Chapter Twenty-Two Inquiry

  Du Xiaonan has gone crazy.

  This happened on the third day after that night.

  That night, they sent the unconscious Du Xiaonan back to her dormitory. After that, Du Xiaonan remained in a coma. On the third day of her coma, in the afternoon, she suddenly woke up.

  "Run away quickly!"

  This was the only clear sentence she said after waking up, and then she went mad, muttering one sentence over and over again: Everyone will die, no one can escape.

  Du Xiaonan was still sent to a mental hospital, and the dormitory was left with only Su Jiner and Lin Yuan. They sat on the bed listlessly, looking at Du Xiaonan and Li Yiqian's empty beds.

  Su Jiner painfully closed her eyes, so many things had happened, but they didn't have any clues at all. The strangest thing was that after three consecutive murder cases, they still hadn't caught the attention of the police. Were they really just eating their salaries for nothing?

  Just as they were at a loss for what to do, they heard a knock on the door. They looked at each other and hesitantly opened it.

  "Hello, I'm Detective Li Jing. May I come in and ask you some questions?" A woman wearing a white windbreaker stood smiling outside the door.

  Su Jiner leaned over and smiled, saying: "Please come in!"

  Li Jing walked into their dormitory, looked at the layout of their dormitory and smiled saying: "Girls' dormitories are still clean and tidy!"

  Su Jiner smiled and handed her a cup of water: "Please sit down! I don't know what Officer Li has come to ask about?"

  Li Jing sat down on Su Jiner's bed, her short hair was neat and tidy, but she had a doll-like face. If she didn't say she was a police officer, others would never associate her with the police.

  "Don't be nervous, I'm not like those idiot cops at the bureau. Can you tell me everything you know?" Li Jing saw their disbelieving eyes and then took out her police ID.

  "What do you want to know?"

  "Right! We've already told you everything we can say."

  "Don't be nervous, and I'm here to find the murderer, more importantly, I want to be friends with you." Li Jing smiled warmly.

  Su Jiner thought for a moment and said, "To be honest, we don't know why she went crazy either. Do you know about the case of Li Yi Qian's disappearance?"

  Li Jing nodded: "You mean, she went crazy after going out with Li Yi Qian and coming back?"

  "Hmm! But it wasn't this severe back then, at least they didn't run around wildly, hitting and biting people!"

  Li Jing nodded: "Then did anything particularly strange happen after she came back?"

  Su Jiner didn't speak, Li Jing looked at their silent appearance and knew that there must be some unspoken secrets, so she said: "You can rest assured, no matter how unbelievable the things you say are, I will believe them."

  "These things happened and even I couldn't believe them, let alone know how to tell you."

  Although she said so, she still told Li Jing all the terrifying things that had happened to her.

  After listening, Li Jing fell silent. As a police officer, she shouldn't have believed in such superstitions about ghosts and gods, but for some reason, she believed every word the two girls said.

  "I know what we're saying may sound unbelievable to you, these things I don't even believe myself." She smiled wryly, having never believed in so-called paranormal events herself, yet now she was trying to convince a law enforcement officer of their validity.

  "No, I believe everything you've said, so please believe me too. To show my sincerity, what clues do you want to know? Anything from the police side, I can tell you."

  Su Jiner looked at her in surprise, originally she was anxious about how to know the police's clue.

  "She said seriously, 'I want to know the cause of Zhang Junsheng's death.'"

  "Didn't Zhang Junsheng hang himself?" Lin Yuan felt very strange, they had clearly seen Zhang Junsheng hanging from the tree that day.

  "No, Zhang Junsheng was strangled to death, wasn't he, Officer Li?"

  "Yes, he was indeed strangled to death, but how did you know?"

  "That day when you carried away his body, I saw it, but what's strange is that the finger marks on his neck were very unusual!"

  "Tell me your opinion."

  "That fingerprint seems particularly thin, it doesn't look like a human finger at all. Even if it were a girl's finger, it shouldn't be that thin and long."

  "Your eyesight is really impressive! What you said is almost the same as what the forensic doctor said, a normal person's fingers shouldn't be like that."

  "What's your conclusion then?"

  Li Jing shook her head, she and Officer Zhou had been to the scene more than once, but they hadn't found any usable clues. Logically speaking, no matter how careful the killer was, they would always leave behind some evidence, but there was nothing there, not just at Zhang Junsheng's death scene, but also Li Ran's death didn't have any leads either.

  "Could it be that a ghost is claiming lives? Is it Xiaoyu's ghost?" Lin Yuan was so scared that his face turned white.

  "By the way, Officer Li, is there a record of a girl named Xiao Qing's death five years ago?"

  "Five years ago I wasn't even a cop yet! However, I can go back to the bureau and check, is this related to the case we're handling now?"

  Su Jiner shook her head, they didn't know if there was any connection either, so she skipped the part about Li Yiqing when talking to her just now.

