The three of them walked over to the shade of a tree.
Xue Ji asked about what happened during the forest trial. Could a vampire really…
“So you’re saying you found Song Liangpeng after you got lost, and he was just lying on the ground when you saw him?” Xue Ji double-checked. “Did you notice anything strange at the time?”
Zhao Cheng tried hard to recall the scene. Besides Song Liangpeng on the ground, what else was there? A flash of pale yellow crossed his mind.
“There was sand! There was a lot of sand underneath Song Liangpeng!” Zhao Cheng hadn’t had time to think about it then, but now he realized how strange it was. In a place covered entirely in soil, there was a lot of dry, yellow sand.
Hearing this, Xue Ji suddenly thought of something: “Was the sand mixed with blood?”
“Song Liangpeng had claw wounds on his chest from a wolf, so there probably was,” Zhao Cheng replied. The situation had been urgent, and he hadn’t paid close attention, so he could only make a reasonable assumption.
Shen Dai, thinking about Song Liangpeng, remembered something.
Playing with Xue Ji’s smooth hair, she said: “Oh yeah, Song Liangpeng’s parents are pretty weird too.”
“People from his class said they used to be really nice during parent-teacher conferences, even bringing snacks for the whole class.”
“But in the last half month, they seem to have had a complete change in personality. Song Liangpeng went home for half a day on the weekend and came back with bruises and swelling on his face. I heard his parents were even arrested by the police.”
Shen Dai felt quite bad talking about it. It was his final year of high school, yet his parents had turned out like this.
Every time he came looking for Xue Ji, he would stand at the door for a long time. When asked what he wanted with Xue Ji, he wouldn’t say.
“I actually meant to tell you back then, but your phone was always off. I thought something had happened to you, and I was so worried,” Shen Dai said with a hint of埋怨 (grievance/complaint).
In an apologetic tone, Xue Ji said: “Alright, alright, I’ll treat you to McDonald’s later. I’ve got to go now, bye~”
Xue Ji said goodbye to a few instructors and headed back.
…
Xue Ji returned to the teaching building and went straight to the next classroom over, which was Class 1, where Song Liangpeng was.
Class 1 was an advanced class with a strong academic atmosphere. During the break, not a single person was out in the hallway. Xue Ji had no choice but to brazenly walk into the classroom. Her arrival didn’t disturb the students solving problems; no one even looked up.
Xue Ji glanced around but didn’t see Song Liangpeng.
She wanted to ask someone, but didn’t know who to approach, as everyone was buried in their work.
She found a girl working on a math test, who was stuck on the final problem.
Xue Ji offered a suggestion: “First, take the logarithm, then invert the numerator and denominator, split the term, and finally use the method of dislocation subtraction.”
Hearing this, the girl finally looked up. Whether it was from concentrating too hard on the test or being dazzled by Xue Ji’s white hair, she seemed a bit dazed.
Following Xue Ji’s advice, she quickly solved the last problem.
“So it was that simple!”
Then she remembered that a cute white-haired girl seemed to be standing beside her. She looked up and was captivated.
Realizing she was being rude, she shook her head and said: “Sorry, classmate, I was too focused. Did you need something?”
She wore round-framed glasses and had shoulder-length short hair, looking every bit the academic achiever.
“Where is Song Liangpeng from your class?” Xue Ji asked.
The girl frowned upon hearing this: “Him? He probably went looking for cats.”
“Looking for cats?”
“Yeah. And also…” she lowered her voice, cupping her hand like a megaphone, saying, “I heard he bites cats and dogs to suck their blood. You should be careful if you’re looking for him too.”
Xue Ji smiled slightly and said: “That’s not true, is it? Are you all afraid of that?”
The girl knew that logically it probably wasn’t true, but the suspicions didn’t come from nowhere, leaving her at a loss for words.
“People say I’m a female ghost because of my white hair, boo!” Xue Ji deliberately made a scary face to frighten her.
“Hahaha, you’re really cute, classmate.”
Hearing this, Xue Ji added one more item to her mental to-do list for the day.
…
Xue Ji went to the fence near the small sports field. This was where the most cats from San Zhong High School gathered; stray cats often slipped in through the gaps in the fence.
She also saw Song Liangpeng, leaning against the parallel bars, staring blankly at the empty wasteland outside the fence.
Just then, a calico cat seductively wriggled its body, slowly squeezing its way inside.
After the calico cat entered, he thought about petting it and crouched down. But as soon as he got close, the cat immediately turned and ran.
Helpless, he let out a long sigh towards the wasteland.
But from behind him came Xue Ji’s gentle teasing.
“Look at you, you even scare the cats away.”
He turned around and saw the calico cat obediently lying in Xue Ji’s arms.
But the moment the cat sensed his gaze, it tried to burrow deeper into Xue Ji’s arms as if trying to escape.
“Pretty pathetic looking, like this,” Xue Ji commented mercilessly.
Being told this, Song Liangpeng had nothing to say.
Xue Ji didn’t let him off, continuing to chatter.
“Weren’t you looking for me? How come you’re not saying anything now that I’m here?”
“Don’t you have any spirit? Won’t even talk?”
“You’re not really a vampire, are you? Did you kill those cats? Hey, hey, hey!”
Song Liangpeng finally couldn’t take it anymore and opened his mouth to retort: “I’m not!” But his voice was weak, sounding somewhat wronged.
“Louder, I can’t hear you! Are you feeling guilty, vampire?” Xue Ji shouted.
“I’m not, I’m not, I am not a vampire!!!” He shouted out all the frustration in his heart, finally sounding a bit more human.
Xue Ji sat on the ping pong table holding the cat, while Song Liangpeng leaned against the parallel bars. The two could finally have a normal conversation.
“Why are you dressed like this? Can you take those sunglasses off?”
Under Xue Ji’s repeated insistence, he took off the sunglasses, revealing bloodshot, utterly exhausted eyes. These eyes weren’t completely devoid of life; deep within them still shone a light of defiance.
“Tell me, what happened to you.”
Song Liangpeng took off that large black coat, revealing the bruises and scars hidden underneath. These were the marks left from being beaten by his parents.
“They inexplicably joined some new cult that appeared and wanted to sell our house to donate the money. I objected, and they beat me up. And they did it with several masked people there too.”
“Those masked people pointed at my nose and called me a vampire, surrounding me and making these weird gestures. Their words seemed to have some kind of magic, making me start to believe I was a vampire too.”
“For the next half month, I started being afraid of sunlight. When I looked in the mirror, I’d see fangs in my mouth in a daze. After that, I started having this craving for blood. I began distrusting everyone around me.”
But the desiccated cat corpses on campus were not Song Liangpeng’s doing. During his first attempt, he had managed to snap himself back to senses.
“It’s really impressive that you could snap out of it,” Xue Ji praised sincerely.
What Song Liangpeng didn’t say was that every time his reason was about to reach its limit, he would remember Xue Ji’s figure from behind from that day.
Whenever he remembered it, a gentle priestess-like older sister seemed to emerge from Xue Ji, pulling his reason back.
And Xue Ji also had something she didn’t say. Using her Pioneer authority, she had found surveillance footage of Song Liangpeng being beaten by his parents.
The so-called masked people simply did not exist in the footage.