Professor Ma leaned on the chair and was lost in his own thoughts. The previous phone call disturbed him slightly, but Lu Xu’s disappearance disturbed him to no end.
He was engaged in the research of ancient texts for most of his life, and he was part of many amazing discoveries as well.
Some of those discoveries include his window being scratched in the middle of the night, a black dog wandering inside his house, or even the countless, strange dreams he would have regarding the texts he studied.
It didn’t harm him or anyone else, so he chalked it up to great imagination.
Until now.
He stood up from his chair as he held his teacup and looked out the window.
His office overlooked the male dorm.
The third floor is occupied by very famous students, and he was impressed by them.
There was a student plagued by night sickness in that class, and he did something that shocked the entire campus.
The police received a report regarding a stench that emanated from that student’s room, and when they broke into his dorm, they saw him lying among dozens of rotting animal corpses.
“Even murder scenes don’t phase the police, but all of them vomited as soon as they opened the door.”
That student’s dorm was at the end of the corridor, and it is still vacant to this date. The windows are boarded up, and even the dorm next to it is vacant.
He became a little bored staring out the window, and his vision wandered to the top floor, where freshmen lived.
In a daze, a figure broke into his vision.
Someone was standing on the roof of the dorms, overlooking the direction of his office. Professor Ma could feel his heart skip a beat, but a strange familiarity seemed to wash over him.
Lu Xu.
He hurried forward and pressed himself against the glass, trying to take a closer look, but found that the roof was devoid of people.
Professor Ma rubbed his eyes over and over again, and true enough, nobody was there.
However, the faint stench returned to his nostrils, and just as he was about to turn around to investigate the source of the stench, his body forcibly froze in place.
A feeling of unease washed over him, and his back felt eerily cold in that empty office of his.
Some humans possess a sixth sense where they instinctively feel that something is wrong. Professor Ma once thought that he had similar feelings to this, but now he could tell that his sixth sense was blaring alarms at him.
The stench became more intense as if a decomposed corpse was right in front of him, and that corpse held a strong sense of malice.
The moment he turned his neck, his neck would be snapped.
He swallowed hard, and his hands trembled with every slight movement of his fingers. He could feel something approaching closer and closer to him.
Suddenly, a chill ran down his back, and his body shuddered violently.
He could feel a pair of hands resting on his shoulder, pushing him forward towards the window.
Some humans experience the call of the void, where they claim that an otherworldly force is tempting them to jump down from a high place.
Professor Ma didn’t think of it as a temptation, but something he has done all his life.
One foot forward.
“Professor? I’m here!”
Hearing Lu Yibei’s voice, Professor Ma came back to his senses in an instant. After realising that half of his body was leaning out the window, his face paled instantly as he kicked himself back into the office.
At this moment, that invisible power seemed to disappear in an instant, and he fell to a much, much shorter height, with the nerves of his behind crying out in pain.
Although this was not his first time hunting down urban legends, the situation this time was different.
He wasn’t fighting alone.
Before he left, Jumeng, with a grave face, told him that if he were to encounter any trouble, he could call for her at any time.
A pillar to fall back onto! How great!
Yibei felt elated that a goddess was supporting his journey, but…
Where the hell is Professor Ma’s office?
It took him a while to find the professor’s office, and he knocked on the door lightly after calling out for him.
With verbal confirmation, Lu Yibei pushed the door open and entered as he was greeted by the scene of Professor Ma massaging his buttocks in circular motions.
“O-oh, Professor,” he breathed out. “Was I interrupting something?”
“You bastard. What the hell are you talking about?”
“There is nothing to be ashamed of! We are both men, right? I believe that…”
Seeing Professor Ma’s face darken, he strategically shut up.
Professor Ma updated Lu Yibei on Lu Xu’s sudden disappearance, then told him all about the disappearance of his old friend as well as his son.
After listening, Lu Yibei could only come to one very obvious conclusion.
‘It’s all in the bamboo scrolls!’
Just as he was about to ask to see the bamboo scrolls, Professor Ma, still rubbing his buttocks, was limping across his office.
“Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee, please. Two sugars and one cream.”
Although he wasn’t interested in drinking, after being tortured for an entire night by Jumeng, he thought he needed some caffeine and sugar to re-energise himself.
“I don’t have any of that,” Professor Ma said. “I got the 3-in-1 packets.”
“That’s fine.”
As he brewed the instant coffee, with his back turned towards Yibei, he asked, “Do you think this has to do with the occult? I want to hear your opinion.”
“I’m not sure, but I am confident it is related to the set of bamboo scrolls you were studying. Can I take a look?”
“Ah…” Professor Ma furrowed his brows. “Are you sure? All the disappearances are linked to the scrolls, and I’m worried that…”
“That’s fine! You touched the scrolls too, but you’re right here in front of me!” Yibei said calmly.
Professor Ma remained silent before leaving his office, beckoning Yibei to follow behind him.
The two soon arrived at Professor Ma’s lab.
He sat Yibei down in the research room, then walked to the storage closet alone.
After turning on the lights, his eyes locked on the ancient box containing the scrolls. Opening the box, rolls of dull bamboo revealed themselves within the box.
Staring at the scrolls, he shook his head as he closed the box, picked up the replica bamboo scrolls that he had written out, and walked out of the storage closet.
Lu Yibei’s eyes were burning the moment he stepped into the lab, and they only intensified as he got closer to the storage closet. Looking at the storage closet visible through the glass wall, he could see Professor Ma’s figure in the dim light.
Now, Yibei was 100 per cent confident that the bamboo scrolls were the culprit.
He wasn’t sure what was in the storage closet, but he could confirm it when the professor left the storage closet.
Professor Ma returned to his side with the set of replicated bamboo scrolls.
Yibei wordlessly took the scrolls and unfolded them, and a string of hieroglyphs with weird shapes caught his eye.
What puzzled him was that his eyes burnt slightly less, as if there was nothing wrong with these bamboo scrolls.
“What are these writings?”
“This should be a sacrificial ceremony,” Professor Ma explained. “I have not fully deciphered it yet. Is there anything unusual about it?”
“No… It’s just an ordinary set of bamboo scrolls.”
If he can’t see it, it doesn’t mean that Jumeng couldn’t. He could write it down and ask her later.
“Is that so?” Professor Ma looked a little disappointed. “I must be thinking too much. I wasted your time today.”
Professor Ma wanted to show him the original scrolls, but…
Something strange seemed to overtake him the moment his hands landed on the box. As if something was telling him not to hand the scrolls over to Yibei…
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