He hadn’t expected it—truly hadn’t.
Jiang Luo had already stopped suspecting Bai Yefeng after reviewing all the background information. But by pure coincidence, he’d managed to tear away his mask.
The discovery rapidly lifted his mood.
Suppressing his grin, he wiped the ash from his fingers. Just as he finished, Xu Yan returned from outside.
Wherever he’d gone, there were mud stains on the tops of his shoes. Jiang Luo turned to glance at him, and Xu Yan shot back a wary glare.
Jiang Luo smiled. “Back already? Any later and it’d start raining.”
There’s a saying—one doesn’t hit a smiling face. And Jiang Luo’s smile was so dazzling, so natural and friendly, that it easily dissolved the slight tension between them. Xu Yan found it hard to keep glaring and gave a stiff grunt in response.
Jiang Luo picked up a thermos and poured two cups of water. “Sit, why’re you still standing?”
Xu Yan hesitated, then walked over and sat down at the table.
Jiang Luo sat too, propping his chin on one hand and watching him with a cheerful glint in his eyes. His black hair was covered by a gray towel, his face pale and features striking—long brows, vibrant eyes, lips bright as cinnabar. He looked like one of those red-lipped, white-toothed beauties from a minority ethnic group.
“So, how long have you known Classmate Bai?”
Xu Yan replied reflexively, “Six years.”
“Oh,” Jiang Luo nodded, curious. “Has he always been this warm and friendly?”
Hearing Jiang Luo praise Bai Yefeng eased some of Xu Yan’s hostility. “Brother Bai’s always been great.”
He thought for a moment, then hesitantly realized he didn’t really have any impression of the former Bai Yefeng in his mind. “Before… Brother Bai used to be pretty low-key.”
Jiang Luo said, “I heard he started striving upward about five years ago. That would’ve been first year of high school, right? As expected of someone with talent—even starting to work hard in first year isn’t too late.”
“Yeah,” Xu Yan couldn’t help but add more, “Before high school, none of us could tell Brother Bai had that kind of talent.”
Jiang Luo smiled faintly. “A genius, huh.”
Five years ago.
Back then, Chi You hadn’t died yet.
That was practically a shocking secret. Jiang Luo was so thrilled he nearly wanted to dig a pit for Chi You right then and there. But he quickly suppressed the thought—such a big secret, he obviously had to make the most of it.
Jiang Luo casually chatted with Xu Yan about a few other topics and smoothly shifted the focus away from those earlier questions. By the time Bai Yefeng and Zhuo Zhongqiu came back from the bathroom, they saw the two of them chatting with a seemingly pleasant atmosphere.
Bai Yefeng smiled as he approached. “What are you talking about?”
“Talking about urban legends at Shanhai University,” Jiang Luo said. “Your school’s pretty interesting.”
His expression didn’t betray anything, but his attitude toward Bai Yefeng was noticeably colder than toward Xu Yan—this was only natural, considering Jiang Luo had just been tripped up by Bai Yefeng’s tactic of killing with kindness.
Bai Yefeng didn’t suspect anything and smiled. “Classmate Jiang Luo, you’re welcome to our school to play. If you’re able, transferring to our school wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
Zhuo Zhongqiu clicked her tongue. “Openly trying to poach someone?”
Outside the window, thunder suddenly rumbled. Lightning flashed, and everyone looked up. Heavy rain had started pouring down violently.
It came suddenly and fiercely, tearing through the sky and pounding the ground, hammering the glass windows with sharp slaps.
Bai Yefeng watched the storm for a while and said, “Let’s rest.”
The signal in the old campus building was poor. To prevent students preparing for exams from playing on their phones, the school hadn’t improved the signal. Their phones couldn’t connect to the internet—at most they could make calls or send texts.
Time with nothing to do made people drowsy. Accompanied by the sound of rain, Jiang Luo slowly fell asleep.
Until night deepened.
In the middle of the night, Jiang Luo was suddenly jolted awake by his phone ringing.
Still groggy, he picked up his phone. The call was from an unknown number.
The dormitory was quiet—shallow breathing, no one speaking, everything wrapped in silence.
Jiang Luo pressed answer, eyes still closed. “Hello?”
“……”
Jiang Luo: “Who are you?”
