“Yan Qing, are you in there? Yan Qing!” The knocking grew louder and more insistent.

Yan Qing opened her eyes from a light rest and quickly made her way to the door.

“Yan Qing, Yan Qing.” It was Jing Lan’s voice, tight with anxious, tearful urgency.

A flicker of warmth stirred in Yan Qing’s heart. “I’m here,” she answered.

“Don’t be scared. I’ve already found someone to come unlock the door — they’ll be here soon. You’re going to be fine. I’m right outside.”

It seemed everyone harbored a deep-seated dread of this classroom of death. Jing Lan had assumed she must have been frightened half out of her wits by now.

Yan Qing smiled helplessly to herself and waited quietly for the locksmith.

Before long, the guard arrived with his tools. When he and Jing Lan saw Yan Qing sitting there completely unscathed, they both froze.

“Yan Qing, are you all right?” Jing Lan had feared that the lack of response meant she had been frightened into a stupor.

“I’m fine,” Yan Qing said with a smile. “Are classes still going on? I think I missed them again.”

The last thing Jing Lan had expected at a moment like this was for her to ask about classes. It left her not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Class is over. When you didn’t come back, I went to look for Teacher Zhang, but she’d already gone home early. When I realized something was wrong, I started asking around, and heard that someone had locked you in here, so I came straight away.”

Shi Yutong and Yan Qin had no doubt been boasting about it to anyone who would listen. But even if everyone knew where she was, they had all looked the other way. The only one who had truly cared was Jing Lan alone.

Yan Qing took Jing Lan’s hand. Her palm was slightly damp — she had been so anxious she’d broken out in a cold sweat. “Thank you, Jing Lan.”

“As long as you’re all right. I was really afraid you’d frightened yourself sick.” Jing Lan glanced back at the classroom, a flash of unease crossing her face. “After all, someone died here. Even when people just walk past this doorway normally, no one dares to look at it twice — it gives off such an eerie chill.”

The rumors that this classroom was haunted had already been circulating for half a year, spinning themselves into all manner of wild versions. The gossip had spread like wildfire and turned the place into a forbidden zone within the school. From the look on Jing Lan’s face, she seemed to believe every word of it.

“That Shi Yutong really went too far.” Jing Lan was both angry and exasperated.

Yan Qing might be the school director’s daughter, but Shi Yutong was the Marshal’s precious girl. Even if the headmaster had been given a hundred times his usual courage, he wouldn’t have dared hold her accountable. Given the gap between their positions, Yan Qing had no choice but to swallow this humiliation in silence.

The day after the incident, Yan Qing suddenly found herself thinking back to something Jing Lan had mentioned — the story about the water demon devouring people.

“There really is a water demon.” Jing Lan had kept that newspaper, and when she heard Yan Qing ask about it, she immediately dug it out. “Someone pulled a torso out of the water — what was left after the water demon had eaten its fill. It was in absolutely gruesome condition.”

Yan Qing opened the paper and found the news item. It was not, in fact, a water demon that had devoured anyone — a fisherman casting his net in the Liao He River had simply hauled up a body part. Because folk legends about water demons already existed, the story had been sensationalized into something far more sinister.

It occurred to Yan Qing that the Military Police Bureau must have taken over the case by now. A dismembered body pulled from a river was far more likely to be a homicide than a suicide.

The Bureau had indeed taken charge. Shi Cheng, captain of the Third Squadron, had led his team to the scene as soon as the report came in.

The person who had filed the report was a local fisherman. Wanting to catch the early tide, he had gone out to set his nets before dawn. At midday, he went back to collect them. The net was unusually heavy, and he had been overjoyed at the time, certain he had landed a massive fish. But when he hauled it up, what he found was a large pale mass — not a fish at all, but a human torso.

—