Doomsday Jigsaw Puzzle

Chapter 182: Chapter 182: The Supernatural Secret of Baichuan Middle School

Separated by seven hundred years, the Masked Strange Person certainly could not hear the successor’s question.

He could answer all of Bai Wu’s questions: who Cain was, who the Ten of Spades was, and what the six Well-Level beings truly signified.

But this wasn’t a phone booth; it was Jiang Yimi’s memory. And Jiang Yimi had no concept of these figures yet, so she couldn’t ask these questions.

The exploration of the Ninth Psychiatric Hospital ended quickly.

After learning part of the truth, on the way back to school, Jiang Yimi said:

"Will many more people be targeted?"

"Yes, but you needn’t feel too sad. The civilization of humanity, which has lasted thousands of years, is about to be compressed into a tower. Most of us are nothing more than pawns discarded outside the tower. Becoming monsters is just a matter of time. What’s essential is to not lose who you are at heart."

"I... I want to save them."

"Can you save them all? You’re not a savior, but perhaps you’ll meet one in the future. You need to get used to it; compared to the long new era, whether or not they turn into monsters, they could die from various upheavals anyway."

"Saving even a little is something, and you must have a way," insisted Jiang Yimi.

"That is achievable, at least within this school, we can save quite a few students."

When they reached the school gate, as if remembering something, the Masked Strange Person suddenly stopped.

"What’s wrong?"

"Nothing, take this phone."

The Masked Strange Person handed a smartphone to Jiang Yimi:

"In the next few days, we’ll slowly investigate the truth behind the school, but I might not always be conveniently available to see you. I still have to deal with some monsters, continue taking them to the Ninth Psychiatric Hospital, and there are some investigations where it’s not appropriate for you to go. I’ll go alone, but I’ll provide you with some clues on the progress through the phone."

Jiang Yimi nodded, somewhat understanding. To her, the Masked Strange Person was like a hero who had suddenly appeared, and he had a strong big brother vibe. Naturally, she would do whatever he suggested, just like a younger sister following her elder brother.

The night was long, and soon the two arrived at the teaching building area.

The principal’s office door had its locks changed not long ago, and even the windows had security measures installed. Forcing entry would surely create quite a disturbance.

However, this didn’t pose a problem for the Masked Strange Person, who took out a strange key and easily unlocked the door.

"How do you have the key to the principal’s office?"

"Impressive, right?"

"The impressive thing..."

"In the future, there will be many strange items in this world; these items will undergo a Spirit Possession Reaction. Do you know what a Spirit Possession Reaction is? It’s when these inanimate objects close to death suddenly acquire some peculiar properties."

Jiang Yimi shook her head.

As the Masked Strange Person was educating Jiang Yimi about the rules outside the tower, Bai Wu noticed the key.

He had seen that key before.

In the heart of Well Si, he had once bought that key from Little Octopus in Well Si’s fictional game, and it was that very key that allowed him to open the file room door and learn about the past of Professor Tao and Professor Xie.

"The items from that game should have been seen by Well Si. Including the Original Sin Series Weapons, the Imitation Sin Weapons, they all must have real-life prototypes, so it’s the same with... the key, this Masked Strange Person must have met the several beings surnamed Well."

Bai Wu really wanted to suddenly alter causality, walk up to the Masked Man, and lift off the mask, although, if he actually tried to do that, he’d most likely be immobilized by a snap of the other’s fingers.

The Masked Strange Person and Jiang Yimi quickly began to search the principal’s office.

The process didn’t last long; the Masked Strange Person obviously had a special talent for finding things, much like Bai Wu. Before long, he found a secret compartment behind the bookcase.

But what’s worth noting isn’t the files in the secret compartment, but rather the meridians that emerged on the wall behind the bookcase.

Black vein-like structures surfaced on the wall; they rooted there as if belonging to some living creature.

"What is this?" Jiang Yimi asked in surprise as she looked at these slowly pulsating veins.

"Shhh..."

The Masked Strange Person gestured for silence, whispering:

"This is the result of high-level distortion. There should be another world behind this wall, and following these meridians, we might find the Principal."

"Has the Principal already... stopped being human?"

"Whether in body or mind, it can no longer be considered human. Its true form is probably more exaggerated than you can imagine."

"Doesn’t he need to meet with other people, though... he is the Principal, after all."

"I’m afraid the teachers at the school are also living in fear, and there have been many strange occurrences in the faculty dormitory. And the Principal alone couldn’t have orchestrated so many supernatural events; there must be accomplices."

After opening the secret compartment, the Masked Strange Person flipped through the files, Jiang Yimi leaned in closer, and Bai Wu did the same.

Three individuals from different times and spaces were together at that moment.

What Bai Wu didn’t know was that, beyond her memory, Jiang Yimi, dressed in a white nightgown, had already arrived behind her, looking at her with a puzzled expression.

