Chapter 49 : Chapter 49
Chapter 49: The School Dormitory Building
The sudden mission that the Scum Game had issued left Bai Yu extremely puzzled.
Yes—puzzled.
She had never seen the Scum Game show such a side before.
To give an example: if she and the other participants were gladiators in an arena, fighting with blood and life to entertain the audience in the stands, then the Scum Game was the owner behind the arena.
It would only think of ways to make your death more entertaining.
And how did it achieve that?
Through all kinds of missions.
So today’s mission truly confused her.
Why had it become like this?
What exactly was the meaning behind this mission?
Her instinct was to think about killing Number 652. That would be simple and efficient.
But the problem was that every piece of information in the mission suggested she should complete it in another way.
At the very least, she could not kill the target.
However, the mission itself was not the thing that confused her the most.
What puzzled her most was a single line in the mission description.
Those lunatics also have emotions. Deep in their hearts there is also a fragile and gentle side.
The sentence seemed simple.
In other words—despite the fact that they killed and committed arson, they were actually good people inside who deserved to be saved?
Perhaps a manga protagonist might think like that.
But the Scum Game would never play such a trick.
In the Scum Game, you either killed others, or others killed you.
What happened in the past did not matter.
From the moment one entered the Scum Game, they became an entirely new person.
And to be honest, even Bai Yu herself wondered—Was someone like her even worthy of redemption?
And who would come to redeem her?
A lunatic whose hands were soaked in blood…
If she ever encountered someone trying to guide and redeem her, she would probably cut them down with a single strike.
‘If someone wants to redeem these lunatics, the premise is that they must first make them obedient.’
‘And that’s far more difficult than simply killing them…’
‘Wait…’
Bai Yu frowned slightly.
She suddenly seemed to realize something.
Leaving aside whatever strange whim the Scum Game had this time, perhaps the reason the mission had been assigned to her was precisely because of her strength.
Everyone knew that preaching with fists was often far more effective than persuading people with love.
While Bai Yu was pondering the mission given by the Scum Game, Zhao Mingyue had already followed a narrow path overgrown with weeds—a path that clearly had not been used in a long time—and arrived outside the walls of Dongcheng No. 13 Middle School.
From the outside, she could only see the school’s silhouette hidden within the darkness.
But once she came closer, she could see it more clearly.
At first glance, nothing seemed particularly unusual.
Parts of the school’s walls had cracked, and large patches of white plaster had peeled off.
The school playground was overrun with weeds.
The open space in front of the teaching building was the same. All kinds of wild grass grew through cracks in the ground.
Following the wall, she arrived at the school’s main gate.
The gate was rusted all over, and a black iron lock had sealed it shut.
The good news was that the hollow metal gate made climbing relatively easy.
The entire campus was not very large.
There were only four buildings in total: A four-story teaching building, A three-story youth activity center, A cafeteria, and the student dormitory.
After all, this place had originally been an orphanage.
At the time the school was built, there had not been much funding. Considering the remote location, there would never be many students attending anyway. Most of them would have been children from nearby villages.
“That old director really was a good person. Building a school here must have been a losing business. He probably lost money every year. I heard that later the school relied entirely on donations from charitable people in society.”
“The key point is that it was still a private school. Later, because the school could no longer afford to pay the teachers and lacked sufficient faculty—and after the old director passed away—the school was eventually abandoned.”
Standing in front of the school gate, Zhao Mingyue spoke to herself while shining her flashlight toward the exterior wall of one of the buildings.
Unfortunately, the flashlight beam was rather weak. It was not as strong as a high-powered flashlight.
Still, it allowed her to notice something unusual.
Because the building had been exposed to wind and rain for so long without maintenance, its walls had turned yellow and cracked slightly, with patches of plaster falling off. That was normal.
But in one particular spot, she saw something different.
The wall there had turned black—like it had been burned.
She had seen this kind of damage before in Sunshine Apartments after the fire.
She was absolutely certain.
There had definitely been a fire in that building.
“A fire…”
The information she had gathered before, along with the mission description, had never mentioned a fire.
They only mentioned a poisoning case.
And that an entire class of children had died.
But thinking about it now, something felt wrong.
In such a small school, everyone would eat in the cafeteria.
If someone poisoned the food, how could only one class die while the rest of the students were unaffected?
But if it had been a fire…
Then it would make sense.
Because students from a single class would gather together in one classroom.
If the windows and doors were sealed shut, and gasoline or something similar had been poured inside…
Then it would be possible.
Although even that would be difficult.
After all, a classroom did not contain many flammable materials.
Unlike a dormitory…
‘Dormitory!?’
Zhao Mingyue suddenly turned her head.
Her flashlight beam swept across the other buildings.
That class that had been wiped out was described as a “special class.”
If those orphans all slept in the same dormitory…
Then perhaps the killer had started the fire there?
She scanned the area with her flashlight again, but could not see anything clearly.
In the end, she returned her attention to the building in front of her.
“This probably isn’t the teaching building.”
“It should be the dormitory.”
“There’s no way to figure things out just standing here. I’ll have to go inside.”
Zhao Mingyue was the kind of person who acted as soon as she made up her mind.
Muttering to herself, she bit the flashlight between her teeth.
Rubbing her hands together, completely unconcerned about getting dirty, she grabbed the rusted gate tightly with both hands.
Without a single trace of ladylike behavior—or any concern for her image—she climbed over the gate with both hands and feet.
In just a few swift movements, she had flipped into the school courtyard.
Her movements were clean and efficient.
After landing, she dusted off her hands and brushed the rust flakes from her clothes.
Holding the flashlight, she carefully followed the concrete path toward the interior of the campus.
“Bai Yu… Big Sister Yu… are you still there?”
Zhao Mingyue called out softly in her mind.
She bent slightly at the waist, cautiously observing her surroundings, moving slowly.
Every step was taken with extreme care.
“I’m here.”
“Mhm. Good. As long as you’re here.”
“I’ve already come inside. What should we do first? Which task should we complete?”
After only a few steps, she arrived in front of the building she had been observing earlier.
Just as she suspected, it was not the teaching building at all.
It was the dormitory.
It was her own fault for not looking carefully before.
After all, two large characters painted in red clearly stood on the front of the building:
“Dormitory.”
Strangely enough, although everything else in the school looked worn and broken, those two red characters remained bright and vivid—as if they had only been painted recently.
However…Unlike the neatly written text elsewhere, these two characters looked slightly twisted.
You could not say they were badly written. But somehow…They gave off an unsettling feeling.