5 Chapter 5 Campus

Experimental Middle School of Yin City was established in the 1930s, originally founded as Jingyang Middle School by donations from local gentry. After several changes, it became one of the high schools in Yin City with the best academic performance, the most substantial teaching faculty, and the highest overall student quality.

Monday, 7:50 AM. The morning reading session at the Experimental School gradually came to a halt with the ringing of the bell.

The first class was about to start, and the students on duty, dressed in blue and white uniforms and standing at the school gate, hurried towards the teaching buildings.

The electric retractable gate closed completely under a set program, and outside the gate, Li Ang walked leisurely toward the school, backpack on his shoulder, neither hurried nor slow.

Instead of taking the main entrance, he approached an iron fence that was hidden from electronic surveillance by protective trees. He broke into a sprint, pushed off hard with his foot, and using the force from the ground, he leapt into the air,

elegantly flipping over the one-meter-high fence like a gymnast vaulting over the pommel horse. He dusted the leaves off himself and casually walked into the teaching building as if nothing had happened.

Knock, knock, knock.

He knocked on the door, entered the classroom, and all his classmates, as well as their homeroom teacher Shi Qingsong who was teaching a history lesson on the podium, simultaneously turned to look at Li Ang.

"Late again."

The scholarly middle-aged man Shi Qingsong pushed up his glasses, tapped the lectern with his knuckles, "What's the excuse this time?

Last time you said you were chased eighteen blocks by a wife and her husband after eating their Mapo Tofu at a street-side restaurant,

the time before last you said you saw a homeless man sleeping on the street, and out of fear he'd catch cold, you covered him with three shared bicycles,

and the time before that, you said that while getting a scrub at the bathhouse you tried to prevent an awkward silence by striking up a conversation with the bathhouse attendant, asking him, 'Haven't had dinner yet?' which led to an offended attendant, who felt his professional dignity was challenged, scrubbed off two layers of your skin leaving you in so much pain that you were late to school the next day."

Huh, you sure remember it quite clearly.

Li Ang modestly said, "Report to the teacher, last night I engaged in a fierce battle with a monster and killed it on the spot, successfully sealing the news that demons and evil spirits truly exist."

Shi Qingsong couldn't help but laugh, "Zi Buyu never talked about strange phenomena; where in the world are there any monsters?"

Li Ang nodded, "See, how successful the information blockade has been."

Shi Qingsong twitched the corner of his eye, "...Go back to your seat, come to the office after class."

Li Ang, as if pardoned, returned to his seat.

His deskmate was a girl, Wang Congshan, who served as the class president and was also somewhat of a childhood friend to Li Ang.

Back in elementary school, when Wang Congshan was afraid of mosquito bites, the considerate Li Ang caught a toad from the drainage ditch and put it on her head to eat any daring mosquitoes coming close;

When they were raising silkworms, Wang Congshan's silkworms died, so the thoughtful Li Ang brought her a bunch of creamy caterpillars for comfort, encouraging her to continue raising them, which inevitably resulted in a swarm of green-headed flies wreaking havoc in the classroom;

When they played hide and seek, Wang Congshan hid in a large cabinet, and the kind-hearted Li Ang, not wanting to hurt her pride, lit ten stacks of mosquito coils and placed them in front of the cabinet, smoking her out with swollen, red eyes as she tumbled out;

Um... upon reflection, their childhood friendship memories seem quite "sweet" indeed....

Of course, Wang Congshan, who had been putting up with Li Ang for so many years, was no pushover and often turned the tables on him.

Li Ang settled into his seat and, while searching for his textbook in his backpack, he softly said to Wang Congshan, "Good morning, Bo."

The class leader, who had grown accustomed to his deskmate's style, glared, "Who the hell is 'Biaozi'? Stop assigning such ridiculous nicknames, you moron."

"Okay 'Biaozi,' got it, 'Biaozi.'"

"..." Wang Congshan took a deep breath and automatically tuned out the teasing.

When class ended, Shi Qingsong stepped outside the classroom to take a phone call. He had to go to the newly-built teachers' office building to pick up some documents and told Li Ang to come see him at noon to talk about student behavior codes.

Once the homeroom teacher had left, the students were finally able to let loose and gathered in groups to chat leisurely.

"Hey, did you guys hear? There was another death on Qianhua Road, just this morning. Over a dozen police cars showed up and they cordoned off four streets."

"Ah, what happened? Didn't an accident just occur there a few days ago? A tourist, I don't know what got into him, suddenly stuck his head out of a tour bus window,

and a city bus happened to drive by right next to it.... His body was still inside the bus, but his head, like a sugar cane, was cleanly severed and flew out, landing right in the bowl of a guy who was eating noodles on the street..."

"Hiss..." The classmates listening in all sucked in a breath of cold air.

"This time it's not just a traffic accident. They say a sanitation worker early in the morning saw a man embedded in the utility pole on the street corner of Qianhua Road intersection...."

"Embedded? How so?"

"Ever tried stabbing a bun with chopsticks? The guy was lying flat on the ground with a twelve-meter utility pole sticking straight out of his chest..."

"How is that possible? You're kidding, right?"

"Tsk, they say he took his own life, jumping from a tall building and just happened to be impaled by the cement pole, but the tallest building near that intersection is only three or four stories high. Not nearly high enough for that kind of fall.

Moreover, the wires at the top of the utility pole were completely intact, and there wasn't a single trace of blood on the entire body of the cement pole. That corpse, it looked as though it had 'grown' right out of the pole, as natural as could be...."

The group gathered for casual chit-chat wore unnatural expressions on their faces, while the classmate telling the story sneakily took out his smartphone to search online, chuckling, "Heh, hundreds of people at the intersection saw it, my uncle was there too. He even uploaded photos to the family chat and Weibo, and now, you can't find anything related on Weibo or the forums, 'Qianhua Road' has been censored..."

After that, he passed his phone around for others to see, and Li Ang also stole a glance.

The photo was probably taken from a distance and was a bit blurry, but you could vaguely make out a man in a suit lying under a concrete utility pole, surrounded by officials and some firefighters wielding concrete saws.

Clearly, the police had no way to extract the body intact without damaging the pole, leaving the fire department with no choice but to saw the utility pole in half at its midsection.

On the smartphone screen, that bizarre, eerie, and somewhat horrifying image made the surrounding girls turn pale, while the boys tried to keep calm, forcing a laugh.

As the old saying goes, 'One can pretend to love dragons,' but in recent months, cases of unnatural death fitting this urban legend genre have been emerging one after another, with people discussing the tales with both intrigue and trepidation.

Seeing the fearful expressions on her classmates' faces, Wang Congshan, as the class president, quickly said, "Alright, alright, let's not discuss or spread such things in school. Class is about to start, everyone go back to your seats."

Everyone dispersed in a subdued atmosphere, but Li Ang narrowed his eyes, thinking back to the photo.

Such a thing couldn't be the work of a serial killer or an accident. The only explanation was the elusive and unpredictable 'Monster.'

This was the reality that the players had to face.

Li Ang remained silent, jotting down the words "Qianhua Road" in his notebook.