Chapter 335: The Three Tests (1/2)

We were still waiting for the last word with half a minute left when the boy ran back out of breath and gasped, ”Song Yang, I'm sorry, I don't know who hid the word ‘stone' on the Stone Pot Bibimbap sign. I searched the whole cafeteria but I couldn’t find it...”

”Bastard! He deliberately set a trap!” I cursed.

Upon further reflection, I suddenly thought of something. ”What about the place we grab our cutlery?”

But it was too late. The last ten seconds flickered on the countdown and the projection disappeared. Deng Chao spoke through the speakers, ”I'm sorry, you failed! Go to the place where you stumbled and look for the second test!”

The boys looked at each other. ”To the cafeteria!” I shouted.

When we arrived at the cafeteria, we were greeted by two dead students on the ground who had fallen from a height. The crowd was thrown into yet another panic. ”I failed the first test so Deng Chao killed two students,” I said, speaking into my headphones.

”I heard all about it. The bastard cheated!” Xiaotao exclaimed.

Many of them blamed me for the deaths of these two students but I entered the cafeteria without saying a word and headed upstairs.

The top floor of the cafeteria was contracted to a food stall. On the signboard of the Korean stall, “stone” was the only one missing from the words “Stone Pot Bibimbap.” I gritted my teeth, holding back the rage in stony silence.

Deng Chao had obviously expected me to think of the cafeteria and designed it so I would fail, even preparing the victims in advance.

I noticed something behind the signboard and used one of the chair legs to push it out from the gap. It was a piece of cardboard written with a marker. ”Here’s your second test. I know you’re very good at solving crimes. This is a real case I heard about in prison. I don't think it should pose a challenge for our Great Detective Song, right? On a hot summer’s day, two girls were sitting in the store having a drink. But unbeknownst to them, the drinks had been poisoned. One girl finished her drink quickly while the other took her sweet time. In the end, the second girl was poisoned but the first girl survived. What’s the reason for this? Please write down the answer in five minutes and hold up the cardboard to the south window!”

Upon reading it, Dali said, ”The first girl must have taken the antidote beforehand.”

The others began to chatter noisily, making it impossible for me to think. I left on my own and found some place quiet without anyone around. Suddenly, there was a commotion behind me. Dali darted towards me in a panic, ”T-they’ve been poisoned!”

The three boys were foaming at the mouth, their limbs convulsing as they clawed their throats. “They’re my students!” shouted one of the professors. ”Do something about it! Can you ask Deng Chao if he’ll allow a doctor in?”

”There’s no way that’s going to happen because these poison victims are his second batch of hostages.”

“That’s just your opinion!” the professor pointed angrily at me. “There are lives at stake here. Get the police to do something. You can't just let them die!”

The others echoed in succession, their dissatisfaction with me erupting once more. I gritted my teeth, grabbed a pen from the store and quickly wrote the answer on the cardboard: The poison was in the ice.

Deng Chao had deliberately mentioned it was a hot summer’s day, so the two girls must have ordered iced drinks. The girl who slowly sipped her drink only died because the ice melted and the poison was mixed into her drink.

This was the only reasonable answer I could think of!

I found the south windows and held up the cardboard. There was a bright glint in the building directly opposite of the cafeteria, as if someone was looking through a telescope.

Half a minute later, there came a buzzing sound in the air–a toy remote control plane flying with several tiny green vials hanging from it. It was the antidote!