The good news was that Qin Shu no longer needed to climb all the way to the roof of the boys’ dormitory, which did not have an elevator, to confirm whether a haunting had occurred.
The bad news was that the student who had jumped the previous night had successfully become a vengeful ghost. In broad daylight and before numerous witnesses, he had brutally murdered the target of his revenge through exceptionally violent means.
The malice radiating from him had not faded after his revenge was complete. His pitch-black pupils, devoid of any whites, stared fixedly at Qin Shu. They no longer held any trace of human emotion and instead resembled the eyes of a bloodthirsty beast that had just tasted success.
After devouring human flesh and blood for the first time, it was already eager to hunt for more, regardless of how deranged its methods might be.
Qin Shu did not move recklessly. He was thinking.
The vengeful ghost now floated before him, maintaining eye contact the entire time. Its only remaining hands had never moved and hung lifelessly at its sides… If that was the case, how had it smashed Teacher He’s head apart?
Since Daoist priests possessed spiritual power, ghosts presumably did as well. But how were the upper and lower limits of that power determined? Surely someone could not transform into an overwhelmingly powerful ghost that no ordinary person could resist after being dead for only a single day.
Even the victim at First Municipal Hospital, whose resentment had accumulated for several months and who had received assistance from Yuncheng’s mysterious arts, had not been powerful enough to slaughter everyone in the hospital.
Then how had this jumping ghost, with only half a body remaining, deceived Qin Shu’s eyes… and abruptly killed Teacher He?
Qin Shu considered the question seriously because he was not the only human present. If his judgment was even slightly mistaken, the others had no ability to fight a vengeful ghost, and the number of casualties could continue rising.
Even more troublesome was that everyone else who had witnessed the horrific scene was now too frightened to speak, yet none of them dared to run. The younger student who had brought the school doctor had collapsed weakly onto the ground. The other student, who had gone to find a teacher, caught sight of the blood spraying across the sports field from a distance and shouted in terror, but no longer dared approach.
The school doctor was drenched from head to toe. As the person who had been closest to Teacher He, he looked like a blood-soaked man who had just walked through a torrential downpour.
Trembling, he searched his pockets for his phone and tapped the screen several times with faint clicking sounds before finally entering the correct number. Yet each time the call connected, it was immediately ended—again and again—as though an invisible hand were manipulating his screen.
“There’s… there’s a ghost… Don’t come closer! You two, run! Teacher Zhang, don’t come over!” The school doctor’s face gradually turned white. In his panic, he directly shouted the possibility he himself found hardest to believe.
The vengeful ghost staring at Qin Shu tilted its head. Its icy gaze abruptly shifted, revealing even more undisguised malice and hunger as it turned hideously toward the school doctor.
“Wait. I understand now. You smashed him to death with your feet, didn’t you? Because your limbs were separated from your body, you can use them as weapons… Pretty clever.”
At that critical moment, Qin Shu finally figured it out and immediately spoke aloud as though struck by sudden realization.
The ghost’s wandering attention instantly returned to him. It gave Qin Shu a threatening, vicious grin and proudly bared its ruined teeth. Its mouth abruptly split open into an enormous gash that defied human anatomy, revealing the bloody, rotting gums shattered when it had jumped from the building.
The enormous mouth was inches away, reeking heavily of blood. Alarm bells screamed inside Qin Shu’s mind, and he immediately abandoned any thought of communication and punched it without hesitation.
Avoiding its teeth, his knuckles struck the centipede-like fracture in its skull with perfect accuracy. The icy bone instantly crumbled into vast clouds of powder, collapsing with a crash and scattering into the blood covering the ground.
At the same time, Qin Shu’s other hand was not idle. He took the open acrylic box he had prepared in his pocket and hurled it directly toward the arm with which the school doctor was holding his phone.
His strategy was simple: fight poison with poison.
The swollen, foul-smelling gray-white eyeball flew from the box along a beautiful arc, lightly bounced onto the school doctor’s arm, then landed with a smack against one of the severed legs floating in midair.
