Doomsday Jigsaw Puzzle

Chapter 179: Chapter 179: The Cat and the Girl

"Mom and Dad."

The first page contained only these four words. Even with perfect reading comprehension, Bai Wu could make nothing of just these four words.

As he turned to the second page, the monsters that had formed from the black substance outside the window had already bared their fangs and unsheathed their claws.

But they didn’t come in, and it seemed as if Bai Wu knew they wouldn’t.

Page two.

"He Shuhong, teacher, died in a car accident, died approaching me."

There was no further description, so concise that not a single word was wasted, reminiscent of small sticky notes, with each page’s content very brief.

What caught Bai Wu’s attention was that this was different from when he saw the words "Mom and Dad."

He had no reaction to the words "Mom and Dad"; his mind was simply a blank. But when he saw He Shuhong’s name, it was as if he had opened a file that Hong Yin had prepared for him.

Memories flooded him in a flash.

He saw a woman in her thirties, the kind of strict female teacher remembered by many, not particularly beautiful, with crow’s feet, wearing prints from the eighties or nineties, thick lenses in her glasses, forever holding books and a ruler in her hand.

Her past with the Cursed Woman took on distinct images.

Nobody knew why, but the fully enclosed Baichuan Middle School suddenly had a cursed campus legend. The girl who could bring bad luck had already caused a major sensation earlier on.

No one understood why the school would bring such a creature into its premises.

Even though the Western District where she resided was far from the school, it still caused a lot of unease among students and parents.

Many students left the school, but those who withdrew soon started experiencing accidents. Disappearances, deaths, all manner of bizarre incidents followed those who fled the school.

All public opinion seemed to point to the Cursed Woman. Clearly, she stayed in the old building on the western side of the school, but people still blamed her for the accidents.

Gradually, people dared not leave the school.

It seemed that those who remained at the school encountered no issues, but those who left the school were bound to face misfortune. The police were all over the world dealing with Evil Fallen, searching for missing people, and capturing the Masked Strange Person.

They simply had no time to look into more cases.

The reputation of the Cursed Woman grew worse and worse; no teacher was willing to educate her, not even online.

That was until He Shuhong, the teacher mentioned in the sticky note, appeared and finally someone was willing to impart knowledge to the Cursed Woman.

He Shuhong was a firm atheist. She believed that the children who met with accidents upon leaving the school did so for other reasons, and it shouldn’t be blamed on the girl confined to the old building.

This was a teacher with integrity, who, when everyone else wouldn’t even dare to talk to the Cursed Woman through a network connection, chose to teach the Cursed Woman various academic subjects.

The two became acquainted, and He Shuhong felt that the Cursed Woman was actually very kind at heart. She, a girl who was not good at speaking and somewhat dull in conversation, truly desired to interact with others.

During the Cursed Woman’s difficult campus life, He Shuhong took on the roles of teacher, friend, and mother.

Bai Wu could sense from these memories that, for a time, the Cursed Woman really did come to regard He Shuhong as her own mother.

But in the end, He Shuhong died.

The memory did not show He Shuhong’s corpse; the Cursed Woman could not leave the low building to mourn. She only heard rumors that He Shuhong was said to have died in a car accident.

Once again, all the gossip pointed towards the Cursed Woman.

Few understood or supported what He Shuhong did while alive, but her death provided them with a perfect opportunity to vent.

"Ingrate," "Patricide," "White-eyed wolf," "Biting the hand that feeds," "Ultimate betrayal"... Such accusations came hard and fast, as if the Cursed Woman had personally killed He Shuhong, as if she were a witch waiting on the gallows for her sentence to be read.

That’s where the memory of He Shuhong ended.

Within these simple sentences with no superfluous details, no emotions could be discerned, but Bai Wu could feel the guilt inside the Cursed Woman’s heart.

He turned to the next page.

"Jiang Huan, my senior, died in a fire, died getting close to me. I am a monster."

Another fragment of memory came surging back.

The Cursed Woman crouched by the window of the low-rise building, looking at the seals around her, feeling like a monster.

A true calamity.

In those times seven hundred years earlier, when neither sequence nor entry was known, people could only attribute everything to destiny.

Day after day, she would sit by the window, wondering when her destiny would end, and whether she, too, could one day live the life of an ordinary person.

That was how Jiang Huan came to know her; this art student senior didn’t disbelieve those campus ghost stories, but driven by a desire to find a particular absurd and bizarre beauty, he still ventured into the school’s forbidden zone.

Jiang Huan never really got close to the Cursed Woman; they always met at a distance.

After seeing the image of the Cursed Woman looking at the sky, with the breeze stirring her long hair, Jiang Huan was captivated.

Under the barren, deathly silent, and dim color tones, the entire scene looked like a haunted house, replete with a sense of age and horror, yet there was a woman who was unbelievably beautiful, and she merged perfectly with the scenery.

