Ch48 - Sha, Sha, Sha

Nan Zhou stared at the pattern on the ground of the stairs, smelled the leftover scent of apples on his fingers and thought of a shadowy figure. He had never made any female friends but there was a shadow in his heart.

This shadow belonged to a tall woman wearing a black and white loli dress. Her waist and chest were decorated with rust red roses. Her skirt was very big, making it a bit difficult for her to crouch down. Therefore, she was on one knee and revealed a beautiful, snow-white stocking covered calf. 

The first time Nan Zhou saw her, she was half-kneeling in his yard. In front of her were several handfuls of newly dug mud and it seemed like she was planting something. He didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t seem to know that this place had an owner.

Nan Zhou leaned through the window and watched the woman’s back for a long time. He thought about all the people he had seen in town and found that he didn’t recognize her.

The woman was busy but felt the eyes staring at her, so she raised her head. The black hat covered her eyes. Nan Zhou only saw her slightly pointed chin, her light smile and her lip color that was like burning fire. Still, he was sure that the woman had seen him. It was because those lips slightly opened and closed. The corners of the already slightly curved mouth raised in a perfect arc.

Nan Zhou was stunned for a long time. By the time he headed downstairs to find her, the woman was gone. Nan Zhou thought that if he saw her again, he might be a bit nervous. It wasn’t to the point of being friends but he still wanted to know her. 

However, the first time he saw her was the last time.

***

Nan Zhou stubbornly seized on the topic he had found and didn’t give up. “…Xie Xiangyu.”

Li Yinhang couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.

However, Jiang Fang didn’t grab onto it and just said softly, “Okay, tell us about Xie Xiangyu.”

Nan Zhou let out a slight sigh of relief. There were some things he didn’t want to say and couldn’t say. Fortunately, Jiang Fang’s personality was very good and tolerant. He allowed Nan Zhou to have his own secrets. He said, “Xie Xiangyu probably knew from the start that Zuo Jiaming existed.”

Li Yinhang thought that Nan Zhou was deliberately trying to change the topic but he threw out a big bomb as soon as he opened his mouth. Li Yinhang’s mind crashed for a moment before she spoke in a puzzled tone, “…Huh?”

Nan Zhou said, “I went to remove the name cards and found that the surface was very clean. There is only a bit of dust deep in the side grooves.” 

He added, “Sun Guojing and Zuo Jiaming’s dormitories are both like this. I observed it before I took the card. The gray lines on the sides of the clear plastic slots used to insert the name cards of the two dormitories aren’t coherent.”

Normally speaking, the dormitory arrangements were a big project for the school. Once the dormitory allocation was determined, it wasn’t easy to change dormitories. It had to be reported to all levels for approval. In the end, the approval wouldn’t necessarily be successful. Therefore, starting from the first year of enrollment, the name card at the entrance wouldn’t change unless the dormitory relationship was really incompatible. No one moved it for a long time so dust naturally fell on it. Now Nan Zhou found that the name cards were clean and the original dust lines were broken.

After a fierce brainstorming, Li Yinhang suddenly found inspiration. She felt like she understood. Thus, she was eager to try and speak.

Nan Zhou glanced at Jiang Fang. Jiang Fang gently nodded. They confirmed it and looked at Li Yinhang in unison. 

Li Yinhang carefully adjusted her thoughts, cleared her throat and spoke. “In this way, Xie Xiangyu should’ve checked the name card a long time ago. So what we know now, he knew earlier. The strange thing is that he didn’t tell anyone.”

“I think the reason he is like this is because there is a problem with the role he is playing. The original ‘Xie Xiangyu’ is likely to be the culprit of everything. In the entire relationship network, ‘Xie Xiangyu’ is the only one who clearly hates the four boys in the sports dormitory.”

“He hates the people who caught him peeping and wanted to stay away from them, but they have his handle and he has to listen to them. As a result, he had to work as an errand boy for the four people of the sports department. His peeping is also likely to be known by his roommate Zuo Jiaming. After all, Zuo Jiaming is Hu Li’s friend. Thus, he is also worried about living in the dormitory…”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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Li Yinhang was encouraged and plucked up more courage. She continued speaking while organizing her thoughts. “That night, ‘Xie Xiangyu’ learned about the place of our gathering. He found a way to attract that force and dragged us in with him. He might’ve been tired of the world for a long time. After all, he has been threatened and bullied like this. He doesn’t know when it will end so he wants to let everyone die together with him.”