“…zzz…zzz…”
Amid the broken static of the line, a female voice emerged in jagged fragments: “I… zzz… I’m… I’m here…”
Jiang Luo snapped awake. He sat up. A cold wind snuck in through the crack in the window. Gripping his phone, he glanced around—nothing.
“Zzz…”
The stiff female voice continued, “I’m… back-to-back… with you…”
The call abruptly ended.
Jiang Luo’s forehead throbbed twice. The cold wind gave him goosebumps. He sat up and leaned against the white wall, turning on his phone to check the call info—but the unknown number had vanished.
He flipped through his call history again and again, but that call was nowhere to be found. Jiang Luo was now certain: he had encountered something supernatural.
Back-to-back with me?
He turned his head slowly to look behind him. Behind him, there was nothing but a wall. Jiang Luo was just about to look away when his gaze suddenly froze on the wall.
Could there be something inside the wall?
Could it be that girl who went missing in 2012?
A chill crept down Jiang Luo’s back. He sat up and moved away from the white wall. Turning on his phone flashlight, he carefully inspected it.
The dorm walls weren’t as worn as the exterior. There were no visible cracks. Jiang Luo knocked lightly on the wall—it gave off a dull sound, no obvious abnormalities.
He thought for a moment, then used his phone to look around the other walls. The other three people laid motionless in bed. Even the loud ringtone just now hadn’t woken them up.
Jiang Luo looked down at the time. It was only 2 a.m.
“What are you doing?”
A voice suddenly came from behind.
Jiang Luo’s scalp instantly prickled. He rolled back with a start and pulled out a talisman from under his pillow, holding it between his fingers in front of himself. But in the pale glow of his phone, he saw Bai Yefeng’s face.
Bai Yefeng wasn’t wearing his glasses. In the dim light, his face—which looked gentle during the day under silver frames—now appeared cold and sinister. But he quickly smiled. “Why aren’t you sleeping in the middle of the night?”
Jiang Luo put away the talisman. “Suddenly needed to use the bathroom.”
“Let’s go together,” Bai Yefeng said. “I just happened to need to go too.”
There was only a shower in the dorm—not a toilet. But going to the bathroom with a malicious ghost wearing human skin, especially one that clearly had it in for Jiang Luo… what was he, stupid? What were they going to do, compete who could pee farther?
Jiang Luo looked down at his phone. “I’ll play on my phone for a bit first. You go ahead.”
Bai Yefeng smiled. “Alright.”
His footsteps gradually faded. A few minutes later, he returned.
Before bed, this so-called champion-to-be even kindly said, “Classmate Jiang, holding it in is bad for your health.”
Jiang Luo: “…” Ha.
For the rest of the night, Jiang Luo didn’t sleep. He waited until dawn broke and the rain stopped.
When Zhuo Zhongqiu got up, he saw Jiang Luo sitting on his bed with dark circles under his eyes and said in surprise, “Why are you up so early?”
Jiang Luo said, “I didn’t sleep at all.”
He climbed out of bed, washed his face in the bathroom, and said to Zhuo Zhongqiu, “Let’s go find a hammer and a shovel.”
The two of them went to the first-floor administrator to borrow some tools, then returned to the sixth floor. Bai Yefeng and Xu Yan were sitting at the table chatting. When they saw them coming in with tools, both were a little surprised.
“What are you two doing?” Bai Yefeng asked.
Jiang Luo replied succinctly, “Smashing the wall.”
Only then did Zhuo Zhongqiu realize what task she had signed up for. She asked, “Jiang Luo, are we really smashing the wall?”
Jiang Luo nodded.
Zhuo Zhongqiu rolled her wrists and said crisply, “Then let’s smash it.”
Bai Yefeng tried to dissuade them. “Once we leave, the students will come back. If you smash the wall, what are they supposed to do?”
Truly living up to his reputation as a gentle and considerate “white lotus,” Jiang Luo smiled flawlessly at Bai Yefeng. “We’ll patch it up before they return.”
Bai Yefeng sighed and made a “go ahead” gesture.
Jiang Luo and Zhuo Zhongqiu moved the dormitory bed aside and started smashing the plain white wall. The dorm wall wasn’t high quality—it didn’t take long before a hole appeared.