This was what Jiang Huan was looking for, beauty amidst ruination and desolation. After seeing this scene, he began to come here every day to paint.

One feared the curse but came to the forbidden land in search of the perfect painting. The other feared harming others yet longed for friends.

They kept their distance, yet there was an unspoken understanding between them. One was willing to wield the paintbrush, while the other was content to become the subject of his paintings.

Even though the two of them didn’t even know each other’s names.

All the rumors and gossip, the Cursed Woman had no need to explain anything. When Jiang Huan saw her, he believed that such a beautiful girl couldn’t possibly be the demon who caused countless bizarre deaths.

He truly thought so, and even the Cursed Woman felt that perhaps there really was someone in the world who wouldn’t think of her as a monster.

Because they didn’t know each other and were always at a distance, the Cursed Woman felt that maybe the misfortune wouldn’t spread to Jiang Huan. Even though they couldn’t converse face to face, having this kind of tranquility and mutual gaze was also a form of satisfaction.

But misfortune struck anyway.

One day she learned Jiang Huan’s name, from the news of his death.

Inside that low-rise building, the Cursed Woman could also use the internet, albeit limited to the school’s network. Through the campus forum, she learned of the classroom fire, and that art student Jiang Huan had died in the blaze.

She didn’t see Jiang Huan’s body.

The post did mention several charred skeletons, but the results of the tests were never revealed. However, the truth was clear, as there had been only a few people in the classroom at the time.

Among the curses on the forum, the Cursed Woman wept, consumed with self-blame. It wasn’t just Jiang Huan she had killed; she had also implicated the other people in the classroom.

Jiang Huan’s memory ended there.

Bai Wu furrowed his brows, feeling that something wasn’t right.

It seemed, by all appearances, that He Shuhong and Jiang Huan had indeed died by accident, and it’s quite possible they were really doomed by the Cursed Woman’s theft of their fortunes.

But oddly enough, Bai Wu felt a strong sense of incongruence.

He turned to the third page.

"Lin Yiping, a junior who liked to feed cats, died by drowning, died getting close to me."

With the previous experiences and encounters, the fact that the Cursed Woman could bring a curse, that those who contacted her would be beset by misfortune, was almost indisputable.

The school, however, was determined to keep the Cursed Woman.

Although the students kept protesting and questioning, they dared not simply flee the school anymore. More and more students began to disappear. More and more bizarre and supernatural incidents, absurd campus tales of terror, were becoming the subject of conversation.

It was as if ever since the Cursed Woman arrived, this world, which was already gradually distorting, had become even more twisted.

Those things that only appeared in supernatural stories... began to manifest one after another. The continuous disappearances of people leaving no trace, shrouded the entire campus in a layer of fear.

And people attributed all the strange phenomena to the Cursed Woman.

Cursed Woman sealed herself away so she wouldn’t harm others anymore, so that no one else would die because of her.

In her youth, even loneliness was noisy. Those children, in their attempts to escape solitude, committed all sorts of rebellious acts, yearning for acknowledgment, craving attention.

Cursed Woman never had the chance to be capricious like that. She gradually came to understand that someone like her would only bring misfortune and disaster to others.

She often crouched in the corner of an empty classroom, where a trash bin was supposed to be, hugging her knees as if to bury her head in them, silently mouthing, "I am a monster."

She truly believed that, but even monsters have a vulnerable side.

"I want friends, but I don’t want any friends to die,"

The sentences Cursed Woman wrote on paper were always straightforward. Perhaps sensing its owner’s intent, the black cat carried the notes she wrote on the desktop out of the forbidden zone.

When it returned, the note had been replaced.

"What a cute cat, are you its owner? You don’t have friends? Maybe you could consider starting a conversation with someone."

Reading these words on the note, Cursed Woman felt immense fear. She longed for friends but was afraid of involving others.

She didn’t reply to the message.

Yet, the black cat always took out the most sincere thoughts she wrote on white paper every day.

And every time it returned, it brought more information from the same person.

"The cat looks a bit thin. I fed it some Xiaoyugan in the shrubbery of the west campus area, and it seemed to really like it."

"There seems to be some strange happening in the basketball gym... They say that at night, one can hear the sound of someone playing basketball."

"Several people have gone missing in the school recently, I hope they are okay."

"You didn’t write anything today... But the black cat still came to find me."

The day after Lin Yiping replied, Cursed Woman realized it was her black cat that had been constantly conveying the words she’d written and the other’s intentions.

Not wanting to expose Lin Yiping to misfortune, Cursed Woman decided not to write anything more. But Lin Yiping didn’t mind and kept replying regardless.

The black cat still brought back his messages every day.

"I did not have friends before too because I could not hear things, but later, I was able to hear the sounds around me with the help of a hearing aid."

"It’s almost the end of the term, but my friends seem not to plan on leaving. The weird occurrences in the school are becoming more frequent."