Squelch, squelch…
A bizarre mixture of corrosive and licking sounds rang out. Qin Shu took a breath and shook out the arm he had swung too forcefully. Narrowing his eyes, he followed the noise and discovered with slight horror… that the eyeball had actually eaten both legs and grown somewhat larger as a result.
More precisely, the densely packed tiny blood vessels behind the eyeball, along with the nerve fibers that should have connected it to the brain, pierced the jumping ghost’s remaining legs like tentacles and directly absorbed their energy and nourishment.
Only after the two legs had been drained into thin, shriveled sheets of flesh that dispersed into the air with a gust of wind did the fully satisfied eyeball retract its swollen “tentacles” and return to its former round shape.
How educational. Apparently, the carrion-eating eagle-bodied little ghosts were not the only spirits that devoured other ghosts. Perhaps every ghost in the world had some possibility of consuming its own kind.
After all, they had long since lost both their reason and the moral principles that kept human society functioning. Once their obsessions disappeared, growing stronger and satisfying their desires became the fundamental logic governing ghosts.
Qin Shu fell into thought, but his tense body did not relax. Tentatively, he called out, “You can come back now. Thank you for helping me.”
A moment later, the slightly plumper eyeball wriggled and reluctantly began moving. It hopped into the acrylic box on the ground and, under everyone’s horrified gazes, snapped the lid closed from a distance. Then both the eyeball and the box returned to Qin Shu’s pocket.
As for the bloodstains still covering the container, that was none of its concern.
“So obedient? You really are a good ghost. How understanding.” Qin Shu was genuinely a little surprised.
He kept feeling that the eyeball’s entire “aura” had changed today. It was no longer as easily provoked as it had been the night before, nor did it continue radiating that unpleasant, sinister resentment. To exaggerate somewhat, it even inexplicably seemed a little cute.
Qin Shu shook his head and temporarily stopped dwelling on the matter. After all, he still had a much greater problem before him. At that moment, he was surrounded by stunned witnesses.
The four people present—the school doctor, the two younger students, and Teacher Zhang, who had hurried over—had all watched Qin Shu speak to empty air. They had seen him throw the box… and had also seen it fly back by itself.
Teacher Zhang was busy calling the police and shakily dialing the emergency hotline again, yet her gaze kept drifting uncontrollably toward Qin Shu.
The two younger students were thoroughly terrified. Without prior discussion, both maintained a sufficiently safe distance from Qin Shu, obvious tears filling their eyes. The school doctor attempted to say something to comfort them, but unfortunately, it had little effect. Neither student could listen.
That was entirely understandable. Anyone who witnessed such an eerie phenomenon would need a long time to recover. They would need explanations and reassurance.
But Qin Shu truly could not explain the situation honestly, especially the matter of the “flying box.” Even if he told the truth, it would be useless. The other teachers were neither as worldly as Old Fu nor as familiar with Qin Shu.
Qin Shu genuinely dared to tell people that the school was haunted, but when matters truly came to a head, he understood very clearly that he risked being treated as mentally ill.
More importantly, Teacher He was still lying on the ground with his head smashed beyond recognition.
This was a dead man—a freshly dead man. As the old saying went, the dead deserved respect.
Although Qin Shu did not feel particularly grieved, he could at least read the atmosphere. There was no way he could claim that he had been “performing a magic trick.” That would make him sound practically antisocial. Absolutely not.
Just then, the school doctor stopped trying to console the younger students and approached Qin Shu. His face was still covered in so much blood that his features were almost impossible to distinguish. He looked exceptionally wretched.
“Student, may I ask…”
“Um, Teacher, could I choose not to explain? If you have any questions, you can speak with my homeroom teacher, Teacher Fu. He can explain.”
After hesitating briefly, Qin Shu directly threw the entire problem onto Old Fu.
“No. What I wanted to ask was… Student, what is your name? You’re in your final year, correct?” The school doctor still appeared somewhat shaken. With trembling fingers, he brushed the blood-soaked fringe away from his forehead and looked seriously at Qin Shu as he spoke.
“Yes, Teacher. My name is Qin Shu. I’m from the advanced class.”
“…I see. So it’s you. Don’t forget your psychological counseling appointment on Friday. I’m the teacher assigned to you—Xu Min.”
