Chapter 92: Death Class 7 (Part 16)

Xiao Muyu sensed something wrong, but Shen Qingqiu held her firmly, not letting her move. A gust of wind swept through the window. It was the end of April, yet the wind blowing in felt scorching. With the added adrenaline, Xiao Muyu quickly started sweating.

*Thump, thump,* came the sound of Luo Zihao hopping on his head. Their room was on the third floor. There was no way Luo Zihao could come in. Yet the sound was so clear and so close. They shouldn’t be able to hear it from where they were.

He was inside!

Xiao Muyu couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Had the second hunt begun?

Xiao Muyu could see the situation in the room from the corner of her eye. Luo Zihao pushed open the glass window and jumped in.

*Thump, thump.*

“I know you’re awake.” He chuckled lowly. “Why aren’t you looking at me? Aren’t you curious?”

His body exuded a putrid stench, and his laugh was hoarse and grating. He had lost all trace of the living person he once was.

Shen Qingqiu tightened her grip again, blocking Xiao Muyu’s view. Luo Zihao’s words were nothing good. If he wanted them to look, then they mustn’t.

Shen Qingqiu lay towards the outside, keeping Xiao Muyu protected inside. Xiao Muyu, extremely nervous, hurriedly pressed her palm over Shen Qingqiu’s eyes.

Warm and damp, the palm pressed firmly against Shen Qingqiu’s face. Despite the tension, there was unexpected comfort in the action.

However, the situation vexed Shen Qingqiu, as she could sense Luo Zihao standing right beside her.

“I couldn’t find you last night,” he mumbled, still laughing. “What a pity. Don’t you want to look at me?”

He rambled on, trying to entice them to make eye contact with him. The strange persistence made it seem like someone in the game was targeting the two of them.

Shen Qingqiu hadn’t thought too much about it at first. She just waited patiently for Luo Zihao to leave. However, he was too noisy and refused to shove off. Shen Qingqiu couldn’t stand him anymore.

Instead of turning around, she loosened her right hand to grab her dagger and, swift as lightning, slashed it along the edge of the bed. It grazed past Luo Zihao’s body, then *Thunk!* drove deep into the wooden bedpost.

“You—” Luo Zihao’s voice abruptly cut off. *Thump, thump, thump.* He rapidly retreated before bouncing straight out of the window.

Xiao Muyu looked at Shen Qingqiu, her face showing surprise and amusement.

What a cowardly ghost.

Luo Zihao was genuinely afraid of Shen Qingqiu. That dagger had almost severed his leg.

The window remained wide open. Xiao Muyu cautiously turned to look outside. The red-clad ghost girl and the mummy still stood there. The ghost girl didn’t say anything when Luo Zihao landed in front of her. She merely lowered her head to glance at him.

Luo Zihao slumped, shivering in fear of the ghost girl.

He soon jumped toward the male dorm, with the ghost girl drifting after him. Before leaving, she cast one last indifferent glance in their direction.

“What are they doing?” Shen Qingqiu felt deeply unsettled. If she weren’t worried about triggering the death condition, she wouldn’t have stopped at intimidating Luo Zihao earlier. She would’ve gone over and ripped off the remaining half of his head.

Xiao Muyu didn’t answer immediately. She silently gazed out the window and, after a long pause, finally spoke with her voice lowered. “She’s set her sights on us.”

Shen Qingqiu’s expression darkened slightly, her gaze turning icy. “Since she’s in Class 7, she can observe us. It was only a matter of time before she locked onto us. But if that’s really the case, instance NPCs develop self-awareness starting from Level A. I suspect they might know we’re players.”

Xiao Muyu let out a long breath. “They didn’t suddenly wake us up to have Luo Zihao lure us again. If I’m right…”

Shen Qingqiu looked at the direction the ghosts were heading and finished Xiao Muyu’s sentence, “Zhang Zhu won’t survive the night.” Tonight could well be a quiet night, at least for the players.