"Did you hear? Some creatures never seen before seem to have appeared on the outskirts of the city."

"Today the black cat seems a bit sad, is it because you are not happy?"

"This place seems to have become our secret meeting spot, and it waits here for me every day."

For more than ten consecutive days, Lin Yiping kept replying to Cursed Woman in this one-sided manner. One note a day, each with just one sentence. Never less, never more.

Even though Cursed Woman didn’t reply, these notes still became one of her few sources of happiness. But soon, she woke from this happiness.

She could not drag this person down, she could not hold on to any false hope. As a monster spreading misfortune, only by pushing everyone far away could she protect them.

With this realization, Cursed Woman revealed her true identity in a note.

"I am a monster, a monster living in the forbidden zone, don’t reply, and don’t touch my cat."

She reluctantly wrote this brief sentence, thinking her identity would frighten him, and that the friendship, which had never started in the first place, would vanish completely.

But the next day, Cursed Woman saw a sentence that made her want to cry:

"I know, I knew it from the second day I saw the black cat, but it’s okay, we are friends, right?"

Lin Yiping had known all along.

But this boy, who had grown up without the world’s noise in his ears, did not care about what others said. He just felt sorry for Cursed Woman, just believed that it wasn’t wrong for someone to want friends.

Since then, the Cursed Woman still hadn’t replied to any messages, but the Black Cat would still bring news of Lin Yiping every day.

She dared not hope for anything, out of fear that as soon as she began to look forward to the future, that expectation would swiftly burst like a bubble.

Sometimes people are tormented by Destiny to the point of living in humiliation; when something good happens in their lives, they anxiously wonder if some misfortune will occur to negate this stroke of luck.

Perhaps if she didn’t respond to anything... Lin Yiping would be safe.

In the end, the Cursed Woman had given up the joy of talking with friends; she just wanted the boy to stay alive.

Experiencing these memories, Bai Wu had already seen Lin Yiping’s fate.

This kind-hearted and somewhat lonely boy finally died by drowning, dead in the artificial lake on campus. freewebnσvel.cѳm

The information about this boy also came from the death notice published by the school authorities.

Similarly, the Cursed Woman in the memories had not seen the body. The school authorities had discovered the death scene first and were the first to announce the news.

It was just that the Cursed Woman had to bear some more curses, and her heart was once again filled with guilt.

The school seemed unconcerned, especially during that time in Baichuan City, when everything was in disarray. The school was in chaos, the area outside the school was just as disordered, and the entire city was in turmoil.

Evil Fallen had already started to appear, with humans in the city beginning to mutate. Even though the Era of the High Tower was still a few years away, Baichuan City seemed to have entered its most distorted moment ahead of time, due to some evil secrets.

Naturally, the events in the school just spread within the school. freēwēbnovel.com

But this time, Lin Yiping’s death caused those who didn’t know the truth and were just following the rumors to redirect their anger towards the Black Cat who had been in contact with Lin Yiping.

They believed the Black Cat had spread the curse. So, if Lin Yiping died by drowning, the Black Cat had to die by burning.

Countless people watched this cruel and inhumane cat-torture live stream on the internet, cheering as if a witch at the stake was finally going to be burned to death by the flames.

The flames did not kill the Black Cat.

They just made it accompany its master permanently in another way. From then on, there was a new campus ghost story – the Unburnable Black Cat.

...

...

Three encounters, three regrettable deaths.

These good people who once tried to redeem the Cursed Woman ended up as the shackles and fetters imprisoning her soul.

The malicious gossip and accusations didn’t make the girl give up hope; instead, it was those moths drawn to her flame that made her realize she was a true monster.

Perhaps even now, the Cursed Woman still thinks of herself as a monster, but Bai Wu had already felt that something was off.

"Three deaths, no bodies seen... all announced unilaterally by the school authorities. ’Eyes mentioned deceit’... The identity of the Cursed Woman seems more like a scapegoat used to attract hatred and attention."

There were many more names on the back of the memo pad, but all these people were mysteriously missing or announced dead.

The Cursed Woman clearly believed that she was the cause of these deaths.

Bai Wu quickly went through the memo pad, and during this process, the black substance behind him had not really attacked him.

From the moment he saw the Black Cat, Bai Wu had a premonition that the most dangerous place in this campus legend might be inhabited by the one among these monsters who was least like a monster.

He still had many doubts in his heart.

Who had hidden those memo pads in various concealed places? What was the deal with the lantern-carrying old man? What was the real truth behind room 404?

This question didn’t trouble Bai Wu for long, as he soon found a clue in another diary on the desk.

The diary contained a short sentence and a memory.

But unlike He Shuhong, Lin Yiping, and Jiang Huan, this memory was even more special and precious to the Cursed Woman.

"Name unknown, hero with a mask, died by the principal, died getting close to me."