Chapter 2
"Lao Gu! How's your cleaning going? Let's go eat together."
He Song poked half of his head out from the classroom door. Gu Qingming's back was already covered in cold sweat. He suppressed the unspeakable fear, pushed the notebook to the deepest part of the table hole, stood up as if normal, and walked out with He Song.
"Old Gu, do you want to eat anything? I'll be able to show my hospitality."
He Song put his arm around Gu Qingming's shoulder and asked casually.
"Uh.....let me ponder this for a while, do you have any recommendations?"
Gu Qingming walked out of the gate of Lantai No. 1 Middle School quickly, thinking that he would rather die than starve to death. His attention was quickly diverted to the century-old question of "what to eat for lunch today". He thought about it and finally threw the question back to He Song.
Lantai No. 1 Middle School is such an unfortunate place that it doesn't provide any meal service at noon. Regardless of whether students are boarding on campus or day students, most of them choose to make do with their classmates on the street behind the school.
The street near Lantai No. 1 Middle School has supported countless small vendors and has made outstanding contributions to boosting the GDP growth of Lantai City.
"Um.....…"
He Song was obviously also very conflicted. Although he had eaten lunch at the food court behind the school many times, his indecisiveness prevented him from making a firm decision.
"How about... this one?"
He Song stopped and pointed at a rice noodle shop and asked.
"That's fine, don't worry about it, let's go with this one."
Seeing that there were fewer and fewer students on the street and fewer and fewer empty seats in the store, Gu Qingming made a quick decision.
He Song has eaten this rice noodles many times and is even familiar with the chef, so the quality is guaranteed.
The two walked into the store and just as they went up to the second floor to find the old place that He Song mentioned, they saw a strange figure at the stairs.
The man was sitting at the entrance of the stairs, wearing a string of Five Emperors' copper coins strung with a red rope on his hand. He had long hair, which was tied into a low braid with a pen-shaped hair accessory that had a crystal texture.
But the most eye-catching thing is the fox mask on the man's face. It has a white background with red and gold patterns. It is extremely exquisite and it is obvious that it is worth a lot of money.
The weirdo wasn't looking at them; he was staring at his phone and appeared to be chatting with someone.
A strange feeling, as if an instinctive resonance with something, surged up from Gu Qingming's heart. The feeling was not unfamiliar. It rose from the bottom of his heart and was almost exactly the same as the strange feeling that appeared when he just met Chu Zhongyuan.
"Huh? He's here too?"
He Song felt a little strange when he saw the fox mask.
"Why, you know him?"
Gu Qingming was still frightened by the notebook that had caught up with him, so when he heard He Song's words, he asked casually.
"I rushed to the mail room and saw from afar that he handed your package to the old man in the mail room. I thought he was a senior from the school drama club and helped pick up the express package on the way, but now it seems... he is probably a member of society."
He Song touched his chin as he explained. Upon hearing this, Gu Qingming felt a cold sweat break out on his back again.
This fox mask... could it be the person who sent the notebook? Or in other words, the person who is related to this series of strange events?
Who is the Fox Mask? And why does the notebook keep chasing him like a shadow in the dark night?
"What's wrong? Is there something wrong with your delivery? How about I go and ask for you now?"
Seeing Gu Qingming stunned, He Song quickly waved his hand in front of him, trying to draw his attention back.
"never mind."
Gu Qingming stopped He Song who was eager to try and said calmly.
Just by looking at the figure, he was sure that he definitely did not know the man wearing the fox mask, and he had never heard his mother talk about such an acquaintance, but this person seemed to have repeatedly delivered his mother's notes to him in various ways...
All of this was like a black whirlpool constantly spinning in the deep sea, making Gu Qingming want to escape from here at all costs to avoid being dragged into it.
But in order to avoid alerting the enemy, Gu Qingming hesitated for a moment, and then, like the students around him, he pulled He Song and continued to move forward.
He Song was also very considerate and didn't say much. Although he hadn't seen Gu Qingming for a long time, he could also sense certain signals from Gu Qingming's hesitation.
Fortunately, the fox mask was so engrossed in the conversation with the person on the other end of the phone that he didn't notice that Gu Qingming and the other man were moving a little stiffly.
Gu Qingming and He Song safely ran to the inner room and sat down. From here they could see three people busy in the kitchen. Looking at the tall chef who was leading the group, they felt more at ease.
"Here comes Xiao He!"
"Good afternoon, Uncle Chef."
The chef and boss greeted He Song, who quickly responded and randomly selected two classic rice noodles with Gu Qingming and added a serving of fish tofu.
After the chef left with the menu, Gu Qingming and He Song looked at each other. The tacit understanding that they hadn't seen for many years made He Song couldn't help but speak.
"Old Gu, what's going on? Was that express delivery given to you by the fox mask? What's inside that makes you so nervous?" He Song asked seriously.
Although I don’t know the specific situation, seeing how nervous my good friend Gu Qingming is, it is definitely not a good thing.
"It should be him. Inside the courier package was a notebook my mother used to have. Maybe a friend of my parents asked someone to help deliver it... Oh, it's okay. Maybe I'm overthinking."
Gu Qingming didn't want to involve He Song in this strange situation, so he tried to find a reasonable explanation for himself.
