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Chapter 634 This was said by Cao Wushang, the Left Sima of Liu Bang.

Looking at the smiling Li Shu in the photo, Bai Lu felt a chill.

The dim overhead light shone on the photo, making the friendly smile seem somewhat distorted.

Gu Mian pointed to the bottom right corner with one finger: "Look at the shooting date."

Bai Lu followed Gu Mian's finger and looked in that direction.

The filming date was June 1st of this year, a few days before the incident.

She looked at the date in the lower right corner, her face full of doubt: "When Li Shu took this photo, Yuan Haotian's family members were already dead, right?"

"That's right," Gu Mian nodded.

The moment Bai Lu saw that Cao Deren and his sister had the same hair clip, she suspected that the fire at Yuan Haotian's house was related to Li Shu and the other two. However, the hair clip was newly bought and was not the same one that Yuan Haotian's sister had.

Although Li Shu took photos downstairs at Yuan Haotian's house, those photos were taken after the fire.

These coincidences do not prove that the three people involved in the fire are related to the incident.

"What a coincidence?" Bai Lu glanced at Li Shu's smile in the photo again. The smile was a little creepy, and she immediately looked away, not daring to look any longer.

Gu Mian didn't react much: "The Book of Rites tells us that after returning from Weishan, Yuan Haotian has been creating opportunities to run into them, but I don't think that's the case."

The egret looked up at Gu Mian.

"In my opinion, it was Li Shu and the other two who were creating 'coincidences' all along."

"Cao Deren bought the same hair clip as Yuan Haotian's sister, and Li Shu took a picture outside the house where Yuan Haotian's house once burned down. These are all coincidences."
"Perhaps there are more coincidences that we haven't discovered yet. I guess Yuan Haotian also discovered some coincidence when he went to Weishan, which is why he was so frantically following them."

"So many coincidences do seem intentional, but why would Li Shu and the others do this?" Bai Lu pondered. "Are they mentally disturbed? Did they deliberately provoke Yuan Haotian after learning that his entire family had died?"

“You’ve overlooked one thing,” Gu Mian said, looking down at Bai Lu. “The fact that they can create so many coincidences that drive Yuan Haotian crazy means they must know Yuan Haotian very well.”

"You mean..." Bai Lu was stunned, "Li Shu and the other two knew Yuan Haotian a long time ago? Before that friend's gathering? Even before Yuan Haotian's house burned down? Could it be that he was lying to us from the very beginning!"

"That's right, you fell for his rhetoric trap."

Meanwhile, Wang Youcai's group, who had just lost a member, had already run out of the teaching building, and the group was sitting panting in a small pavilion next to the building.

Ye Qiqi's face was a mix of red and white, and even though it was dark, you could still see how bad her complexion was. She was the only one who saw her head being dragged into the desk hole by the ghost.

Wang Youcai sat on a stone bench nearby, head down, without making a sound.

Ye Weiwei's face was also pale. She had just escaped death from the clutches of a ghost and was still very frightened.

"Just now..." Ye Qiqi gasped for breath before turning to look at Ye Weiwei, "It was so dangerous just now. You were talking about something when that ghostly hand suddenly reached out from the hole in the table."

Thinking of this, Ye Qiqi shuddered violently again.

Having witnessed her teammate being dragged into a dark hole in the desk, she now has a phobia of dark holes.

“Roommate,” Ye Weiwei suddenly straightened up and looked at the two people next to her, “the roommate who was mentioned before when the ghost grabbed her head.”

"There are other people in their dorm?" Ye Qiqi was slightly taken aback. "That makes sense. High school dorms are usually eight people a day."

“But they never mentioned that there was another person.” Wang Youcai, standing next to him, frowned.

Ye Weiwei suddenly remembered another notebook she found in Li Yi's desk: "Before the ghost appeared, I found a notebook belonging to a student named 'Liu Baoma' in Li Yi's desk. Could this be the eighth person in their dormitory?"

Liu Baoma? Wang Youcai pondered; it was an unfamiliar name.

"Could it be that she's a loner?" Ye Qiqi pondered. "Sis, do you remember when we were in high school, there was a weirdo in the dorm next door who would shake her clothes until two or three in the morning, keeping all the other girls in her dorm awake. No matter what we said, she wouldn't listen and just did whatever she wanted."

Ye Weiwei nodded: "It's hard not to remember."

Because the person next door has done just too many bizarre things.

Not only would he stand naked in the middle of the dormitory at midnight shaking his clothes, but he would also sometimes move his desk from the classroom back to the dormitory to wash it overnight.

Once, that girl borrowed Ye Weiwei's newly bought shampoo, and when she returned it, there was only a little bit left.

Later, Ye Weiwei had the opportunity to see how she washed her hair—she poured shampoo all over her head, then vigorously rubbed it for half an hour, until there was so much foam that you could hardly see her head.

Because of her neurotic behavior, this girl was not well-liked by her roommates.

She wasn't included when the dorm next door took their group photo.

“It’s also possible that there really are only seven people in their dormitory,” Ye Qiqi pondered. “Why don’t we go to the hospital and ask the surviving students?”

Ye Weiwei looked up at the school shrouded in darkness.

After what just happened, she didn't want to stay here any longer: "I don't know if it's a coincidence, but the ghost appeared when we mentioned the eighth person, as if it didn't want us to investigate further. But if the eighth person really has important clues, we still need to find him."

Wang Youcai nodded in agreement: "There are gatekeepers in the student dormitories, so we can't get in no matter what. Let's go back to the hospital and ask the survivors."

He then stood up and said, "Let's leave here first."

But just as Wang Youcai got up, the three of them suddenly heard a rustling sound coming from the bushes next to them.

who!
Ye Weiwei immediately grabbed Ye Qiqi and ran in the opposite direction.

