Start with a core cabin

Chapter 1401 is just the prologue (Starry Sky finally has a vehicle!)

"But, in the end, the bodies of the two girls were not found?"

After pouring a cup of tea for Duanmu Huai, Sha Jiuye asked with some uneasiness.

"No, their bodies were eaten clean by the monster. Not even a bone was left. After that, I went to the air-raid shelter again, but I didn't find anything. Only the cell phone was preserved, perhaps because of luck. The others were either eaten or destroyed."

Duanmu Huai shook his head. He could see the endings of the two girls on his phone, so he didn't have any thoughts. Frankly speaking, the sports girl was really unlucky. She was simply dragged into the stupid behavior of her friends. But the literary girl was courting her own death. Duanmu Huai didn't feel any sympathy for her.

"How pitiful... If there was a corpse, we could have offered sacrifices."

"If not, then at least the family can still hold on to the idea that the other person is still alive, which is not a bad thing."

Duanmu Huai shrugged his shoulders, picked up the teacup and drank a sip of tea. The body of the monster had completely melted and disappeared, so there was naturally no evidence left. So Duanmu Huai just told the principal that the monster that invaded the campus had been expelled. Of course, the principal was also skeptical. So…

"Is my brother leaving?"

"The principal asked me to substitute teach for at least one semester."

Duanmu Huai sighed silently, but it didn’t matter, since it was the other party who paid the salary anyway.

And Duanmu Huai had no intention of leaving, because strictly speaking, the matter was not over yet.

Or, in Duanmu Huai's view, it has just been begun.

The reason is very simple. After killing the monster, Duanmu Huai did not obtain the essence of the past.

From the previous recollection, Duanmu Huai has determined that the monster is more like being attracted or summoned. If we use the game as an analogy, then it is more like a summoned monster, not a real BOSS. So Duanmu Huai also plans to stay in the school for a while to see how things go. Otherwise, if he says there is no problem and leaves, and something happens in the school right after, wouldn't that be a slap in his face?

Although more things could be traced back through the magic circle on the ceiling, the magic circle was automatically destroyed when Duanmu Huai traced it back. This was very similar to the situation in March City when Duanmu Huai used shadow copies of believers and then caused them to self-destruct. This meant that there must be an Old One who was not much different from the King in Yellow hidden behind the magic circle, so Duanmu Huai could not obtain any information from it.

In other words, there must be something wrong here, but as for what the problem is... Duanmu Huai hasn't figured it out yet.

"Woo...Woo..."

Just then, the cell phone rang. Duanmu Huai picked up the phone and answered it. Then the voice of Shionji Youzi came from the other end.

"found it!"

"What did you find?"

"According to what you said, I checked the historical records of Qianyuan Academy and found that there was indeed a mass disappearance incident 60 years ago!"

"Collective disappearance?"

"That's right. Because it was so long ago, I can only extract information from the Internet and some tabloids. I can't guarantee its credibility. But some newspapers did report the collective disappearance of students from Qianyuan Academy. One of the tabloid magazines even wrote about the supernatural photos!"

"Oh?"

Hearing this, Duanmu Huai took his cell phone... then rushed directly to the second floor and opened the door.

"Show me where it is?"

"Whoa!"

Youzi Ziyuanji, who was sitting on the bed, was also startled by Duanmu Huai who suddenly rushed in. She immediately turned around and glared at him with dissatisfaction.

"Why did you suddenly break into the lady's room?"

"We live under the same roof, yet you still want to use your cell phone to communicate. This is insane!"

Duanmu Huai glared at Shionji Youzi. This girl is a real NEET. She almost never goes out. She sleeps here and eats here. If it weren't for Sakuya's insistence, she wouldn't even bother to take a shower or change clothes. It's as if she wants to live in this room forever. Just now, she insisted on contacting Duanmu Huai through her mobile phone even though she was shouting from the second floor.

If you don’t know, you would think they are thousands of miles apart!

Duanmu Huai would not tolerate this bad habit of this bad girl.

"Come, let me see where you are talking about?"

Duanmu Huai walked straight to Ziyuansi Youzi's bed, and the latter glared at Duanmu Huai hatefully, then turned his head away helplessly.

"Here... the owner of this website is interested in collecting tabloids. Later, because the Internet was well developed, he posted all the content he collected on the Internet. He did gain a certain degree of fame."

This is also normal, just like some people's hobby is to collect cigarette butts. In the past, no one understood it, and they could only collect them in their drawers to comfort themselves. But now is the Internet age, and you can take pictures of them and post them online, and then communicate with like-minded people.

Shionji Yuuko's screen quickly brought up the contents of the magazine. Although the paper was a little yellowed due to its age, the contents were still clear.

Duanmu Huai read it through and immediately understood why Ziyuansi Youzi quickly locked onto this content.

Because the content of this story is almost exactly the same as what I had encountered before.

According to the magazine, the interviewee was a friend of the missing person, who told the reporter that before the students disappeared, they were members of a mysterious club in the school. Their hobbies were supernatural events, and before they disappeared, they had taken some supernatural photos.

What prompted them to take the photos was a supernatural album in a magazine.

Unlike now, although we have entered the scientific age, superstition is still prevalent. For example, Qigong and mediums were also very popular at the time. They were called supernatural sciences. There were even scholars who specialized in studying these (I don’t know if they were liars or fools), who believed that they could explain things like souls or feng shui from a scientific perspective. So at that time, supernatural research was not regarded as some kind of weird hobby in society, and because of its characteristics, it attracted a lot of discussion.

The supernatural research group of Qianyuan Academy was also like this at that time. They believed that the location of Qianyuan Academy might be a place where mysterious forces could easily gather in some kind of feng shui, so it should be possible to take such a photo here. So they used some method and finally took a supernatural photo.