Gu Qingming's intuition told him that if he wanted to maintain his peaceful campus life until graduation from high school, he had better not get involved with these things and people that seemed wrong inside and out. He had already made a decision. If it really didn't work, he would choose to call the police or directly tell Uncle Lu Ze who worked at the Municipal Bureau.
There have been too many strange things happening around him recently, and he doesn't have the energy to investigate these messy things on top of his studies.
"Okay, but Gu Qingming, if you need help, you must tell your brothers."
He Song didn't say much, just left a message.
Gu Qingming nodded repeatedly.
The leisure time at noon passed in a flash, and in a blink of an eye, it was already afternoon. The boring classes were the same in any school, and the rainy atmosphere outside made the students in Class 7 lose their spirits.
As the class division was approaching, the arrival of the transfer student Gu Qingming did not cause any waves. After the classmates expressed their welcome, they immersed themselves in the sea of questions again.
After barely getting through dinner with bread, Gu Qingming couldn't help it after all. During the evening self-study class, he secretly started fiddling with the notebook in the desk hole.
Before Gu Qingming transferred to another school, this notebook suddenly appeared in his room. At that time, Gu Qingming did not take it seriously, thinking it was just debris dropped when his parents were packing up their things. However, when this notebook appeared in front of him again and again, Gu Qingming's nerves, which were driven crazy by the series of strange things, finally could not bear it anymore. He locked the notebook in the attic, but when he returned to school the next day, he saw it again in the desk hole.
Because of Uncle Lu Ze's invitation and unbearable strange events, Gu Qingming finally chose to leave the city where he and his parents had lived for many years and came to Lantai City.
The notes that appeared in front of him before had no detectable signature, so Gu Qingming did not care about the content of the notes and just wanted to stay away from them. But now, he found that the notes were actually related to his missing mother, so he had to open it and find out the truth.
The brown-eyed boy looked at the combination lock on the notebook, thoughtfully.
Although he didn't know whether the owner of this notebook was his mother, as long as there was such a possibility, he should give it a try instead of continuing to escape.
If it was the mother...what would she use as the password?
Maybe...
Gu Qingming thought for a moment from the mother's perspective, and a flash of inspiration came to his mind, and he immediately started trying it.
"000417..."
Gu Qingming entered his birthday, and his movements were even a little hesitant.
To his surprise, with a "click", the combination lock was opened easily.
It was as if a heavy restriction had been lifted. Perhaps it was Gu Qingming's illusion, he even felt that the notes in his hand had become a lot lighter.
The moment the notebook was opened, Gu Qingming felt his nose a little sour, and a layer of hazy crystal appeared in front of his eyes. He quickly pushed up his glasses, trying to cover up something during the evening study session when no one looked up.
This strange notebook actually came from his mother's hand, because no one else except his parents would be so careful as to set the password as his birthday.
Opening his mother's notebook, the records inside were a little sloppy, but extremely rich. Gu Qingming read through them page by page, and found that most of them were about the customs and folklore of various regions in East C District. There were also many place names that Gu Qingming had never heard of and bizarre underground palace diagrams that looked like tomb-robbing novels, which were inconsistent with the weird records that Gu Qingming had imagined at the beginning.
It’s just that…these vivid records of folk customs seem a little strange at this moment.
What on earth is going on?
Uncontrollable doubts arose in Gu Qingming's heart. Gu Qingming felt that he had never been so confused, as if the whole world was covered with a strange white veil and the truth could not be seen.
His parents were obviously just two ordinary members of a geographical expedition team.
The evening self-study system of Lantai No. 1 Middle School is different from that of Gu Qingming's original school. The last evening self-study session is not long, only thirty-five minutes. Gu Qingming was absent-mindedly copying Chinese ancient poems because of his mother's notes, but his eyes were fixed on the clock hanging in front of the classroom, watching the second hand move to 12 bit by bit.
The piano version of the bell for the end of get out of class sounded on time. Gu Qingming said goodbye to He Song with a heavy heart and walked towards the dormitory building.
The campus at night lacks the vitality and brilliance of the day. The wide straight cement roads on campus are shining with tiny bits of light because of the street lamps, like a miniature galaxy.
Because they had just finished evening self-study, students gathered in groups of three or five on the road, forming a crowd that was laughing and moving towards the dormitory and the gate. Amid the bustling crowd, there was no horror atmosphere described in those supernatural novels.
But Gu Qingming had no time to care about these things. He walked hurriedly in the predetermined direction, as if all the noise around him did not exist.
"Bang!"
Perhaps because he was too anxious, Gu Qingming did not observe the road conditions carefully. He ran a few steps before he bumped into another boy. The interaction of forces caused both of them to fall to the ground, and the bag the boy was carrying was spilled all over the ground. Gu Qingming rubbed his head, calmed himself, and was about to apologize when he was startled by the boy in front of him.
The boy had shoulder-length hair, and he was none other than Chu Zhongyuan, the troublemaker from No. 1 Middle School who was previously publicized by He Song.
It's over now.
Gu Qingming thought, although the prickly cat looked very much like a cow cat, it also showed that there was a high possibility that the other party would suddenly go crazy.
Given this troublemaker's unknown personality, it's unclear how he'll react.
But at least it's better than encountering strange things.
Gu Qingming tried to find joy in the midst of adversity and chatted with his thoughts.
The troublemaker in the class is at least a person...
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