V3C22

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Before leaving, Lin Jue took a look at Gu Fengyi’s hand. As expected, two marks had appeared.

Whose illusion was this? Lin Jue’s first thought was that it was Liu Qingqing’s, but her reaction when facing the monster didn’t seem like it. Then was it Gu Fengyi’s? Then what was that creepy centipede monster meant to be? And who was the man controlling the centipede? How was he able to?

Even though Lin Jue was filled with curiosity, Gu Fengyi had no intention of satisfying him, nor could he ask Gu Fengyi straight up out of politeness. In the end, he could only watch as she supported Liu Qingqing towards the open doors.

Girls, such secret-filled creatures, Lin Jue thought, I don’t get them at all.

Returning to the campus, Lin Jue looked at the time: 01:08. Anxiety rose in him. What if Song Hanzhang had already finished talking to Lu Ren but couldn’t find him? Did he go to the plaza all by himself then? That’s so dangerous.

“This smell… Lu Ren’s here.” Gu Fengyi’s snake sense was once again put to use.

Lin Jue snapped his head back. Lu Ren was leisurely walking towards them, a piece of dried grass in his mouth, blood still dripping from his dao; he flung the blade, the blood from the edge splattering onto Lin Jue’s shoes.

“You finished talking to Song Hanzhang?” Lin Jue asked hurriedly. “Where is he?”

Lu Ren’s lips moved and he spat out the grass. “He left after we finished talking.”

Lin Jue grew even more anxious. “Where?”

“How would I know?” Lu Ren gave him a sidelong glance, his tone unfriendly. “Why are you so worried about him anyway? If you have that much spare time, you might as well worry for yourself; he’s gotten more and more cultish, so mysterious. Don’t die under his manipulations.”

Lin Jue wanted to talk back but he conceded. Lu Ren, this guy, he fought whenever he wanted to. If he happened to be in the mood, Lin Jue might never be able to see Song Hanzhang again in this life…

“Do you want to go to the plaza with us?” Gu Fengyi suddenly asked Lu Ren.

Lu Ren looked at her in surprise. “Hmm? Why are you going to the plaza?”

It wasn’t hard to understand Gu Fengyi’s thought process. It was never a bad thing to add some power to their team, even if this power was a little dangerous. This was a team fight after all, and even Lu Ren should take his own survival into consideration.

“We’re planning to temporarily team up with the 2022 players to get rid of the 2002 team.” Gu Fengyi scrutinized Lu Ren. “Instead of wandering around by yourself, why not join us for now?”

“Sounds nice,” Lu Ren said, rubbing his lips together as if considering it, but the next second, he shrugged. “ Unfortunately, I’m not interested.”

Gu Fengyi was quite surprised.

“I’ll come to play with you lot when I catch that guy in the cape.” Saying that, Lu Ren waved goodbye to them intimately, as if they were friends, making all three of them shudder in disgust.

Lu Ren left under the hazy lamplight after refusing their assistance, leaving them with only a dashing silhouette. Lin Jue was confused. Hadn’t Lu Ren brought a message to Song Hanzhang just then? He had thought that the message was from the cloaked man, but from what Lu Ren had said, he hadn’t caught up to the cloaked man yet. Who was the message from then?

In the midst of his confusion, Song Hanzhang’s figure appeared at the end of the road covered by wild grass and blood streaks. Lin Jue froze for a moment, then immediately threw his confusion out the window as he jogged up to him. Seeing the damage to Song Hanzhang’s clothes, he asked in worry, “Did you meet a monster?”

Song Hanzhang nodded without any further explanation.

Lin Jue felt his heart settle down. “I met Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing… Gu Fengyi asked for Judas to be her decision, after killing Dan Liang, and until then, she’d keep an eye on Liu Qingqing. We were taken into an illusion just then as well and I didn’t see anything wrong with Liu Qingqing…”

“That’s fine.” Song Hanzhang looked at Liu Qingqing who was nestled beside Gu Fengyi from afar, his voice filled with light fatigue. “Do as she says, I have no issue with it.”