Then, they disappeared. Because Qianyuan Academy was an aristocratic girls' school, the atmosphere at that time was more conservative than it is now, and the students who attended that school were all from the upper class and wealthy families, so the disappearance of these students really caused a heated discussion in the world, and the police also set up a special task force to investigate from all angles, but all ended in failure.

The reason why we know this is that in order to emphasize the specificity of the disappearance, the tabloid specially published the report of the case at that time. It should be to prove to readers that "the police have tried so hard but still found no clues, so this must be some kind of incredible supernatural event."

However, this incident ultimately became an unsolved case because of its lack of results. The media reported it as a "disappearance incident" and it was eventually left unresolved.

  I have to say, the whole story is exactly the same as the previous situation. Is history really a cycle?

After all, if the current situation continues to develop, the police here will also classify it as an unsolved case because there are no clues and the body cannot be found.

"So, the photos that girl saw were actually taken by students of this school sixty years ago, and those students disappeared after taking the photos... Now she also imitated those predecessors to take photos, and then disappeared... No, was she eaten by a monster?"

Seeing this, Sha Jiuye murmured to himself, while Duanmu Huai shrugged his shoulders.

"This is actually quite normal."

After all, in Mary's world, Duanmu Huai encountered a similar thing when facing the cultists. In order to deal with him, the other party summoned creatures from another world, but the latter turned around and ate the summoner after being summoned. If you don't prepare a sacrifice, you will be the one who is unlucky. What's so strange about that?

However, those students were all outsiders and probably had never thought of preparing any sacrifices at all, so it was only natural that they were eaten by the summoned creatures after being summoned.

This also explains why nothing happened in the school after that. After all, the summoned creature ate without receiving any orders, so it patted its butt and turned back to its hometown. So unless someone summoned it next time, it would definitely not appear.

In fact, the same thing happened to that monster. If Duanmu Huai had not found it so quickly in these few days, it might have disappeared on its own in two days.

As for why the monster did not disappear immediately this time, Duanmu Huai probably thought it was because it did not eat enough.

After all, five people were missing before, but only two this time.

Considering the size of the monster, two probably wouldn't be enough.

If Duanmu Huai and Mianmu Satori had been eaten, the monster would have gone home contentedly to sleep. Then rumors would spread in the school that "someone mysteriously disappeared, and the person investigating the incident also mysteriously disappeared", and it would have turned into a horror story.

Well, actually the monster just ate his fill and went home to sleep.

"What about the magazine?"

The source of the two consecutive incidents were supernatural topics published in supernatural magazines, which makes it hard for people not to think too much. Although similar things are actually not uncommon, many TV programs also solicit the audience's supernatural experiences, and then film the more interesting ones into dramas for broadcast on TV.

In fact, Duanmu Huai also suspected that the missing students 60 years ago might have obtained the same magic book, but unfortunately, too much time had passed, and the tracing back to the air-raid shelter itself could not be successful because of the magic circle.

As for the things stored inside - if they were more than sixty years old, they would have been thrown into the trash long ago.

"There's nothing wrong with the magazine itself. It's just an ordinary supernatural magazine."

Shionji Yuko spread her hands helplessly.

"I investigated its distribution, publication, and planning... everything is normal. At least it looks like a simple third-rate supernatural magazine."

"What about Qianyuan Academy itself?"

"It's a prestigious private school. It's been very famous since its founding... Your sister went to school there, so she should know more about it than I do, since I've never been there. Of course, there are occasional suicides or disappearances, but if you look at it from a hundred-year perspective, it's not that uncommon."

Similar things actually happen in every school. After all, students are inherently emotionally unstable, especially during adolescence. It is not impossible for a school to commit suicide or cause trouble for some reason. From this perspective, the incidents that occurred in Qianyuan Academy were relatively rare compared to other schools. After all, it was a school for young ladies with strict discipline.

"So the clue is broken again?"

"That's right for now, and the commission you received wasn't to investigate this, right? Didn't you kill the monster? Isn't that enough?"

This is indeed the case from the perspective of Ziyuan Temple Youzi, and the same is true for Duanmu Huai. If he had not obtained the essence of the past, he would have thought that the matter was over.

"Anyway, I'll stay in school for another semester... Never mind, let's see how things go."

Duanmu Huai is not the kind of investigator who will get to the bottom of things. His attitude is to just stop looking if he can’t find the answer, because the other party will reveal themselves eventually anyway.

Just like the King in Yellow, since there is no way to stop their conspiracy, then just wait until they succeed and then come out and beat them up, like a mantis stalking a cicada while the oriole is behind.

Aren’t many adventure and mystery movies like this? The protagonist goes through untold hardships, passes through traps, avoids monsters, solves puzzles, and finally obtains the treasure hidden in the tomb. Then when he climbs out of the tomb with the treasure, the villain’s men point guns at him, and then the other party easily takes the treasure away.

No need to decrypt, no need to take risks, simple, rough, direct and easy.

Duanmu Huai also likes this method.

Of course, what Duanmu Huai didn't like was that the villain in the movie got the thing but didn't kill the protagonist. If it were Duanmu Huai, he would just smash the opponent's head and throw the body into the ravine.

Well, it seems that I am not the protagonist now?

"So do we still need to continue investigating? I did as you said and investigated everything thoroughly, but I didn't find any clues related to the Cosmic Light Foundation."

“………………No need, let’s talk about it next time we have a chance.”

Duanmu Huai thought about it and made a decisive decision, and Ziyuanji Youzi also breathed a sigh of relief.

"Okay, let's do it then...By the way, it seems like someone is looking for you."

As she spoke, Shionji Yuko pointed at the screen.

Duanmu Huai turned his head and saw the figure of Yotsuya Miko appearing on the screen.

(End of this chapter)