I Got Together With the Fake Heiress - Chapter 47

It was unclear whether the lucky charm was working, but Wen Yimeng felt that she had over-performed in every examination. Even when she accidentally overheard classmates discussing exam questions, the correct answers she heard were the same as the ones she had filled in on her paper. She was not affected at all, and instead, felt even more confident.

The last subject was English, which was Wen Yimeng’s strong suit, and indeed the strong suit of all Ruihua students. An hour before the exam ended, Wen Yimeng had already finished all the questions and checked them twice.

The difficulty of this English exam was slightly higher than the mock tests. Wen Yunqing shouldn’t have any problems, right? After all, she has been tutoring for quite some time, Wen Yimeng thought, resting her chin on her hand.

The English exam was naturally not a problem for Wen Yunqing, but in other details, she ran into a bit of minor trouble.

The person sitting next to her, for reasons unknown, started coughing frantically from the beginning, especially during the listening comprehension section. The coughing was earth-shattering. If Wen Yunqing’s hearing hadn’t been good enough, she was worried she would have lost significant marks.

Wen Yunqing could rely on her heightened five senses to remain unaffected, but the others in the examination room couldn’t tolerate it. As soon as the listening comprehension ended, many candidates raised their hands, stating that they had been affected by the coughing. They demanded either that he stop coughing or that he be asked to leave.

The invigilator was in a difficult position. The College Entrance Examination was, after all, a life-altering test. If the students in one class were affected by a single person, it was indeed inappropriate. But similarly, if he asked the coughing candidate to leave, it would also affect the student’s performance.

After some hesitation, the invigilator called the floor patrol teacher and asked for her assistance in handling the matter.

“Isn’t there a spare examination room? Just let him move to another classroom,” said Lu Zhiming, the patrol teacher who had been roped in to help out.

“But if we do that, he won’t have a teacher to invigilate him,” the invigilator replied.

“Then I’ll invigilate him,” Lu Zhiming said. She was tired from walking around anyway and needed to sit down and rest.

Just like that, the coughing candidate was isolated in the spare examination room, and Lu Zhiming changed from a patrol teacher to an invigilator.

Less than three minutes after sitting down, the boy raised his hand and signaled, “Teacher, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Generally, using the bathroom is not allowed during the examination,” Lu Zhiming said, frowning slightly at the male candidate. “The invigilator should have reminded you before the exam started, right?”

“Cough, cough, I forgot to go. Teacher, I really can’t hold it,” the boy said, his face flushing slightly.

Lu Zhiming stood up. “Alright, I’ll accompany you.”

“Teacher, I need to go to the men’s room.” The expression on the boy’s face was a bit complex. “Are you going to follow me in too?”

“I know. I’ll just wait outside and watch,” Lu Zhiming said, never taking her eyes off the candidate. First, he was coughing non-stop, and now he needed to use the bathroom. In any case, he looked suspicious.

Could he be trying to cheat by using the bathroom? But that didn’t seem right. Based on his simple attire, he appeared to be a student from a low-income background, and his academic performance should be quite good. Why would he need to cheat?

“You said you couldn’t hold it anymore? Why aren’t you going yet?” Lu Zhiming urged. Although the possibility of cheating was small, she needed to be prepared.

The boy pursed his lips. After a moment of hesitation, he finally stood up from his seat and hurried towards the men’s room.

Lu Zhiming followed the boy to the restroom. Less than a minute after the boy went in, a student and a teacher appeared from the other end of the corridor.

“Teacher Lu, why are you here?” The Ruihua teacher accompanying the student was slightly surprised to see Lu Zhiming guarding the men’s room, as Ruihua’s restrooms were built to be separate for males and females.

“A student is using the bathroom,” Lu Zhiming said, glancing at the student who had accompanied them. He had a scholarly, slightly thin appearance and was wearing the most ordinary T-shirt, long pants, and capris. He was likely also a high-achieving student from a low-income background.

The male teacher nodded and had the low-income student wait outside first. Strict regulations regarding exam discipline were enforced during the College Entrance Examination. Even in the restroom, candidates were not allowed to have contact alone.

The low-income student opened his mouth as if to say something, but seeing Lu Zhiming there, he swallowed his words and waited obediently nearby.

After five minutes, the male teacher became impatient. After greeting Lu Zhiming, he walked straight into the men’s room.

In less than ten seconds, the male teacher stumbled out, his hands clamped tightly over his mouth to prevent himself from screaming and disturbing the students.

“Something happened?” As soon as the male teacher came out, Lu Zhiming smelled a faint scent of blood.

The male teacher’s eyes were filled with terror. He nodded hard, waved the low-income student to use the restroom on a different floor, and then tremblingly pulled out his walkie-talkie to contact the school administration.

Lu Zhiming sensed disaster and rushed directly into the men’s room. Stepping over the threshold, she saw a boy lying on the floor, his eyes rolled back, and a coin-sized bloody hole near his brow bone.