After running for ten seconds, she realized that Wang Youcai had not caught up.

At this moment, Ye Qiqi, who was being held back by Ye Weiwei, suddenly spoke up: "Sister, it looks like a person."

people?
Ye Weiwei then slowly stopped and looked back.

A man was standing beside the pavilion where they had just rested, looking at them with the eyes of someone who looked at a lunatic. Wang Youcai kept his distance from the man who had suddenly appeared, and Ye Weiwei saw his mouth moving as if he were asking something.

"You are... not teachers, are you?" The students who emerged from the bushes looked at Wang Youcai with strange expressions. "I've never seen you before."

"Are you human?" Wang Youcai looked the boy in the school uniform up and down.

“Nonsense,” the student said with a strange expression, “If I’m not human, what am I? You guys are really weird, asking me if I’m human in this kind of place in the middle of the night.”

Wang Youcai looked at the student-looking man in front of him warily: "You're strange too. You crawled out of the bushes in the middle of the night. It's almost four in the morning. What are you doing here instead of in your dorm?"

"Of course they went to the internet cafe to play games by climbing over the wall," the boy said without hiding anything, realizing that these people were not teachers. "They came back to take a nap when they ran out of money."

"Sleeping in the grass?"

"The dormitory was locked, so I was just trying to make do in this pavilion. I didn't expect to run into you guys. Who are you people? You're not thieves, are you?"

"Of course not," Wang Youcai denied the other party's statement.

Then he paused slightly, his gaze lingering on the boy's chest where a school badge was pinned: "You're in Class 5 of Senior Three?"

The boy yawned lazily: "Yeah, what's wrong?"

They unexpectedly ran into a student from Class 5 of the third year of high school.

That's quite a coincidence.

Wang Youcai wasn't sure if it was a genuine coincidence or a deliberate act by the copywriter, but with the clues right in front of him, how could he possibly give up?

"Do you know that someone in your class died?"

"Of course I know. Three people in the dormitory were stabbed to death, and the rest escaped."

Wang Youcai took a deep breath: "Then do you know who the murderer is?"

Wang Youcai knew, of course, that the murderer was a middle-aged man named Liu Ben who had just gotten divorced; he just wanted to confirm whether the student knew who the murderer was.

"Yeah, I know him, Liu Baoma's dad. What a coincidence. Oh, you guys don't know who Liu Baoma is? He was another guy in their dorm who committed suicide three months ago. I have to say, that dorm is really weird. One person committed suicide, and now three more have been stabbed to death by that person's father..."

Hearing the boy's words, Wang Youcai's back began to tingle.

They've made contact.

Liu Baoma was Liu Ben's son. Liu Baoma committed suicide, and three months later, Liu Ben killed his son's three roommates.

Liu Ben did not kill without a purpose.

But the students in the hospital didn't tell them about this, they didn't tell them that the murderer was the father of their dead roommate.

Ye Weiwei had already returned to the pavilion. She frowned and asked, "Was the person you mentioned who committed suicide close to his other roommates?"

“I don’t know, I don’t share a dorm with them,” the boy thought for a few seconds, “but Liu Baoma was a very good student, he probably just didn’t get along well with the others, but he was always smiling, and even if he was bullied, he wouldn’t necessarily say anything. I heard that after Liu Baoma committed suicide, his mother couldn’t handle the shock and divorced his father not long after…”

Upon hearing this, Ye Weiwei already had some guesses in her mind.

She turned to look at Wang Youcai, only to see him stunned, his expression strange.

"What's wrong?" Ye Weiwei asked.

Wang Youcai then came to his senses: "...It's nothing."

At this moment, Ye Qiqi next to her was staring at a dark green belt. The knee-high green belt was very dense and blocked her view of the investigation.

She keenly heard a faint friction sound coming from behind the green belt, but the sound was too faint and seemed like a hallucination caused by her excessive tension.

The swaying branches occasionally revealed a few gaps, allowing one to glimpse a tiny area behind them. Ye Qiqi stared intently at the gaps between the branches, lest something suddenly appear there.

Seeing that Wang Youcai had come to his senses, Ye Weiwei lowered her voice and said, "I think Liu Ben's murder must be related to his son's death. You know about school bullying, right?"

Wang Youcai paused for a few seconds before nodding: "I know."

"Perhaps Liu Baoma encountered these things. His death may have been closely related to his roommates, which is why Liu Ben went on a killing spree against those people."

"Is this the truth we've been looking for?" Wang Youcai seemed a little tired, and he reached out to lean on the pavilion pillar next to him.

Ye Weiwei said, "This is just my guess. To verify this guess, we will probably need to find more clues, but I think I have guessed it pretty accurately."

"So what's the way out?" Wang Youcai asked, somewhat realizing something. "But Liu Ben was found not guilty? Yet he did kill someone."

"I think it's like this: this instance requires us to make the right choice, to find out the truth and then make a judgment. The truth is that the deceased was not innocent..."

As Ye Weiwei was speaking, she felt her sleeve being tugged.

She turned her head and saw Ye Qiqi next to her nervously tugging at her sleeve.

"Sister, I don't feel comfortable here. Can we leave first?" A few beads of sweat appeared on Ye Qiqi's forehead.

Ye Weiwei looked at Wang Youcai: "Let's go first."

The group then said goodbye to the boy and quickly left.

But before they could go far, they heard footsteps behind them, followed by a familiar voice. It was the same judge surnamed Chu they had met not long ago: "Xu Xingcheng?"

Everyone, go check out the monthly pass event in the comments section! It's been approved!

I won't tell you that Xu Xingcheng appears in chapters 228 and 329! ╭(╯^╰)╮

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(End of this chapter)