Chapter 444: Half a Photo

Uncle Zhang Shan left, brimming with new story material, and disappeared within seconds, leaving the surroundings in utter silence.

No stars or moon could be seen in the sky. A gust of wind swept by, bringing with it rain as fine as ox hair.

The rain, soaked by the cold air from the mountains on both sides, carried a chill that ordinary clothing could hardly withstand.

Perhaps worried that Lu Yibei might catch cold if she stayed too long in the wind and rain, the jacket wriggled for a moment, tightening its cuffs and hem, radiating warmth inside, and for a fleeting moment, giving the illusion of lying in a cozy bed.

As a familiar contracted while under the state of Nu Ba’s Powers, the jacket, though not as highly attuned to fire attribute spell formations as Du Sixian, could still manage small things like generating a bit of heat.

Jacket, “……”

I really am a thoughtful little jacket!

٩(๑>◡<๑)۶

Through the familiar mark, Lu Yibei sensed the jacket was as delighted as a silly roe deer, and she smiled wryly to herself, gently touching her collar before continuing down the silent, deserted path.

At this moment, a hazy mist had begun to form halfway up the mountain. The faint outline of Ban Shan Primary School loomed in the swirling white fog, as if it might vanish into the mountains at any moment.

“Is the fog getting thicker? Looks like I need to pick up the pace. If I get lost, that’ll be trouble.” Lu Yibei muttered to herself.

Although she hadn’t detected any hauntings nearby, Ban Shan Primary School exuded an eerie atmosphere everywhere.

A school vanishing in the thick fog could very well happen here.

Moreover, as this thought surfaced, Lu Yibei felt as if something hidden in the mountains had been awakened, casting a probing gaze her way.

The closer she got to the mountainside, the more Lu Yibei felt her decision to send Uncle Zhang Shan away had been correct.

The landslide at the mountaintop mine had deformed the mountain, and the closer the ring road got to the summit, the worse its damage became. Cracks riddled the pavement, some over a meter wide, and after years of wind and rain, certain sections had turned into mud pits after a few downpours.

The mountain mist grew thicker.

When even the last bit of light from the street lamps at the foot of the mountain was swallowed by the mountain and fog, everything before her eyes became a blur.

Seeing this, Lu Yibei cursed inwardly and was about to pull out an Alchemical Bomb for illumination when she rounded a sharp bend. In a daze, she suddenly found herself rooted to the spot.

The thick mountain fog seemed to vanish in an instant, and when she came to, she was already standing in the open space before Ban Shan Primary School’s gate.

“This……”

Lu Yibei opened her mouth, hesitated, glanced at the school gate a hundred meters away, then looked back at the road she’d come from, her brows knitted tightly.

Something’s off! Just now, she could barely make out the school’s outline, and it looked at least a kilometer or two away.

How did she end up at the gate after just one turn?

It felt like… like the school itself had run toward her, just like in the story she’d told Uncle Zhang Shan.

Thinking this, Lu Yibei silently took out an Alchemical Bomb and held it in her hand, ready for both illumination and self-defense. Then, using Country Z’s traditional skill of “since I’m already here,” she fought the urge to turn back and slowed her steps, moving forward.

Moments later, Lu Yibei arrived at the gate of Ban Shan Primary School.

The school had been abandoned for years. The sign above the gate was broken in half, the ground was littered with rubble, and even the surrounding walls were hidden by rampant vegetation, making the place look exceptionally desolate.

It was midnight, and the mountain was eerily quiet. Occasionally, a few hurried bird calls rang out, chilling and strange.

Could those be crows?

Lu Yibei recalled the story she’d just told Uncle Zhang Shan, her face turning grim.

Why did I have to run my mouth and tell him that kind of story?

Wasn’t I just making trouble for myself?

She grumbled inwardly, frowning as she looked into the school.

Neglected for years, the greenbelt was overgrown with weeds, and many trees grew crooked and askew. In the shadows, she could vaguely see several unmarked graves beneath the trees.

