CH 69

Towards the evening, the sky was overcast, which wasn’t a good omen.

After dealing with his men, Ren Xian returned to the conference room upstairs as promised.

In fact, as a veteran of the severe crime squad, he knew that there was a set of internal procedures for dealing with a mole. Whether it was to kill them or use them as bait, there were different considerations, and it was hard for outsiders to ask.

However, Lin Chen thought that Ren Xian would probably choose to keep everything that happened today in his heart because now he had a hard time trusting anyone else. At least in the case of Fang Zhiming, he had lost the ability to trust.

It was like having to label seeds that were unsuitable for planting and seal them in a corner of the storage room, then wait for the spring breeze to bring suitable soil.

This kind of thing, by and large, wasn’t something that couldn’t be told, but if it had never reached such an appropriate time, it had to be kept secret. Lin Chen knew this feeling all too well.

Just like now, his conversation with Xing Conglian ended naturally after they finished talking about getting a drink.

Xing Conglian, on the other hand, didn’t confirm it and didn’t even respond.

After developing a deeper friendship with Xing Conglian, Lin Chen discovered that this person was extremely cautious, which was inconsistent with his appearance. This caution came down to small details, which showed it was difficult to detect any obvious attitudes or tendencies he had before he really started to deal with things, and it only made it difficult for others to guess what he was really thinking.

The reason for this kind of caution was, of course, a secret.

Lin Chen finished writing the last subject post and handed it over to the other party for review.

After Xing Conglian finished reading it, he was surprised and said, “Consultant Lin, with just these few subject posts, I have the urge to handcuff you.”

His tone and expression were very natural, as if they hadn’t had that private conversation earlier.

Lin Chen almost sighed inaudibly.

Although he said this, Xing Conglian quickly translated the dirty and morbid posts Lin Chen had written and entered them on the laptop. Ren Xian only had to complete the work by copying and pasting them.

Before that, the captain of the criminal division had completed the planning and arrangements for the psychological test for thousands of people, including a series of tasks such as specific classroom arrangements and sequence. He seemed to be naturally good at arranging and organizing, and he was terribly efficient when he got down to business.

So much so that when Fu Hao came after class, he almost had nothing to criticize about such arrangements, and this was someone who specialized in psychometrics and had presided over many large-scale joint tests, so one would expect him to have many words regarding the test plan.

“Computer testing and pen-and-paper testing are conducted at the same time… Although it’s not advisable to control the measurement error, it’s not a big problem if you’re in a hurry. I’ll wait for our computer room to prepare, but why is there a detailed rule here that allows students who take the computer test to gather in the cafeteria first without notifying the test location in advance and then have me lead them to the computer room?”

“Just in case.”

—-

Just in case had almost become Xing Conglian’s new motto recently.

Rather, perhaps it was a catchphrase.

When night fell, it began to rain.

There was no regularity to the spring rain. From time to time, the entire campus was shrouded in thin rain and mist and exuded a quiet light.

But for students in the psychology department, school of medicine, and chemistry department of Yongchuan University, their night was destined to be quite the opposite of quiet.

After all, they were college students who were used to being undisciplined. No one wanted to go to the teaching buildings to answer 500 personality test questions when they should be heading back to their dorms to chase dramas or play games. They all had to fill out the answer carefully as well, which only added to the torment.

The rainy night was cold and humid, and the air was filled with the sizzling sound of electronic equipment.

For the purpose of concealment, Lin Chen could only sit in the surveillance room and observe every move in the 10 classrooms.

Like a picture that had been copied and pasted, the scene in each classroom was almost exactly the same.

At the front and rear of the classroom, there were grad students Fu Hao hired to preside over the test. After explaining and distributing the test papers, they began to play on their cellphones out of boredom.

At this moment, most of the students were bending over and holding pens as they flipped through the test booklets page by page. Some of them were yawning, and others were answering the questions at extraordinary speed. The problem was, from the angles with their heads down and their backs curving, one couldn’t tell who among them was different from the others.

“Hey, your school is really great. Even the classrooms are equipped with cameras.”

The door of the surveillance room was pushed open. Lin Chen turned his head and saw Xing Conglian walking in slowly with two cups of coffee.

“Do you see anything?” Xing Conglian asked.

Lin Chen shook his head. “The angle isn’t good. The cameras are mainly used to monitor the teacher’s class, so they’re all installed on the back wall. Just looking at their movements, it’s difficult to see anything suspicious.”

Lin Chen felt a little depressed looking at the neat backs of the students.

“Also, there are too many students,” Xing Conglian tried to comfort him. His voice was low, as if he were saying something casually.

