Chapter 231

Chapter 231

An ordinary person would naturally feel terrified the more they thought about it, but I felt all right.

If he had been frightened to death…

then he had either seen a ghost or a demon, right?

In any case, it had probably been some supernatural evil.

Ordinary people had no mental preparation or understanding of such things. If they suddenly encountered one, it was perfectly normal for them to faint or even die from fright.

But even if Wang Xinren really had been frightened to death, his soul could not simply vanish without reason, could it?

No matter how much I pondered it, I could not understand.

I looked at Roundy. The damned fat bird also made a shrugging motion with its wings, showing that it could not figure it out either.

“Could it have been some powerful evil entity that devours human souls? But if something like that entered this room, surely it would have left behind traces and an aura?”

I pinched my chin and muttered to myself.

At that moment, Wang Dachun offered a suggestion.

“Boss, should we reenact Wang Xinren’s situation at the time? For example, lie on his bed and imagine what things were like then…”

He pointed at a bed in the corner against the wall.

Every dorm room had five bunk beds.

Wang Xinren lived alone, so he could sleep wherever he liked. But I had heard that he usually slept on the upper bunk of the right-hand bed at the back, beside the wall. He probably thought it was the quietest spot.

“That makes sense!”

My eyes lit up. I patted Wang Dachun on the shoulder and said with a smile,

“Not bad, Dachun! That’s a very good idea. It gives us a new line of thought. You’ve gotten much smarter.”

He scratched his head in embarrassment and said,

“Boss, you rarely praise me so directly. I’m not used to it.”

“Get lost! Am I usually that harsh?”

I laughingly cursed him and lightly kicked him.

Then I walked toward Wang Xinren’s bed.

I climbed the ladder to the upper bunk.

The people from the police station had taken Wang Xinren’s pillow, quilt, and other belongings, probably to examine them. All that remained was a bed frame topped by thin wooden boards and a palm-fiber mat.

From a few traces, I determined that Wang Xinren had slept with his head toward the window and his feet pointing inward.

“This fellow really was brave! Most people would feel uneasy sleeping with a window behind their head. After all, people are completely defenseless when asleep. Because of instincts inherited from ancient times, they subconsciously prefer to have something solid behind them while sleeping.”

Imagining Wang Xinren’s position on the bed, I slowly lay down…

All of Lianghe District Middle School was built against the mountain. The boys’ dormitory stood at the very back of the school and at its highest point, roughly halfway up the mountainside.

In fact, part of the mountain had been excavated when the dormitory was constructed. Thus, the mountain lay behind the building and the corridor ran along its front. From a corridor on one of the higher floors, one could see most of Lianghe Town.

The dorm rooms ran through from north to south and had windows at both the front and back.

Beyond the rear windows lay the mountain forest…

I lay flat on the bed.

My eyes stared at the ceiling.

“Boss, how does it feel? Have you noticed anything unusual?”

Wang Dachun asked.

He and Zeng Jin stood beside my bed, their chins level with the bed board. When I turned onto my side, I could see two large heads right in front of me.

Honestly, from that angle, they looked like two disembodied heads floating beside the bed.

At a sudden glance, it was rather frightening!

I said irritably,

“I only just lay down. How could I notice anything so quickly? Wait… wait!”

My heart jolted.

I discovered that while lying on my side like this, I could see the mountain behind the school through the window in the wall from the corner of my eye.

And directly at the end of my line of sight stood… an abandoned grave!

It looked as though it had been neglected for a long time.

The memorial paper hung there had already rotted away, leaving only a bamboo pole standing atop the grave.

The bowls once used for offerings in front of the grave were all broken and completely empty.
At a rough estimate, no one had come to pay respects for nearly ten years…

That was right. There were quite a few graves on the mountain behind Lianghe District Middle School.

Back then, most people who died in towns and villages were still buried in the ground. Besides, Lianghe Town had a long history. What mountain around it did not have graves?

Moreover, Lianghe District Middle School had excellent feng shui to begin with.

Even folk feng shui practitioners whose understanding was not as deep as mine knew this was a good place for burial.

Over a century of accumulation, quite a number of graves had therefore appeared on the mountain behind the school.

But a situation like the one at Wang Xinren’s bed, where turning over gave a direct view of an abandoned grave–or one could even say the bed faced it head-on–was still extremely rare!

I stared fixedly at the grave outside the window.

It was astonishingly close, less than two zhang away.

“Boss, what are you looking at?”

Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin asked curiously as they turned their heads.

By the moonlight, they could also faintly make out the small grave mound. Both jumped in fright.

“Oh my god!”

Wang Dachun instinctively stepped back twice, patted his chest, and exclaimed in alarm,

“There’s a grave outside the window? And it’s so close! Wang Xinren lived alone in this room, so wouldn’t he see the grave outside every time he rolled over? Wasn’t he afraid?”

Zeng Jin nodded vigorously beside him.

“Exactly! Living alone was already brave enough, but he deliberately chose the bed with the clearest view of the grave.”

I gave a cold laugh.

“There really is a problem! It seems Wang Xinren’s death was most likely connected to this abandoned grave.”

Roundy flapped its wings and flew to the window.

It hovered there, looking through the rows of iron bars at the grave on the mountain behind the building.

Because the mountain was directly behind the dormitory, the windows had vertical protective iron bars, with glass panes farther inside that could be opened for ventilation.

“Wu boy, I can’t sense any sinister aura from this grave. It seems like an ordinary grave. There isn’t even a trace of ghost qi or corpse qi inside.”

I sighed and said,

“Isn’t that precisely what’s strangest? Damned fat bird, your cultivation isn’t low, and your senses are extremely sharp in matters like this. Even if the corpse in the grave never transformed and the soul went to the Netherworld to reincarnate, the bones left behind couldn’t possibly lack even the slightest trace of yin energy, could they?”

Exactly!

I had focused my senses on it a moment earlier. This grave was too “normal”–so normal that it was abnormal!

Uh…

Roundy froze.

“You have a point. Should we go over and take a look now?”

I nodded and said decisively,

“Yes! We definitely need to inspect this grave carefully. I have a feeling it’s the key to Wang Xinren’s strange death and the disappearance of his soul.”

But getting close to the abandoned grave was actually rather troublesome.

Looking through the window of Room 404, it was only a few meters away.

But iron bars blocked the way!

I thought carefully. Among all the methods I knew, I did not seem to have any that could open iron bars as thick as a thumb without alerting the neighboring rooms or the elderly dormitory gatekeeper.

We had no choice but to leave the student dormitory by the normal route, then reach the side gate on the east side of the school and enter the mountain there. From there, we would have to make a wide circuit from east to west before finally reaching the mountain behind the boys’ dormitory.

The entire route would be at least three or four kilometers long.

What a miserable nuisance!

Wang Dachun clenched a fist and said,

“Let’s go! Since this is an adventure for hot-blooded youths, no matter how far it is or how frightening it gets, we have to go.”

Hm?

I frowned.

“You two don’t need to come, do you? Going into the mountains and visiting a graveyard at night is much more dangerous than staying in the dormitory.”

Wang Dachun immediately looked aggrieved.

“But Boss, didn’t you promise we’d accompany you tonight to uncover the truth? As our boss, you can’t go back on your word.”

Me: “…”

Being the boss was exhausting too!