With the dormitory door as the dividing line, 917 is divided into two parts by the light. One part is 16 beds crowded together under incandescent lights, and the other part is a bare wall with blue spots caused by years of dampness.
At the corner where the wall met the floor, two girls in white huddled on the ground. To be more precise, only Orophee, in her white T-shirt, was shivering, while No. 13, in her white dress, had her head lowered, her facial expression unclear.
Ou Ruofei poured water into his mouth, but no matter how much he drank, the dryness in his throat did not ease at all.
The crying sound beside my ears became clearer and clearer. It no longer sounded like the sobbing of one girl, but two, three, or even a group...
Pop.
Ou Ruofei's hands were shaking so much that she couldn't hold the cup. The paper cup fell to the ground and the water splashed onto No. 13's clothes.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!"
Ou Ruofei quickly apologized, but found that No. 13 didn't react at all.
Through the black hair hanging on her cheeks, you can see the girl's white neck stretched out at a strange angle, even her head is against the wall, and her chest does not rise or fall at all.
Oruofei couldn't help but curl her fingers together. She desperately wanted to avoid the thought, but she couldn't stop it from running wild...
Is the No. 13 in front of me really a normal person?
Perhaps because the crying sounds were getting closer, she woke up a little from her daze and realized the strangeness of the situation.
"Classmate, I'm going back to sleep first. Um, I'm leaving first..."
She waved her hands incoherently and backed away. She tried to get up but someone grabbed her arm!
Number 13, who was leaning against the wall, turned his head and asked, "Don't you want to chat with me anymore?"
The cold light hit the girl's face, passed through her dark eyeballs, and printed her back on the wall.
This time, Oruofei finally heard the direction of the crying sound.
It comes from the shadow of body number 13.
In the bathroom, No. 5 yawned.
"I've finished checking everything here. My dear sister's shift will be up soon. I'll go back and call her."
Number 7 also left, saying briefly before leaving: "If there is any accident, shout, I will come back as soon as I hear it."
Number 5's joking voice came from the corridor: "What if you fall asleep?"
Number 7 replied coldly, "I haven't slept in a long time."
…
Tang Xinjue and Jiang Lan stood in front of the sink.
The freshly cleaned bathroom still had a foul smell of unknown origin, which Zhang Youdong couldn't get rid of even with two large bottles of air freshener. He could only let it continue to fill the space.
Jiang Lan spoke first: "Did you receive my note?"
After receiving a positive answer, her expression relaxed slightly. "I'm sorry for using such a roundabout way. I'm not sure if it's safe to talk directly during the day. The props have a time limit."
She spread out her hand, with a golden bell in her palm. As it was shaken, a transparent corrugated protective shield appeared beside the two of them, blocking out any sound.
Tang Xin Jue also got straight to the point: "Who do you suspect?"
Jiang Lan clasped her hands together, her voice heavy, "There are a lot of people... The only people I can trust right now are the two of us in the dorm."
Tang Xinjue had reminded her to be careful of others. Besides, her three roommates, Zhang, Zheng and Guo, were all very strong and actively working hard, so it was impossible that they were ghosts in disguise.
"Especially No. 13's dormitory," Jiang Lan frowned tightly and told him that she had wanted to go to the upper bunk to check, but was stopped by No. 13 excitedly.
"A Nian's perception is very strong. If she saw blood, it definitely couldn't have been ketchup by mistake."
But the blood on the two beds had indeed turned into ketchup, leaving them no reason to investigate further.
Tang Xin Jue: "Doesn't it look like the skeleton at the door?"
Although a smile was clearly seen, it turned into a fake doll in the blink of an eye, confusing everyone's guesses and senses.
Behind every false alarm, it seemed like someone deliberately erased the clues they had received, leaving the clues confused and with no progress at the end of the day.
"That's right." Jiang Lan frowned at the reminder, and simply revealed the other piece of evidence. She took out a golden sphere, and with the trigger of a switch, the sphere rotated on its own and a pair of wings popped out.
"At first I thought there was something wrong with number 13, but..."
The wings fluttered, and a girl's voice floated out from inside:
"...I hid the thing you gave me very well. No one saw it. When can I open it?"
This is the voice of number 13!
Then, another female voice sounded: "...Wait until tonight, and you will know what is inside."
Tang Xinjue heard that this was number 15.
Number 13 sounded a little scared, constantly seeking a positive answer. Number 15 said softly, "Don't worry, we're roommates. Would I lie to you?"
The recording stops abruptly here, and turns into a cacophony of noise.
Tang Xinjue lowered his eyes slightly, not surprised by the content of the recording. "From this, it seems that the person with the real problem on the first day was No. 15."
The initial abnormality of No. 13 was also related to No. 15, but No. 15 had been staying quietly in the crowd, and many people did not notice her.
