Case Files Chapter 40: Campus Suspicions (2)

Translated by Vivian of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Addis

 

Guan Jin was using a snail fork and tweezers to ‘battle’ with the escargot on his plate.

Lu YunYang couldn’t stand watching any longer, so he gave him the ones that he had already shelled. “After experiencing that type of situation, I’m impressed that you’re still able to feast so freely.”

Guan Jin didn’t look up. “Hunger breeds discontentment. If we don’t eat, then the ones that’ll die will be us.”

“Hey, that person nearly landed on my head.” Lu YunYang rested his chin on his hand and looked hurt. “You haven’t thought to console my frightened and fragile soul?”

Guan Jin ignored him. Actually, he felt that it was a pity that that person hadn’t landed on Lu YunYang’s head. He thought back to how Lu YunYang, even though he had his back facing the scene, practically noticed that something was wrong at the same time as Guan Jin before the person fell. This type of intuition as keen as a beast’s made Guan Jin feel a little surprised.

*****

Two hours ago.

Lu YunYang walked over to check the situation of the person lying face down. Although they hadn’t fallen onto concrete and created a horror scene in which blood splashed everywhere, the grass had still been stained red. The person seemed to have been a boy, and he had fallen from the seventh floor, so the chances of survival were very slim.

“Call 110 and 120!” he shouted to the students around him. Many people reacted to this and all fished out their phones. Lu YunYang looked at Guan Jin, who was rubbing his eyes. “What is it?” 

“Nothing.” Actually, the instant that person fell, Guan Jin had looked up. The sun of the summer evening was still bright, and he seemed to have seen something sway on top of the seventh floor. But when he blinked and looked again, there was nothing there.

Soon afterwards, some teachers and dormitory supervisors arrived and maintained the situation together, evacuating the students. The ambulance also arrived quickly, and the people in the truck came down to give some emergency first aid before lifting the person onto the truck. The police also arrived after them, being chaotic and noisy at one side.

Although Guan Jin was a police officer, he usually didn’t have this self-awareness. Anyway, everyone was doing their own thing, so he wouldn’t be of much help. Thus, he poked Lu YunYang’s back.

“What is it?”

“You didn’t forget why I came here, did you?”

“You——still want to eat French cuisine?”

“Why can’t I eat it?”

“I feel that it needs a certain atmosphere.”

“We’re going to the restaurant to eat, not staying here.”

“…Okay, if you insist, then let’s go.” Lu YunYang looked back at the gruesome scene behind him before catching up to Guan Jin.

*****

 On Monday morning, unexpectedly, Lu YunYang had shown up at the office. When Guan Jin arrived, he was telling everyone about the shocking scene that had happened that weekend.

“Kids nowadays can’t cope well with stress, and many of them choose to use the method of giving up their life to avoid their problems.” Gu Xiang shook his head regretfully.

“Ah, jumping to one’s death must be very painful, they must’ve been very brave.” Lin Bai was puzzled.

“You two spent the weekend together?” Wen JingHan suddenly interrupted.

This question was very ambiguous, and Guan Jin was just about to explain himself, but Lu YunYang was already smiling and saying, “In the afternoon, Little Jin went to the school to listen to my lecture, and then we went to eat at a famous French restaurant. It was lit with candlelights, and there was an orchestra playing… The ambience was very nice.”

“It wasn’t——” Guan Jin was going to clear things up no matter what.

“You two must’ve been in a good mood, since you were able to eat even after seeing that gruesome scene.”

“Le Fan looks at dead people everyday, why don’t you ask him whether he eats or not.”

Wen JingHan didn’t reply, and Guan Jin felt smug at his victory, though he completely forgot that he was originally trying to clarify something.

Suddenly, Wen JingHan’s phone rang. He picked up and frowned after listening for a little. He replied tersely and hung up before turning to Guan Jin and saying, “You were quite prophetic, warming up the case in advance.”

Guan Jin blinked in confusion.

Chen QiaoYu looked up, “Huh? We even have to handle a suicide case? Have we really been so idle lately that we’ve made everyone angry?” 

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions. Before this, two students from Nanhua University have already died within the last six months, and the reasons for their deaths are still unknown.” Wen JingHan put down the information he had just received and motioned for Ding Ding to distribute them.

“The name of the first deceased student is Cheng JiaoJiao. She was in the life sciences department, she majored in marine biology, and she was in her third year of university. Cause of death was phosgene poisoning,” Ding Ding read the records.

“Was it not an accident caused by an experiment gone wrong?” asked Zheng Fei.

“Phosgene gas is a highly toxic industrial gas, so usually, school laboratories wouldn’t make such a dangerous substance. And, Cheng JiaoJiao researched marine biology, so she rarely went to the chemistry laboratory, not to mention going there at ten p.m., which was after the laboratory building closes. The laboratory doesn’t have any requisition records of the substances required to synthesize phosgene gas, and according to investigations, the laboratory didn’t have any oleum, which is needed in the synthesis of phosgene. Thus, either Cheng JiaoJiao secretly synthesized the poisonous gas for ulterior reasons and accidentally died, or she was poisoned by someone,” said Guan Jin as he quickly flipped through the papers.

“Her state of death was also relatively unique. She seemed to have fallen at a corner next to the sink, and her hand was reaching towards the door. Before she died, she must’ve been painfully struggling to try to crawl towards the door, but it was already too late.” Ding Ding frowned.

“As far as I know, phosgene gas has a pungent smell, and it isn’t immediately fatal. As a person who often performs experiments, she should be experienced and have some general knowledge, so once she noticed that she felt unwell, she could’ve left to find help. So why didn’t she have enough time to react?” asked Lu YunYang.

