Chen Ge was startled before he ran toward the female dormitory. The woman who trailed behind Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin seemed to notice him as well as she turned around to glance at Chen Ge. The ashy skin spoke of death, and her eyes were filled with complicated emotions.
Wait, that face?
The woman who followed behind Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin was the woman who appeared in Ma Yin's video!
The facial features and the emotions filling her gaze were all the same. Chen Ge did not dare waste time and charged forward.
"Be careful!" he screamed, but Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin did not seem to hear him. The woman placed her hand on Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian's shoulders. She leaned into the space between them and whispered something into their ears. Due to the distance, Chen Ge could not hear her clearly, but he did see the girls' bodies turn stiff and the focus in their eyes swaying. They eventually closed their eyes, but their bodies kept moving like they were sleep-walking.
"Ma Yin! Liu Xianxian!" Perhaps Chen Ge's shout had its effect because the two girls slowed down, and the expression slightly changed like they were caught in a nightmare. They were also struggling, but the result was different from what Chen Ge anticipated. The two girls did not wake up, but after moving for a few more steps, they fainted and collapsed to the ground.
The woman who trailed behind them turned to look at Chen Ge. She held his gaze as she pointed toward her heart. She made a weird sign before turning to disappear inside the female dormitory. The woman disappeared in the blink of an eye. Chen Ge managed to catch that there was a hole in her clothes near her shoulder like it had been shot through by a bullet.
"Why did she point at her heart? Was that a threat? Was she trying to warn me?" Chen Ge ran to the female dormitory and slammed on the window. In reality, his scream earlier had already awakened the dormitory manager.
"Someone fainted! Just outside the dormitory front door! Help!"
A man banged loudly on the window at the entrance of a female student's dormitory at 3 to 4 am. The manager, who was an auntie, did not dare come out on her own. She picked up the phone to call the security and the school admin.
…
A glass of warm water that had gone cold was placed on the table. Chen Ge glanced at the clock on the wall—it was already 5:40 am. The light filtered down on him. He placed both of his hands on the table and looked at the seven people who sat across from him calmly.
There included police officers, school security, and teachers at the university.
"I have told you many times, I am not a prevent, and it was not me who made the two girls faint. You can doubt me, but please remember everything that I am saying now. When the two girls wake up, I want you to personally apologize to me."
"Chen Ge, of course, we believe that you are innocent, or else Captain Yan would not have personally assigned me to watch over this case." Lee Zheng had dark circles under his eyes. They had just parted about ten hours ago, and ten hours later, they met up again in a different environment. Looking at Chen Ge, Lee Zheng felt like he was looking at one of his colleagues.
"The two girls came to visit my Haunted House yesterday morning. I realized that they were seriously troubled by something, and after I asked them, I found out the taller girl's elder sister has gone missing, and it has been troubling her for a very long time." Chen Ge placed his hand over his heart. "Perhaps you might think my action is very weird—why would I help them if I am not related to them? But I want to tell me, my parents also had a mysterious disappearance half a year ago, and since I understand what she is going through, I have the urge to help her!"
Chen Ge's voice echoed in the office, and it sounded quite convincing.
"Two girls fainted in front of the female dormitory at around 3 am. We have looked through the surveillance video. At the time, you were the only one who was following them. If you are not the culprit, then who could it be?" The person who spoke was a man in his thirties who dressed fashionably. He normally stayed at the staff dormitory, so when the news exploded, he was one of the first to come over.
"I don't know. It could be anyone, including you." Chen Ge did not show any intention to back down, and he would take on anyone who dared challenge him. "The fainting of two girls might not appear to be that serious, but there is a bigger case behind it."
There was a chilliness in Chen Ge's eyes. Other than the few police officers, the other people felt unsettled in their heart.
"I've already told you, the two girls came to find me at my Haunted House. The girl called Ma Yin… her sister has disappeared, and she studied so hard to enter Jiujiang Medical University to find her missing sister because her sister was once a student here…" Chen Ge told the school how Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian had been sneaking out of their dormitory every night lately to find the statue that was part of the campus legend.