“Seems like this person detests Class 7 students to the core,” Shen Qingqiu added. “Going as far as making them watch the deaths.”

The ghosts woke each of them up to make them experience that bone-chilling fear and despair.

Since Su Jin and Zuo Tiantian were not far away, Shen Qingqiu used “Loving Family” to contact them. Sure enough, they had also witnessed that weird, horrifying scene.

The night passed sluggishly but eventually ended.

In the morning, Li Yuehang was the first to wake up in his dorm room.

They had been anxious last night, yet nothing had happened, so he quickly fell asleep.

He had only woken up groggily in the wee hours, disturbed by the sound of branches scraping against the window glass outside.

Li Yuehang slept on a top bunk, and the head of his bed directly faced the window, with a curtain rod above it.

He didn’t like throwing clothes onto the bed, so he usually hung them on the curtain rod.

As he woke, he sat up and instinctively reached backward for his clothes.

He did touch something, but the texture didn’t feel right. The clothes weren’t soft and light but heavy, cold, and stiff, quite the odd sensation for fabric. He instinctively squeezed again.

A thought shot through his mind, instantly banishing all drowsiness. He turned his head and realized what he had been touching wasn’t clothes. It was a person.

The person’s neck hung from a leather belt. Their stiff, cold body swayed slightly with his movements, and the face now turned toward him.

“Aah! Aah!”

Li Yuehang let out heart-rending screams. He jolted back, but as there was nothing behind him, he fell from his bunk and crashed to the floor.

His screams reverberated throughout the boys’ dorm in Yuanning High without barriers. Even the girls in the next building could hear it.

Startled by the clamor, Li Yuehang’s two roommates quickly jumped out of their beds. One of them leaped barefoot onto the floor. But before he could regain his composure, he looked up, then screamed as well.

Chen Kaijie arrived at the school at 6:40 AM. In Room 310 of the boys’ dorm, Zhang Zhu, who failed the first hunt, now hung in the air lifelessly.

The other three people in the dorm had moved to another room, shaking.

As an untrained police officer, Chen Kaijie also felt indescribable apprehension upon seeing Zhang Zhu’s body.

Inside the room, bloodstains steadily extended from the window to Zhang Zhu’s bed before abruptly stopping.

Zhang Zhu’s body didn’t resemble a typical hanging death. Whether it was a suicide or someone hung them, a normal person’s body would hang down due to gravity. But Zhang Zhu was different.

His legs were suspended, bent in a kneeling position as though he had been doing so before being hanged.

Due to asphyxiation, his face was deathly pale, with bodily liquids still running down from his nostrils and mouth corners. A foul odor permeated the room.

However, what struck Chen Kaijie most was the creepy smile frozen on his face. It made the scene even more terrifying.

Zhang Zhu’s body swayed slightly in the still room. His stiff legs occasionally brushed against the glass, producing a faint sound.

Chen Kaijie gritted his teeth, enduring the creeping feeling in his mind as he finished his examination, took photos, and instructed his assistants to help remove the body so the forensic investigator could conduct an autopsy.

They had laid the body down on its side. But as the forensic investigator put on his gloves and opened his toolbox, the body suddenly flipped over. It now looked like a person kneeling on the floor.

The forensic investigator was so frightened that he scrambled away, temporarily halting the investigation.

School canceled the outing scheduled for today. Zhang Zhu’s death had once again pushed fear to its peak, not only for Class 7. Even teachers and the principal were not in the mood to teach classes.

Yuanning High School was forced to suspend classes to cooperate with the police investigation.

Although classes were canceled, the students didn’t return home, providing Xiao Muyu and her team a chance to sit down for a discussion.

After handling the crime scene, Chen Kaijie stayed behind under the pretext of continuing the investigation. He carefully described what he had seen to Xiao Muyu and the others.

