This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-20

Chapter 20

Ididn’t expect it, I really didn’t expect it.

Jiang Luo had already given up his suspicions about Bai Yefeng because of the information, but he was surprised to find out that he had coincidentally stripped him of his vest.

This discovery made Jiang Luo’s mood change rapidly for the better.

He hid his laughter and wiped the paper dust from his fingers. Just as he had finished wiping his hands, Xu Yan came back from outside.

Xu Yan had gone off somewhere, and there were some mud spots on his shoes, so Jiang Luo glanced back at him and Xu Yan glared back warily.

Jiang Luo smiled, “Back? It’s going to rain outside if we’re any later.”

As the saying goes, you can’t beat a smiling man with a hand, and Jiang Luo smiled so beautifully and his words were so self-effacing that he easily diffused the slightly hostile atmosphere between the two. Xu Yan was so embarrassed to stare at him that he gave a stiff “hmmm”.

Jiang Luo picked up a thermos and poured two glasses of water, saying naturally, “Sit down, why are you standing?”

Xu Yan hesitates for a moment, walks over to the table and sits down.

Jiang Luo also sat down and looked at him with a smile on his face. His black hair is covered with a grey towel, his face is fair, his eyebrows are long and brilliantly coloured, his eyes are as transparent as if they had been dabbed with ink, his lips are as bright as the colour of pale pinks, and at first glance he looks like an ethnic beauty with a turban and red lips.

“Classmate, how long have you and Mr. White known each other?”

Xu Yan subconsciously said, “Six years.”

“Oh,” Jiang Luo realized, and asked curiously, “was Bai such a warm and friendly person before?”

Xu Yan heard him compliment Bai Yefeng and his hostility towards him dissipated a little, “Bai has always been so nice.”

He thought about it before hesitantly realizing that the former Bai Yefeng didn’t ring a bell in his mind, “The former …… Bai used to be more low-key.”

Jiang Luo : “I heard that he started to work his way up five years ago, when he was only in his first year of high school, so it’s really not too late for people with talent to start working hard in their first year of high school.”

“Yeah,” Xu Yan couldn’t help but say more, “We didn’t even see that Bai had such talent until he was in high school.”

Jiang Luo smiled, “Genius.”

Five years ago.

Chi You wasn’t dead yet.

Jiang Luo was so excited about this secret that he wanted to take advantage of Chi You right away. But he quickly dismissed the idea that he had to make the best of such a big secret.

Jiang Luo casually chatted with Xu Yan about something else, bringing these two questions to a close, and when Bai Yefeng and Zhuo Zhongqiu returned from the bathroom, they were seen chatting in what could be described as a cordial atmosphere between them.

Bai Yefeng smiled and came forward, “What are you talking about?”

“Talking about the legend of Shanhai University,” Jiang Luo said, “your school is quite interesting.”

He doesn’t look the least bit different, and his attitude towards Bai Yefeng is a little more aloof than Xu Yan’s, which is only normal, as Jiang Luo has only just been punked once by Bai Yefeng in a cynical way.

Bai Yefeng didn’t doubt it and smiled, ” Jiang Luo, you are welcome to come and play at our school. If you can, it would be a good idea to transfer to our school.”

Zhuo Zhongqiu let out a “tsk”, “How about blatant poaching?”

There was a sudden boom of thunder and a flash of lightning outside the window and the group looked up as the rain fell hard.

The rain just fell with such ferocity that it pierced the long sky and fell to the ground, slapping the glass windows with a loud clap.

Bai Yefeng looked at the storm for a long time and said, “Rest.”

The signal at the old campus was not good and the school had not reinforced the signal to prevent the preparation candidates from playing with their mobile phones. They can’t access the internet on their mobile phones, at most they can make a phone call and send a text message.

The hours of inactivity are particularly drowsy, and Jiang Luo slowly falls asleep to the sound of the rain.

Until the night grows late.

In the middle of the night, Jiang Luo was suddenly awakened by the ringing of his mobile phone.

He sleepily picked up his mobile phone and the caller was a stranger.

The dormitory was quiet, breathing was shallow, no one spoke, everything was surrounded by silence.

Jiang Luo pressed the button and said, with his eyes closed, “Hello?”

“……”

Jiang Luo : “Who are you?”

