Zhu Long showed no awareness of his own abnormality. He didn't say the names of the boy and the girl, but the way he spoke made it seem as though he had experienced something similar himself.
"Hey!" Wang Yicheng was very timid. Sensing that Zhu Long looked as though he had been possessed, he reached out and shoved him.
The glazed, vacant look in Zhu Long's eyes vanished instantly. He glanced at the people around him and suddenly broke into a laugh. "Did I scare you all? I was pretty freaked out the first time I heard this story too. You know what? There's actually a second part to this tale. I have a vague impression of it in my head, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't remember."
"There's a second part?"
"Yeah, but I forgot it." Zhu Long chuckled. "Why are you all staring at me like that? It's just some story I heard somewhere else — it's not some urban legend that happened at our school."
When Zhu Long noticed that everyone was still gazing at him, the smile on his face slowly faded. "You don't believe me? It's not like our school is a medical university…"
"Our school is a comprehensive university with three medical programs. Because the faculty is understaffed, there are very few students in those departments — you almost never see them. But they have three separate laboratories in the science building." Although they were all freshmen, Zhang Ju knew the school inside out and was privy to information that most others were not.
"Our school has an anatomy lab?" Zhu Long's jaw dropped. "I was just talking nonsense — please don't take any of it seriously."
"Our Supernatural Phenomenon Research Society exists to find the truth. Whether it's real or not, we can go check it out for ourselves." Chen Ge was quite interested in the story Zhu Long had told. Zhu Long had been a delinquent in the past and had once been sent to juvenile detention over a run-in with urban management officers. His background bore a striking resemblance to the bad kid in the story, and combined with his strange behavior just now, Chen Ge would have been hard-pressed not to suspect something.
"Zhu Long also has no memory of the summer before the end of high school. Something may very well have happened during that summer." Chen Ge had gleaned a great deal of useful leads from these kids. The next step was to enter the school and verify them.
"I'm glad everyone is so willing to participate. Tonight, we'll go check out the places you just mentioned." Chen Ge turned to Zhang Ju. "Let's start with that stretch of woods you mentioned. You personally saw the senior who was taking a leave of absence — what happened to him is very likely real."
"Alright, follow me." Zhang Ju kept his head lowered, which seemed to be a habitual way he walked, likely to conceal the scars on his face.
He was intimately familiar with the school — far too familiar for a freshman. It was clear that this familiarity ran deep in his bones, as though he had always belonged to this institution.
The little square was nearly deserted by now, and very few people noticed the group of them.
Even those who did wouldn't suspect anything — at most they might feel a bit curious, given that every member of Chen Ge's club was rather eccentric.
The woods were quite far from the little square, giving Chen Ge a good opportunity to familiarize himself with the school's layout.
The west campus was enormous. After walking for more than ten minutes, they still couldn't see its borders.
"That over there is an artificial lake. Because there was a drowning incident in the past, the school prohibits anyone from going near it after dark. We'll need to take a longer route." Zhang Ju pointed toward a stretch of pitch-black darkness in the distance. Had he not pointed it out, Chen Ge would never have guessed that was a lake.
The surface of the water was utterly still, without a single glimmer of light. Rather than a lake, it looked more like a black hole that swallowed everything.
After a few more minutes of walking, Zhang Ju came to a stop. "The girl's body was found in these woods."
The campus at night was quite terrifying. Fortunately, both sides of the road were lined with streetlights, and the illumination offered the group some measure of comfort.