This Damned Thirst for Survival

Chapter 23

Jiang Luo peered under the bed for a long time, but could not see anything, and he felt a little disappointed in the middle of the night.

The female ghost hung up the phone and the phone went off. Jiang Luo sighed and lay back down on the bed, sending the recording to the class group “Please burn incense if you need it”.

The class group soon lit up.

[ Ge Zhu : I’ve heard the back-to-back story before, is she under the bed?]

[ Jiang Luo : there is nothing under the bed ]

[ Ge Zhu : Daoist shock face jpg]

[ Wen Renlian : Kuang Zheng and I are still out there, progress is a bit stalled at the moment]

Jiang Luo’s gaze moves to Xu Yan’s bed.

At the head of the bed lay Xu Yan’s shoes, the circle of mud on which had become more numerous. Now in May, the traces of yesterday’s rain have disappeared, and unless one goes to a wet place, there are no such traces anywhere else.

Moist, does not dry easily, concealed location.

[ Jiang Luo : Where’s the sewer?]

Sewers?

Wen Renlian, still looking for clues at the lake, froze, and then thought, “That makes sense.”

He looked up at Kuang Zheng, who was carefully walking round and round the lake, and raised his voice, “Kuang Zheng, let’s go.”

Kuang Zheng dropped the stone in his hand and walked quickly to his side without even asking questions, as if he would do whatever Wen Renlian said.

Wen Renlian put Jiang Luo’s words to him, “We really didn’t remember there was such a thing as a sewer.”

Kuang Zheng nodded silently, and added, “I’ll go down, but you don’t have to.”

Wen Renlian smiled good-naturedly and said, “Why?”

Kuang Zheng’s dark eyes glanced at him and then at the dress he was wearing.

“Well,” Wen Renlian winked at him, “that doesn’t stop me from climbing a sewer.”

They found a sewer opening close by, Kuang Zheng pulled the lid up and jumped in first, reaching down to help Wen Renlian in.

Although Wen Renlian was wearing a dress and a wig, he was a man in name only, tall and well-built. He was afraid that he would crush Kuang Zheng when he was supported by him, but Kuang Zheng did not change his face and steadily helped Wen Renlian off the ground.

The smell in the sewers was not pleasant, but the ground on either side of the water flow was fairly clean. When Wen Renlian stepped on it, he did find a wet, muddy texture.

He gave a thin smile, “This should be it.”

The two men brace themselves and carefully follow the direction of the sewers, Kuang Zheng taking the lead, hiding his companion completely behind him before each turn.

They had been walking for about half an hour when Wen Renlian saw something on the surface of the water, which they fished out and found to be a yellow tin can.

Wen Renlian found the date of manufacture on the tin can, “April 27th …… Wasn’t this just a few days ago?”

The tin can still had a few tiny scraps of food inside, Kuang Zheng looked down and sniffed in the direction the can was floating from, “The stuff has only been unwrapped a short while ago.”

Wen Renlian also looked over, raised his eyebrows and smiled, ” Fu Sheng Wu Liang Tian Zun, can be considered a little rewarding.”

Jiang Luo slept for only a few hours before opening his eyes again.

There was no air conditioning in the high school dormitory, and he woke up with a sticky wet back after a good night’s sleep. Jiang Luo grabbed a quick shower and was on his way when Wen Renlian called him, saying in a cheerful tone, “See you at the school warehouse, I have a surprise for you.”

Jiang Luo guessed that they had found something and sped up to get cleaned up in five minutes, walking out of the bathroom with a wet face.

Bai Yefeng was coming back from the dormitory when the hot water on Jiang Luo’s breath hit his glasses, blurring his face with a white mist and making him look a little more cutthroat and cold than usual.

Jiang Luo casually wiped his hair twice, wrapping the still dripping strands in a towel and taking the lead with a smile, “Did you just go out, Mr. White?”

Bai Yefeng calmly removed his lenses and pulled out a tissue to wipe them, his eyes viper-like as they raked over Jiang Luo’s body, still warm and soft, “Yes, you’re going out too?”