After taking a moment to compose himself, the school doctor revealed a gentle smile. “Thank you for saving us. And thank you for the effort you put into resuscitating Teacher He. Because of you, his life lasted several seconds longer. That is remarkable. What happened afterward will leave all of us feeling regret and fear. Those emotions are reasonable. Simply allow yourself to experience them.
“And you two second-year students as well—if you can’t find anyone to talk to about what happened, you’re always welcome to schedule an appointment during my office hours. The college entrance examination isn’t too far away. Remember to take your emotions seriously.”
“…Thank you, Teacher.”
Qin Shu listened very carefully, even though he had already become too numb to feel much fear. His gratitude was equally sincere. At the same time, however, he could not help paying closer attention to the school doctor who had initiated the conversation.
Xu Min.
The speed at which Teacher Xu had regained emotional stability… was far too fast.
One second earlier, he had been badly frightened and unable to stop his hands from trembling. The next, he had abruptly become extraordinarily calm. Although the wet blood on his face had not even been wiped away, he quickly produced a reassuring smile and immediately organized his thoughts well enough to repeatedly comfort everyone.
It was almost as though dissociation had appeared in an instant. His composure was eerie.
Qin Shu tentatively spoke with him for a little longer but failed to obtain any useful information. He could only set aside that faint abnormality for the time being.
After all, another pile of trouble awaited them. The police officers who had only visited the previous night would be busy again.
A corpse had appeared in broad daylight, dead in an exceptionally gruesome manner. Yet every witness inexplicably insisted, with seemingly logical explanations, that a ghost had caused it… The police developed a tremendous headache listening to them.
The course of events was even more bizarre. There was no murder weapon and no murderer—only a teacher who had suddenly collapsed and died. Yet that teacher had also been involved in a widely known conflict with the student who had jumped the previous night.
After considerable effort, the student and school doctor managed to resuscitate the teacher. But the moment he opened his eyes, he screamed several times, and his head abruptly exploded.
Who would dare believe such a story?
After reviewing the surveillance footage, however, they had no choice but to believe it.
The economy had remained stable in recent years, and public security in Jiangcheng was excellent. Even the criminal investigators rarely encountered anything so bloody and bizarre.
Combined with Tang Ran’s death during the livestream the previous day, everyone could not help privately wondering—could Jiangcheng No. 2 High School genuinely contain something sinister?
“Who else witnessed what happened? Where is the student who performed CPR on Teacher He?”
The seasoned officers had already decided to temporarily withdraw, but a young criminal investigator who refused to believe in the supernatural had not given up. He was still attempting to find witnesses with additional perspectives.
Thus, Qin Shu silently appeared with wet hair and a towel draped over his head. “Um, that was me.”
“Student Qin, you again?”
The young detective paused, and his expression changed slightly.
“Mm, me again. Do you need to take my clothes as evidence?” Wearing an honest expression, Qin Shu held up his school uniform, which had been sealed inside a plastic evidence bag. “When Teacher He’s head exploded, my back happened to be facing him, so I was covered in it.”
“Let me see… I’ll take it for now. Thank you, Student Qin.” The young detective discreetly studied him as he accepted the blood-soaked bag, an inexplicable unease lingering in his heart. “If it’s no longer needed afterward, we’ll have the uniform cleaned and return it to you. Can you leave a phone number?”
“Sure. Let’s add each other on WeChat.” Qin Shu felt no guilt whatsoever and was even more proactive than the detective, taking out his phone with a smile. “I’ve already added all the officers from the nearby police station. It’s extremely convenient whenever something happens. If another murder occurs around me in the future, would contacting you directly be faster?”
“What, do murders happen unusually often around you? You’re already expecting a next time?” The detective also laughed, seemingly joking, though his probing intent became even more obvious.
Hearing this, Qin Shu slowly withdrew his smile and suddenly answered with a solemn expression, “No. But hauntings happen very often. For example, right now, there’s a handprint on your left shoulder. It’s pitch-black.”
“If you encounter any danger you can’t resist—or anything incomprehensible and unnatural—call me at any time, and I’ll help you.”
Futile Devices Scans 
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