Chapter 3: Search

Dorm Room 103.

This room originally housed five students. After the second victim’s suicide, only four remained.

The second victim’s name was Zhou Nansong.

Her belongings still sat where they always had – her bedding, her books. Her family had come to collect a few important items, but left most everything else behind.

At the roommates’ insistence, the school administration hadn’t disposed of these mementos. They remained exactly where they were, waiting to be dealt with once all the students had graduated.

When Qiong Cang stepped inside, the dorm was empty. Lunch break was short, and the roommates had probably gone straight from the cafeteria back to their classrooms to study.

Qiong Cang found Wang Dongyan’s bunk and rummaged through the small cubby for a moment, pulling a little key from an obvious spot. She used it to open the wardrobe beside the bed.

The school’s wooden cabinet carried a damp, musty smell, undercut by the sharp reek of mothballs. The two odors mingled and rushed out as the door swung open, a pungent assault on the senses.

Qiong Cang left the cabinet door wide open to let the smell dissipate some.

Wang Dongyan’s belongings were arranged with meticulous neatness. Everything was laid out plainly to see. Feminine products sat on the bottom shelf. Clothes were folded and stacked by season – spring and autumn wear on the left, pants on the right. A bag of snacks hung from the cabinet door. Wang Dongyan, it seemed, was the sort of person who thrived on discipline and preferred things tidy.

Near the front of the cabinet sat a clear organizer box filled with hair clips, headbands, bracelets, and little charms.

Qiong Cang fished out a bracelet woven from red cord. Tied to it was a small metal square, engraved on the front with two letters: “XY.”

Qiong Cang ran her finger over the faded metal piece. Her brain immediately served up a thought: Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, or chromosomes?

Qiong Cang: “…”

Yeah. She knew. She deserved to be single.

The human subconscious was a terrifying thing.

Qiong Cang pulled out her phone, snapped a photo of the red cord bracelet, and used the image search function to find a matching product on a certain shopping platform.

…Well, that wasn’t exactly rare. A “Red Thread of Fate” matchmaking bracelet from XXX Matchmaker Temple¹.

Qiong Cang: “…”

Alright. So Wang Dongyan liked pretty things and had some aspirations about life.

Qiong Cang set the jewelry box aside and started going through the clothes.

Wang Dongyan didn’t have many personal outfits – First High School required uniforms, after all. Halfway through moving things around, Qiong Cang spotted a small red pouch.

She opened it. Inside was a yellow paper talisman.

She couldn’t tell what exactly was drawn on the talisman, but the words “Rest in Peace” were written on the back. Its purpose was self-evident.

Qiong Cang scanned it with her phone again and discovered something remarkable.

This thing was actually a hot-selling item on a certain shopping platform. Twenty-five yuan each, over ten thousand sold per month. And the most popular variant? Talisman pouches for attracting wealth.

…Human nature really was universal.

Though the talisman probably worked best for the shop owner.

Qiong Cang let out a small sigh, put everything back where she’d found it, then walked over to Zhou Nansong’s desk directly opposite.

This time she didn’t rummage. She just stood at the edge, scanning the desk surface and the space under the bed.

On Zhou Nansong’s desk sat a photograph. In it, two girls wore identical clothes, leaned together flashing hand signs, and laughed with abandon. They were the first two victims.

Nothing else especially eye-catching jumped out. Books, test papers, a cup crammed full of pens.

Qiong Cang’s expression remained perfectly neutral as she snapped a photo of it.

·

By now, her live stream room was buzzing. Nothing got the viewers more excited than these early hints, this sense of things half-glimpsed and then covered up.

“I was about to say, what the hell is she doing, even digging through clothes? She’s not here scavenging for scraps. Never thought she’d actually find a key clue. 【I was too young】”

“I remember this instance. The last player groveled before the NPCs for two days and got the important plot reveal out of them, and it turned out to be absolute bullshit. The Suicide Progress maxed out instantly. This instance is packed with misleading info… From what I’m seeing so far, I’ve got a bad feeling this player’s about to fall into the same traps. 【Sympathy of the Prophet】”

“【Thinking】 Zhou Nansong dies, and Wang Dongyan still prays for her rest. That suggests the two of them had a pretty good relationship.”