"Most of the urban legends are fake, but a small portion of them are based on real events. However, after being tossed around as rumors, it was exaggerated to an impossible proportion." Chen Ge took a sip of the water. He sounded calm, but his brain was turning fast, trying to come up with a way to distract everyone's attention.
"You mean, the story of the weeping statue is real?" Lee Zheng was comparatively familiar with Chen Ge, and at the very least, he knew that Chen Ge would not create stories.
"There is a video on Ma Yin's phone that was sent to her before her sister's disappearance. The weeping statue in the underground storeroom showed up in the video. As long as we can find the owner of the statue, I'm sure we can use that as a clue to look for her sister's killer!" Chen Ge cupped his hands over the glass, and veins were popping on the back of his hands.
Not everyone in the room bought his story. They were there because they were told there was a pervert who was caught trailing female students. They definitely did not expect that to lead to a murder case.
"We've found the video that you mention." Lee Zheng's expression was weird. "The video wasn't taken on Ma Yin's phone. A few years ago, when Ma Yin's sister disappeared, her parents came to the police station to seek our help. At the time, they also provided that video, and after analysis by our technicians, we found that the video wasn't sent by Ma Yin's sister; it was shot by Ma Yin herself."
"Ma Yin was the person who shot the video?" Things were different from what Chen Ge expected.
"Indeed, to be precise, when Ma Yin's elder sister disappeared, she was together with Ma Yin, but Ma Yin cannot remember what happened that day." Lee Zheng flipped through his phone. "We still have the case files with us. A few years ago, her parents regularly came to check up on the progress, but they gave up recently." Lee Zheng sighed softly. "When Ma Yin's sister disappeared, Ma Yin hadn't even enrolled in university yet, but now she is about to graduate."
"No wonder she is so desperate to find her sister." After Chen Ge heard what Lee Zheng had to say, he was not feeling so well. He turned the cup in his hand, and he was suddenly reminded of something. "The video is shot from the first-person view. Obviously, there had been a murder in the house, and when I first saw the video, I managed to confirm the presence of a second victim. Since it has been revealed that the video was not sent to her from her sister's phone and shot by Ma Yin herself, the one who shot everything under the bed was Ma Yin! The other victim was most likely her sister!
"The murderer was inside the house, so how did she manage to survive the ordeal? In the last second of the video, she saw the woman hanging on the windowsill. Is it possible that it was this strange woman who saved her?
"She had lost the memory for an entire day. Could that be the doing of this strange woman as well? She didn't want Ma Yin to remember certain things."
At this point, Chen Ge stood up from the chair. "Have Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian woken up? Quick go and check up on the two of them. I suspect they might have forgotten the things that happened last night!"
The woman who entered the female dormitory with Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin earlier was similar to the woman who leaned on the windowsill several years ago. A few years ago, she managed to make Ma Yin lose her memory, so there was no reason she would not do the same thing several years later.
"Calm down, I will call the doctor down." Lee Zheng dialed a number on his phone. "Doctor Zhang, have the two girls awakened? Is it okay if we go and talk to them?"
The not-so-optimistic voice of the doctor came through the phone. "They have already woken up, and they're physically fine. However, they seemed to have suffered some kind of trauma, so their mental state is not that stable."
"Okay, we'll be there in a bit." Lee Zheng and the other officer led the way. The security guard at the campus and the male lecturer flanked Chen Ge on both sides. They did not seem like they trusted Chen Ge that much. The group entered the infirmary together. Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin were lying in bed, and their faces were pale.
"Are you feeling better? I have a few questions that I need to ask you two about last night." Lee Zheng moved a chair over and sat down beside the beds. He saw both Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin shake their heads at the same time.
"Last night, we were in our bedroom, but for some reason, we ended up in the corridor. We cannot remember anything that happened in between."
"Please try to remember. Last night, the three of us went into the underground morgue together. In the end, it was me who saved both of you!" Chen Ge squeezed his way to the side of the bed. He was pulled back by the security and the doctor; they were afraid that Chen Ge might scare the girls. But it was weird—the pale-faced Liu Xianxian and Ma Yin felt much calmer when they saw Chen Ge. It was as if this man gave them a sense of security.