In the distance, in front of the broken, pitch-black teaching building, stood a banyan tree with unusually lush roots. Its thick trunk and tangled aerial roots would take several people to encircle.

On its branches hung a few old school uniforms that hadn’t been collected, swaying in the wind as if waiting for someone to return.

In the wind and rain, the old banyan’s leaves rustled, and the decaying swing hanging from its trunk gently rocked, as if an invisible girl were sitting on it.

“Hiss–!”

Faced with the eerie scene at Ban Shan Primary School, Lu Yibei couldn’t help but take a deep breath.

This kind of haunted place is like a haunting resort-if there aren’t any hauntings here, that’s just absurd!

If those hauntings led by Du Sixian were given a vacation and brought here for team building and recuperation, they’d be absolutely delighted.

That guy would feel right at home!

As she pondered, Lu Yibei pushed off the ground with her toes, leaping over the gate and officially entering Ban Shan Primary School.

From here, she could see the entire school at a glance.

Directly opposite the gate was a patch of muddy ground, probably the playground, now overgrown with weeds.

At the end of the playground, beside the old banyan, stood a two-story building-the teaching building.

The landslide at the mine had deformed the mountain, causing considerable damage to the buildings. Cracks were clearly visible on the walls, which looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Beside the teaching building was a row of low houses. Lu Yibei guessed they might have been teachers’ offices or dormitories.

After surveying the school grounds, Lu Yibei didn’t rush into the teaching building or the low houses.

She took several Alchemical Bombs from the metal box on her shoulder, burying them about a meter apart under the gate and the surrounding walls, then carefully set up trigger-type detonation spell formations.

Although up to now, Lu Yibei still hadn’t detected any psychic energy fluctuation within Ban Shan Primary School, that didn’t stop her from acting cautiously.

If she didn’t make preparations in advance, and ended up encountering some danger after entering the school, while at the same time some unknown enemy broke in from outside, wouldn’t she be caught in a dilemma?

Whether there were enemies or not, let’s just assume there are!

Anyway, it wouldn’t take long to bury the Alchemical Bombs, and it wouldn’t get in the way. At worst, if she didn’t need them later, she could just dig them up and take them away.

Thinking this, after burying the last Alchemical Bomb, Lu Yibei patted the dirt off her hands, nodded in satisfaction, and turned to head toward the teaching building.

The drizzle washed over the soil, quickly covering up any traces of the ground having been disturbed.

—-

After approaching the teaching building, Lu Yibei first carefully avoided the wild grass around her, circling the dilapidated, aging building once.

After confirming there were no ambushes around the teaching building and planning out two optimal escape routes, she walked into the side entrance.

The corridor was pitch-black, with all the doors on both sides wide open. There was nothing of value inside; desks and chairs had all been cleared out.

The empty classrooms were scattered with yellowed sheets of paper on the floor. Lu Yibei even spotted an exam paper with its score altered.

“Damn, changed 18 points to 98?” Lu Yibei frowned.

“You son of a bitch, you’re really a piece of work! That summer, this test paper must have left you with some painful memories, huh?”

After walking a bit further, near the main entrance hall of the teaching building, Lu Yibei found something interesting.

On the wall beside the main entrance, there was a section painted black with oil paint, used as a blackboard for notices. It was densely covered with chalk writing, but instead of announcements, it was filled with messages-apparently left by students before they left all those years ago.

Most of the chalk writing had blurred over the long years, but a few lines could still barely be made out.

Curious, Lu Yibei leaned in close to the wall, rubbed her fingers together to conjure a red flame flash for light, and began reading the messages one by one.

[Li Guoqing, I love you!]

Lu Yibei, “……”

Uh, elementary schoolers decades ago were already this bold? The seniors were impressive!

By comparison, when I was in primary school, I was just an idiot, only ever worrying about whether to spend my five yuan pocket money on snacks or save up for a new skin. Lu Yibei thought.

[Wang Xiaobao, screw you!]

