Can't you just leave me alone?

"At this time, the most troublesome thing is the student union." Shinomiya Kaguya calmly analyzed, "Such rumors are rampant, which will definitely affect the preparations for the cultural festival. The student council president will definitely take action, probably soon Is there a result?"

"How fast is it?" Fujiwara Chika shook her head, "Wait for two or three days, even if the rumors can be quelled in the end, the enthusiasm of the students will not come back."

"If you want to minimize the impact, it is best to find out the truth of the so-called 'seven mysteries' today."

At this time, she noticed that Yuan Jing did not open the lunch box she carried as usual, but spread out a beautifully crafted newspaper, and seemed to be browsing the news on it.

At the very beginning of the paper, the "St. Eden Morning Post" stood out in bold letters.

"A major mistake in the student union's decision-making!Are there ghosts hidden in the campus at night? "

What Yuanjing read was the headlines on the front page of this newspaper, that is, the reports about the 'Seven Unbelievable'.

"Minata, did you find anything?" Chika Fujiwara asked hopefully.

Putting down the newspaper in his hand, Yuan Jing nodded.

But he didn't say what he found, but turned his head and looked at Yukinoshita Yukino——

"This afternoon, I'm going to stay in the evening for a while, so you and Touma-san should go first."

Chapter 37 Extra stairs

After school on Saturday, at around 4 o'clock, Yuan Jing came to the fourth floor of the club building and began to walk towards the east stairs.

He didn't come alone, Fujiwara Chika was following behind him.

The reason why Chika Fujiwara was needed to accompany him was not because Yuanjing needed someone to 'bolster his courage', but because he needed someone to tell the truth to the students in Class A of Senior One, so as to calm their fears.

And if you want to talk about the person who speaks the most weighty and most convincing students in Class A of Senior One, it is naturally Chika Fujiwara.

"Actually, as long as you think about it calmly, you will find that there are many doubts about this matter." Stepping lightly on the floor of the club building, Yuanjing said to Chika Fujiwara next to him, "The most prominent point is the news department. response."

"You mean, are they reacting too quickly?" Fujiwara Chika immediately understood Yuanjing's meaning.

"That's right, it happened last night, but it was already reported when I went to school this morning." The girl recalled the scene this morning.

"Not only that, the eyewitness testimony is also quite detailed, and the relevant locations are also remembered very carefully. It's like, like..."

"It seems that the news department has been planning this for a long time, right?" Yuan Jing said.

"Hmm." The girl nodded.

"But the question is, why did the news department do this?" This is what puzzled her the most. "Such behavior will undoubtedly offend the student union. It does not hesitate to offend the student union, but also to spread such rumors. ...What kind of consideration does the news department have?"

"I don't know too well." Yuan Jing shook his head, "That's why I came to this so-called 'Seven Unbelievable' site to take a look."

The two stopped before a staircase.

This is one of the seven wonders reported by the Department of Information, and its name is the extra staircase.

It's a pretty old ghost story.To put it simply, there are only 4 steps to go down the 12th floor from the corner platform of the stairs, but there are 4 steps to go up the corner platform from the 13th floor.

And the extra level 1 is the entrance to the underworld.

The two looked at the staircase, but the staircase that was said to hide the entrance to the nether world looked ordinary and had nothing special about it.If there is anything special about it——

"What's that?" Yuan Jing pointed to a rather large sculpture on the corner platform, with a strange look on his face.

It was a rather 'chic' stone sculpture - with a single piece of marble as the base material, with various human faces carved on it.

These faces have different expressions, including happiness, anger, sadness, joy, surprise, fear and so on.

To be honest, the stone sculptures that integrated these human faces looked a bit like offering sacrifices to evil gods, which made people feel a little creepy.

"This is the work of the Avant-Garde Art Club." Chika Fujiwara was not a transfer student like Yuan Jing, and although she couldn't recognize all the clubs in St. Eden Academy, she was still very impressed with a few special clubs among them.

