Some are alive, yet they are dead; some are dead, yet they live on.
Fang Tian had once thought this line carried the writer's remembrance of great souls and his denunciation of the base men of the day. He'd never imagined it could also, unexpectedly, hold meaning on a literal plane.
Through the one-way glass, he watched Song Cai in the ward.
This poor wretch was wrapped head to toe in bandages, swaddled like a mummy. His mood had settled considerably since his arrival — no more shouting or weeping. Instead his eyes stared blankly at the glass water cup on the bedside table, lost in a daze.
The Fourth Division's medics said his injuries were mostly superficial, that a few days' rest would have him mostly mended. But they'd also produced the report that Song Cai had died three years ago — cause of death, suffocation.
Fang Tian felt the whole room reeked of conspiracy now, with a truly enormous case very likely lurking behind it all.
Once again, he felt this 《Monster Appreciation Master》 was an absolute scam.
When it had first issued him an F-rank quest, it had plainly billed it as playing a few games with a ghost — every bit a friend-making app. Yet now it was disappearances and walking corpses. He was beginning to think this system was guilty of defrauding the consumer.
What galled him more was that his recently bought laptop had given its life in glory, too.
Seeing Fang Tian's expression flicker between light and shadow, Feng Xi asked, "What are you thinking?"
After much hesitation she'd told him Song Cai's diagnosis after all — Fang Tian was, for now, the only one who could communicate normally with Lin Jiu.
"I think I got scammed."
"Hm?"
"Oh, I mean, the situation three years ago is a lot more complicated than I imagined."
Complain as he might, the real work still had to be done. Whether for the sake of his promise to Lin Jiu or out of a young man's plain sense of justice, he had to see it through. "There's a question that's bothered me from the start. If the killer planned to murder Lin Jiu from the outset, and even successfully lured her to Cat Whisper Café, yet left whether he succeeded up to luck — that's just too strange."
And Feng Xi's earlier talk in the conference room had sparked something in him. He'd quickly realized all his prior deductions rested on the premise that the killer was an ordinary person.
"What if, on the day Lin Jiu went to Cat Whisper Café, the main hall was guaranteed to be packed, forcing her to go online in the cubicle exactly as the other party had planned?"
Fang Tian's voice was low, less an analysis for Feng Xi than a muttering to himself. "Any killer with sense would absolutely never want to be interrupted mid-crime — all the more so when one shout from Lin Jiu would surely reach the people in the main hall...... unless he was certain that even if they heard her cries for help, they'd do nothing at all."
Could it be that, on that night three years ago, everyone in Cat Whisper Café had been an accomplice?
The sudden thought sent a chill through Fang Tian. But thinking of how Song Cai had wept facing Lin Jiu — and yet refused to "sell out" his partners even at death's door — he couldn't shake the feeling something was off.
Then another idea sprang into his mind.
If what Lin Jiu had seen in Cat Whisper Café three years ago weren't patrons at all, but a crowd of "puppets" worked by someone, then no matter how loudly she'd cried for help at the scene, no one would have come to her aid — and after the fact, these "puppets" could even clean up the scene in good time and provide false statements in the follow-up investigation.
That might also be why the Qingkong police had turned up not a single thread in their later inquiry, and had no choice but to classify the case as a disappearance.
"Officer Feng, I suspect Song Cai's case isn't an isolated one. Can you still track down the others who gave statements?"
"I think so too."
Feng Xi had largely guessed his worry. She nodded. "We'll look into it. It's getting late — I'll have someone drive you back first."
"All right."
***
By the time he got back to school, the sky had turned fish-belly white. Qingkong City brightened early; sunrise came just past five. Fang Tian walked through the gate. The students who took "night classes" had finished their lessons, and under the effect of the "beauty filter," Qingkong's scenery had finally held at a normal state, sparing him a round of Sanity damage the moment he stepped onto campus.
At the same time, he noticed a problem.
The filter seemed to have no effect on Lin Jiu. Her appearances came hand in hand with fleshy buds and blood — as terrifying as could be.
Just as Fang Tian, worn to the bone, melted into the crowd and decided to head back to his dorm for a good sleep, someone blocked his path.
He looked up and saw Senior Hao, whom he hadn't seen in two days.
These two days of flipped day-and-night, disrupted sleep, and being hauled off to the station now and then made it feel as though registering at Qingkong had happened a very long time ago.
"What a coincidence, Senior."
"No coincidence. I've been waiting here for you a long while."
That line — could it be......
A familiar line from a certain idol drama lifted Fang Tian's spirits; that drama, too, had a campus setting.
He looked at Hao Xue. The light of dawn spilled over her, and that signature oval face seemed to bring a little healing to his days of hard running about.
If this were a romance plotline, what came next would likely be the start of the Senior route.
But the now-wiser Fang Tian knew it couldn't be so simple. The Qingkong police had been in and out of campus often lately, and he'd been pulled away as a party to a case more than once. As student-council vice president, Senior surely couldn't be unaware of it.
"Do you know why I've come to find you?"
"Is it about Lin Jiu's disappearance case?"
"Think hard. Have you really overlooked nothing?"
Fang Tian was slightly taken aback. He was now certain Senior had come on serious business.
She seemed to be hinting that, in his dealings with Lin Jiu, he'd overlooked some crucial detail — that the truth had been laid before him from the very start.
He racked his brains: from his first contact with Lin Jiu through the game, to her using the game to tell him what she'd gone through that day at Cat Whisper Café, to her hunting down Song Cai and nearly taking his life. In all of it, what had he missed?
He began asking himself the same thing.
Scene after scene flashed through his mind, yet the truth stayed hidden in mist, leaving him no sense of direction. So he had to turn to Hao Xue. "Senior, just tell me straight."
Only Fang Tian never imagined that, hearing this, Hao Xue would actually go wide-eyed with shock, the look in her eyes like one sizing up a man absurd beyond all reason.
"Fine, then I'll say it straight."
After a long while, Senior finally drew a deep breath. "Over these two days, you've missed the class meeting, the department's welcome assembly, and the club-recruitment mobilization meeting one after another. Your homeroom teacher is very displeased with you —— Junior Fang, what on earth are you thinking?"
Senior's reproach hit Fang Tian like enlightenment poured over his head.
That day, Fang Tian finally remembered he'd come to Qingkong, in fact, to go to school.
At the thought that he'd angered his homeroom teacher by vanishing two days running......
He'd been had!
This wasn't the Senior route at all — it was the bad ending of "Singled Out and Criticized by the Homeroom Teacher as a Cautionary Example"!