Chapter 148: Campus Panic

After leaving Uncle Yan’s house today, Qi Yan checked the time and saw it was only a little past four o’clock. It was still a bit too early to go straight home, so he decided to head over to the studio instead, grab a bite of dinner there, and then head back later.

When he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw the Li siblings sitting on the sofa, deep in conversation.

"Huh? Both of you are here? What's wrong... why do you both look so grim?"

Seeing him arrive, Li Ruoke began to recount what had happened earlier today at the South Campus of the Normal University. "Someone died at their school—a friend of Xiao Lan's. He jumped from a building, and he's taking it pretty hard."

"Something like that happened? Jumping from a building..."

"Yeah, it was a classmate he was fairly close to, and apparently, the state of the body was quite gruesome. Come to think of it, it's astonishing. This happened literally on his very first day back at school."

Li Lan's expression indeed looked rather unpleasant. "It happened this very morning. The entire department knows about it by now. I imagine the news will spread rapidly and cause widespread panic."

For a student to plummet from a height inside a university campus in broad daylight—even without witnessing it firsthand, one could easily imagine the massive impact it would cause. If it had happened at night, it might have been easier to handle quickly, but with so many teachers and students witnessing the immediate aftermath of the scene, it was simply impossible to suppress.

Panic was inevitable, though it probably wouldn't disrupt the regular academic operations of the department. Still, Li Lan had indeed returned home much earlier than usual today.

Hearing this news, Qi Yan felt quite curious as well. Frowning, he asked, "Was it... suicide? Don't tell me it was some female student entangled in a romantic crisis or something, and unable to cope, she just jumped?"

Li Ruoke rolled her eyes. "It wasn't a girl. It was a guy..."

"Oh, oh. I thought it was another one of those cliché campus romance tragedies. Back when I was in college, there was this one time—a Chinese department girl's boyfriend wanted to break up with her to be with someone else, and she ended up slitting her wrists... Though it was an attempted suicide, she had zero common sense. If you're going to slit your wrists, you have to soak in a bathtub, otherwise the blood clots and you won't die." Qi Yan still had the heart to make sarcastic, cynical remarks.

Li Ruoke reached out and slapped his arm. "Will you stop spreading negative energy? Xiao Lan is grieving... Sigh~~ That Yue Peng even came over to the house to play before. He really was a very honest and well-behaved younger brother. So young, why would he ever be driven to jump and commit suicide? Just today when I dropped Xiao Lan off, I even caught a glimpse of him. He looked completely normal."

At that moment, Li Lan raised his head and said in a deep voice, "Who told you guys he committed suicide? I only said he fell to his death. What the actual cause was remains to be investigated by the police. One thing I am certain of... he absolutely did not commit suicide out of despair."

This wasn't merely his subjective guess, but a rather logical deduction.

Was it not? Shortly before, Yue Peng had gone with two other classmates to meet Li Lan at the school gate. After they all parted ways, only half an hour had passed. What major event could possibly occur in those few short tens of minutes? What could drive a twenty-year-old young college student to harbor thoughts of ending his own life?

Furthermore, based on Li Lan's understanding of Yue Peng, although he was usually calm, reserved, and not particularly outgoing, he had no depressive tendencies whatsoever. From every conceivable angle, the possibility of suicide was simply too slim.

Yet, to say that he accidentally lost his footing and fell didn't make sense either...

At the time, he had plummeted from the fifth floor of a teaching building called "Mingde Building," and he had crashed right through a glass window... It wasn't the roof or an open balcony, so "losing one's footing" was entirely unrealistic.

And that particular location was an art studio... Homicide? That still didn't add up; surveillance cameras covered every corner of the campus, including all the major corridors.

Since criminal investigators were still conducting a thorough probe on campus, that floor was currently cordoned off. Ordinary students like Li Lan had no way of finding out the exact progress of the police investigation. They could only indulge in wild speculations among themselves behind closed doors, leaving everyone in the dark.

However, Li Lan stated with conviction, "I think the possibility of murder is extremely low. There must be... some evil entity haunting the campus."