He was the only one in this bathroom. Could there be a monster at work here? This was Lu Zhiming’s first thought, but after checking the student’s condition, she quickly dismissed that conclusion.

Although the student only appeared to have a hole drilled into his forehead, his internal organs had actually been mostly devoured. Since there were no spiritual energy fluctuations nearby, only one possibility remained.

This boy had been consumed by a Gu worm (gǔ chóng), and the worm had been present in his body for a long time—so long that its aura had merged with his, which was why she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

Confirming that the death was unnatural, Lu Zhiming quickly left the signal-blocked area and contacted Shen Ling, asking her to send over some professionals to handle the situation.

Because the examination was still in progress, the criminal police officers who arrived did not alert anyone. They managed to remove the candidate’s body and sanitize the scene before the exam ended.

An hour later, Wen Yunqing walked out of the examination hall with a relaxed expression. She squinted slightly at the sun, which was already setting halfway down the mountain, and exhaled a breath of stale air.

Yes! The College Entrance Examination is finally over! She can finally break free from the great mountain of studying.

“How did you do?” Wen Yimeng asked. Her examination room was on the third floor, so she came out a little later than Wen Yunqing.

“Not bad, stable performance,” Wen Yunqing said, her smile bright. “I finally don’t have to do any more papers. Next up is the graduation trip before the results come out, right?”

“That’s five days from now,” Wen Yimeng said. “The class monitor just greeted me and said that many of our classmates are busy preparing to go abroad right after the exam, so he wants to organize one last class outing.”

“What’s the location for the outing? The same resort as last time?” Wen Yunqing asked. As long as she was going with Wen Yimeng, the venue didn’t really matter.

Wen Yimeng shook her head. “Originally, he wanted to go abroad, but some students haven’t gotten their passports yet. The specific location is still being discussed, but it should be somewhere a bit further away.”

“A bit further away? That might be quite expensive, then?” Wen Yunqing thought of Zhou Juan. Although she had earned some money from tutoring, she was not very wealthy.

“Don’t worry. This time, the class monitor covered all the basic travel and accommodation costs. If we don’t buy anything along the way, we won’t have to spend a single cent,” Wen Yimeng said.

“That’s strange. Why hasn’t Zhou Juan come out yet? Did she go back to the dorm to rest?” Wen Yimeng checked her watch. Twenty minutes had already passed since the exam ended. Even if Zhou Juan was slow, she should have emerged by now.

Just as Wen Yimeng finished speaking, Zhou Juan appeared in her line of sight, walking towards them with an anxious look.

“What’s wrong? Did you mess up the exam?” Wen Yimeng asked.

Zhou Juan shook her head. “Yunqing, are you free right now?”

“Yes, I am. The exams are over. I should be pretty free going forward,” Wen Yunqing raised an eyebrow. “Is there something you need my help with?”

Zhou Juan clenched both hands into inward-facing fists and spoke very nervously. “A candidate from Class Three had an accident, and Teacher Lu wants your help.”

“A candidate from Class Three?” Wen Yunqing was stunned. “Was it the person in my examination room?”

“I don’t know about that, but Teacher Lu said she couldn’t find any clues, so she asked me if you’d be willing to lend a hand,” Zhou Juan said, then added, “From the way Teacher Lu looked, it must be something very serious.”

Wen Yunqing didn’t answer immediately. Any matter that Lu Zhiming found troublesome was likely another abnormal case. If she got involved, she probably wouldn’t be able to get away anytime soon, and the class outing might be canceled.

“Teacher Lu also helped us solve many physics problems. We’re not in a hurry to leave anyway, so why don’t we go take a look?” Wen Yimeng suggested. She knew what Wen Yunqing was worried about. “I’m curious about what happened, too.”

“Alright. Where is Lu Zhiming?”

Wen Yunqing initially thought that Lu Zhiming had found some troublesome opponent and needed her help. But when she saw Shen Ling and many criminal police officers at the scene, she knew that the matter was probably more serious than she had imagined.

“Captain Lu, why did you call students over?” The middle-aged criminal police officer who was not privy to the situation asked.

“They’re not students; they are helpers,” Lu Zhiming waved at Wen Yunqing, asking the three of them to sit beside her.

The officer raised an eyebrow. “Are all three of them? Captain Lu, this matter is not suitable for ordinary people to get involved in.”

“Whether they are or not, I can make my own judgment,” Lu Zhiming pressed her eyebrow lightly, cutting off the middle-aged officer. “Let’s not waste time with irrelevant talk. Let’s get to the point.”

The middle-aged officer was displeased and looked to Shen Ling, asking for her opinion. Shen Ling looked slightly helpless but tacitly allowed the presence of Zhou Juan and Wen Yimeng.

“About two hours ago, I accompanied a candidate to the bathroom…” Lu Zhiming concisely recounted everything she knew. “The preliminary assessment suggests it’s a Gu worm from the southern part of Southern Xinjiang. The deceased only had a sore throat this morning, but something happened within minutes of entering the restroom. The onset time was too short.”