“Player Xie Xiangyu entered this body and soon discovered the sense of incongruity in the dormitory. He found that there should be four people in his dormitory but there are only three people in his perception.”

“So after checking the name cards in front of his dormitory, he found Sun Guojing’s group, checked their name signs and confirmed his thoughts. He said he wanted to work with them and lived with them while hiding the fact that he knew about these clues. It is to seek protection as well as ensure he had the key clues and got the most points.” 

“Of course, he also worried that once he revealed he was the culprit, Sun Guojing’s group would have a hot mind. They might feel they can solve the problem by resolving the source of the problem. If they try something against him, he will lose more than he gains.”

Li Yinhang finished speaking and secretly reviewed it herself. The logic was smooth and there was nothing wrong with it. She looked at the Jiang Nan duo, waiting for praise. As a result, Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang exchanged looks. Nan Zhou opened his mouth. “You speak first?”

Jiang Fang smiled. “No, Mr Nan. Please go first.”

Li Yinhang, “……” She had the feeling that she had confidently answered a question in class only to have the teacher stare at her and sigh. 

Nan Zhou asked first. “If you are Xie Xiangyu who wants revenge, how will you recruit that force?”

“This…” Li Yinhang paused for a moment. “Generally, you use methods like the pen fairy, disc fairy…”

Nan Zhou interrupted her. “I’m not asking that. I’m asking how can Xie Xiangyu know that there is such a force?”

This unknown force was a paradox. It existed when one didn’t know it existed but no one knew it. It was around by their side by the time they knew about it. Just one question turned Li Yinhang’s originally clear thoughts into a muddle. 

…This was right. This force didn’t exist in the campus legends passed around through word of mouth. If Xie Xiangyu hated those three people, he should’ve resorted to more classic measures such as the pen fairy’s curse that could be found in the school’s forum. How did he have the ability to know about the existence of this force? Since he didn’t know about it, how could he use its power?

She saw that her reasoning was in danger and the building was going to collapse. Li Yinhang tried to find a reason to explain this source of contradiction. “Then… he might have been exposed to that power once himself and guessed how powerful it was. Thus, he wanted to drag others down with him…”

Nan Zhou used a question to break Li Yinhang’s barely established reason. “Who organized the party?”

…Ah, right. The party was determined by the four people of the sports department and the location was also set by them. Xie Xiangyu was the junior and he was completely pulled to run errands and pay the bill. He didn’t have any dominance at all. This was unless that force could be driven by him at will and at his call. Then Xie Xiangyu could be renamed Xie Half-Immortal and the balance of the game would be a joke. 

Li Yinhang, “……”

After Nan Zhou’s question, she learned one thing.

…She understood alone.

Jiang Fang noted Li Yinhang’s dejected look and said gently, “Do I still need to ask?” 

Li Yinhang’s heart felt as grey as death. “Say it. Let me die more thoroughly.”

Jiang Fang didn’t hold back. He put his hands to his lips and gave a false cough to block his smile. “According to your thoughts, why is it necessary for Xie Xiangyu to go to Sun Guojing and ask for their cooperation?”

Li Yinhang, “……” This was also right. What benefits could the muscle brains of the Sun Guojing trio bring to Xie Xiangyu who had already mastered the first advantage?

If he got the clue left behind by Zuo Jiaming and wanted to verify his judgment or find out who Hu Li was while not revealing key clues to other players and monopolizing the score, he just needed to investigate secretly in the middle of the night. Why did he have to establish a cooperative relationship with these three people who only had developed limbs? 

Wait. Midnight…

Li Yinhang blinked. According to Sun Guojing, Xie Xiangyu came to him the very first night he encountered the ghost. They only took the clues given by Xie Xiangyu and were completely led by the nose. They completely forgot the most important question.

Why did he come to the sports department in the middle of the night? The dormitory building had the lights turned off and was locked at night. If an outsider to the department wanted to come in, they would have to hide in the public restroom before the lights were turned off. Why didn’t he come earlier if he wanted to seek cooperation or sleep together?

The relatively possible explanation was that Xie Xiangyu had come to the sports department in the middle of the night to check the name signs at the door. He also did it very successfully. The trio didn’t hear the tiny noise of the signs at their door being removed. Once he finished and confirmed what he thought, he didn’t leave. Rather, he knocked on their door and proposed cooperation. Not only did he put forward cooperation, he also concealed the most critical information. 

Not only did he conceal the key information, he also used a small clue as a favor to deceive the three people into following his advice. He made them run to 403 where there might be a latent force to investigate the situation. Meanwhile, he went to the classroom with peace of mind to act as an ordinary student.