The Avant-Garde Art Club is a club created by those guys in the Sculpture Club who are too avant-garde to satisfy the existing activities.It is characterized by all kinds of weird statues.

"Next to this staircase is the branch room of the Avant-Garde Art Club. They should use this sculpture as a signboard to attract customers, right?" Fujiwara Chika guessed.

"However, this sculpture should have nothing to do with the haunted steps. If you regard the eerie sculpture as a ghost, it should evolve into other types of ghost stories."

Yuan Jing nodded noncommittally, turned his gaze away from the weird sculpture, and then looked at Chika Fujiwara——

"You or I?"

"Let me do it." Fujiwara Chika took a deep breath, looking a little nervous.Although she doesn't really believe in the theory of ghosts and gods, but the news agency's report is written with conviction, and in front of 'him'...

Fujiwara Chika stepped up the stairs and made a rather cold voice.It is even hard to imagine that this is the sound made by indoor shoes with rubber soles.

one two three four......

Fujiwara Chika counted in a low voice.

And when she counted to thirteen, she stepped onto the corner landing of the stairs, and the eerie statue was close at hand.

After taking a closer look, the statue looked more and more weird and terrifying. Chika Fujiwara suddenly understood why the statue club expelled this group of people from the club.

There are quite a lot of weirdos in St. Eden Academy.

Shaking her head slightly, Chika Fujiwara drove these thoughts out of her mind, turned around, and faced the stairs again.

It's time to go down now.

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten......

eleven.

twelve.

Ok?

Standing on the last step, Fujiwara Chika suddenly felt a burst of cold air rushing to her heart.

Why is it twelve?

Could it be that......

"You counted wrong." Looking at Chika Fujiwara who was a little confused, Yuan Jing said very calmly.

"Fujiwara-san, when you went downstairs, you didn't count the step to the fourth floor, did you? But when you went upstairs, you also counted the step to the corner platform. No wonder there was an extra step."

"Huh?" Chika Fujiwara's eyes widened when she heard the words, she recalled her previous actions, and she suddenly realized-"So that's it, that is to say, the reason why there is an extra staircase is simply because of a simple counting error. Yet?"

"It's not just a simple counting error." Yuan Jing denied Fujiwara Chika's idea.

He stretched out his hand and made a substitution.

"Fujiwara-san, I will deliberately step hard to make a sound, so please close your eyes and count the number of steps according to the sound you hear."

Yuanjing made a rather strange request.

Although Fujiwara Chika was somewhat puzzled, she still closed her eyes out of trust in Yuan Jing.

Step, step, step... The cold voice sounded again, and Chika Fujiwara closed her eyes and counted silently.

There are 13 stomps in total.

After a pause, the similar voice sounded again.

However, the sound only rang 12 times.No, it should be 13, but—

The 13th stepping sound is very different from the previous 25 sounds.

Fujiwara Chika opened her eyes, she seemed to understand something.

She first stomped hard on the floor under her feet, and then on the stairs.

"The voice is different," she murmured.

"That's right, the stairs and the corner platforms should be specially waxed, so the sound of stepping on them is so strange. However, the ground on the fourth floor has not been treated like this."

Like Chika Fujiwara, Yuan Jing also stepped hard on the stairs and the ground on the fourth floor, "The footsteps of step No. 13 when going downstairs are different from before, and the sound of step No. 13 when going upstairs is the same as before , so it is easy to count wrong.”

The truth is so simple.

"But, just like this, will everyone get it wrong?" Fujiwara Chika was still a little hard to understand.

"It's not necessary for everyone to get it wrong," Yuan Jing shook his head, "This is a ghost story, if one or two out of ten people are wrong, this will have the best effect."

If there is a trap that allows ten out of ten people to discover No. 13th order, then it is not a 'haunted', but a phenomenon.

Occasionally there are a few careless victims to spread around, so it is a 'ghost story'.