But when these words reached Lin Chen’s ears, it was as if there had been a thunderclap in the middle of the night. He raised his head slightly and frowned, only to notice that the air around him was becoming irritating.

“What’s wrong?” Xing Conglian asked.

“You just reminded me just now the most dangerous part of the whole incident.”

“What?”

“We can’t see it.” He folded his hands on the table and stared at more than 500 students on the screen and said, “Even if some students can be screened out, there will still be those that we can’t see because they have perfectly transformed into another person.”

It was like using a single fishing net and never catching any fish in the pond. What they were doing now was fishing out species that just matched the size of the fishing net, but the remaining fish would still be swimming freely.

“It’s not easy to find some people, but at least this is a breakthrough,” Xing Conglian said.

“Have you ever thought that even if there’s a breakthrough, it may be difficult for us to touch the essence of the problem? That is, what can cause them to do such a thing?”

“But you said it’s not drugs or hypnosis. How can people lose themselves for no reason? This isn’t some kind of curse, right?”

Hearing this, Lin Chen raised his head and was speechless for a while.

The window of the surveillance room was half open. From there, they could see the vague lights in the teaching building in the distance.

Unconsciously, the sound of rain gradually became dense, and their conversation seemed to be obscured by it.

“What’s wrong now?” Xing Conglian asked.

“You’ve given me a very bad idea. I hope I won’t be caught by your unbelief.”

“Consultant Lin, there’s no need to turn to feudal superstition…” Xing Conglian shuddered and asked in a low voice, “This isn’t really sorcery, right?”

“Does psychological sorcery count?”

Lin Chen had no intention of scaring Xing Conglian, but from the man’s expression, he saw a trace of consternation that quickly blinked away. It was as if something illuminated his entire face, and when Lin Chen noticed it, it was due to a flash of lightning from outside.

“It’s not good to say it now. Let’s wait for the results to come out,” Lin Chen said before the thunder sounded.

“I hope things will be smooth sailing,” Xing Conglian said.

In short, Lin Chen felt that Xing Conglian’s recent rebellious spirit seemed too accurate.

Because after Xing Conglian finished his “praying for success”, the sound of thunder fell from the sky and was so loud that the glass window of the entire building seemed to tremble. He even heard some screams coming from the teaching building in the distance.

Then the sound of rain became violent and fell indiscriminately.

Spring rain and spring thunder were both unreasonable occurrences that came with incomparably powerful vitality. It overwhelmed the sky, and even the air began to stir.

Lin Chen stood up, looked out the window, and after another strike of lightning, the lights suddenly went out.

This was more unreasonable than a spring thunderstorm in a drama. There was no warning, as a large area of the campus in the distance was plunged into darkness. It was as if someone wiped out the chalk on the chalkboard. Including the teaching building where the psychological test was being conducted, dozens of other buildings all had their lights shut off, while other parts of the school were still brightly lit at this moment.

Through the shimmering lights, Lin Chen said to Xing Conglian, “After this matter is over, you really have to go bye-bye.”

As he said this, he took out his phone.

Due to the careful and thoughtful work from Xing Conglian, before organizing the personality test, those grad students, who were responsible for the specific implementation of the test were uniformly dragged into a WeChat group.

[Calm the students and guard the front and back doors.]

[No one is allowed to leave the classroom.]

Lin Chen sent these two lines to the group.

The students, who were still sitting in the dark classroom, were all stunned. There was a second or two of silence before cries sounded.

Then thunder exploded again, causing the timid girls to start screaming. The shrilling sound began to tear through the entire dark building like a torrential rain.

However, not all students were shouting. Most of them fell into silence as they listened to the shouts around them. First they looked left and right, and gradually, under the sharp screams, they started to anxiously whisper to each other.

“I’m so scared.”

“Not those who committed suicide…”

“Is this place haunted? Why did the power suddenly go out?”

The students exchanged their unfounded theories, and in the heavy rain and darkness, these theories existed truthfully, as if they were three-dimensional.

They even felt that the wind that passed through the hall became cooler, as if some sharp fingers had pierced the darkness and were about to strangle them.

It seemed like countless ants were crawling all over them. The students started to protest one after another.

“It’s so scary. Teacher, how can we do this with no power!”

“Can we go?!”

“Teacher, let us go!”

Anxious and irritable voices slowly fermented and rose.

Lin Chen stood in the surveillance room, overlooking the dark night in the distance.

At this moment, Xing Conglian also put down the phone in his hand. “It seems that just those few buildings suddenly lost power. School security is rushing to the power room now. This is quite strange.”

Another thunder smashed through the sky, rumbling in the distance making it hard for Lin Chen to hear what Xing Conglian had just said.