Jiang Luo nodded, threw the towel on the bed and was about to leave with Zhuo Zhongqiu, brushing past Bai Yefeng when he suddenly stopped in his tracks and smiled sideways, “See you tonight, Bai.”

Bai Yefeng smiled, “I’ll see you tonight.”

It was not until he walked out of the dormitory building that Zhuo Zhongqiu frowned and hesitated: ” Bai Yefeng ……”

Why did she suddenly feel that something was wrong with Bai Yefeng? As she passed Bai Yefeng, Zhuo Zhongqiu was suddenly struck by a shivering feeling in her soul.

For a moment, Zhuo Zhongqiu even thought he was dealing with some kind of extremely terrifying monster.

But then she looked at Jiang Luo, who was calm and even had an inexplicable smile tacked onto the corner of his mouth, and her mood calmed down again.

Jiang Luo was more sensitive than she was to this aspect of her senses, and if Jiang Luo didn’t even respond, then her senses must be out of whack.

The school warehouse is at the back of the teaching area and Jiang Luo arrived just in time to see Wen Renlian standing by the door waiting for them.

Zhuo Zhongqiu asked, “What did you find out?”

Wen Renlian turned around with a smile, “Wouldn’t you know if you went in and took a look?”

Jiang Luo tapped Lu Youyi on the shoulder and looked around the corner to see a man with a dishevelled face like a wild man.

The man looked terrified, his body stank like he hadn’t had a bath in 800 years. Jiang Luo bends down to look at him, and suddenly he thinks he looks familiar.

Isn’t this the same man who was one of the three workers who killed Wang Xinhui?

And is still the one who never speaks.

Jiang Luo said tentatively, ” Wang Xinhui ……”

The worker who heard the name shuddered violently, hugged himself and shrank into a ball, screaming, “Don’t kill me don’t kill me ……”

Jiang Luo narrowed his eyes slightly, yanked up the worker’s hair and asked in a cold voice, “What is your relationship with Wang Xinhui.”

The worker was already too frightened to hear him.

Zhuo Zhongqiu caught a pot of cold water and splashed it head on the man, who shivered and briefly sobered up as the tall Lu Youyi and Kuang Zheng stood menacingly beside the man, “Speak.”

The man cowered in fear, his eyes terrified. Jiang Luo retrieved Wang Xinhui’s photo from his phone and placed it in front of him, “What is her relationship with you.”

The photograph shows a shy and well-behaved girl with a shy smile and her hair tied back in a youthful manner.

The man stared blankly at the photo and murmured, “She’s my girlfriend.”

Jiang Luo turned up another picture of Fu Yuaner, “Who is she.”

The man shuddered, “She’s, she’s Liu Zhi’s girlfriend.”

Jiang Luo put away his phone: “What is your relationship with Liu Zhi.”

“Liu Zhi and I, we are, we are good friends.”

……

It was a multi-person crime.

The first time Fu Yuaner falls in love, she has a student-teacher relationship with a handsome teacher. This is a landmine bombshell for a good girl who has always been reserved.

But Fu Yuaner soon indulged in the pleasures of love.

However, she is so innocent and naive that she encapsulates her dreams into Liu Zhi’s life time and time again. Towards the end of her senior year, she is apprehensive and asks Liu Zhi about their future.

Liu Zhi was so annoyed by her questions that the idea of getting rid of Fu Yuaner gradually came to his mind.

During the expansion of the school, Liu Zhi’s best friend Jin Yuangao was introduced to Fu Yuaner by Liu Zhi.

Liu Zhi and Jin Yuangao’s generation had a very different ratio of men to women, with three out of five men being bachelors. Jin Yuangao was not too old, he was not bad looking, but he had no education. When he looked at his best friend’s beautiful girlfriend, he was so envious that he asked Fu Yuaner to introduce him to her over dinner.

Fu Yuaner was so pestered that she had no choice but to introduce her best friend to Jin Yuangao.

Fu Yuaner’s best friend Wang Xinhui, also a good girl, had long been impressed by the sweetness of the relationship she spoke of, and when she was introduced to Jin Yuangao, she half-heartedly agreed.