The hole eventually grew to the size of a trash bin, but to Jiang Luo’s surprise, there was no corpse inside as he had expected—only a few white ants crawling around.
He frowned in thought. Had the ghost lied to him? Or had he misunderstood what the ghost meant?
“Back-to-back with you.”
Taken literally, didn’t that mean it should be inside the wall?
Bai Yefeng, sitting off to the side drinking water, asked idly, “Find anything?”
His manner was completely relaxed, as if he already knew there was nothing inside the wall. Jiang Luo’s eyes flashed as he recalled the muddy stains on Xu Yan’s shoes yesterday.
It hadn’t rained yet, and most of the ground was dry. Xu Yan wouldn’t have left Bai Yefeng’s side unless Bai Yefeng told him to—so did Bai Yefeng tell him to go somewhere with wet soil?
“Nothing,” Jiang Luo sighed in disappointment, then asked in return, “Classmate Bai, did you find anything?”
Bai Yefeng chuckled. “Classmate Jiang, you really overestimate me. I haven’t even left the dorm—what could I possibly discover?”
Jiang Luo said, “You don’t seem very anxious.”
“Ah,” Bai Yefeng’s gaze slid from the ends of Jiang Luo’s black hair to the reddish rims of his eyes from staying up all night. His tongue flicked briefly, and he let out a light laugh. “Being anxious won’t help.”
Jiang Luo gave him a side glance, then left the dorm with Zhuo Zhongqiu. They returned the borrowed tools and went out to find the others.
On the way, Zhuo Zhongqiu asked, “Why did you suddenly think of smashing the wall?”
Jiang Luo told her about the call he received last night. After hearing it, Zhuo Zhongqiu didn’t immediately analyze the content—her first reaction was to comment on Jiang Luo’s condition.
“You really are unlucky.”
Jiang Luo felt the need to explain. “I’m not always this unlucky.”
At least before he met Chi You, Jiang Luo had been… well, still pretty unlucky.
He changed the subject. “Looks like they’re all here.”
Everyone had gathered at the same spot as yesterday. Jiang Luo shared his findings. “I plan to go to the records room to check the 2012 student files. Who’s coming with me?”
Zhuo Zhongqiu and Ye Xun stepped behind him. Lu Youyi and Cyril also raised their hands, but Jiang Luo didn’t want to bring along fools.
“Let’s go, Sister Zhuo, Ye Xun—just us three.”
Wenren Lian rested his chin in thought. “Then Kuang Zheng and I will go look for places with wet soil.” He gave a sly little smile. “Since Bai Yefeng gifted us that hint, it’d be rude not to accept it.”
Jiang Luo nodded in satisfaction. “I think so too.”
Lu Youyi asked, “What about us?”
The remaining three looked at Jiang Luo with puppy-dog eyes.
Jiang Luo beamed at them. “I need you to help me with something very important… collect the contact info of every participant.”
“The more, the better.” Jiang Luo winked at them.
The group split into three teams. Jiang Luo’s team arrived first at the school archive room. It was already full of people, each with a stack of files in hand, sweating as they read.
They walked to the cabinet containing 2012 records. Most of the files had already been taken.
Thanks to their prior knowledge, Jiang Luo’s team had an edge. Even though they didn’t know the missing girl’s real name, they did know her class: Senior Year 3, Class 4.
They found the records for Class 4 and began combing through them page by page.
The girl disappeared before graduating, so her academic record should have gone blank from the moment she vanished. That kind of data was easy to spot—they quickly found two matching candidates.
Ye Xun whispered, “After the first girl went missing that year, a few more girls disappeared in a row.”
The two matching girls were Wang Xinhui and Fu Yuaner.
There were photos of them in the records. They both looked around eighteen, smiling shyly at the camera in the bloom of youth.
Jiang Luo memorized their faces and continued comparing their files.
One disappeared first, the other later. That meant one girl’s academic records would go blank earlier than the other’s.
Jiang Luo quickly confirmed it—Fu Yuaner was the first girl to go missing.
He snapped a photo of Fu Yuaner’s file.
In the photo, Fu Yuaner looked gentle, a little shy, with faint freckles on her cheeks—the kind of face that fit the stereotypical “first love” image of youth.
Author’s Note:
Shou: Want to go pee together? See who pees farther?
Gong (calmly): …Or see whose is bigger.