Now that’s more normal, but kids shouldn’t be swearing!

Erase it, erase it!

Lu Yibei raised her hand and wiped away the crude words left by some former student on the blackboard used as a notice board, just about to keep reading when a faint rustling sound suddenly reached her ears.

Following the direction of the sound, she instantly held her breath.

Right where she had just wiped away those crooked little words, the chalk letters began to reappear, stroke by stroke.

It felt as if someone was holding an invisible piece of chalk, writing on the blackboard, the faint sound of chalk scraping against the board echoing in the darkness.

But that “person” was invisible, had no psychic energy fluctuation, no scent, no temperature, as if existing in another dimension beyond perception or touch.

So, after just a few breaths, the words [Wang Xiaobao, screw you!] reappeared on the blackboard.

A few seconds later, Lu Yibei snapped back to her senses, instantly expanding her psychic sense to its maximum range, trying to catch even the faintest trace of psychic energy fluctuation.

But she found nothing.

No psychic energy fluctuation-so this phenomenon couldn’t be explained as a haunting.

But…

If I can’t explain this with a haunting, am I supposed to explain it with science? Lu Yibei thought.

Most hauntings didn’t scare her, and phenomena that could be explained by science didn’t frighten her either. But this kind of unknown event, which couldn’t be explained by either science or mysticism, for a moment, made her feel the same nervousness as when she first encountered a haunting incident.

She steadied herself, focused her attention, and leaned in for a closer look at the writing on the blackboard.

This time, when she inadvertently saw another line of small characters, she suddenly gripped the Pure Lotus Sword tightly, took two steps back, and froze on the spot.

[Lu Yibei, don’t you recognize me?]

In the corner of the blackboard was this line of small characters, the handwriting delicate yet a bit clumsy, as if left by some shy, cute girl.

The surroundings were eerily quiet. Outside the teaching building, in the empty schoolyard, a cold wind swept through, making the wild grass and banyan branches sway together, producing a furtive, whispering sound.

For a moment, she felt as if someone was watching her from the shadows. She nervously glanced around, but found nothing.

In the dead silence, Lu Yibei looked again at that line of small characters, her brows knitting tightly.

That sentence grew in her mind like a thorny vine, taking root and making her unable to stop guessing.

When was this message left?

Was it written just now when I was distracted, or nineteen years ago when Qi Nanzhu last met my father, or even over forty years ago when this school was first abandoned?

Was the person who left this message Qi Nanzhu?

If so, what was she trying to say?

Was she trying to see if I still remembered her, or was it some kind of silent threat?

……

“Thud, thud, thud–!”

Suddenly, footsteps sounded from above, as if someone was hurrying down the corridor on the second floor.

The heavy footsteps and the faint psychic energy fluctuation snapped Lu Yibei out of her tangled thoughts.

There’s someone else in this school!

Lu Yibei’s eyelid twitched, but after a brief moment of tension, she actually calmed down.

Sensing the other party’s psychic energy fluctuation, she wasn’t afraid anymore.

It’s the unknown that makes people afraid, not the known.

A psychic energy fluctuation meant that the other party was either a psychic or a haunting.

What was there to fear about psychics and hauntings? Who wasn’t one? Within Hua City, they should be afraid of me!

Lu Yibei comforted herself with these thoughts, glanced up at the ceiling, took a few deep breaths, then raised her sword and headed upstairs.

As soon as she reached the second floor, the dark corridor was illuminated by the glow of the red flame flash. On the corridor, a string of footprints left in accumulated dust came into view, stretching from the stairway entrance into the darkness at the end of the hall.

Lu Yibei followed the direction of the footprints, passing by classrooms on both sides that still had their doors open. Inside, they were empty, with nowhere for anyone to hide.

The one who had made the footsteps earlier seemed to have vanished into thin air.

She walked through the dust-laden corridor and arrived at the last classroom at the end. Seeing the only locked classroom in the entire building, Lu Yibei frowned.