“…… zilla …… zilla ……”

The noise of the airwaves broke off and a female voice rang out over the cracked jam, “I …… zilla, I’m …… I’m here …… ”

Jiang Luo snapped out of his sleep and sat up. A cold breeze ran through the window and he gripped his phone and looked around.

“Zillah ……”

The stiff female voice continued, “I’m with you …… back to back.”

The phone cut off violently.

Jiang Luo’s forehead jumps twice and the cold wind gives him goose bumps. He sat up and leaned against the white wall, turning on his phone to check his caller ID, but the strange number he had just seen had disappeared.

Jiang Luo was convinced that he had encountered a paranormal event, as he had repeatedly checked his communication records several times but could not find any record of the call he had just made.

Me and you, back to back?

He turned around and slowly looked behind him, behind him, there was nothing but a wall. Jiang Luo was about to withdraw his gaze when he settled abruptly on the wall.

Could there be something inside the wall?

Could it be the girl who went missing in 2012?

A chill ran down Jiang Luo’s back as he sat up and looked away from the white wall, turning on the light of his mobile phone and taking a closer look at the wall.

The interior of the dormitory was no more shabby than the outside, and there were no wall gaps in the walls. Jiang Luo knocked gently on the wall and the sound that came back was dull and did not seem unusual.

He thought for a moment and picked up the phone and looked round to the other walls. The other three were lying unmoving in their beds, and the phone had just rung so loudly that it hadn’t woken them up.

Jiang Luo looked down at the time, it was only two o’clock in the morning.

“What are you doing.”

A voice suddenly sounded behind them.

Jiang Luo’s scalp instantly exploded and he rolled back and took out the amulet from under his pillow and held it between his fingers in front of his body, only to see Bai Yefeng’s face in the ghastly white light of the phone.

Bai Yefeng was not wearing his glasses, and his face, softened by silver-rimmed glasses during the day, looked chilly and deceptive in the dull light of the moment. But he soon smiled, “Why aren’t you in bed at midnight?”

Jiang Luo put away the talisman, “I suddenly want to go to the toilet.”

“Come along,” Bai Yefeng said, “I happen to want to go to the toilet too.”

There is only a shower room in the dormitory, not a toilet. But going to the toilet with an evil spirit in human skin, especially when this evil spirit also has ill intentions towards Jiang Luo, who is not stupid, they can still go and compete to see who can pee further?

Jiang Luo touched his phone with his head down, “I’ll play with my phone for a while before I go, you go first.”

Bai Yefeng smiled, “Good.”

The footsteps fade away and Bai Yefeng returns a few minutes later.

Before going to bed, the champion reserve also said gently to Jiang Luo, “Jiang, holding your urine is not good for your health.”

Jiang Luo : “……” lol.

Jiang Luo did not fall asleep again for the rest of the night. He waited until it was light and the rain had stopped.

When Zhuo Zhongqiu got up, he saw him sitting on the bed with green and black eyes and said in surprise, “Why are you up so early?”

Jiang Luo said, “I just didn’t sleep.”

He rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom, washed his face and said to Zhuo Zhongqiu, “Let’s go and find a hammer and shovel.”

The two of them went to the caretaker’s office on the ground floor, borrowed their tools and returned to the sixth floor. Bai Yefeng and Xu Yan were sitting at the table talking and were surprised to see them coming over with their tools, “What are you doing?”

Jiang Luo put it succinctly, “Smash the wall.”

Zhuo Zhongqiu then realised what kind of work she had to do and asked, “Jiang Luo, do you really want to break down the wall?”

Jiang Luo nods his head.

Zhuo Zhongqiu moved his wrist and said neatly, “Then smash it.”

Bai Yefeng advised, “The students will come back after we leave, what will happen to them if you break down the wall?”

As expected of a kind and considerate white lotus, Jiang Luo smiled perfectly as he looked over at Bai Yefeng , “We’ll patch up the wall before they come back.”

Bai Yefeng sighed and made a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

Jiang Luo and Zhuo Zhongqiu pulled the dormitory bed away and started smashing it against the white wall. The quality of the dormitory walls was not much better and a small gaping hole was soon made.

The hole ended up being the size of a rubbish bin, but to Jiang Luo’s surprise, there were no bodies inside the wall as he expected, only a few crawling termites.