“Student Wen, what are your thoughts on this?” Lu Zhiming inquired. “Did you notice anything unusual this morning?”

Wen Yunqing squinted slightly at the photo on the display screen. “No. I didn’t spread my attention too much during the exam. I only remember his coughing sounding unusually heavy.”

“Did this only happen to one person at Ruihua?” Wen Yunqing asked.

“Only this one, for now. Later, we will find a pretext to conduct medical examinations on all Ruihua teachers and students to rule out other cases,” Shen Ling said.

Wen Yunqing leaned back in her chair and tapped the table with a bent finger. “Gu worms are things that are artificially nurtured. Their existence is quite unique; even I cannot identify them immediately upon sight. I suggest prioritizing the people who lived with him, as these small insects reproduce very quickly.”

Lu Zhiming nodded, jotting down Wen Yunqing’s suggestion in her notebook, then turned to look at her, waiting for her next opinion.

Wen Yunqing raised an eyebrow. She felt as if Lu Zhiming was clinging to her. She had only beaten her a few times during spars, after all.

“Then I’ll add another point: for these little insects, the flesh and blood of cultivators are more ‘delicious.’ If possible, they would prefer to parasitize the cultivator,” Wen Yunqing said.

Lu Zhiming pondered. “If that’s the case, why didn’t the so-called Gu worm hide in the corpse and then ambush me? Or do something when we were alone?”

“Perhaps this little insect is still relatively weak,” Wen Yunqing adjusted her posture, observing Wen Yimeng and Zhou Juan with her peripheral vision. Seeing that their curiosity outweighed their fear, she continued, “It realized it couldn’t afford to provoke you, so it didn’t cause any trouble?”

“According to Student Wen, is it possible that the Gu worm sensed danger when it was alone with Captain Lu, which is why it chose to kill the deceased and escape?” the middle-aged criminal officer said. “If Captain Lu hadn’t been the invigilator, perhaps the deceased wouldn’t have met with an accident?”

“I don’t know about that. I haven’t actually examined the scene. The above are just my personal views,” Wen Yunqing said.

This officer seems to dislike Lu Zhiming intensely. His words are heavily loaded and clearly directed at Lu Zhiming.

“Um, didn’t Teacher Lu mention earlier that there was another boy who needed to use the restroom? Who was that person?” Sensing the somewhat delicate atmosphere, Wen Yimeng tentatively asked.

“That boy?” Lu Zhiming stroked her chin. “He was from another examination room. Based on his clothes, he looked like a student from a low-income family. Student Yimeng, do you think there is any connection between the two?”

“I just thought the timing was quite a coincidence,” Wen Yimeng said.

Shen Ling nodded. “That is our oversight. I will arrange for someone to take his statement and give him a medical check-up later.”

Only a little over two hours had passed since the incident, and the information gathered was very limited. After discussing the Gu worm, Shen Ling led the team to continue the investigation.

Once only their group remained in the conference room, Wen Yunqing knocked on the table and spoke. “Lu Zhiming, you didn’t call me over solely because of this case, did you?”

Lu Zhiming smiled when she heard this. “More or less. This case accounts for one-third of the reason.”

“And the remaining two-thirds of the reason?” Wen Yunqing asked. “What is it that requires Yimeng and Zhou Juan to be present before you can speak?”

Lu Zhiming rubbed her nose and spoke with a hint of guilt. “I received orders from headquarters. They hope I can recruit you to join them. Then I encountered this case, so I took the opportunity to call all of you over.”

“And then?” Wen Yunqing raised an eyebrow.

“If you are willing to join, headquarters is willing to give Student Yimeng and Zhou Juan internal positions. Both of them can enjoy the treatment of a Principal Section-Level Officer (zhèng kē jí), and all aspects of their social insurance and salary will be provided,” Lu Zhiming said.

“Ah? What does this have to do with me?” Zhou Juan was confused.

“According to our investigation, the students closest to Student Wen are Student Yimeng and you,” Lu Zhiming said, her attitude very candid. “This is considered a means of recruitment by headquarters.”

“Yunqing, I don’t need the benefits. You don’t have to consider me,” Zhou Juan immediately stated.

“And I doubt I would be short of a Principal Section-Level Officer’s benefits either,” Wen Yimeng said.

Wen Yunqing did not commit either way. Based on her understanding of Lu Zhiming, she was someone who fundamentally disliked rules and restrictions. It made no sense for her to directly recruit her just because of an order from her superior, nor would she involve Zhou Juan and Wen Yimeng without warning.

“If all three of us are given Principal Division-Level Officer  treatment, then I will consider it,” Wen Yunqing quickly decided.

She trusted her intuition: Lu Zhiming would not do this without a reason. Something major must be happening soon, and if they didn’t officially get approval from the government, they might encounter trouble.