"I cannot remember what happened last night, but I cannot sense any malicious intent from him." Ma Yin touched her head. "I feel like I've forgotten something very important."
Liu Xianxian had a deeper impression of Chen Ge compared to Ma Yin, perhaps because Chen Ge had carried her and run for quite a distance. Now, even though part of her memory was missing, staring at Chen Ge, she knew instinctually that this man was a good person, someone reliable. "Last night, he helped me and Ma Yin. I cannot tell what happened exactly, but I am sure that without his help, Ma Yin and myself would have been in serious danger."
Liu Xianxian sounded so sure and confident when she said that. She even smiled and added a thank you to Chen Ge.
"Last night, you say." Chen Ge narrowed his eyes. The memory loss of these two girls had to do with that woman with ashy skin. He remembered seeing the woman lean into Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian's ears to say something before they started to look like they were sleep-walking.
The ability to eclipse a part of someone's memory, I've seen this ability before. Chen Ge thought about it internally. Looking at Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian, Chen Ge was reminded of a different person—the police officer who was retiring, Ol' Wei. When Ol' Wei entered Coffin Village with Chen Ge, he seemed to have a run-in with No. 10 from the ghost stories society, and then part of his memory disappeared as well.
Ol' Wei's condition is similar to Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian! Does this mean he has also run into the woman with ashy skin? The Zhu lady said that No. 10 had a dead body on his back; could that dead body be this woman with ashy skin?
When Chen Ge asked the statue in the underground storeroom about the ghost stories society, the soul inside the statue had disappeared instantly. Therefore, the underground morgue was probably related to the ghost stories society as well.
The ghost stories society's chairperson should have access to more than one door. One of the doors is the blood door at the Third Sick Hall, so could the other door be the door in the underground morgue? Chen Ge was shocked by the thought that surfaced in his mind. He felt like he was getting close to uncovering the real identity of the society's chairperson!
No. 10 should be very familiar with Jiujiang Medical University.
Familiarity with Jiujiang Medical University, seen him wearing the Doctor Skull-cracker's mask at least once, and participated in many cases where Chen Ge was involved… At this point, a name suddenly popped up in Chen Ge's mind.
He Feng!
When Murder by Midnight was first introduced, He San had come to visit with a few other students from Jiujiang Medical University, and the eldest and tallest among them was He Feng. At the time, Chen Ge had been impressed by this young man's ability to stay calm under duress and even exchanged numbers with him. Chen Ge had planned to invite the man to join him as he expanded his empire.
Could it really be him? Chen Ge was still deep in thought when the eyes of Liu Xianxian, who was in bed, suddenly reddened. She was looking at someone among the group. Following the direction of her gaze, Chen Ge realized that the clean-looking man had his eyes jumping all over the place. He was trying his best to remain unaffected. Looks like this is the man Liu Xianxian was in love with.
Perhaps beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
The perfect man in Liu Xianxian's eyes had zero advantages in Chen Ge's eyes other than his passable fashion sense.
The black phone hasn't announced that the one-star mission is complete. Looks like I need to be cautious of this man.
Ma Yin and Liu Xianxian became Chen Ge character witnesses. They both said that Chen Ge was a kind person, and with the testimony from Lee Zheng, the incident was thus settled. When the sun rose, Lee Zheng brought the campus security into the underground morgue to remove the statue.
Then, they connected the school admin at the new campus, and the investigation to check who left the statue inside the underground morgue began. Things were taken out of Chen Ge's hands. While no one was noticing, he picked up his backpack and prepared to slip away from the campus. As he waited for a taxi to arrive, he suddenly saw the man whom Liu Xianxian had a crush on also trying to run away from the scene.
Now should be the time the school is busiest, but he is not staying behind to help, so where is he rushing to? Chen Ge hid inside the convenience store, and after the man got into the car, Chen Ge also hailed one of his own to follow after the man.
The taxi drove for about ten minutes before stopping at Fang Hwa Apartments.
According to Lee Zheng, the man has a permanent residence at the staff dormitory, so what is he doing at Fang Hwa Apartments?
Chen Ge did not have a good impression of Fang Hwa Apartments. He got out of the taxi and silently tailed the man.