Lin Jue opened his mouth, really wanting to ask what message Lu Ren brought him, and who it was from, but from what he knew about Song Hanzhang, if this person had decided to not say something, there was no way to get it out of him…

In the end, there was only silence.

After all… After all, he would know in the end. That was what Lin Jue believed.

The wind blew through the wilted branches, scattering the scent of blood and dry leaves, making a light crunching sound. The four stepped on the dead leaves towards the direction of the Time Plaza. Before they left, Song Hanzhang had used his healing spell on Liu Qingqing to alleviate the wound on her right hand; even though it wasn’t enough to heal it completely, at least she could now curl her fingers.

The more Lin Jue wondered what Song Hanzhang was thinking, the more he didn’t understand. He was healing Judas?! Even though he himself had said it was an eighty percent chance, by default Lin Jue had thought it meant nighty-nine percent. Was it because of Gu Fengyi’s position that it wasn’t appropriate to turn against Liu Qingqing? Was he preparing to kill her first and then explain? Even Gu Fengyi wouldn’t be able to say anything once Judas’ Rule appeared when Liu Qingqing died.

Was that it? Filled with questions, Lin Jue sneakily ‘questioned’ Song Hanzhang with his eyes.

After being harassed by his gaze multiple times, Song Hanzhang finally turned to look at him. They were the same calm, expressionless eyes that could be mistaken for gentleness in brighter, softer lighting, but Lin Jue intuitively knew that those eyes contained too many, too complex emotions. He didn’t understand them, but he felt that panic.

“Xuezhang…” Lin Jue called after him.

“Mhm?”

Lin Jue had a lot he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t manage to open his mouth. Maybe he was afraid that others would hear, or maybe it was that uncertain suspicion deep in his heart that made him so timid, but he knew that once he opened his mouth, whether or not Song Hanzhang answered, no matter what he answered, there wouldn’t be a reply that wouldn’t trouble him.

There must be a reason why Song Hanzhang didn’t tell him. That was what Lin Jue believed.

“Nothing… yeah, nothing.” Lin Jue pulled out a strained, bright smile at Song Hanzhang.

Song Hanzhang looked at him deeply.

Keeping his mouth shut.

&&&

Dark red, viscous fluid flowed through the man-made water system surrounding Time Plaza like filthy blood, exuding a fishy smell. The safety time on the plaza had ticked to its end a long time ago, and the Judas’ Rule sign had completely vanished.

The members of 2022 had already gathered in the plaza. Zhang Sijia and Zuo Linyuan were whispering to each other in a corner; Zhang Sijia voiced his judgments of the players from 2012 as Zuo Linyuan nodded.

The sisters, Mu Chunning and Mu Qiuning, were sitting next to the flower bed. The cheery Mu Chunning said three consecutive jokes to her younger sister but not a sliver of emotion appeared on Mu Qiuning’s frozen face, a look of disgust in her eyes. Mu Chunning yelled in anger, “Su Tian! Come and tell her a joke!”

Su Tian, who had been trying to reduce her presence, shivered, not sure how she had angered this little witch. She mumbled, “I… I don’t know how.”

Mu Chunning dragged out a long “oh” and looked at Su Tian with raised eyebrows. “You don’t know how to do this either, then what can you do?”

Su Tian swallowed, not daring to speak up, her head lowered. Because she held a resurrection tool, she had been able to luckily resurrect in 2022, but she had lived in fear the entire time. The reality of traveling across twenty years had yet to completely settle on her. The teammates around her were all strangers; Zuo Linyuan treated her coldly, Zhang Sijia lost all interest in her after getting her story out of her, the Mu sisters weren’t very friendly towards her either, and as for that cloaked man…

Su Tian winced, not daring to think further.

Even though she was called Su Tian1, her personality and features were as plain as tap water. Apart from her studies, there had never been a single thing eye-catching about her. But even that strong point was unable to hide her mediocrity after getting into university. Even though she was able to get scholarships every year, no one had a deep impression of this person who traveled the straight line of classroom, library, dormitory all year long. Even her roommates didn’t have a good relationship with her, disliking her for continuing to study even after coming back from the library, making them appear even less studious.

