Global Collapse-Chapter 665 - 633: The Word of Pei Gong’s Left Sima, Cao Wushang_1

Looking at the cheerful Li Shu in the photo, Bai Lu felt a chill.

The dim light overhead shone on the photo, making the familiar smile seem somewhat sinister.

Gu Mian pointed with a finger to the bottom right corner. "Look at the date it was taken."

Bai Lu looked where Gu Mian was pointing.

The photo was taken on June 1st of this year, a few days before the incident.

She looked at the date in the bottom right corner, her face full of confusion. "When Li Shu took this photo, hadn't Yuan Haotian's family already died?"

"That's right," Gu Mian nodded.

Upon seeing that Cao Deren and his sister had the same hairpin, Bai Lu had doubted if Li Shu and the others were involved in the arson at Yuan Haotian's home. But that hairpin was new and not the same one Yuan Haotian's sister had worn.

Although Li Shu had taken photos downstairs from Yuan Haotian's apartment building, those were also taken *after* the fire.

These coincidences couldn't prove that Li Shu and the other two were connected to the arson case.

"Such a coincidence?" Bai Lu glanced again at Li Shu's smile in the photo. That smile made her shudder, and she quickly averted her gaze, not daring to look any longer.

Gu Mian didn't have much of a reaction. "Li Shu told us that after returning from Wei Mountain, Yuan Haotian kept trying to create chance encounters with them. But that's not what I see."

Bai Lu looked up at Gu Mian.

"From my perspective, it was Li Shu and his two companions who were creating these 'coincidences.'

"Cao Deren bought a hairpin similar to Yuan Haotian's sister's, and Li Shu took pictures outside Yuan Haotian's burned-down house. These are all coincidences.

"There may be more coincidences we haven't discovered. I guess Yuan Haotian must have discovered some of these coincidences when he went to Wei Mountain, which is why he started stalking them so frantically."

"So many coincidences do seem intentional. But why would Li Shu and the others do this?" Bai Lu thought hard. "Are they psychopaths? Did they decide to torment him like this after learning his whole family had died?"

"You're overlooking one thing," Gu Mian said, looking down at Bai Lu. "If they could manufacture so many coincidences to drive Yuan Haotian mad, they must know Yuan Haotian very well."

"You mean…" Bai Lu was startled. "Li Shu and the others knew Yuan Haotian a long time ago? Before that party? Even before the fire at Yuan Haotian's house? Could it be that he's been deceiving us from the very beginning?"

"That's right. You've fallen into his verbal trap."

「Meanwhile, Wang Youcai's team, which had just lost a member, had already run out of the teaching building. They were gasping for air, sitting in a small pavilion next to the building.」

Ye Qianqian's face was alternately flushing and turning pale. Even in the deep darkness of the night, it was clear she looked dreadful. She was the only one who had seen Screw-head being dragged by a ghost into the void beneath the desk.

Wang Youcai sat beside her on a stone bench, head bowed, saying nothing.

Ye Weiwei also looked pale. She had just narrowly escaped a ghost's clutches and was still deeply unnerved by the close call.

"Just now…" Ye Qianqian gasped for several breaths before turning to Ye Weiwei. "That was so dangerous. While you were talking, that ghost hand suddenly reached out from under the desk."

Remembering this, Ye Qianqian shivered violently again.

Having witnessed a teammate being dragged under the desk, she now had a phobia of dark holes.

"The roommate," Ye Weiwei suddenly sat upright and looked at the two beside her. "Before the ghost took him, Screw-head mentioned the roommates of the seven victims."

"There are other people in their dorm?" Ye Qianqian was slightly taken aback. "That's right. High school dorms usually house eight people."

"But they never mentioned anyone else," Wang Youcai, at their side, also frowned.

Ye Weiwei suddenly remembered the other workbook she had found inside Li Yi's desk. "Before the ghost appeared, I found a workbook belonging to a student named 'Liu Baoma' inside Li Yi's desk. Could this be the eighth person in their dorm?"

Liu Baoma? Wang Youcai pondered. An unfamiliar name.

"Could he be unsociable?" Ye Qianqian wondered. "Sis, do you remember when we were in high school? There was that weird girl in the dorm next door. She'd shake her clothes until two or three in the morning, keeping everyone else in her dorm awake. She wouldn't listen to anyone and just did her own thing."

Ye Weiwei nodded. "It's hard to forget."

The outlandish things that girl next door did were too numerous to count.

Not only did she stand naked in the middle of the dormitory shaking her clothes at midnight, but sometimes she also brought her desk back from the classroom to wash it in the dormitory all night.

Once, this girl borrowed Ye Weiwei's newly bought shampoo, and when she returned it, only a little was left at the bottom.

Later, Ye Weiwei had the dubious honor of witnessing how she washed her hair—she would douse her head in shampoo, rub it vigorously for half an hour, until the foam was so thick you could barely see her head.

Because of this neurotic behavior, this girl was not liked by her roommates.

When the girls in the neighboring dorm took a group photo, they didn't include her.

"It could also be that their dormitory really only had seven people," Ye Qianqian mused. "Why don't we go back to the hospital and ask those surviving students again?"

Ye Weiwei looked up at the school, shrouded in darkness.

After what had just happened, she didn't want to stay here any longer. "I wonder if it's a coincidence, but the ghost appeared when we mentioned the eighth person. It seems like it doesn't want us to investigate further. But if this eighth person really holds important clues, we have to find him."

Wang Youcai also nodded. "There's security at the student dorms; we won't be able to get in anyway. Let's go back to the hospital and ask the few survivors."

With that, he stood up. "Let's get out of here first."