"However, this shows a problem." Yuan Jing looked at the stairs, thoughtful, "That is someone deliberately set a trap to create a 'haunted' illusion."

"As for whether this is an isolated phenomenon, or just like this..." Yuan Jing shook his head, but did not continue.

He turned around, left the 'haunted' staircase, and proceeded to the next location.

Naturally, Chika Fujiwara followed immediately.

Behind the two, the faces on the weird statue seemed to come alive under the sunlight cast from the window.

They seemed to be 'looking' at the figures of the two men.

Chapter 38 Lilicia Todo, Director of the Information Department (3000 words)

A student who was good at painting died of illness before he finished a painting, and the student's unfinished paintings remained in the school.Inspired by the other party's devotion to painting, his club used it as an exhibit and hung it on the corridor outside the department house.

But I don't know why, even though the author is dead, the painting is being completed by itself.

The location is in the corridor on the west side of the 3rd floor of the club building, and the painting that is said to be completed by itself is hanging in the corridor here.

"Abstract painting?"

Seeing the various colors on the wall intricately intertwined into a whirlpool, Chika Fujiwara was a little surprised.

"Because that legendary 'student' is a member of the Abstract Painting Club." Yuan Jing stared at the somewhat confusing painting, and gently rubbed his chin with his fingers.

This is the message specifically mentioned in the St. Eden Morning Post.

"Student Fujiwara, is there really such a student who died of a disease?" After looking at the work carefully up and down, Yuanjing suddenly asked Chika Fujiwara.

"No." After thinking about it for a moment, Chika Fujiwara shook her head, "At least, since I went to St. Eden Academy, that is, when I first went to the country 4 years ago, I have never heard of a student suffering from illness. Rumors of death."

The death of a student is definitely a major event. If such a thing really happened, Chika Fujiwara, who had many friends and well-informed information, could not have heard the news.

That is, is the story made up?

Yuan Jing stepped forward, but he didn't look at the content of the painting, but focused on the frame of the square painting, to be precise, the gap between the frame and the wall.

The painting is hung by using the rope from the frame to the nails on the wall.Because the rope is quite short, if you don't look closely, you will definitely think that the painting is nailed to the wall.

Yuan Jing inserted his hand into the gap between the painting and the wall, as if he was groping for something with his fingers.Afterwards, he showed such an expression as expected.

The border with the rope is not just the top horizontal one.

Yuanjing is inside the other three borders of the square frame, and you can also feel the touch of the thin rope.

That is to say-

There is not only one way to hang this painting.

Gently removed the painting from the wall, and after turning it clockwise ninety degrees, Yuan Jing hung the painting on the wall again.

Fujiwara Chika, who watched Yuanjing's actions, was a little confused at first, and then her almond eyes widened.

"The vortex has increased? No," she immediately discovered the mystery. "This is a visual trap."

Everyone should have seen similar patterns. For example, it is clearly a still image, but if you stare carefully, you feel that the portrait on it is moving.

Or there are two identical graphics of the same size, but due to the interference of some other images, it seems that there is a very obvious difference in size.

This is the so-called visual trap.

Seeing is not necessarily believing.

The human eye can actually be easily deceived by colors and graphics, thus sending incorrect information to the brain.This is something that modern science has proven.

In abstract painting, this technique is also given an exclusive title, that is, trompe l'oeil [trompe l'oeil].

"Someone should come over regularly to adjust the hanging direction of this painting." Yuan Jing said, "In this way, people who don't know will mistakenly think that this painting has been changed, this is the 'auto-completed portrait' 'The origin of this strange talk."

While saying this, Yuan Jing shook his head——

"It's obviously a weird talk, but in the end all of them can be explained by science. This is really a bit ironic."

After sighing, Yuan Jing suddenly asked Chika Fujiwara, "Where are we going next?"

"???" After hearing this sentence, Chika Fujiwara glanced at Yuanjing in surprise.

Didn't the two of them already plan the entire route in the class?Why are you asking yourself this question here?