Although Jin Yuangao disliked his girlfriend for not being as good-looking as Fu Yuaner, she was still pretty and attractive. He happily bought food and went to Liu Zhi’s teacher’s flat and invited Liu Zhi and Fu Yuaner for a meal. Jin Yuangao had drunk too much beer at the dinner and came back from a pee break to see Liu Zhi smashing Fu Yuaner’s head against the table.

Jin Yuangao was stunned, and Liu Zhi looked up at him in a sweat, “Yuangao, you have to help me.”

Jin Yuangao nods subconsciously.

At this point, Jin Yuangao panicked, but Liu Zhi was his buddy, so he couldn’t let him go to jail. So he called two of his social friends and asked them to come over for drinks and dinner.

After the two workers had had too much to drink, Liu Zhi took Fu Yuaner’s body out. The wound on Fu Yuaner’s head was covered with a towel, his clothes were in disarray and he was lying on the sofa as if he had fallen asleep after drinking too much.

Halfway through the matter, the two workers realised that something was wrong.

Why didn’t this man scream or move?

They both lifted the towel and saw Fu Yuaner’s blue and white face and were so shocked that they rolled right off Fu Yuaner.

Liu Zhi changed his expression at this point and said coldly, “You will have to dispose of the body with me or I will sue you for raping and killing my girlfriend.”

The two workers had no choice but to agree. In the darkness of the night, they carried the body downstairs and were wondering what to do with it when the scene was witnessed by Wang Xinhui.

They hadn’t spotted Wang Xinhui, but Liu Zhi had seen the jewellery that she had dropped in her haste to escape. The four men’s faces sank when they realised that they had been seen. Liu Zhi put Fu Yuaner on his back and looked grimly at the other three men, “I’ll leave her to you.”

Liu Zhi walks off in another direction, carrying Fu Yuaner on his back alone.

In order not to expose himself and to make amends to the two workers he had screwed, Jin Yuangao remained silent and watched as Wang Xinhui was flushed to the toilet bowl in a miserable state ……

Jin Yuangao did not know where Liu Zhi had hidden Fu Yuaner’s body, but the same year after the school was expanded, the two workers who had raped and killed Wang Xinhui died.

Jin Yuangao, tormented by fear and weakened, goes back to Liu Zhi, who tells him to hide in the school sewers so that the ghosts can’t kill him if they don’t find him.

Jin Yuangao has just been in hiding for so long.

……

Jiang Luo immediately said, “Call the police.”

The police arrived at the warehouse shortly afterwards, accompanied by staff. They acted as if they were ready to go and arrested Jin Yuangao without Jiang Luo having to say much.

The staff member asked expectantly, “Are you planning to submit your answers now?”

Jiang Luo shook his head, “We’ll submit it later.”

With five hours to go, only one of the three questions on the pass remained – where had Fu Yuaner’s body been hidden?

Ye Xun said, “Of the clues given, only one remains unused.”

“Room 4-5,” Jiang Luo laughed bitterly, “I looked at the bottom of the bedpan and smashed the walls, but I couldn’t find Fu Yuaner’s body, so could it be in the mezzanine of two floors?”

Lu Youyi said with a big grin, “Liu Zhi’s office is a quadruple room.”

Ge Zhu laughed: “You didn’t think people would leave their bodies in the office, did you?”

Jiang Luo thought of Liu Zhi’s attendance sheet and his eyes lit up, “That makes sense.”

“Liu Zhi killed Fu Yuaner and hid Fu Yuaner’s body in this school, why didn’t he leave Evergreen High School when no one found out?” Jiang Luo flew to his office, “He came to class every day rain or shine and hadn’t been late a day in five months. A pervert’s mind can’t be understood in the way normal people think, maybe he was thinking of keeping the body under his nose and watching it, thinking it was the safest way to go?”

This guarded against any accidents, as the murderer himself, kept watch over the body day in and day out.

Lu Youyi ran up after him and wondered, “…… Then how can you understand the idea of perversion.”