But just as Wang Youcai stood up, they suddenly heard a rustling noise coming from the nearby bushes.

"Who's there?!"

Ye Weiwei immediately grabbed Ye Qianqian and started running in the opposite direction.

After running for about ten seconds, she realized Wang Youcai wasn't following.

At that moment, Ye Qianqian, still held by Ye Weiwei, suddenly said, "Sis, I think it might be a person…"

A person?

Only then did Ye Weiwei slowly stop and look back.

She saw a person standing by the pavilion where they had just rested, looking at them as if they were insane.

Wang Youcai was keeping his distance from the figure that had appeared so suddenly. Ye Weiwei saw his lips moving, as if asking something.

The student who had crawled out of the bushes looked at Wang Youcai with a strange expression. "You guys... you're not teachers, are you? I've never seen you before."

"Are you human?" Wang Youcai sized up the teenager in the student uniform before him.

"Nonsense," the student said with a peculiar expression. "If I weren't human, would I be a dog? You people are really weird, out here in the middle of the night asking if I'm human."

Wang Youcai warily eyed the student-like figure. "You're pretty strange yourself, crawling out of the bushes in the middle of the night. It's almost four in the morning, isn't it? What's a student like you doing out here instead of in your dorm?"

"Obviously, I climbed the wall to go to the internet cafe and play games," the teenager said, not bothering to hide it once he realized they weren't teachers. "When I ran out of money, I came back to get some sleep."

"Sleeping in the bushes?"

"The dormitory door was locked. I was originally planning to crash here in this pavilion, but I didn't expect to run into you. Who are you people, anyway? Thieves?"

"Of course not," Wang Youcai denied.

Then he paused, his gaze fixing on the school badge pinned to the boy's chest. "You're from Senior Three, Class Five?"

The young man yawned lazily. "Yeah, what about it?"

They had unexpectedly run into a student from Senior Three, Class Five.

This was too coincidental.

Wang Youcai wasn't sure if this was a genuine coincidence or something deliberately arranged by the instance, but with a clue right in front of him, he couldn't possibly let it go.

"Do you know that people in your class have died?"

"Of course. Three people in one dorm were stabbed to death, and the rest ran away."

Wang Youcai took a deep breath. "Then do you know who the killer is?"

Of course, Wang Youcai knew the killer was a recently divorced, middle-aged man named Liu Ben. He just wanted to confirm if this student knew.

"I know. It was Liu Baoma's father, of course. What a coincidence! Oh, you don't know Liu Baoma. He was another guy from their dorm; he committed suicide three months ago. Speaking of which, that dorm of theirs is really cursed. One committed suicide, and now three more were stabbed to death by the suicide's dad..."

Listening to the young man, a chill ran down Wang Youcai's back.

It all connected.

Liu Baoma was Liu Ben's son. Liu Baoma had committed suicide, and three months later, Liu Ben had killed three of his son's roommates.

Liu Ben hadn't killed randomly.

However, the students in the hospital hadn't told them this. They hadn't mentioned that the murderer was the father of their deceased roommate.

Ye Weiwei had already returned to the pavilion. She frowned and asked, "This person you said committed suicide, did he get along well with his other roommates?"

"I wouldn't know about that; I'm not in their dormitory," the teenager pondered for a few seconds. "But Liu Baoma was a top student. Maybe he didn't get along well with the others. He always had a smile on his face, though, so even if he was bullied, he might not have said anything. I heard that after Liu Baoma committed suicide, his mother couldn't handle the shock and divorced his father not long after..."

Hearing this, Ye Weiwei had already formed some theories.

She turned to look at Wang Youcai but found him staring blankly, his expression somewhat off.

"What's wrong?" Ye Weiwei asked.

Wang Youcai finally snapped out of it. "...Nothing."

At that moment, Ye Qianqian, standing to the side, was staring at a dark patch of greenery. The knee-high plants were so dense they blocked her view of what lay beyond. Her sharp ears caught a faint scraping sound from behind the greenery, but the noise was so slight she wondered if it was an auditory hallucination brought on by her tension.

The swaying branches and leaves occasionally revealed small gaps, allowing glimpses into the area behind them. Ye Qianqian stared intently at these openings, wary of anything that might suddenly appear.

Seeing Wang Youcai regain his composure, Ye Weiwei lowered her voice. "I think Liu Ben's motive for murder must be related to his son's death. You know about school bullying, right?"

Wang Youcai was stunned for a few seconds before nodding. "I know."

"Perhaps Liu Baoma experienced something like that. His death might be closely related to his roommates, which is why Liu Ben would go on a killing spree against them."

"Is this the truth we're looking for?" Wang Youcai seemed somewhat tired, leaning on a nearby pavilion pillar for support.

Ye Weiwei said, "This is just my guess. To verify it, we'll probably need to find more clues. But I think I'm very close to the truth."

"So, what's the solution then?" Wang Youcai seemed somewhat dazed. "Acquit Liu Ben? But he definitely killed people."

"I think that's it. This instance wants us to make the right choice. We need to find out the truth and then make a judgment. The truth is that the deceased were not innocent..."

Just as Ye Weiwei was speaking, she felt a tug on her sleeve.

She turned to see Ye Qianqian beside her, anxiously pulling at her sleeve.

"Sister, I have a bad feeling about this place. Can we leave first and talk later?" Beads of sweat appeared on Ye Qianqian's forehead.

Ye Weiwei looked at Wang Youcai. "We should go."

The group said goodbye to the teenager and then quickly left.

However, before they had gone far, they heard footsteps behind them, followed by a familiar voice. Listening to the voice, it was precisely the judge surnamed Chu whom they had encountered not long ago: "Xu Xingcheng?"