Chapter 45 Graveyard On Campus

Chapter 45 Graveyard On Campus

I felt a little depressed. Wen Jiubo was correct, it was an old case and nobody wanted to redress it. The difficulty of reopening the case would be enormous.

“I’m suffocating to death here!”

Bai, who was hiding beneath my clothes, suddenly popped out. He complained, “Boring! Who is this girl who died years ago? What is this dream? I don’t understand what you’re talking about at all. I wouldn’t have come with you if I knew.”

I glanced at the ferret. “Of course, if I knew in advance, I wouldn’t bring you with me. You can’t help me at all!”

Wen Jiubo started to talk before Bai could quarrel with me.

“But, thanks to the teacher, I think I know what’s happening at the university now,” announced Wen Jiubo with a meaningful smile on his face.

“Really?” I was surprised.

“As I said before, there is a simple law of cause and effect. Now, if we can recognize this ‘effect,’ it will lead us to the cause.” Wen Jiubo’s confidence didn’t seem fake, on the contrary, I was familiar with this look, which only appeared when he was a hundred percent sure.

“So, what should we do now?”

“You need to come back to my home with me, I need you to help carry something heavy.” Wen Jiubo winked at me. I was puzzled by his sudden wink.

“What? What are you going to do?” Bai jumped out of my shirt excitedly.

“You’ll find out if you come back.” Wen Jiubo smirked, walking back to his home.

By the time we arrived at his house, it was already past eleven at night. The roads on the mountain seemed creepy, and the old residence looked like a horror movie set in the dark. Wen Jiubo went directly into a room full of clutter, he took out two shovels from one of the piles of weird stuff.

Wait, shovels?

What’s he going to do with those shovels?

“Hold this.” Before I could understand what he was doing, Wen Jiubo threw a shovel towards me. I caught it just before the heavy thing made a dent in the ground.

“It’s so heavy!” I could scarcely lift it up. Then I looked at Wen Jiubo, confused, “What’re you going to do with these shovels? Are we going to dig something up?”

Wen Jiubo turned around with a soft smile on his face, holding the other shovel in his hand. “Let’s go and dig up some graves.”

——————————————————————

Just like that, Wen Jiubo, Bai, and I, two people with a ferret, sneaked through the back door of my school’s dorm at midnight.

There was a huge open space behind the dorm building in our university. This space was huge, but for some reason, the university left it vacant, only planting some willow and aspen trees there. As a result, it became a favorite date spot among couples. As a single person, I had never come here before and I didn’t understand why it existed.

“Did you say…dig up graves?”

“Yes.” Wen Jiubo’s expression remained neutral.

“Bu…but,” I stammered. “This is a school, how would it have…”

I stopped talking, praying with all my heart that Wen Jiubo would not tell me there was a graveyard in my university.

“The grave I’m looking for is in your university.” Wen Jiubo narrowed his eyes, smiling.

I growled, “Wen Jiubo! Can you stop terrifying me with some campus horror story!”

Wen Jiubo became serious. “Who said I’m trying to scare you? Since there have been so many weird things happening at your university, it should come as no surprise that your school has a graveyard.”

“But, this only happens in supernatural novels…” My lips twitched.

“What is real is rational,” Wen Jiubo enunciated with his arm crossed. “Did it ever occur to you that that’s why there are so many novels and movies depicting ghost stories happenings at schools?”

“Of course those stories are fake,they aim to terrify small children,” I riposted with a straight face.

Wen Jiubo paused for a second and then laughed.

“Well, you’re right to some extent. However, many schools in China were indeed built on graveyards. There is an explanation based on Feng Shui.”

“Are you sure?” I couldn’t believe what I heard.

Wen Jiubo nodded. “Graveyards are places full of negative energy. Many cities with a long history have old graveyards in which generations of families are buried. All of these places are full of negative energy. If we build schools on the sites of these graveyards, the positive energy produced by a large number of people, who are educated citizens that don’t believe in ghosts, will suppress the negative energy. Also, young students can produce more positive energy compared to others and this positive energy can ward off evil ghosts and spirits.”

I nodded, only half-understanding.

“But, this is not the main reason why schools are built on graveyards.” Wen Jiubo raised his head, looking at the grove of willows and aspens.

“Oh?” I was curious.

“Because it’s cheap.” Wen Jiubo grinned at me. “You know, schools need to spend a huge amount of money to purchase land. The board of directors will always choose the cheapest land they can find. Besides, building a school needs to occupy a large space, if they buy land at other locations, they need to demolish the buildings on the site, but if they choose a graveyard, it will save them tons of trouble.”

This reason was so unexpected, I scratched my head, feeling that the reason was ridiculous. “I see, but…”

“Em?”

“Even if some schools choose graveyards to build their schools on, not all of them will do this. As far as I know, most schools don’t choose such places.” I tried to form my question, “How do you know there is a graveyard beneath my university?”

Wen Jiubo grinned. “Gu Yu, I thought you had keen observation.”

“Uh?” I blinked, not understanding what he meant.

“The first time I walked in the building I noticed that there are no portraits hung in the aisles in your building,” explained Wen Jiubo.

“So?”

“Most schools hang some portraits of great men in the hallways,” Wen Jiubo said. “Some schools have many of them, others have a few. But it’s rare to see a school have none. Visually, an aisle without any paintings decorating its walls is not pretty, right? But on the other hand, it will prevent evil spirits from possessing these portraits to do evil things.”