Chapter 764 - Knocking [2 in 1] (1/2)

“You are overthinking things.” Chen Ge saw the black trash bag out of the corner of his eyes, but he did not place much attention on it at all. Regardless of whether it was a dead body part or everyday trash inside the trash bag, what did that have to do with him?

Chen Ge had not lost his mind. The first thing that he needed to figure out was his own identity; he needed to find out what kind of person this Lin Sisi was. From his perspective, there had supposedly not been any changes to his physique and appearance, but he had no idea why Wang Xiaoming and the people around him had been treating him as Lin Sisi.

Perhaps this Lin Sisi is not even a person’s name but a code name, a type of identity.

“If you wish to go to the canteen later, you can come and get me. I’ll go with you. But now I shall go and rest.” Chen Ge’s expression did not change much. It was as if he did not see the trash bag at all.

“Okay.” Wang Xiaoming was about to slither inside the darkened bedroom when he was suddenly reminded of something, and he turned around to yell at Chen Ge, “Xiao Lin, you slept in class again today. Did you hear the few crucial things that Mr. Bai specifically told us about?”

“What things?”

“Do not leave your bedroom at night, and we should stay quietly inside our room. Other than that, the time for lights out has been moved earlier from the previous 11 pm to 10:30 pm. There will be people patrolling the corridors after the lights go off, so it is wise for us to pay more attention to these details.”

“That’s all?” Chen Ge had thought that Wang Xiaoming wanted to tell him something very important. He had been inside the door for quite some time already, but the things, incidents, and people that he had encountered could not have been normal, or at least they could not have been more normal on the surface. This school appeared no different from a normal night school, and there was nothing worth investigating about it.

Wang Xiaoming bit on his lips. He seemed to have more to say, but due to uncertainties, he eventually revealed nothing. The door closed, and Chen Ge was left alone in the dormitory corridor. The surroundings were extremely quiet—there was no sound at all.

“It still hasn’t reached the time for lights out, so why is the corridor so quiet? Could it be that all the bedrooms here are actually unoccupied?” Chen Ge took out the keys from his bag and then turned to look at the door of the bedroom opposite from Wang Xiaoming’s. There was a number on the door, 413.

“Is this Lin Sisi’s room?” Staring at that number, Chen Ge suddenly felt it looked so familiar. “The four probably represents the fourth floor, but what about the number 13? The 13th room?”

Chen Ge had once seen this number thirteen inside the diary in the basement of Nightmare Academy, and he remembered it very clearly. On the last page of the diary, the following phrases was written—I, Die, One Three, School of the Afterlife, Run.

“Does the thirteen mentioned in the diary refer to this bedroom? I sincerely doubt it is that simple.” Inside the eerily quiet corridor, the only sound was the keys turning the lock. Chen Ge tried multiple keys before he found the correct one. After he got the door open and strode into the bedroom, Chen Ge’s brows creased heavily when he saw what was inside the bedroom.

The bedroom was not big by any means, but there were six beds in total. They were all bunk beds. The beds were placed on the top bunk, and underneath were a table, shelves, and storage for various objects.

If that was everything, Chen Ge would not have thought anything was a problem, but what attracted Chen Ge’s attention were the walls of the bedroom. There were many human shadows on the bedroom’s ceiling and walls. They had the same height as a normal person, and it was hard to tell whether they had been pasted there or drawn there.

“One, two, three…” Chen Ge made a rough count, and there were five shadows inside the bedroom. These things were so eye-catching that it was hard to pretend that they did not exist. For his own safety, Chen Ge first climbed up the bunk bed’s ladders to study the human shadows at a closer distance.

His fingers touched the shadow closest to him. Chen Ge used his fingers to lightly peel at the wall. “This is painted by some kind of paint, but who would do this kind of thing inside their bedroom?”

Those shadows that had the same size of a normal person were so scary in broad daylight, but once the lights were off, how scary would it be to open one’s eyes and realize that there were human shadows everywhere?

After scanning all the shadows with his eyes, Chen Ge jumped down from bed. After losing the aid from his employees, Chen Ge had become more careful than ever before. “There are six beds in total, but there is only one water bottle in the room, and there is only one pair of slippers on the ground. Xiao Lin is probably the only person who lives in this bedroom.”