Xiao Muyu remained silent for a moment before she spoke in a low voice. “That ghost girl woke us all up last night. She and Luo Zihao went to the boys’ dorm. Zhang Zhu’s death was inevitable.”

“Woke you up before killing someone? Why do it like that?” Chen Kaijie was extremely surprised.

“She was warning us and also intimidating the students of Class 7.” Xiao Muyu’s face grew serious. This instance turned out to be far more thrilling than she had expected.

Chen Kaijie felt a chill run down his spine. “Warning us? Do those ghosts know we’re here to investigate the truth?”

That was a frightening thought. If the NPCs knew their intentions, they would refuse to cooperate and even take action against them.

Things weren’t looking optimistic for them. Zhang Zhu was dead, and the last person to see him was Li Yuehang. So, a new game might begin tonight.

If the game’s target was not Li Yuehang but someone among their team, then the NPCs were after them.

“The situation’s not looking good right now. Let me quickly go over the information I have. We don’t need to think too much about the storyline. The key here is evidence. Otherwise, even if we’re 100% certain about our guesses, it’ll be pointless if we can’t trigger the system.

“First, Liu Ya is suspicious, no need to elaborate on that. Last night, I saw her drawing of Sisyphus rolling the boulder. It probably has some deeper meaning.

“Second, the way Zhang Zhu died. Death by hanging is quite common, but he died kneeling, which is humiliating. This suggests that Zhang Zhu was killed for revenge. There’s no doubt he participated in the bullying.”

Xiao Muyu furrowed her brows, recalling the terrifying scene from last night. She added, “There’s also something we haven’t discussed. How did the bullied victim die? The school should have information on that for evidence.”

Everyone understood Xiao Muyu’s point. They couldn’t just keep guessing. They needed evidence.

“Tiantian and I also saw that ghost girl last night.” Su Jin shared her account all business-like. “It left a deep impression. When her face transformed, Tiantian and I thought it looked burnt. But I’m not sure it’s actually burnt or she was trying to scare me.”

Shen Qingqiu immediately glanced at Xiao Muyu. “You mentioned Luo Zihao said something about the wind being much stronger and hotter before he died.”

Xiao Muyu gave a wordless nod. She kept frowning, immersed in her own world. Shen Qingqiu and the others knew what she was doing and held their breaths.

After watching her not saying anything for a long time, Shen Qingqiu gave a gentle reminder. “Is there anything related to this that slipped your mind?”

“Right… burning,” Xiao Muyu mumbled, then suddenly raised her head. “I just remembered! Last night, when I was picking up the notebook for Lin Xue, I saw scars on Liu Ya’s hand, like burns. Now that I think about it, they were probably burn injuries!”

Chen Kaijie blinked. “So, it’s Liu Ya? Doesn’t this create a contradiction?”

Su Jin and Zuo Tiantian exchanged a glance before one of them spoke up. “No, this pretty much confirms it. It was Lin Xue who died. Zhang Zhu, Luo Zihao, and the three other dead students helped verify a conclusion: the grades of those involved in the bullying would drop drastically. Liu Ya’s grades did drop but rose again in March. The curse hadn’t affected her, so she didn’t get scared. Right now, no one in the class gets along with Liu Ya except for Lin Xue. Why would she have nothing to fear if it were someone else?”

Xiao Muyu and Shen Qingqiu nodded. Lin Xue was an obvious suspect, but they lacked evidence, and the logical deductions weren’t necessarily conclusive.

Xiao Muyu didn’t linger on the matter for now. She mentally noted it down and raised her gaze to look at Chen Kaijie. “Can you get the fire alarm records from the fire department?”

Chen Kaijie took a moment to process the request, then brightened. He gave a short clap. “I can. But I’m not sure if they’re undamaged. I’ll go back right now and check!”

“Girls, let me know what you find when I get back,” he said over his shoulder as he left.

Su Jin and Zuo Tiantian nodded, watching him leave. Having a police officer identity sure was convenient for gathering evidence.