“Doesn’t the school teach science or critical thinking? Why would Wang Dongyan buy talismans like that?”

“Great Detective on the scene! Wang Dongyan and Zhou Nansong were good roommates, and Zhou Nansong and Tian Yun were best friends. Three sworn sisters, dying one after another, not a single one escaping. It’s absolutely a conspiracy. Probably they witnessed some crime scene, then got threatened and retaliated against.”

“Can’t we just let campus life mysteries be simple? Why does everyone have to steer it toward horror flicks?”

“Not every famous detective is a Sherlock. Some are just the Three Stooges². I’m looking at you all. “

·

While the viewers were still fixated on that photograph, Qiong Cang had already turned and headed out to the balcony.

She half-leaned against the balcony railing, pressed her hand to the back of her neck, and rolled her head in wide circles. After loosening up her neck, she cracked her knuckles with force, letting out crisp popping sounds.

Preparations complete, Qiong Cang pulled out her phone and began composing a text message to He Jueyun.

The contents of her phone screen were projected onto the right side of the stream for viewers to follow along.

Qiong Cang: Regarding, inferences about the relationships between the three deceased.

Qiong Cang: Victim 1, Tian Yun, and Victim 2, Zhou Nansong, were close. 【Image · Photograph】

Qiong Cang: Zhou Nansong and Wang Dongyan were roommates. Their relationship was poor.

When the first two lines appeared, viewers nodded along – yes, that seemed right. But when that third line hit the screen, a lot of people blanked out.

“?”

“Huh?”

“I knew it! What kind of student who’s been through compulsory education buys a soul-resting talisman out of sisterly love? That’s way too creepy! It’s because her own conscience was guilty! Big shot, great minds think alike!”

“No concrete evidence proves that, right? The talisman alone doesn’t hold water. Lots of people just buy that stuff casually. The little pouch was actually pretty cute. A lot of Chinese people are superstitious in a half-hearted way.”

He Jueyun’s reply came back quickly.

He Jueyun: What’ve you got?

Qiong Cang typed rapidly.

Qiong Cang: The stationery, magazines, ornaments, cups and basins on both their desks show absolutely no overlap or similarity. However, both of them do share product lines of the same series with their other roommates.

Qiong Cang: 【Image】Wang Dongyan’s sandals share the exact same style and material as several other roommates’, so I infer they came from the same shop. Zhou Nansong’s water cup, like several other roommates’, is a custom-printed cup with a self-drawn design in a similar style.

Qiong Cang: Given that the two of them live in the same dorm yet went out of their way to avoid matching items, I infer their relationship is extremely strained. Wang Dongyan likes taking photos, yet there isn’t a single photo of Zhou Nansong in her album, which provides circumstantial corroboration.

He Jueyun: That tracks.

Qiong Cang: 【Image · Talisman】No other religious-related items were found among Wang Dongyan’s personal belongings, and nothing of that nature surfaced on her phone either. The yellow talisman is a popular item from an online marketplace, uniquely styled. Wang Dongyan likely has a casual, superstitious-type belief system and made an impulse purchase.

He Jueyun: Agreed.

Qiong Cang: With the two on bad terms, Wang Dongyan buying this kind of functionally sensitive talisman and storing it in her own wardrobe is abnormal behavior. It may be a subconscious attempt to seek psychological comfort. A bold inference: Wang Dongyan has some connection to Zhou Nansong’s suicide, and she’s carrying psychological guilt. It could be direct involvement, or it could just be that she knows the inside story.

He Jueyun: That actually makes a lot of sense.

Compared to the heated back-and-forth between the two of them, the pace of comments in the Live Stream Room gradually slowed. The loudly proclaimed certainties from moments before were still hanging there, only to be instantly replaced by the sharp, resounding slap of reality. One group of people simply spammed laughing emojis, silently mocking those viewers who had spoken with such unwavering conviction just a short while ago.