Usually, as the top bully of the school, Du Cheng would never have taken a second look at a nerd like her. For one end-of-term exam, he sat behind Su Tian, grabbed her paper, and copied the answers, resulting in an accidental ninety-nine for the class – the one mark he lost was because he copied a multiple choice wrong.

Du Cheng had been shocked and had immediately trapped her on the stairs, forcing her to help him cheat. Su Tian was terrified and immediately started crying, begging for Du Cheng not to. Du Cheng was shocked again, unsure what he had done. It was just cheating on an exam, why did she act as if she was getting raped?

But no matter how hard she cried, Su Tian was unable to escape her fate. In the second term, Du Cheng’s results in the second term soared so much that even his father was moved, repeatedly asking if he had made someone else take the test for him. How could Du Chen admit that? After some rolling around, he managed to get a sports car out of his old man’s hands and drove around with three pretty girls. Those girls were not so simple. They coaxed the young master to smoke marijuana which ended in drug addiction and a driving accident that killed someone.

When Du Cheng’s dad finished calming everything down, Du Cheng’s credit card and sports cards were confiscated and he was only given five thousand yuan2 a month as pocket change. His several girlfriends were chased off, and he was scolded that if he continued to hang out with those unruly women, he would never be able to get another penny out of his hand. It was a bad time for Du Cheng; he had no money, all his supposed friends had left him, and his life had become boring in an instant.

Only now did Du Cheng truly notice the Su Tian who had helped him cheat. Perhaps because he was bored out of his mind, or maybe because he wanted to try something new, but he chased after Su Tian for more than a month, from the foot of the dormitory building to the library, taking her down easily after making her cry a few times, obtaining a fresh, studious girlfriend.

Not long after, Du Cheng stopped being grounded and immediately resumed his life of decadence, his girlfriends a rotating cycle. Su Tian was timid and boring, a dead fish in bed, never calling him out of her own volition and never bothering him, so he never ended up truly breaking up with her, even buying her some small presents before each exam. This strange relationship continued until they entered this game, until the death of Su Tian.

“Finally.” From a distance, Zhan Sijia saw the four in the mist walking across the bridge to the plaza.

The newcomers were Gu Fengyi, Liu Qingqing, Song Hanzhang… and Lin Jue.

Due to the masks during the ball, Zhang Sijia was unable to determine who was next to Song Hanzhang out of the list of possible candidates, but now that they had taken off their masks, he was able to recognize him.

In order to investigate Zhang Jia’s disappearance, Zhang Sijia had done everything he could to investigate the two groups who had disappeared in the past twenty years, and of course, he hadn’t missed Lin Jue who was in the same dormitory building as Song Hanzhang.

Song Hanzhang wasn’t the type to waffle and got straight to the point. “Let’s continue our previous conversation.”

Zhang Sijia gave him a meaningful look. “Senior Song is quite the hasty one.”

Song Hanzhang said lightly, “There’s no need to waste time.”

Zhang Sijia curled the corners of his lips. “Alright, Su Tian, come here.”

Only just having been let go by the Mu sisters, Su Tian became nervous again, and she stood cautiously by Zhang Sijia. Zhang Sijia patted her arm and smiled. “Start from Zou Lili’s death.”

Su Tian shivered and quickly lowered her head. Zhang Sijia encouraged, “There’s nothing to hide, tell them everything.”

Su Tian mumbled something but Mu Chunning was already impatient. “Did you forget to grow a mouth? I’m so sick of you. Let me tell them then, your boyfriend got his eyes on Zhang Jia’s girlfriend Zou Lili, and tried to harass her during break time. Zou Lili was wounded and ran away, trying to seek help from Zhang Jia, but ended up dying a miserable death by Bai Lushuang.”

Su Tian’s face was deathly pale as if she had just received a heavy strike, her entire body trembling.

“How did you know this?” Song Hanzhang asked.

It was Mu Qiuning who replied this time. She said simply, “She was responsible for taking care of the corpse.”

PS: Lilith: my death was really sad =A=

1Tian means sweet.

2$740 USD.

|TOC|

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