In the face of these contradictory details, Li Yinhang issued a soul-tortured question, “…What does he want?”

Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang answered at the same time, “I don’t know.”

The interests of every team were different. It was just like how Li Yinhang hid the clues in the first instance. At that time, her interests were clear: find more clues and give her team more points. She just didn’t know if her efforts were useful or not. It was only her personal attempt and speculation. If it was such a solid clue that was vital to the life and death of other players and needed to be shared, no one with a slightly normal mind would hide it. 

Why did Xie Xiangyu deliberately obscure the clues? In addition…

Until now, they hadn’t been able to find out the order and regularity of everyone who had been affected by the rustling sound.

So far, excluding Xie Xiangyu and Hu Li and Zuo Jiaming who were no longer here, Sun Guojing had heard the rustling the most among the nine people who had been to classroom 403. It was five times. Nan Zhou and Li Yinhang were tied for second place and had heard it four times. Luo Ge and Qi Tianyun had heard it twice and three times respectively. Jiang Fang heard it only once.

Li Yinhang spoke without much hope. “Since the force is completely unknown, the order in which we are chosen should be unreasonable. There are no likes or dislikes.” 

In other words, it was about the mood of that force and their luck.

“Not necessarily,” Nan Zhou told her. “This is an instance. An instance has its own playing logic.”

He asked the two people, “Do you remember the setting of the exploration system?”

Li Yinhang naturally remembered. In the last world, their instance exploration rating was S. After going back, Nan Zhou still thought about it for a long time. In that little hotel, Li Yinhang was falling asleep but she heard Nan Zhou persistently question Jiang Fang. “Why 98.7%? What about that 1.13%?” 

Jiang Fang’s answer was to pull the quilt over his head. “Don’t think about it now. Let’s sleep.”

Nan Zhou said, “The exploration system should be adjusted according to the different attributes of each instance.”

“The last instance had a fixed location and exploration range so it tested our ability to collect and sort out the various clues scattered in Xiao Ming’s home. However, the criteria for this instance must be different from the first one. If it is evaluated in accordance with the exploration range, the campus area is so huge that it is impossible to explore it all physically. So the score of the exploration must be focused on relationships and the instance’s puzzles. The order and regularity in which we are selected should be one of the key indicators of the exploration degree.”

…Li Yinhang wanted to talk but stopped. She thought that Nan Zhou would say that if they found the pattern, they could figure out a way to get rid of the influence of the force and survive. After all, once Sun Guojing was completely erased, it would immediately be their turn. The sound of rustling could take them away at any time. It could be called a seamless transition. 

As a result, people were determined to set up indicators. This attitude was like answering the teacher’s final question on a test.

Li Yinhang had panicked the fourth time she heard the rustling. Now seeing how Nan Zhou was stable as a mountain and giving them focus, she felt it would be really unnecessary if she panicked too much. She wondered, “What should we do next?”

Nan Zhou spoke a bit too much and intended to rest his throat. He handed out a plate of snacks to Nanji Star. He glanced at Jiang Fang.

…It meant he was asking Brother Fang to continue. Jiang Fang picked up on the flow. “Tonight, we will make another trip to 403 at the same time that we met last week.” 

Nan Zhou stepped down the stairs, silently agreeing to the proposal. At the same time, he planned to go to the supermarket later to buy more apples. He was in a better mood when he thought about apples.

Still, he couldn’t help thinking about the good-looking woman. It was because the woman dug at the ground of his house and planted an apple tree. Not long after, the green treetops grew all the way up to his bedroom window on the second floor, filling his room with the fruity scent. It was at this time that Nan Zhou fell in love with eating apples.

Nan Zhou thought of the past and casually looked back. His gaze fell on Jiang Fang, who was holding a piece of paper and writing something on it. Nan Zhou became subtly stunned. The smile on the woman’s mouth that he remembered just now corresponded closely with Jiang Fang’s smile in his natural state.

The long-term habits developed from working in the casino meant that Jiang Fang smiled slightly even in a relaxed state. 

Jiang Fang perceived Nan Zhou’s gaze and turned over the paper that had the words ‘Nan Zhou’s girlfriend’ written on them. He pressed the side with the writing against his knee and looked over. The arc of his mouth curved up even more. In the bright light of the day, it was so pleasant that people couldn’t move away.

“What is it?”

Nan Zhou moved his gaze away and looked at Nanji Star, who was holding his finger and smelling the fruit.

“…It’s nothing.”