Chen Ge looked through the tables and shelves of the other bunk beds. Even though they were filled with junk, they were not everyday items. Instead, they were strange objects like a painting palette, paint cans, the broken arm of a statue, a ruined electrical wire, and so on. This bedroom was like a storage where Xiao Lin was the only living occupant, and the rest was not occupied.

“There are few students who stay at the night school’s dormitory. Xiao Lin does not come from a rich family, and it is impossible to think that he would spend more money to live at school, so the only explanation is that staying here cost less than renting a house outside the campus.”

Normally, the price of a dormitory apartment would be far higher than the rental of nearby houses. However, since Xiao Lin could afford to stay there, there was only one explanation—there had to be something wrong with the room.

Chen Ge had no idea what had happened in Xiao Lin’s bedroom in the past, but there was a strange sense of urgency inside his heart. Chen Ge walked to the bed number four, which was furthest from the door. This bed had a new mattress and cover. Even though the other beds also had mattresses and covers, most of them were covered in dust, and they had long outlived their usefulness.

“Since no one is staying here, why would they prepare the mattress and covers? Would anyone even someone sleep in such a dirty bed?” Chen Ge climbed up the ladder and sat down on the fourth bed. He looked around the bedroom from this perspective, and it felt completely different; it no longer felt so cramped.

“I must be right. This is Xiao Lin’s bed.” There were words of encouragement and a schedule pasted next to the pillow. If this was not inside a strange school, Chen Ge would have had no doubt that Xiao Lin was a hardworking ace student.

“The cover has been recently cleaned; there is still a lingering smell of the detergent. The blanket is carefully folded. When I was at school, I rarely saw such organization in a male dorm. Xiao Lin should be an extremely self-disciplined student who cannot stand messiness.” Chen Ge started to draft up an image of Xiao Lin in his mind.

Other than the blanket and pillow, a book and a pencil were in the bed. Chen Ge thought that this was because Xiao Lin was reading in bed, but once he read through a few pages, he realized that things were not that simple.

Most of the books related to the subject and schools were clean and untouched; there were no mark on them at all. It was like they were brand new. But Xiao Lin’s own notebooks were dog-eared and folded at many pages, which was a sign that they were heavily used. Chen Ge took out the three notebooks that were hidden among the textbooks. They were filled with paper scraps. Some were directly cut out from newspapers, some came from the notices pasted on the bulletin board downstairs, and there were also small notes with different handwriting.

“These are…” Chen Ge just had a casual glance through them, but he was quickly drawn into them.

“The man entered the student dormitory when it was a holiday, but he did not expect that there would still be students who had not left. He hid inside the closet and was discovered by a student when he tried to escape in the middle of the night.

“The student’s body was found inside the closet at dawn the next morning. The murderer has still not been found. All the students and staff must be on full alert.”

The newspaper cuttings were all about some mysterious cases. There was no detailed address to any of them, and the names had all been removed. The articles merely spoke of killing cases that people should be conscious about.

“The people’s names look like they have been purposely removed. Where did Xiao Lin find these newspaper articles? The paper itself is yellowing, so they should be from some time back.” The notebook recorded more than one case, and the crime scenes were all over the place. They included the library, a bedroom, laboratories, and inside the elevator booth.

“Could these cases have all been real?” Chen Ge looked through the notebook. The further he read, the more nervous he became. “This notebook is extremely important.”

As he read through the notebooks, Chen Ge’s curiosity in Xiao Lin only continued to grow. Who was this person? Why would he keep tabs on those strange, curious cases?

Chen Ge placed all of Xiao Lin’s notebooks that he had found on the bed. The one that he had been carrying inside the bed and the three found on the bed, so now Chen Ge had four notebooks in total. “The notebook inside the bed should be used for some kind of distraction. It does not contain any real important information. These three notebooks found here should be Xiao Lin’s biggest secret.”

Chen Ge read through them carefully and tried to memorize everything that he saw. Chen Ge paid his full focus and did not allow himself to be disturbed, but at that moment, knocking came from the door.

The silence was broken, and out of habit, Chen Ge quickly held his breath.

The door knocking continued a few times before it stopped completely.

“Is it Wang Xiaoming outside the door? Does he wish to ask me to go with him to the canteen for dinner?” Chen Ge did not want to presume too much about this Wang Xiaoming, but he did not wish to have much more interaction with him either. After about one whole minute, that annoying knocking sound returned again. It was as sudden as the one before it.