The Black Cat did the same.

Behind Jiang Yimi was a surge of black substance like a giant wave, and with her bare feet and clothing that was white to the point of being eerie, she appeared ghost-like.

But she never harmed Bai Wu; her confusion stemmed from a sense of familiarity emanating from Bai Wu.

And if Bai Wu turned back now, she might understand the true meaning of the initial information her eyes gave her.

...

...

The content of the files contained many of the Principal’s arrangements—the list of students who had disappeared, those slated to disappear soon, and various plans for unexpected disappearances.

It also included transactions between Cain and the Principal, as well as with the doctor.

However, it is worth mentioning that there was no connection between Cain and the doctor. Bai Wu speculated that, at least in this scenario, Cain and the doctor were unlikely to appear together.

Watching all the things the Principal had done, Jiang Yimi’s shoulders trembled slightly.

The Masked Strange Person said:

"It seems that this Principal is not stupid; it doesn’t dare provoke you, because your power is too dominating, and nobody wants to experience their luck being devoured."

Jiang Yimi didn’t understand.

The Masked Strange Person went on to explain:

"In a sense, you are indeed a monster, because you have acquired a power that makes others afraid. The Principal has been misled by someone, but the misleader underestimates the Principal’s desire for power, unaware that the Principal has established cooperation with the doctor."

"The doctor... What does he do?"

"The doctor comes from a terrifying force; he’s capable of altering entries, Stitched. Entries and Sequences are not the same; Sequences are fixed in number, but entries can be manipulated to create unprecedented abilities. Naturally, this requires a large number of sacrifices—fear that all the students at the school are offerings."

Entry manipulation.

Jiang Yimi couldn’t understand the concept; she was simply shocked by the revelation that all the students were offerings.

Bai Wu, however, grasped the horror of this ability.

"Travelers can freely go to any area, and they can bring several servants. Merchants can trade anything, including life, memories, powers. And the abilities of doctors are not simple either, they can specifically enhance terms, even stitch them together?"

At this time, Bai Wu’s thoughts actually synchronized with the Masked Strange Person—

"This is indeed unexpected; their collusion also means that the principal might be slightly more difficult to deal with than I imagined."

Jiang Yimi silently noted the contents of the archive:

"There are many plans here that haven’t been implemented yet. Can we save them?"

"Of course, we can. That’s exactly the purpose of our trip. We can turn their plans against them, making these children, who were supposed to disappear in supernatural events, truly vanish."

"What do you mean?"

"Look here, the school plans to let these four children die in the Pen Fairy game. They will surely be lured into similar acts soon. Before the school takes certain actions, we can step in and take them to a safe place first."

"A safe place?"

"Different Space, a space where we can hide these students. Aren’t they creating supernatural cases? We can do the same. This school doesn’t have a room 404; they say it’s because it’s unlucky. We can fabricate a ghost story about room 404, making all the students who were supposed to be taken by the school authorities go to room 404. Once I’ve killed the principal, they can come out."

By the time Bai Wu heard this, he had guessed the rest of the story based on previous explorations.

"So that’s what room 404 is about... The world in that mirror, was it created by the Masked Strange Person? How many abilities does this guy have on him?"

"But room 404 still exists, and at midnight, a large number of shadows will come out of that room. This indicates that he has not killed the principal yet. Combined with this sentence in the diary, the Masked Strange Person died at the hands of the principal, died getting close to Jiang Yimi. Does this mean he was defeated in the confrontation with the principal?"

The Masked Strange Person very likely lost to the principal, or perhaps the principal and Cain joined forces.

This made Bai Wu feel somewhat unreal. Because the strength that the Masked Strange Person displayed at the moment seemed to Bai Wu to be almost godlike.

For a long while afterward, the memories served to provide answers to the previous puzzles.

Jiang Yimi and the Masked Strange Person never met the principal. They started to create the ghost story about room 404.

In a very short time, due to the Masked Strange Person’s spread of the story, almost the entire school knew of a "disappearing room 404" ghost story.

This was not at all strange for Baichuan Middle School. Now, it was not a problem to call it a Ghost School.

The entire Baichuan City was also shrouded in an eerie atmosphere. During the day, the Masked Strange Person hunted various Evil Fallen; at night, he would join Jiang Yimi in a secret investigation and rescue.

They were always one step ahead of the school.

When the school planned to make certain students disappear or to appear to die in an accident, the two would take these students to room 404 in advance.

With an explanation from the Masked Strange Person, Bai Wu learned the secret of this room.

Talent Sequence 27: Mirror Imprisonment.

On the Talent Sequence list, the description of Mirror Imprisonment had a philosophical implication, confining people behind a facade of falsehood. Bai Wu could not guess the concrete effects of Mirror Imprisonment at the time.

