Chen Ge was startled by his own train of thought. An unowned Door, a child who kept searching for despair, spending years in the process — and ultimately transforming itself into a four-star scenario?
It sounded far too unbelievable. Chen Ge forced himself to calm down.
"There are thirteen easels in the oil painting room of the experimental building, and thirteen people were painting. They knew the school's secret, the color inversion of blood — they were very likely the thirteen candidates the Door chose for itself."
A single person's power was rarely enough to sustain a four-star scenario, unless that person had surpassed the Red Cloths. But if multiple Red Cloths joined forces, no one could say for certain what the outcome would be. Even he himself had never seen so many Red Cloths together.
"Thirteen — what an unlucky number." Chen Ge glanced at Zhou Tu. He had been searching for the art club all along, and had even dreamed of the scene inside the oil painting room. This person was almost certainly one of those thirteen painters.
"The Door must have selection criteria. Zhang Ju clearly didn't meet them, but Zhou Tu did." At first, Chen Ge hadn't expected much from the oil painting room, but after his analysis, he changed his mind: "Zhou Tu's memories are the key."
Among the club members, Zhou Tu was the most unusual one. Chen Ge now needed to prepare for both possibilities.
Either Zhou Tu would recover his memories and tell him everything, or Zhou Tu would recover his memories and become his enemy.
"This is a big catch. Was I too casual with him before?" Chen Ge's eyes locked onto Zhou Tu, making the other man shudder.
"Teacher Bai, I'm going to check over there." Zhou Tu made up an excuse and scurried to the deepest corner of the archive room.
"Run all you like — I'm the one who should be scared here," Chen Ge muttered and continued searching the room. The archive room still had plenty of surprises left for him.
Before long, Chen Ge found several newspaper reports about fires inside the archive room. Fire seemed to carry a special meaning within this school — it symbolized destruction, yet also heralded rebirth.
"Muyang Middle School had a fire. There are burn marks on the staircase. The school's predecessor was a crematorium. And now I've discovered that Xicheng Private Academy also had a fire. Are these all coincidences, or is there a deeper reason behind them?"
In addition to the fire reports, Chen Ge also found a few relatively well-preserved student files at the very bottom of the metal cabinet, two of which were particularly noteworthy.
One of the files contained Lin Sisi's name, along with comments from teachers and classmates.
His classmates didn't want to befriend him, and his teachers couldn't be bothered to deal with him. The boy had no mother, and his father was a murderer. He had been adopted as a child, but for one reason or another, he had run away from his foster family multiple times — a real handful.
In his view, the only person in the entire world who had genuinely helped him was an intern at the welfare institute.
That recent college graduate, despite not having her own life settled, had sponsored Lin Sisi through elementary school and had even attended his parent-teacher conferences.
According to the teacher's notes, only when that intern was around did Lin Sisi's "hyperactivity" improve at all.
The file contained no photo or detailed information about Lin Sisi, but it did preserve a handwritten signature — Gu Youjia.
The entire document was tattered and moldy, riddled with wormholes, yet the guardian's signature section was spotlessly clean.
"Gu Youjia, Hanjiang Welfare Institute — if I make it out of here alive, I might pay them a visit." Chen Ge spoke as if talking to himself, though it was also quite possible he was saying it deliberately for someone else to hear.