves behind a faint aura of death nearby. By using talisman arts or another magical technique to gather qi in one’s eyes, that aura becomes visible.
“Boss, whew… you ran way too fast! You didn’t even wait for us.”
Wang Dachun was the second to arrive.
This fellow had been physically gifted since childhood. Otherwise, before I forced him to become a “good student,” he would not have lost so few of the fights he got into.
I shrugged.
“Weren’t you the one who wanted to see what was happening? I came ahead to look for you guys. But as you can see, we can’t get in.”
Wang Dachun glanced at the yellow police tape and the young officer standing there, looking somewhat disappointed.
Then he leaned close to my ear and whispered,
“Boss, this has to be a major case! Someone didn’t die, did they?”
Uh…
He guessed it in one try.
I nodded slightly, then frowned and said in a low voice,
“That’s right. Someone probably died inside the dormitory. I can see faint death qi seeping out of the building.”
“Holy crap! Someone really did die!”
Wang Dachun covered his mouth in fright.
Then concern appeared on his face.
“A student died in the boys’ dormitory? Sigh… we’re all schoolmates. I hope it wasn’t anyone from our class or someone we know. That would make it even sadder.”
Before long, more and more students who had come to watch the commotion arrived.
Naturally, the yellow police tape kept them all outside, where everyone talked over one another.
Zeng Jin, of course, learned what had happened from me as well.
He ventured a cautious guess.
“Brother Wu, Brother Chun, do you think someone in the dorm got into an argument, then started fighting and lost control, and hit the other person too hard, and then…”
I shook my head and replied softly,
“It doesn’t seem likely. If that were what happened, the dead person would certainly harbor deep resentment. The death qi would definitely contain a fierce, baleful aura. It wouldn’t be this faint. But simply observing the qi can’t tell me exactly what happened. To learn the truth, I would have to visit the scene or at least get close to the body.”
As long as I could make contact with the body, I could use the soul-summoning method to call back the dead person’s soul.
After a few questions, I would know exactly what had happened.
Wait!
I suddenly remembered what Roundy had said the night before.
It had wondered whether something was wrong with the feng shui pattern of Lianghe District Middle School.
Could that be connected to this incident?
Encountering this as soon as I arrived at school had made me completely forget that I needed to carefully reexamine the school’s feng shui pattern.
I had to look now!