But through the explanation of the Masked Strange Person, he finally understood that this thing was probably similar to a term associated with the Mirror Evil Fallen he had encountered before—Soul Imprisonment.

At the Travelers’ gathering, a Level 9 Mutant Mirror Evil Fallen had used a similar ability.

Imprisoning a person in the world of mirrors. The mirror surface still displayed the diverse memories of the person’s life.

The effect of Mirror Solidification was almost the same. The Masked Strange Person did not explain the specific conditions for casting it but mentioned that if the caster did not lift it voluntarily, the creature trapped in Mirror Solidification could only come to the real world as a shadow, and it had to be at an extremely yin and dark moment.

Moreover, time was almost stagnant within the mirror.

Bai Wu now understood that all those shadows that ran out of the mirror were the students of this school who were supposed to have their lives taken away by either the principal or the doctors.

All of them had been saved by Jiang Yimi and the Masked Strange Person, and through the many photographs provided by the Masked Strange Person, learned the true causes and consequences.

They also realized they were in a very dangerous place.

For instance, Mr. Liu, whose behavior had suddenly changed, decided that Chang Yuan was a bad student after interacting with the students of Class Four. Especially since Chang Yuan looked fierce and evil, he must be no good.

The reason Mr. Liu was being gentle with Chang Yuan was that they had already made up their minds to make Chang Yuan disappear forever in an accident. Once all the bad students were gone, only the good ones would remain in the school, thus purifying it.

Such so-called gentleness was merely temporary mercy from a jailer to a death row inmate.

After learning this information from the Masked Strange Person, Chang Yuan went pale and was seized by an after-fear.

On the contrary, the students who had been scared by the supernatural events in the mirror suddenly felt lucky.

Including that student who was lured to the school’s forbidden grounds by Black Cat – the real reason was that he had been targeted by the school, and going to the forbidden grounds actually saved his life.

They were being protected by an unnamed hero, and the Masked Strange Person naturally had a strong affinity, quickly earning the trust of the students.

In fact, as more people disappeared from the school, quite a few students had started to notice something wrong—

Why did the school bring the Cursed Woman into their midst? Why did the principal never come forward to explain? Why did the principal insist on keeping the Cursed Woman after so many accidents had occurred?

Although they also verbally attacked the Cursed Woman on their keyboards, they were also contemplating what the real truth was.

After learning the truth, these students too were afraid of turning into monsters, especially when some of the medical records from the Ninth Hospital gave them the creeps.

So easily, the Masked Strange Person convinced them to hide in the Mirror World.

As for those notes, they were hidden by the Masked Strange Person.

After the school’s search turned up nothing, the school itself did not care too much. They were thinking of attributing the disappearances of these students to the supernatural events as much as possible.

Plus, with the whole Baichuan City feeling haunted, nobody really felt anything was amiss. In times when everyone was fearing for themselves, who had the energy to bother about others?

In the Mirror Imprisonment World, the Masked Strange Person could communicate with those students. He wrote down their recounted experiences just before their disappearances, which were not entirely true, as some parts were deliberately processed to be more horrifying.

The original purpose of the Masked Person was to deal with the school’s search.

Bai Wu could imagine that if the school really began a thorough investigation into these disappearing students, they would find that the supernatural events used to mislead people’s senses had changed from fake to real.

It’s like someone who often pretends to be a ghost to scare people, but then encounters a real ghost. This might serve as a warning that walking the night road often will eventually lead to seeing a ghost. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

But what Masked Strange Person and the others did not anticipate was the high acceptance of supernatural phenomena by these people, or perhaps their blatant disregard for the lives of the students.

They never searched seriously, with the result that seven hundred years later, these so-called clues were still found by Bai Wu.

Some of the puzzles were gradually being solved.

But there were a few key areas that puzzled Bai Wu—

If the seven disciples included the principal, how did they end up being a vulnerable group? Where were they each? What exactly went wrong in the confrontation between the Masked Strange Person and the principal?

What in the end happened to the school so that it underwent such extensive Evil Fallen Transformation?

From the current information, it seemed as though Jiang Yimi and the Masked Strange Person were trying to save the school.

Although the Masked Strange Person’s attitude was that these people would end up dead or transformed into Evil Fallen sooner or later, and that some things only a savior could accomplish, so there was no need to care too much. But at Jiang Yimi’s request, the Masked Strange Person indeed saved quite a few students.

The subsequent memories were almost all about letting students enter the world inside the mirror. At first, the school didn’t care, but as more and more people became victims of the Room 404 rumor.

The principal and some of the school’s teachers finally realized something – there were other forces coveting these students in this school.

They couldn’t find the secret of Room 404, but they became aware of the existence of the Masked Strange Person.

At the end of the memories, the final confrontation between the Masked Strange Person and the principal finally arrived.