Chapter 1 A Supermarket on the West Side of Campus

An old, half-open glass door of a supermarket, plastered with promotional posters of some Korean idol.

The sequined, fitted suit didn't exactly impress the man on the mission; on the contrary, it was incredibly tacky.

The man in the suit struck a long match, turning his face to light a cigarette.

Then, he flicked his wrist to extinguish the flame on the match.

The man in a baseball cap stood on the steps opposite him, gnawing on a dry piece of bread while drinking from a bottle of mineral water.

Staring at the poster, the man in the suit sneered and slowly exhaled a cloud of murky smoke onto the Korean idol's face. "Was our aesthetic sense this bad back then?"

The man in the baseball cap had just finished his bread and was greedily sucking the remaining jam from his fingers.

However, his gaze wasn't fixed on the man in the suit or the poster, but rather on a group of girls.

His wolfish eyes roamed freely over them.

They stood neither too close nor too far, circled together.

They were dressed rather revealingly.

One tall girl with long, loose hair kept glancing over here, a cigarette between her fingers.

Although she tried to maintain an air of nonchalant composure, the naiveté in her eyes betrayed her, and her smoking was clumsy. She didn't belong to this group; she had only recently joined.

"If this weren't the Dream Realm, how wonderful it would be," the man in the baseball cap licked his chapped lips.

Hearing this, the man in the suit lowered his head and carefully fastened the buttons on his right sleeve. Then, he smiled and said, "Stop daydreaming. How would you dare to come to a place like this in the real world?"

"You can only hide in a dark, sunless basement," the man in the suit continued without looking at him. "Don't forget, the police are looking for you everywhere."

The man in the suit's words seemed to pull the man in the baseball cap back to reality. His expression faltered, his composure vanished, and his smile faded by seven or eight degrees.

He wiped his left hand on his body, then adjusted the brim of his cap, pressing it down firmly.

He stood in the shadows, and from the man in the suit's perspective, only half of his chin was visible.

"There's no need to be so nervous," the man in the suit's voice carried an ambiguous undertone. He adjusted his collar, inadvertently revealing the vibrant ukiyo-e print on the lining of his suit.

"I'll keep your secret," the man in the suit said with a smile. "You know what I want."

"But we don't know who has it," the man in the baseball cap said in a muffled voice.

"Then we'll find them, one by one. We have plenty of time. The qipao woman died first, which means it's highly unlikely she had it. In other words, even if she did, it's already been taken." The man in the suit was like a different person now, his gentle face concealing a demon.

The man in the baseball cap seemed to realize something, and he raised his head, his narrow eyes beneath the brim of his cap staring at the man in the suit's face. "Are you saying someone engineered her death?"

The black pupils in his eyes were small, and the whites were large, which gave people an insidious feeling, though he was indeed such a person.

"That's right," the man in the suit nodded.

"Who is it?"

"It's not clear yet."

"Could it be the woman in room 406?" The man in the baseball cap suddenly became anxious. "Her aura is strange. Her fists and the base of her thumb have calluses. Do you think... could she be a cop?"

The man in the suit rubbed his chin with a finger and replied after a moment, "Probably not. She gives me a fierce, aggressive feeling. Police shouldn't be like that."

The man in the baseball cap sighed in relief. "That's good."

"Heh," the man in the suit sized up the man in the baseball cap, his tone playful. "As long as you choose to cooperate with me, it doesn't matter if she's a cop or not." He leaned forward, one corner of his mouth twitching upward. "Because... I can't let her leave here alive."

The man in the suit extinguished the cigarette in his hand and said coldly, "Just like those two idiots in 404."

......

"Achoo!"

Jiang Cheng sneezed heavily.

Fatty hugged his arms and asked with concern, "Doctor, do you have a cold?"

Jiang Cheng shook his head and looked around. "No, I guess someone misses me and is silently expressing their longing for me from afar."

Fatty ignored the second half of Jiang Cheng's sentence.

They had been wandering around the campus for a long time, from the cafeteria to the westernmost part of the playground, and then back the way they came, taking a different route.

"Doctor," Fatty asked curiously, "where exactly are we going? I feel like you're just wandering aimlessly."

"That's right," Jiang Cheng admitted generously. "I am indeed wandering around."

Fatty was stunned. He understood less and less what this person was thinking.

"I'm done wandering," Jiang Cheng said, stopping and shading his eyes with his hand to block the sunlight. After a brief orientation, he pointed to a road and said, "Let's go to the equipment room. We'll meet up with them there."

They had agreed to meet in front of the equipment room at noon.

The journey was relatively long, and Fatty's heart became uneasy again. He repeatedly glanced at Jiang Cheng, his lips moving as if he wanted to ask something but couldn't bring himself to.

"You want to ask who killed the qipao woman?" Jiang Cheng said casually.

His tone lacked the usual interrogative inflection. He spoke as calmly as if he were stating an established fact.

"Yes, yes," Fatty nodded repeatedly.

They had discussed this issue before, but were interrupted by the sudden ringing of a bell.

"The ghost in the mission killed her," Jiang Cheng said.

Fatty said anxiously, "Of course I know the ghost killed her. What I mean is..."

"It was the woman in the pajamas," Jiang Cheng stopped and turned to look at Fatty. "She used the qipao woman's fear of ghosts to drive her out of room 407, which led to the latter's death."

Although Fatty was surprised by Jiang Cheng's conclusion, he didn't doubt the statement itself.

Because he knew that the latter never joked about such things.

"How did she do it?" Fatty suddenly became agitated. "How... how could a newbie dare to do that?"

"I can't answer the first question yet," Jiang Cheng said. "But the second question is simple: the woman in the pajamas isn't a newbie. Everything we saw, including her fear, cowardice, screams, tears... even the dinosaur pajamas she was wearing when she appeared, these were all her disguises."

"The man in the suit's character performance is obviously a whole level below hers," he shrugged. "Compared to the latter, he's a complete idiot."

Fatty gradually calmed down. He thought carefully about the woman in the pajamas, but couldn't find any flaws in his memory. "Doctor," he raised his head. "Can you tell me your evidence?"