As soon as these words were uttered, Li Ruoke and Qi Yan looked even more astonished. "You... how can you think that?"

The three of them had all personally experienced multiple paranormal events, so they didn't find his theory entirely absurd, but wasn't this a bit too sensitive? He couldn't just attribute every single murder case to that realm simply because he possessed a spirit-medium constitution and had witnessed numerous ghosts since childhood... How could there possibly be so many ghosts in this world?

Li Lan picked up his phone and began to scroll through it. "Although I couldn't squeeze my way to the front to see the actual corpse and the crime scene because of the crowds, many classmates who were present took photos with their phones amidst the chaos. I managed to secretly save one of them. Take a look yourselves."

When he pulled up the photo and the other two leaned in to look closely, they reacted just like most people upon first sight—gasping sharply in unison.

"Oh my god... There really is something... No, what on earth is that bluish-white puddle on his face?"

"Blood? Impossible, what kind of color is that?"

"You think that's blood?"

"Isn't it? Look, it's flowing right out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Look at his mouth—wasn't it spewing out from inside?"

The two of them muttered to each other while staring at the phone, their eyes filled with astonishment.

Li Lan shook his own head and said, "There is a massive police presence conducting intensive investigations across the campus right now. Afternoon classes have been suspended, and nobody is allowed to enter or exit that teaching building. The school administration is just trying their best to appease us students. As for Yue Peng's homicide case, it's currently being investigated as a major criminal case. We can't get any information out, and probably only the highest levels of the school administration can communicate with the police. Some people uploaded these photos to our school forum and major tieba boards, but they were taken down almost immediately, and anyone caught sharing them faces disciplinary action. I only kept this photo secretly on my own phone... The entire school is in an uproar right now. Everyone is whispering that an evil spirit is on a killing spree, and fear has instantly enveloped the whole campus. No matter how hard the school tries to suppress the public opinion, they simply can't do it, because there were far too many eyewitnesses at the scene."

Come to think of it, that made sense... If it were an ordinary murder case, or if the victim had gotten into a physical altercation and scuffle with someone resulting in an accident, it shouldn't be all that difficult to uncover the cause.

It hadn't happened in the dead of night, but in broad daylight just before various classes were about to begin. People were moving around everywhere, both inside the teaching buildings and across the campus, not to mention the countless surveillance cameras... If a perpetrator really had committed a crime under those circumstances and caused such a huge commotion, the culprit would have been dragged out in a heartbeat.

The problem was that the school administration could never make the truth public to the faculty and students under any circumstances. Since it was still under a criminal investigation, strict confidentiality had to be maintained on all fronts, leaving students to blindly gossip out of sheer curiosity.

Judging by the dreadful state of the corpse... it was indeed far too bizarre. The true cause of death might not even have been the fall itself, right?

Li Ruoke's expression turned stern as she emphasized, "Forget about it. Xiao Lan, I'm warning you—no matter how baffling and shocking this major case is, it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Whether it's murder, an accident, or a supernatural event, it doesn't matter at all. That's the police's job, so don't you go hatching any wild ideas!"

"But..." Li Lan started to say something, but Qi Yan chimed in to agree at that moment, "There are no 'buts.' Listen to your sister. Xiao-Li, let me ask you—do you know why most people die in horror movies?"

Li Lan blankly shook his head.

Qi Yan sneered, "Because of their overwhelming curiosity! The way your friend died is indeed terrifying, and I don't think it looks 'human-made' either... If there really is some malevolent spirit wreaking havoc within your campus, you need to be even more cautious and stay far away from trouble. You're someone who naturally attracts these creepy things to begin with..."

Li Ruoke crossed her arms and nodded in agreement. "That's right. Frankly speaking... I think you should just continue taking sick leave and stay home for a while. The more you two talk, the more panicked I feel. For a murder case with such strong paranormal overtones to happen in broad daylight—if that hypothesis holds true, it must be a terrifying entity indeed... Until this case is closed, you might as well stay home and recuperate."