Jiang Lan looked troubled. "But the tricky thing is, we can't be sure whether they are human or ghosts, and what their purpose is in sneaking into our midst."
Most importantly, she did not have enough evidence to confirm it, and she did not dare to act rashly.
Once suspicions begin to grow, they become difficult to control. If No. 15's identity is unreliable, then No. 13, who is closely related to her, is also suspicious, as are No. 11 and No. 12, their roommates, and No. 14 and No. 7, who are all alone.
In the worst case scenario, half of the people in the dormitory may be disguised "exam candidates"!
Tang Xinjue's clear voice put an end to Jiang Lan's suspicions: "They shouldn't be ghosts in disguise."
"I'm more inclined to believe that they didn't have problems from the beginning, but were influenced by certain entities during the exam."
Jiang Lan's eyes moved: "You mean... possessed by a ghost?"
According to Tang Xinjue, this was the closest guess within her knowledge.
"No," Tang Xin Jue shook his head. "Whether it's a ghost in disguise or possessed, as long as the ghost shows up in person, my roommate will notice it."
Guo Guo's Yin-Yang eyes had never failed to work, but this time he found nothing.
So there were no ghosts? Could everything be normal, and their intuition and judgment were just wrong? Jiang Lan felt her headache worsen.
Their guesses were indeed based on intuition, without any substantial evidence, so it's not impossible that they were wrong... Jiang Lan was about to speak when Tang Xin Jue said, "I'm more inclined to believe that the ghost didn't appear directly in the dormitory, but intervened in some other way. And this intervention has a process and pattern."
After saying that, she dipped her fingertips in water and wrote down the bed numbers of the beds where accidents occurred on the first day on the mirror.
Ah Nian was in bed number 16, Ou Ruofei was in bed number 14, bed number 15 was above bed number 16, bed number 13 was above bed number 14...
Jiang Lan stared at the numbers in silence and quickly understood: "The order is from back to front——"
Her voice stopped abruptly as she realized another problem: if the ghost chose its targets from the back to the front, then the first person to encounter an accident should be Anian.
Tang Xinjue looked at her and said, "I think you know better than me whether Ah Nian has any problems or not."
The person next to him pursed his lips and finally answered firmly, "A-Nian is absolutely fine. She has the safety bracelet I bought at the mall at a high price. It connects the five-dimensional attributes of the three of us together. If she is affected by any external factors, Ke Ke and I will know immediately."
"So after the goblin failed to kill her, it moved on to the next person."
Tang Xin Jue drew a circle on the mirror: "Number 15."
Guo Guo: [Damn! It's the 15th! I guessed wrong again.]
Zheng Wanqing: [You didn't listen carefully. You knew it was number 15 from the recording. How can you pass the level with that attitude and get a high score...]
The roommates who were connected in real time in their minds seemed to be watching a live broadcast, and soon turned from scrolling through the comments to arguing with each other, and finally ended with Guo Guo shouting, "Miss, stop reading."
Tang Xin Jue: "...In short, when I noticed something was wrong with No. 15, I didn't immediately make a judgment because the changes in her body were extremely slight. I couldn't confirm it until now."
In a state of mind connection, she can not only have a mental conversation with her roommate, but also see other people's mental power from another perspective.
Everyone's spiritual power was originally a pale orange flame, of similar size and brightness. But after the door-smashing farce, she keenly noticed that some people's flames had dimmed.
Although it was not obvious, the dimmed flame no longer danced, as if it had wilted. At first glance, it seemed to be just frightened and not eye-catching.
But throughout the whole day, the only flame that remained strange was enough to make people certain.
Tang Xinjue did not explain the information about the spiritual flame in detail, but simply talked about her spiritual abilities. Jiang Lan naturally understood the cause and effect.
"I didn't expect someone could actually awaken psychic abilities." Jiang Lan was a little shocked. "Psychic abilities are one of the most expensive abilities in the store, and upgrading them is even more expensive. Awakening them on your own is like earning a ton of points for free. You're incredibly lucky."
"……Um."
Tang Xinjue tacitly agreed with this statement, without explaining that the first superpower she awakened was actually a toilet plunger.
Back to the topic, after having the prerequisites, the two of them quickly sorted out the basic situation of the dormitory based on the information they had.
"Let's assume for now that number 15 is controlled by a ghost. Their next targets should be numbers 14 and 13."
"During the day, No. 13 was suddenly grabbed by a ghost. Is this a sign of this? Then how should we deal with it..."
Jiang Lan was explaining her ideas when she suddenly saw Tang Xinjue stop and turn around to look at the dormitory behind him.
"What's wrong?"
Tang Xinjue's expression was more serious than ever since he entered the exam. "I feel a strong sense of fear coming from someone else... It's Ou Ruofei!"
She is calling for help!
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