This classroom had always been tucked away at the far end of a corridor. Because something had happened there in the past, it had been locked up ever since. Tonight, only three classes were holding evening lessons, and all of their classrooms were some distance away. Even if Jing Lan noticed Yan Qing hadn’t returned, she would simply assume a teacher had called her in for a talk.

Yan Qing tried knocking on the door, but received no response.

After a few knocks, she gave up. Since there was no way out, she might as well settle in and wait — Murong would find her sooner or later.

Yan Qing turned her wheelchair around and let her gaze drift slowly across the room.

The dim surroundings had created an eerily unsettling space. Pale moonlight filtered in through the windows, falling across the mottled floor, while the shadows of tree branches swayed like countless struggling arms flailing wildly in the dark.

Having been locked up for so long, the overturned desks and chairs were blanketed in thick dust and cobwebs. The air was thick with the stench of rot and decay.

Just a year ago, a female student had hanged herself in this very classroom. Before she died, she had apparently been consumed by an overwhelming hatred, and had deliberately dressed herself in a red skirt. She believed that someone who died a wrongful death wearing red would transform into a vengeful spirit after death, able to fulfill the wishes she had carried in life.

The incident had once shaken the entire school, but it had quickly faded from memory. After all, the one who had died was no daughter of a wealthy family or member of a distinguished clan — she was just an ordinary girl from a modest background.

Like a pebble tossed into a vast lake, it could only stir a small ripple before the water smoothed over again.

In the center of the classroom, a chair lay toppled on the floor. From the ceiling beam hung half a length of roughly woven rope. They said someone had cut the rope to try to save her, and that remaining half had been hanging there ever since, swaying eerily from side to side with the wind that drifted in through the windows.

Yan Qing tilted her head to look at the rope, then leaned forward to examine the overturned chair and desk below.

At the time, the Military Police Bureau had ruled the incident a suicide. If the accounts were accurate, Yan Qing agreed with that conclusion.

First, the point of suspension was too high — it would have required the deceased to climb onto the chair and then up onto the desk herself before throwing the rope up over the beam.

If someone had carried her body up there to hang it, the combined weight of two people would surely have collapsed a desk that wasn’t nearly sturdy enough.

Second, the scene had been clean and undisturbed, with no signs of dragging, which also ruled out the possibility of someone looping a rope around the victim’s neck and hoisting her up.

She could picture it — a girl full of despair, stepping up onto that fragile desk, throwing the rope up over the high beam, and in the moment she slipped the noose around her own neck, there had been no hesitation, no pulling back. She had been determined to die, and that determination had made her resolute.

Yan Qing let out a quiet sigh. Unless someone had been driven to the very edge, no one would have the courage to seek death with such single-minded resolve.

She wheeled herself to the window and quietly took in the nighttime view. Aside from a few dim, yellowed lamps, there was really nothing much to look at.

Shi Yutong and Yan Qin could never have imagined that their carefully laid plan to lock Yan Qing in here and frighten her would yield this result — not only had she not been frightened in the slightest, she had spent her time calmly analyzing a suicide scene.

As a seasoned forensic examiner, she had long since stopped believing in ghosts or the supernatural. The only thing she believed in was this: in this world, what was far more terrifying than any ghost was the unfathomable depths of the human heart.

The human heart held both good and evil. One thought could make a person into a saint; another could turn them into a demon. Many crimes were decided in a single moment — and yet that briefest of instants could destroy two lives, or even more.

Just as Yan Qing was staring out the window, lost in thought, an urgent knocking at the door broke the silence.

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