"Something's happened. Something must have happened."
Fan Yu paced anxiously around the laboratory like an ant on a hot pan.
He kept muttering under his breath, buzzing endlessly like a headless fly.
He could hardly be blamed for his anxiety.
He knew exactly what Zhou Yi had been doing at the academy. She did whatever she pleased, had a violent temper, and had offended plenty of people.
If Fan Yu had not been a director in the Soul Tool Department, backing Zhou Yi so that the academy's teachers gave her some leeway and its senior staff turned a blind eye, she would have been expelled long ago. How could she have lasted until today?
In fact, Fan Yu had imagined that a day like this might come. He had prepared plenty of fallback measures, too, but it had happened precisely when he was away, leaving him unable to put any of them into action.
Seeing this, He Caitou's mind raced until he finally thought of a way to reassure him. "Teacher, could the academy be deliberately laying a false trail? Maybe Teacher Zhou never actually left, and they're protecting her this way."
What he had not expected was for Fan Yu to reject the idea the moment he voiced it.
"Impossible. Absolutely impossible."
Fan Yu shook his head and looked at He Caitou. "This definitely isn't as simple as you imagine."
"Why?"
"Think about it. If the academy really did what you suggested, openly repairing the plank road while secretly crossing through Chencang to protect Zhou Yi, why wouldn't they tell me?
"You know how unsettled I was before. We wrote so many letters to Shrek Academy, but we never received a single reply.
"Now I understand why they didn't reply. They didn't dare face me, because they never protected