Chapter 222

The large lecture hall was so quiet that a pin drop could be heard; the luxurious decorations formed a sharp contrast with the dilapidated school.

Sunlight formed pillars of light through the gaps in the walls, scattering due to the dust.

In the hot summer, they were sweating profusely just a moment ago, but now they felt an inexplicable eeriness.

A chilly, ghostly wind brushed against their bodies; Su Yang shivered violently, and goosebumps rose all over his body.

Qin Weiyang's attention was entirely on the interior of the lecture hall, and she didn't notice Su Yang's anomaly.

"The ground is covered with a thick layer of dust; it seems no one has been here for a long time."

As she spoke, she took a step forward; as soon as her shoe made contact with the floor, it shook up thick dust.

Su Yang fanned the air in front of him, his gaze suddenly attracted by the floor under his feet.

"Wait!"

He immediately reached out and grabbed Qin Weiyang's arm, his expression becoming solemn.

"What's wrong?" Qin Weiyang asked curiously.

Su Yang slowly leaned over, touched the floor with his finger, and looked closely against the light.

"Fresh footprints... someone is faster than us."

As soon as these words were spoken, Qin Weiyang lowered her eyes to examine them and found that in the thick dust, there were indeed several blurred marks.

Unlike ordinary footprints, this person was clearly walking on tiptoes.

"It must be a player," Qin Weiyang said.

Su Yang nodded, his gaze sweeping across every corner of the second floor of the lecture hall, then he turned back to look at the window.

Qin Weiyang had noticed this clue in the morning; the window was not tightly sealed but had a crack.

In a situation where the lecture hall was rarely opened, it was impossible for the teacher in charge of maintenance to make the low-level mistake of not closing the doors and windows properly.

Clearly, this was done deliberately by someone.

Either to leave a path for themselves.

Or... willing victims taking the bait, luring them into a trap!

"How did he know we would come?" Qin Weiyang asked, puzzled.

Su Yang stared at the stage covered by the large red curtain, his eyes flickering, "He was just randomly picking 'lucky ones'."

"We took the bait."

Qin Weiyang frowned and walked straight toward the stairs.

Su Yang followed unhurriedly, lowering his head to observe the direction of the footprints.

The two followed the stairs to the front of the stage on the first floor, where Su Yang found the footprints suddenly disappeared.

His gaze moved slowly upward, and an increasingly thick smell of blood rushed toward them.

"It's inside," Qin Weiyang said slowly.

"The footprints also stopped here," Su Yang said.

Qin Weiyang pulled out her knife, took a deep breath, grabbed a corner of the curtain, and pulled hard!

"Whoosh—"

The scene inside the stage was immediately revealed; Su Yang subconsciously took half a step back, his palm sliding into his pocket to grip his folding knife.

However, the scene that followed left the two slightly stunned.

The large stage was empty, the pear-wood floor was as clean as new, as if it had just been laid.

"No one?" Qin Weiyang jumped onto the stage and explored toward the backstage.

Su Yang took out his folding knife and walked toward the entrance on the right side of the backstage, his muscles tense at all times.

Similarly, the backstage only had scattered debris and no sign of anyone.

The two carefully checked every corner but did not find the source of the bloody smell.

"Strange, there's no one, and we didn't find any bloodstains," Qin Weiyang felt suspicious.

Both of them, being extremely sensitive to the smell of blood, knew that the stage was the source.

And the direction of the footprints left on the second floor was enough to show that the person had finally entered the stage.

But how...

Nothing?

"Let's go out and take a look," Su Yang returned to the center of the stage, looking for a possible entrance.

Qin Weiyang was somewhat unwilling; she had finally found a clue and was on the verge of solving the case, yet she had gained nothing.

"Do you think it's possible that a player who came in took the treasure?"

"Then he met another player who also came in to hunt for treasure, killed him, and just happened to meet the clearance conditions."

Su Yang shook his head, "Then the game would have ended long ago."

"This is easy to explain; he wants the hidden achievement."

"According to your logic, what is the point of him opening the window? What is the purpose of leaving footprints?"

"Kill all the treasure hunters to get higher points."

Su Yang was not surprised to hear this answer; this was indeed the thought process Qin Weiyang would have.

"If you have already obtained the treasure and killed a player from the enemy camp, would you still want to use your own strength to kill all the players?" Su Yang asked rhetorically.

"Yes," Qin Weiyang nodded honestly.

Su Yang slapped his forehead and sighed in his heart.

If there were a replay, he would really like to see how Qin Weiyang had made it this far.

"Is there a problem?" Qin Weiyang saw his speechless expression and felt somewhat unconvinced.

"The problem is huge," Su Yang squatted on the stage, tapping the wooden boards while saying, "You don't know who the players are, nor do you know their talents."

"Picking them off one by one will not only increase the risk but may also put yourself in the school's field of vision."

"Furthermore, you want to fish, but what if someone has the 'remote object retrieval' talent? What would you do then?"

Qin Weiyang thought for a moment and felt it made some sense.

"Then what should we do now? The clue is broken."

"Tap tap!"

Su Yang gave a light "huh," tapped several times in a row, and found the hollow sound particularly obvious.

He then tapped other places, and the sound was significantly different.

"The clue isn't broken; the answer is inside," Su Yang pointed under his feet, a sharp light flashing in his eyes.

Qin Weiyang's heart stirred, and she used her knife to make several cuts along the gaps in the wooden boards.

Su Yang squatted down to help, lifted a corner of the wooden board, and pried it open with force!

The next moment, a deep hole suddenly appeared.

The two looked down, head to head, then looked up and met each other's eyes, saying in unison:

"Found it!"

The source of the bloody smell was coming from this hole.

"Going down?" Qin Weiyang asked.

"Since we're here, of course we have to go down," Su Yang climbed down the stairs of the hole.

Qin Weiyang turned to look at the lecture hall gate, pulled the curtain back, and followed him down.

When the two landed, the dim underground space was particularly damp, and the air was filled with bursts of putrid odor.

"I'll take the lead, you cover the rear," Qin Weiyang volunteered.

Su Yang naturally had no objection to this and followed behind her, feeling his way forward little by little.

There was no light underground, and visibility was almost zero.

Just after walking ten meters, Qin Weiyang's back became blurry.

"I should have brought a flashlight," Su Yang said, his voice echoing in the enclosed space.

"Are you afraid of the dark?" Qin Weiyang asked with interest.

"A little, I watched too many horror movies when I was a kid, and the aftereffects have lasted until now," Su Yang said.

"I didn't expect that a dignified top 100 on the leaderboard and number one in individual prison points would also be afraid of the dark," Qin Weiyang covered her mouth and smiled.

"What's there to be ashamed of? I'm not only afraid of the dark, but I'm also afraid of cockroaches," Su Yang said nonchalantly.

People always have weaknesses; if they don't have weaknesses, they aren't human.

They are gods!

"Snap!"

At this moment, Su Yang suddenly stepped on something, making a crisp sound.

Just as he leaned over to pick it up, light suddenly appeared all around.

Seeing that all the torches in the narrow space were lit, Su Yang saw the object in his hand clearly by the firelight—

A hand bone!