Chapter 5 of Volume 1: Nine Deaths and One Madness
Jiang Qicai and Zhang Lan rushed out of the corridor at the same time, soon seeing Wang Shiyu's panicked face leaning against the wall. The thermos under his feet had been smashed to pieces, and the floor was covered with sparkling fragments of the thermos everywhere.
Before Jiang Qicai and Zhang Lan could get close, Wang Shiyu suddenly rushed over, pointing at the empty darkness and trembling with fear: "Xiao Lan, I saw a snake! A human-headed snake! Really, you guys have to believe me..."
"Is it human snake again?" Jiang Qicai furrowed his brow.
But Zhang Lan stared at her with a gaping mouth, as if looking at a mentally ill person, "Shi Yu, what are you talking about? What human snake? Are you sick?"
"I didn't, I really didn't! I really saw a human snake!" Wang Shiyu's gaze turned to Jiang Qicai, and the beautiful and innocent starry eyes flashed with a pleading light.
"Poetry Rain, I think you're too tired today, why don't you go back and rest for a while?" Zhang Lan whispered to Jiang Qi Cai with a glance, kindly advising. Then, without saying another word, she pulled Wang Shi Yu's arm and headed towards the dormitory.
Jiang Qicai didn't know what he was thinking in his heart, but his mouth comforted: "Alright! You're very tired, go rest first!"
"Don't you believe me either?" Wang Shiyu's expression was both sad and resentful.
Just as Zhang Lan and Jiang Qicai were about to persuade him, a faint sound of footsteps came from the direction of the bathroom in the dimly lit room.
"Drip, drip, drip..."
Zhang Lan and Wang Shi Yu's breathing immediately became urgent. The two of them instantly hid behind Jiang Qi Cai, one on the left and one on the right, tightly pulling his arms from behind.
"What's coming over there?"
"It must be that human snake! Let's run!"
"Drip, drip, drip..."
That thing is getting closer and closer.
Watching a group of people slowly take shape in the darkness, Jiang Qicai said very calmly: "Don't be afraid, no matter what it is, I have the confidence to deal with it!"
Zhang Lan's body shook violently in the darkness, and she involuntarily shrank back towards Jiang Qicai's back, but immediately sprang open like a spark of electricity. This complex and contradictory expression did not escape Wang Shiyu's eyes, and looking at Wang Shiyu's face with a mixture of embarrassment and ambiguity, Zhang Lan wished she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
But soon they also saw clearly that the comer was not a monster with a human head and a snake tail, but a man in a suit wearing gold-rimmed glasses, who turned out to be the principal!
Zhang Lan and Wang Shiyu both let out a long sigh of relief!
……
Later.
The principal's office.
Jiang Qicai comfortably took a sip of the Dongding Oolong tea that the principal had specially brewed for him, stretched his waist on the stool, and pouted, but didn't take the initiative to speak.
The principal sat opposite, fiddling with a 24K gold nib Parker pen, his expression solemn and stern.
Two people were lost in their own thoughts...
After a long time, the principal finally couldn't help but sigh and say, "Jiang Qicai, what are you thinking in your heart?"
"What do you think? About Liu Xiaofei's suicide?" Jiang Qicai's lazy expression was in stark contrast to the principal's, his apathetic and casual face still wore a hint of an insolent smile. As if he didn't care about anything in this world, and also as if nothing in this world could stump him.
The principal nodded at this time, "Yes, I found you, also want you to help me reason out..."
"Huh? Did you know all along that Liu Xiaofei was going to commit suicide?" Jiang Qicai's originally casual face suddenly became extremely serious. He stared at the principal without blinking, as if trying to see through to the other person's heart.
"No, I didn't mean that!" The principal shook his head in a fluster, the Parker pen in his hand creaking with a faint sound. For some reason, he always felt that the person sitting in front of him, despite his cheerful and smiling appearance, gave off an aura of profound mystery.
"What I mean is that my intuition told me that something would go wrong with this school someday! But I didn't think it would come so soon!"
"Haha, Principal, your intuition is really accurate! Is this considered a prophecy?" Jiang Qicai looked up at the sky and laughed.
"What do you mean? Are you suspecting me?" The principal obviously heard the implication in Jiang Qicai's words.
Jiang Qicai shrugged indifferently, "If Liu Xiaofei was really murdered, then everyone in this school is a suspect, of course, including me!"
The principal slapped the table in annoyance, but ultimately suppressed his anger and stared at Jiang Qicai. The two locked eyes for a moment before Jiang Qicai smiled and said, "Don't be tense, I was just joking, I know it wasn't you. But I want to know, why did you have a premonition that something would happen in school?"
The principal's anger subsided slightly, and he fell silent for a moment before sighing, "Everything started from that mysterious legend in Room 707!"
"Legend?"
"In fact, strictly speaking, it wasn't a legend at all, but a real strange thing that happened in our school. Because the matter was so bizarre, students and teachers who knew about it at the time either transferred to other schools or quit their jobs... But I don't know why, recently many teachers and students have learned about this again, and I'm not even clear where they heard it from!"
Jiang Qicai supported his chin, tilted his head and thought for a moment, "So what's the so-called legend all about?"
"For a moment, I really didn't know how to start...". The principal hesitated and finally chose to recount the events in reverse order. "To put it simply, the consequences of that incident were extremely severe: out of ten students, nine died and one went mad!"
"Wait a minute!" Before he could even finish speaking, Jiang Qi suddenly remembered that these four words seemed familiar! But for the time being, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall where he had seen them.
At this time, the principal pushed his gold-rimmed glasses and continued: "The cause of the matter must be traced back to one of the female students who participated in the strange incident at that time..."
I remember it was a few days before the Spring Festival, when our school also organized a party, playing very late. However, during this time, many female students drank too much and returned to their dormitories to rest before 12 o'clock.
Around midnight, one of the girls surnamed Zhao from room 707 suddenly ran out in a panic, disheveled and frightened, saying she had just had a strange dream. In her dream, a woman with long hair and wearing white clothes was hovering around the ceiling lamp in their dormitory, with a greenish face and a ferocious expression, and even stuck out a bright red tongue. She kept muttering something that Zhao couldn't quite make out.
"Classmate Zhao at that time swore that the dream was extremely realistic, and could even be said to be a real-life experience. After seeing the white shadow, Classmate Zhao tried her best to get out of bed and escape out the door. But no matter how hard she struggled, her body felt as if it were tightly bound to the bed by ropes. Then Classmate Zhao also saw that the white shadow began to revolve around the chandelier non-stop, round after round, and finally, with the white shadow's continuous rotation, big drops of blood slowly flowed down from the corner of its mouth..."
"At that time, when Zhao's classmate finished speaking, not only did we not take it to heart, but many students and teachers present also ridiculed her for being timid, thinking it was just a nightmare!"
As he said this, the principal's forehead began to sweat profusely, and his tone also underwent a drastic tremolo with the following strange events. "But who would have thought that Zhao classmate mysteriously disappeared the next day, just like evaporating into thin air!"
Jiang Qicai fell into silence...