“You also know chemistry?” Guan Jin glanced at him.

“A little bit.”

“The autopsy report didn’t show any other abnormalities, and she didn’t have any family history of heart disease, so there are a lot of baffling things about her death,” said Wen JingHan.

“The second deceased person was Wang TianPeng, a physics student in his second year of university. He also died in the laboratory building, but he died at the warehouse. He seemed to have been on a ladder, searching for something on a shelf, but then, he accidentally fell and happened to land on a sharp iron fence that had just been taken down but hadn’t been taken care of yet. The sharp point of the fence impaled his abdomen, so I’m afraid his death was very painful,” continued Wen JingHan.

Lin Bai shuddered. “What a bad way to go. Could it have been a murder?”

“It doesn’t seem like it was done by a person, but it is also unclear as to why he would go to the laboratory building to search for something in the dead of night, and how he died so coincidentally.” Chen QiaoYu scratched her head.

“Say, did that person who jumped off the building also jump from the laboratory building?” asked Zheng Fei. “That would be creepy.”

“No, that was a dormitory building, and it’s very far from the laboratory building,” answered Lu YunYang.

“There’s no evidence to show that the two dead people were familiar or even acquainted. Also, the physics laboratory isn’t in the laboratory building, and Wang TianPeng didn’t seem to have gone there before.” Gu Xiang pondered for a moment. “If this is only a coincidence, it’s rather far-fetched, but it is also hard to imagine that someone would murder two students who were still so young and hadn’t entered society yet.”

Wen JingHan glanced at the papers that had just been mailed to them. “We now have a third victim, whose information has just been sent by the bureau. The person who fell was a boy named Dong Ping, a junior in the department of foreign languages. He was unable to be rescued.”

Everyone fell silent. A life in their youthful years being lost just like this inevitably made people sigh.

“YunYang, do you have any opinions?” asked Wen JingHan.

Lu YunYang shook his head. “For now, there’s no way of knowing if they were murdered. Even if they were, the methods were different, the victims’ commonalities are unknown, and the details are also very unclear. If I had to find a shared attribute between them, then I think it’s that they all died very unexpectedly, and there’s no obvious evidence that their deaths were murders. And, their deaths were very painful.”

“Have you heard of rumors in the school before?”

“I’m their visiting professor, so I didn’t have any classes last semester. Moreover, the school must’ve kept silent about these things to avoid causing panic.”

“Actually, at a school, the people who have the most information should be the students who live in it,” said Gu Xiang, who was also a teacher.

Wen JingHan pointed at him, and his face suddenly brightened. “I suddenly thought of something, let me think about it.” Then, he disappeared into his office.

…Everyone felt very apprehensive.

Sure enough, when Wen JingHan came out of his office, his eager expression was dazzling, no matter how one looked at it, “Everyone knows that we’re the Special Cases Investigation Team, so not only do we investigate special cases, we also use original methods to investigate, so we never stick to one pattern to find out the truth.”

Lin Bai sidled up to Guan Jin. “How come I always feel very nervous when he uses an official tone like that.”

“That means that you’re not as oblivious anymore. That’s the indication that he’s going to wreak havoc.”

“The victims this time are special, and the school setting is also special, so in order to obtain effective clues and so that we don’t affect the students’ physical and mental health and the school’s normal dynamic, I’ve decided that——”

Everyone’s hearts were in their throats. Only Lu YunYang, who was an outsider, watched the show with interest.

“I’m going to send our team members to go undercover in Nanhua University!”

“Undercover? How? As teachers?” Zheng Fei’s eyes lit up. “I can be a PE teacher!” He could practically already see the young and beautiful girls.

“I can be a counselor!” Chen QiaoYu raised her hand excitedly.

“Teachers have no way of mingling with the students, so how could they understand their lives?” Their requests were rejected. “I meant that you guys are going to pretend to be students and become one of them.”

A few people rejoiced, and a few people were worried. Ding Ding and Lin Bai were very excited. “We recommend ourselves!”

Guan Jin looked at the others as if this had nothing to do with him.

“We need to communicate with the school in advance. The school isn’t like the Triad ¹, so it’s not very dangerous, but if there really is a killer concealed in it, then the risk is still very high. Ding Ding, Little Bai, and Guan Jin, you three will mix into the university as students and think of ways to dig up as much information as possible.”

Guan Jin froze. “Me? Why me?”

“Do you think the others look like students?”

“…”  As someone who had never received one day of formal education, he’d rather go undercover in the Triad than as a student. “I object!”

“Objection overruled!” Wen JingHan ignored Guan Jin’s dissatisfaction. “As far as I know, the three victims didn’t live in the same dormitory building, but after the adjustments for the new semester, their classes happen to live in the same building now, although not in the same area. The dorm rooms the victims used to live in have a vacant bed, so you three will pretend to be exchange students and move in so you can get to know their roommates. However, you have to choose a major so as to not raise suspicion.”

Lin Bai said proudly, “I’ll major in information technology, and I’ll definitely be the top of my class.”

“I choose Chinese language and literature,” said Ding Ding.

“How about you, Guan Jin?”

“…English,” said Guan Jin through gritted teeth.

 “Are you sure?” Wen JingHan was surprised.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, if you can’t cope with the university courses, then you can just say you got in through a sports or art scholarship, and everyone will understand.”

Guan Jin felt that the heavens must dislike him; whatever he didn’t want, came.

“YunYang, they’re all quite inexperienced. Although you’re not a police officer, it’d be better if you can look after them at the school.”

“Rest assured, I’ll handle it.” Lu YunYang’s gaze lingered on Guan Jin in satisfaction.

 

The youthful years, university campuses and whatnots really were exciting.