  "Alright! Let's leave it at that for now. If anything comes up, you can contact me anytime. Here's my phone number." Li Jing wrote down her own phone number on a notebook she carried with her and handed it to Su Jin'er.

  Seeing Li Jing off, Su Jiner sat on the bed in disappointment, her hands pressed against her forehead and her eyebrows tightly furrowed. Three people had already died, she didn't know if anyone else would be killed, Du Xiaonan was crazy, and Li Yiqian was nowhere to be found, could things get any worse?

  "Xiao Yuan, let's go find our tutor."

  "What's the tutor for?"

  "I don't know, go ask! Maybe there will be things we want to know."

  Their counselor is named Zhang Jing, a graduate student and a very handsome young teacher who has been at the school for less than a year. Although he may not know what happened five years ago, as a counselor, he should know more than the students, right? And even if he asks around about what happened at the school, no one should suspect anything.

  Knock knock——

  Zhang Jing, who was reading a book seriously, heard someone knocking on the door and got up to open it.

  "Su Jin'er? Do you have something on me?"

  "Tutor, may I ask you some questions?"

  "Of course! I'll tell you everything I know, what do you want to ask?" This Zhang Jing teacher is famous for his good temper, no matter which student comes to find him, he will help them very enthusiastically, and it's said that many girls in the school have a secret crush on him.

  "It's actually no big deal, we just want to know who has the longest seniority in our school, whoever it is."

  "Oh dear! You're asking at just the right time. If you had asked before yesterday, I might not have been able to help you. But what's the point of asking this?"

  "There's nothing much, just wanted to know a bit about our school's history." Su Jin'er's heart was racing with the hope that he wouldn't mention going to the archives room again.

  "Oh! So that's it!" Zhang Jing thought for a moment and didn't continue to ask: "If the longest-serving is the principal, what about the teachers? It seems like the most they've been here is four years at most!"

  "Why? Is there no one who is over five years old or exactly five years old?"

  "I'm also very curious! However, I heard that five years ago something happened and all the teachers were replaced, but it seems like two people were left behind."

  "Who?"

  "It's just Gatekeeper Liu and Teacher Zhang."

  "Which Teacher Zhang? Aren't you also surnamed Zhang?"

  Zhang Jing was taken aback and laughed, saying: "I almost forgot, I'm Zhang, the teacher who taught you anatomy!"

  Just as Su Jin'er and Lin Yuan were about to bid him farewell, he seemed to have suddenly thought of something and asked, "What are you two asking these questions for? Are you investigating something?"

  "How could this be? Teacher, we were just casually asking, it's nothing, so we'll leave first."

  They didn't wait for him to say anything else and escaped from Zhang Jing's office.

  It turns out that the old man in the security room is surnamed Liu, and he has been in school for a long time. It's more convenient to ask him questions than asking Teacher Zhang! Just thinking of that gloomy teacher makes people feel terrified.

  "Let's go find Old Man Liu and ask him what really happened five years ago that made them replace all the teachers."

  They quickly walked towards the entrance, and it wasn't until they got there that they found Chu Fei Fan and Zuo Yi were already there.

  "How did you end up here?" Lin Yuan asked in puzzlement.

  "It's nothing! I just came to chat with you, Grandpa." Zuo Yi scratched his head and said awkwardly.

  "That's perfect, we don't have anything else to do, let's chat!" Su Jin'er smiled and sat down in the chair beside the table.

  Old Liu chuckled and stroked his completely white beard: "You're all clever kids, what's the matter? Just tell old man!"

  Su Jiner thought for a moment and said: "Grandpa Liu, I know you've been in this school the longest, so I hope you can tell us everything you know. I think you also know what happened in the school during this period of time, so please tell us, what really happened five years ago?"

  Old Liu's face twitched involuntarily when he heard her say five years ago, he closed his eyes, then slowly opened them, his eyes filled with pain and fear.

  "It was a tragedy five years ago! Such a good child died like that, I really don't know how that person could bear to kill such an excellent child, what a sin!"

  "Who killed whom?"

  When he heard that the old man was no longer speaking, Lin Yuan anxiously asked.

  "Don't interrupt, listen to Grandpa."

  However, after waiting for a long time, Grandpa Liu didn't continue speaking. His head was slightly tilted back, as if he was thinking about something. A bad premonition suddenly rose to her heart, and Su Jin'er slowly walked to Grandpa Liu's side, then stretched out her hand to check his breath.

  Her body began to tremble involuntarily, and tears slid slowly down her cheeks: "Grandpa Liu has passed away."

  "What?"

  A few people who didn't believe it walked forward. How is this possible? They were just fine talking to them earlier! How could they suddenly pass away?!

  Su Jiner slumped down on the ground: "It's all my fault, if I hadn't wanted to investigate these things, Grandpa Liu wouldn't have died. Heaven! What have I done?"

  "No, it's not your fault. Anyway, we must find the murderer and avenge Liu Grandpa." Chu Fei Fan pulled up Su Jin Er from the ground and hugged her tightly.

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