Chapter 231: 227 Return to Kisaragi High School

A figure wearing a trench coat and a khaki fedora walked out of the hospital with a relaxed gait, soon ducking into the crowded street, and quickly disappearing from sight.

Regarding this, in an alley across from the hospital entrance, several figures emerged from the shadows. One of them turned back to a person still half-hidden in the shadows against the wall and said, "Senior Matsumoto, do we really not need to follow him? Are we just going to leave him be like this?"

"Heh, he's bound to return to that place anyway. Rather than wasting effort tailing him, we might as well let everyone get some rest." Matsumoto Gin walked into the sunlight with his hands in his pockets, his smiling eyes opening into a slit—they were the eyes of someone who had everything under control. "Besides, after interrogating He Jia'an and Misaki Naomi, I've already roughly figured out where the dark clouds currently hanging over Taomu City came from. That is truly a dangerous business."

After passing through the endless stream of people, He Jia'an turned into a street corner with fewer pedestrians, and after a series of twists and turns, he finally walked onto a street with sparse foot traffic.

He adjusted his ill-fitting hat, glanced sideways at a sleeve that had flashed by a corner behind him, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

He Jia'an knew someone was tailing him and had been following him for a long time, but they had yet to show themselves; he did not care about this.

He did not show any panic because of the tail, nor did he have any intention of speeding up his pace to shake them off.

"Hey—is the school closed?" After wandering around for a while, He Jia'an had unexpectedly returned to the starting point. He squinted as he read the notice posted at the entrance of Kisaragi High School.

The reason for the closure written on the notice was that broken water pipes had caused unstable electrical circuits, making it impossible for the school to conduct classes normally; therefore, it was announced that in-person classes were suspended for three days and would be switched to online instruction.

However, the real reason for the school's closure was naturally not what was written on the notice, but because the night before last, not only had Kisaragi High School in the Inner World been invaded by unknown factors, but the school in the Real World had also suffered an attack, and the school authorities had already discovered that people had been injured or even killed as a result.

For the sake of the teachers and students, and for the sake of the school's reputation, Kisaragi High School would not open until the crisis was resolved.

Presumably, until the people from the Chosen Alliance resolved the school's crisis, these three days of closure were destined to be three days after three days, making it difficult to have an accurate end date.

Right now, there wasn't even a security guard at the school gate; they had likely heard some rumors through the grapevine.

With a salary of only a few hundred Alliance coins a month, it wasn't worth risking one's life for.

Of course, it could not be ruled out that this was done intentionally by the Chosen Alliance.

He Jia'an entered the current Kisaragi High School as if walking through an empty space; no one could stop him, and no one dared to stop his actions. He Jia'an walked into the school in this brazen manner and even swiped most of the school's keys from the security office.

"That Biology Classroom must be here." He Jia'an thought to himself, arriving once again at the chemistry lab he had visited the night before last, and he opened the laboratory door.

The empty chemistry lab was a bit stuffy, and the scent of chemical reagents, difficult to distinguish, drifted in the air. He walked in and carefully surveyed the environment.

"It seems that compared to the Kisaragi High School of the Showa era, the room structure has been modified quite a bit; it's a quarter larger than the former Biology Classroom." He Jia'an walked past the position of the classroom podium; that was actually where the wall of the Biology Classroom should have been, but now the wall had been pushed back.

He Jia'an tried to pass through this door into the perilous Inner World just as he had the night before last, but the Space Channel seemed to only function at night; it had no effect during the day.

"If my guess is correct, during the Showa era, Hanako's mother, Takayama Keika, held the Sacrificial Ritual related to the Thousand Illusion Moon in the Biology Classroom. This is why Takayama Keika said she had done something to wrong the students." He Jia'an thought of Takayama Keika's somewhat distorted vengeful mentality—how she had played Ju Xiuyi in the palm of her hand and driven a student to a breakdown—and he felt his conjecture was very likely.

Takayama Keika was clearly somewhat insane. Every debt has its debtor; that perverted school worker and the cowardly Ju Xiuyi had done something to wrong her daughter. If she had only targeted those two, everything would have been reasonable, but she seemed to have no intention of considering the feelings of the innocent.

Perhaps in her eyes, the entire school was not innocent, which was why she wanted to drag everyone down with her.

Whether it was the rumored "Biology Classroom you can't walk out of" or even "Hanako in the toilet," these two campus urban legend-like rumors had appeared because of Takayama Keika.

Regarding Takayama Keika, He Jia'an had actually conducted a relatively detailed investigation into the past Takayama Keika before coming here, discovering that she had mysteriously disappeared the day before the media announced who the real culprit behind her daughter's murder was.

And if He Jia'an hadn't guessed wrong, Takayama Keika must have intended to offer herself to an Alien God at that time, in exchange for equivalent power—that is, those cursed rumors.

"Could you be the source of the Hanako Curse, Teacher Takayama Keika?" He Jia'an muttered to himself, then wanted to find traces left behind in this place by a person who had long since ceased to exist in this vastly different space-time.

According to Lin Laoban, the source of a curse does not have to be the person themselves, but the one who initiates the curse must have a close relationship with the deceased, even feeling their pain as their own.

As for who would feel anger and resentment for Hanako, and who would have the most motive to deliberately utilize the power of a Blessing, it had to be Hanako's kin—that is, Hanako's single mother.

With a target for his suspicions, it was naturally easier to lock on and take action.

He Jia'an intended to search in this chemistry lab that used to be the Biology Classroom. As he walked through the lab, having grown accustomed to the pungent smell of some chemical agents, he finally caught an unusual scent in the environment.

"Is this the smell of blood?" He Jia'an tried hard to twitch his nose and breathe, following the bloody scent intermittently, and only then did he finally discover the source of the smell: under the base of a certain laboratory bench, there was a patch of dried, sticky blood, and unknown burn marks had scorched a human-shaped outline into the floor.

He Jia'an was slightly silent; he could roughly guess who the person who died here was.

Arriving at the private office next to the laboratory, he discovered an open leather notebook that actually contained a drawing of a partial Ritual Pattern; the complete pattern had already been half-erased.

The name "Mano Daichi" was written on the cover and on an unused page inside the leather notebook. Observing the handwriting of the drawing, it could be confirmed that this pattern had been drawn by Mano Daichi himself.