Rusty iron chains were wrapped around the door, and on the chains, a padlock was sealed shut, seemingly rusted together with the chain.

“……”

Could it be…

Staring at the padlock, Lu Yibei pondered for two seconds, then silently reached into her jacket pocket and gripped the twisted brass key.

Although such an ordinary iron door could be easily broken with a single sword strike, to confirm her suspicions, after taking out the key, she carefully straightened it and tried to insert it into the padlock.

Perhaps because too much time had passed, the padlock was severely rusted. Lu Yibei managed to insert the key halfway before it got stuck. She pushed harder, and the dew-moistened rust stained her hands a rusty red. Then, with a “click!”, the key slid fully into the keyhole.

Now, it was time to witness a miracle!

Staring at the padlock, Lu Yibei silently took a deep breath, twisted the key forcefully left and right, and with a tooth-grinding creak, the padlock opened.

“!!!”

It actually opened!

This key had been carefully kept by her old man. Did that mean that behind this door was the person or thing she was looking for? Lu Yibei thought excitedly.

Then…

She suddenly stepped back two paces, activated the psychic energy within her, and performed the sword technique from The Diagram of the Gentleman Sword of Taihe, unleashing a dazzling sword light at the iron door with lightning speed.

In an instant, the screech of metal tearing erupted, and the iron door shattered into a dozen pieces, flying into the classroom.

Though she had unlocked the padlock with the key and then cut open the door with her sword, it did make her seem a bit deranged.

But…

First, Lu Yibei hadn’t unlocked the padlock to enter, but merely to confirm whether Lu Ming’s preserved key matched the padlock.

Second, if the psychics and hauntings who had been moving upstairs were lying in ambush behind the door, simply pushing it open would give them a chance to strike.

So, Lu Yibei unlocked the padlock to make them think she’d enter, then violently broke down the door, cutting down both the door and anyone hiding behind it.

However…

This time, she was overthinking it. There were no psychics or hauntings in the classroom behind the door.

As the iron door was broken open by the Pure Lotus Sword, the long-accumulated dust on the door flew everywhere, covering Lu Yibei’s face as if chastising her for her rough behavior.

“Cough–!”

She coughed softly, waved her hand in front of her to clear the dust, then steadied herself and looked into the classroom.

Unlike the empty classrooms before, who knew what had happened here in the past-broken limbs of desks and chairs littered the floor.

The damaged desks and chairs were piled together in twisted shapes, vaguely arranged as if someone had deliberately placed them that way.

But, amid the wreckage, there was a single intact chair in the center of the classroom, and on it lay a dust-covered booklet with “Commemorative Album” written on the cover.

Lu Yibei looked up at the ceiling above the chair, confirmed there was nowhere to hang oneself, and that the chair wasn’t a tool for suicide, then approached, keeping a meter’s distance, and used the Pure Lotus Sword to flip open the commemorative album on the chair.

However…

“Huh? Empty? How could it be empty?” Staring at the blank commemorative album, Lu Yibei uttered a surprised sound.

Honestly, in a place like this, if a commemorative album appeared with scriptures pointing straight to an evil god, she wouldn’t be surprised.

But if nothing was written, it was even more suspicious.

With doubts in her mind, she used the Pure Lotus Sword to flip a few more pages. Just then, a faint glimmer flashed by, and a photo tucked inside the album fluttered to the floor.

To be precise, it was only half a photo, showing a stunningly beautiful woman. The other half…

Lu Yibei frowned and took out the half-photo she’d found among her father’s belongings. Just by comparing them from a distance, she could tell the torn edges matched almost perfectly.

Was the woman in the half-photo Qi Nanzhu?

Was this photo a picture of her and her father together?

Lu Yibei wondered, holding the half-photo, inching closer to compare the torn edges more carefully. Just then, a loud crash sounded outside the window, followed by several heart-wrenching screams.

The crash startled Lu Yibei; her body trembled, and in her distraction, the photo in her hand fluttered down, as if drawn by the one on the floor, flying over and merging together…