But before long, the viewers pulled themselves out of their embarrassment.

The best way to cover up your own mistakes is to praise your opponent. So the comments section began lavishing Qiong Cang with half-hearted flattery about her sharp powers of observation. Then, pretending nothing had happened, they let their thoughts run wild again, predicting where things would go next.

They were all veteran netizens with years of experience. How could they not have some psychological fortitude?

On the screen, the two were still conversing.

He Jueyun: Anything else?

Qiong Cang: There is. I’ll tell you after I finish grading homework.

He Jueyun: ? What homework?

Qiong Cang: Daily practice, Five-Three³, Getting to Know Meng Jianping⁴.

He Jueyun: …

When Qiong Cang said grading homework, she meant literally grading homework.

Most people have a habit of doodling and scribbling, especially when they’re bored. Since Wang Dongyan already harbored strong suicidal desires and had no one in real life to confide in, she most likely would have left some clues in unguarded places. And homework or scratch paper are things that clearly reflect a student’s psychological state.

Especially scratch paper.

When people are bored, there’s nothing they won’t do.

Senior-year high school students have a lot of practice books, across all subjects, all editions, all brands. Qiong Cang surveyed the sea of books on the desk, selected the ones related to science subjects, and began flipping through them page by page.

Qiong Cang flipped at high speed, turning the page every few seconds as if just skimming. But she looked at every single page seriously.

The flow of time in the game sped up correspondingly when no plot was unfolding. By the time the sun had set, Qiong Cang finally finished going through the contents of the several practice books in her hands.

Her expression was so composed that viewers had no way of knowing whether she’d actually found anything over the span of most of the day. Yet she didn’t stop. She began searching through other books.

She found a graded composition book on the table containing the ten essays required for winter break.

This was a completely silent stretch of video. Qiong Cang was almost entirely absorbed while reading, with only the faintest of small movements. The result was a screen that looked like it was looping the same footage over and over, utterly unchanging. The only break she took was stepping out to eat a meal in the middle.

The director even enlarged the practice problems from the books onto the screen, letting the audience experience the joy of studying together.

Never before had viewers experienced such a mind-numbingly boring murder-case livestream. It was a sight to behold. Even more amazing was that a surprising number of people with nothing better to do actually persevered.

If a slapdash diary entry written just to satisfy a homework requirement might still allow for the slightest glimpse of something, then when Qiong Cang began flipping through scratch paper, the viewers who had been floundering at the edge of an ocean of tedium could stay calm no longer.

“The moment she set the books down, I heaved a massive sigh of relief. I thought I had triumphed. Then she took out the scratch paper she’d shoved into the corner earlier. 【Smile】What the hell kind of ascetic penance is this?”

“Insane! What a madwoman! I bow to her, okay?”

“I just came to watch a stream to relax a little, why are you doing this to me? 【Haggard】I thought this was supposed to be a funny game? Girl, aren’t you going to go romance an NPC?”

“Does searching for evidence really need to be this meticulous? You even have to start with scrap paper?”

“Information obtained through dialogue interrogation might involve the other party lying. Physical evidence like this really is more reliable.”

“She reads way too fast. If her rating weren’t so high, I’d honestly think she was just showing off.”

“I kind of feel like it’s useless, though. Her pace of gathering clues is way too slow. She probably didn’t find any usable information in the textbooks or homework, that’s why she switched to scratch paper, right? For all we know there’s nothing in the scratch paper either!”

A chorus of sighs and wails rose from the viewers, but Qiong Cang simply continued rapidly flipping through the scratch paper notebooks.

Her patience was practically terrifying.

A high schooler’s scratch paper is generally used rather casually with no real pattern to it, so Qiong Cang flipped through it much faster than before.

When she was about halfway through, she spotted a comic character sketched in pencil on a page from a stapled stack of white scratch paper.