He pondered between his brows, had the female ghost tricked him, or had he misunderstood her?

“I’ll go back to back with you.”

Wouldn’t the normal meaning of the word be that it should be inside the wall?

Bai Yefeng, who was sitting on the side drinking water, asked leisurely, “Did you find anything?”

His posture was idle, as if he had known there was nothing inside the wall. Jiang Luo’s eyes flashed and he remembered the mud on Xu Yan’s feet yesterday.

When it hadn’t rained, most of the ground was dry and Xu Yan wouldn’t leave Bai Yefeng’s side unless Bai Yefeng told him to, so Xu Yan had listened to Bai Yefeng and gone to a place with wet soil?

“No,” Jiang Luo sighed regretfully and asked rhetorically, “What did you find out, Mr. White?”

Bai Yefeng laughed, “Jiang Luo, you think too highly of me. I haven’t left the dormitory so far, what can I find?”

Jiang Luo said, “I don’t see you in a big hurry.”

“Ah,” Bai Yefeng’s eyes traced over the ends of Jiang Luo’s dark hair and moved back to the reddened ends of Jiang Luo’s eyes from a night’s sleep, his tongue twitching as he chuckled softly, “There’s no use rushing.”

Jiang Luo Yu Guang glanced over at him, and Zhuo Zhongqiu left the dormitory, putting the borrowed tools back where they belonged, and went out to find his companions.

Zhuo Zhongqiu asked him on the road, “Why did you suddenly think of smashing the wall?”

Jiang Luo told her about the call she had received last night. Zhuo Zhongqiu listened to it and, instead of first pondering the contents of the call, first exclaimed about Jiang Luo’s physique, “You’re really unlucky.”

Jiang Luo felt he had to explain himself, “I wasn’t always this unlucky.”

At least until he met Chi You, Jiang Luo was …… still unlucky.

He changed the subject, “They seem to have arrived.”

The group remained where they met yesterday and Jiang Luo told them what he had found, “I’m going to the archives to check the 2012 student’s dossier, who wants to join me?”

Zhuo Zhongqiu and Ye Xun stood behind Jiang Luo, Lu Youyi and Sai Liaoer also raised their hands, but Jiang Luo didn’t want to take the fools, “Come on, Zhuo Sister Ye Xun , the three of us together.”

Wen Renlian rested his chin in thought, “Then Kuang Zheng and I will go and look for a place with a muddy field.” He curled his lips in a wry smile, “Since Bai Yefeng gave us the information, we’d be doing him a disservice if we didn’t accept the gift.”

Jiang Luo nodded with relief and agreed: “I think so too.”

Lu Youyi asked, “What about us.”

The three remaining men looked at Jiang Luo with bewilderment.

Jiang Luo smiled and said, “You guys are going to help me with something very important …… by adding the contact details of each of the participants.”

“The more the merrier.” Jiang Luo winked at them.

Divided into three groups, Jiang Luo was the first to find the school’s archives. When they arrived, there were already a lot of people in the archives, all sitting on the floor with stacks of files, sweating and looking at them.

They walked to the cabinet where the 2012 files were kept and most of the information on it had already been taken.

As people who knew about the match in advance, Jiang Luo and his team were a little better than these people, although they didn’t know the real name of the girl who went missing that year, they did know which class the girl was in.

Senior Class (4).

They found the senior 3(4)-like clerical papers and looked up the information contained therein page by page.

The girl had not yet graduated when she disappeared, and her academic record should have been blank at the moment she disappeared. Such information was easy to find, and they quickly found their counterparts, but the corresponding girls turned out to be two in number.

Ye Xun whispered, “After the first girl disappeared that year, several more girls went missing in quick succession.”

The two eligible girls are Wang Xinhui and Fu Yuaner.

There are photographs of them on the scroll, and they look no more than eighteen years old as flowers, smiling shyly at the camera.

Jiang Luo took note of their appearance and continued to compare the information in the two volumes.

With two girls, one missing first and one missing later, one must be left blank for a longer period of time than the other in this message.

Jiang Luo soon established that Fu Yuaner was the first girl to go missing that year.

He picked up his mobile phone and took a picture of Fu Yuaner’s message.

In the photograph, Fu Yuaner looks gentle and introverted, with a slightly freckled face, the face of everyone’s first adolescent love.