Chapter 335
I ran back to the auditorium with only two minutes left on the countdown. Dali brought back the word ‘well.’ There were four blanks in the projection on the curtain. I borrowed a knife to cut out the word "Down" and pasted the three words with glue.
We were still waiting for the last word with half a minute left when the boy ran back out of breath and gasped, "Song Yang, I’m sorry, I don’t know who hid the word ‘stone’ on the Stone Pot Bibimbap sign. I searched the whole cafeteria but I couldn’t find it..."
"Bastard! He deliberately set a trap!" I cursed.
Upon further reflection, I suddenly thought of something. "What about the place we grab our cutlery?"
But it was too late. The last ten seconds flickered on the countdown and the projection disappeared. Deng Chao spoke through the speakers, "I’m sorry, you failed! Go to the place where you stumbled and look for the second test!"
The boys looked at each other. "To the cafeteria!" I shouted.
When we arrived at the cafeteria, we were greeted by two dead students on the ground who had fallen from a height. The crowd was thrown into yet another panic. "I failed the first test so Deng Chao killed two students,” I said, speaking into my headphones.
"I heard all about it. The bastard cheated!" Xiaotao exclaimed.
Many of them blamed me for the deaths of these two students but I entered the cafeteria without saying a word and headed upstairs.
The top floor of the cafeteria was contracted to a food stall. On the signboard of the Korean stall, “stone” was the only one missing from the words “Stone Pot Bibimbap.” I gritted my teeth, holding back the rage in stony silence.
Deng Chao had obviously expected me to think of the cafeteria and designed it so I would fail, even preparing the victims in advance.
I noticed something behind the signboard and used one of the chair legs to push it out from the gap. It was a piece of cardboard written with a marker. "Here’s your second test. I know you’re very good at solving crimes. This is a real case I heard about in prison. I don’t think it should pose a challenge for our Great Detective Song, right? On a hot summer’s day, two girls were sitting in the store having a drink. But unbeknownst to them, the drinks had been poisoned. One girl finished her drink quickly while the other took her sweet time. In the end, the second girl was poisoned but the first girl survived. What’s the reason for this? Please write down the answer in five minutes and hold up the cardboard to the south window!"
Upon reading it, Dali said, "The first girl must have taken the antidote beforehand."
The others began to chatter noisily, making it impossible for me to think. I left on my own and found some place quiet without anyone around. Suddenly, there was a commotion behind me. Dali darted towards me in a panic, "T-they’ve been poisoned!"
Three boys had fallen to the ground with open beverage bottles in their hands. No one was in the stalls so the boys randomly grabbed a bottle each, never expecting their drinks to be laced with poison.
The three boys were foaming at the mouth, their limbs convulsing as they clawed their throats. “They’re my students!” shouted one of the professors. "Do something about it! Can you ask Deng Chao if he’ll allow a doctor in?"
"There’s no way that’s going to happen because these poison victims are his second batch of hostages."
“That’s just your opinion!” the professor pointed angrily at me. “There are lives at stake here. Get the police to do something. You can’t just let them die!"
The others echoed in succession, their dissatisfaction with me erupting once more. I gritted my teeth, grabbed a pen from the store and quickly wrote the answer on the cardboard: The poison was in the ice.
Deng Chao had deliberately mentioned it was a hot summer’s day, so the two girls must have ordered iced drinks. The girl who slowly sipped her drink only died because the ice melted and the poison was mixed into her drink.
This was the only reasonable answer I could think of!
I found the south windows and held up the cardboard. There was a bright glint in the building directly opposite of the cafeteria, as if someone was looking through a telescope.
Half a minute later, there came a buzzing sound in the air–a toy remote control plane flying with several tiny green vials hanging from it. It was the antidote!
I watched anxiously as the remote control plane slowly approached but before I could breathe a sigh of relief, it shot up into the sky. "Go to the roof!" I shouted.
We ran all the way to the top of the building, only to find the plane hovering at the edge. I instructed Dali to grab ahold of my body while I tried to reach for it. "It’s too dangerous," discouraged Dali.
"There’s no time left," I urged. "The five-minute limit given by Deng Chao is how much time the hostages have before being poisoned to death!"
Dali and several muscular boys held me from behind as my body suspended in mid-air. In truth, I was a little afraid of heights so looking down made me dizzy with fear and I was drenched in cold sweat.
Just as my fingers were about to touch the plane, it suddenly lost power and plunged straight down to the ground, the vials breaking into a thousand fragments. My heart sank violently like a plummet of lead.
"What a pity! Although you passed the test, you didn’t manage to get the reward!” Deng Chao’s voice boomed from the speakers. “The next location is of great significance to you and me. It’s where we first met!"
I slammed my fist into the concrete floor, teeth gritted so hard I thought I might break my molars. "That fucking bastard!!"
My knuckles were bleeding profusely. Frightened by my appearance, Dali comforted, "Dude, don’t blame yourself! You mustn’t give up!"
When we went back downstairs, the three boys had breathed their last. "You killed them! It’s all your fault they died!” accused their professor. “You killed them, three people, three families! How will you answer for this? Are human lives a joke in your eyes?!"
I ignored him and walked away, resisting the impulse to lash at him. The professor caught up with me from behind, pulling me by my shirt. "Say something! Didn’t you promise to protect us? But look at what happened! The only one you protected is yourself!"
"Professor, please calm down!" persuaded Dali and the others.
By this point, fury was smoldering in my chest and my gloomy eyes were staring hard. The professor was startled by my expression.
Deng Chao’s plan was very meticulous, having pre-calculated every single one of our actions. If I continued to do as he asked, I would only walk right into his trap. If I wanted to turn things around, I had to preempt his actions.
"Is the lecture room where your first confrontation took place?" asked Dali.
"He should be referring to the lake!"
Earlier when I grabbed the sign, I noticed something in the grass by the lake, though I was too preoccupied to examine further. This time round, I walked over to pull something out from the grass. "Ahhh, a dead body!" shouted the girls.
It was actually a life-sized mannequin with a hollowed torso and a letter within.
I opened the letter which read, "This is your third test. Haven’t you always boasted of your proficiency in the human body structure? What you see before you is an empty torso. You need to find suitable organs from the surrounding area to fill up the torso and place it under the nearby camera within five minutes."
“Dali, turn on your cell phone and keep talking. Look around with the others. I need to handle something!"
"Where are you going?" asked Dali.
"Stop talking, just hurry!"
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