The character’s lines were drawn quite crudely, but the expression was remarkably vivid, puffing out its cheeks as it ate. It was clearly something Wang Dongyan had doodled out of boredom, and something she had a faint fondness for.

Qiong Cang’s fingers paused. The drawing gave her an inexplicable sense of familiarity. She took an extra moment to examine the character’s head on the scratch paper, then tore the sheet out, set it aside, and continued rifling through the rest.

Before long, she spotted another bust portrait of a boy yawning.

Qiong Cang quickened her pace, and near the end of the notebook she found the third drawing – several boys playing a stacking game, yet only one of them had facial features drawn in.

The poses in these last two drawings were distinctive enough that Qiong Cang recalled them immediately.

She photographed each one and sent them to He Jueyun.

Qiong Cang: 【Image · Drawing】

He Jueyun: What’s this? What does it prove? Wang Dongyan likes manga?

Qiong Cang: Do you know what XY is?

He Jueyun: Chromosomes?

He Jueyun: Don’t tell me Wang Dongyan is actually a guy?!

Qiong Cang froze for a moment.

Qiong Cang: ??

Qiong Cang: You’re something else. Your imagination really goes there, huh.

He Jueyun: …No. I once handled a case where a male offender got breast implants, disguised himself as a woman for years, and committed sexual crimes. Left a bit of an impression.

Qiong Cang read He Jueyun’s reply three times, her mind going a little blank.

…She had just learned something that enriched one’s life experience immensely, and yet was completely useless.

Now she would also remember it vividly.

Qiong Cang shook the strange thoughts from her head and switched to her phone’s photo gallery.

Earlier that day, while rummaging through the phone in the classroom, she’d searched the gallery. It contained over five hundred photos – some selfies, some screenshots, and some candid shots taken in the classroom.

At the time, Qiong Cang had focused on the classmates caught in those candid shots, assuming they must be friends Wang Dongyan was close to. After all, Wang Dongyan was unlikely to take candid photos of people she disliked and keep them stored in her gallery.

But back then she hadn’t pinpointed what felt off about them. They just seemed like ordinary records of a high schooler’s daily life.

Qiong Cang: 【Image】

Qiong Cang: Look at the boy in the background.

She sent him three photos in a row.

In every single one, another girl was the ostensible subject, yet the lens always just so happened to “inadvertently” capture half of a boy’s figure.

That boy was Xu You.

Xu You yawning.

Xu You eating.

Xu You playing stacking games on the floor with other boys.

Every single pose matched the manga-style drawings perfectly.

Xu You had a mole at the corner of his eye, and the comic character had a mole in the exact same spot.

Countless details made it clear – this was a girl expressing a crush in the most subtle, veiled way.

Qiong Cang: Xu You. The boy who cornered me at noon today. Slammed his hand into my head right when I loaded into the instance.

Qiong Cang: 【Image · Red String Bracelet】Taobao match – bought by Wang Dongyan.

Qiong Cang: XY.

Qiong Cang: Yo ho.

That “Yo ho” carried some real spirit.

He Jueyun felt he could detect a hint of pride in it.

The online viewers were equally electrified by this discovery, their long-sluggish spirits finally perking up.

“Holy crap! She figured this plot out way too early, didn’t she? The player I watched didn’t even learn about this until right before dying!”

“Ah, the young ones.”

“Just think about how Xu You treated her… this story was a bad ending right from the start.”

“She noticed a character that took up less than a quarter of the frame across that many photos? 【pupil earthquake⁵】Is she a human-shaped system? Does she just auto-run image analysis?”

“She really does have that 92-point vibe. Loudly declaring: I CAN⁶!”

“Just when I thought this instance was about campus violence, you’re suddenly telling me it’s actually a youth romance drama?”

“Hold on, but didn’t the player previously deduce that Wang Dongyan’s suicide had nothing to do with Xu You’s behavior?”

“Probably because she’d already gotten used to it, so her data didn’t fluctuate in real time. It’s totally normal for the deductions in 【Case Analysis】 to be off here and there.”

Translator’s Notes