Several students stood clustered together. In their midst, Sun Zhibing, the Economics Institute's student adviser, looked grim. "What did you say? Zhao Qian is missing? How could a perfectly healthy person just disappear?"
In front of him stood a female student in denim shorts and another in a short skirt, both looking anxious.
The girl in denim shorts pointed across the lake. "When we were walking over there, we came across a gardener pruning some trees. Zhao Qian has always loved gardening, so she said she wanted to go over and learn a little. The two of us went somewhere else first."
"But when we came back, she was gone."
The girl in the short skirt added, "The gardener was gone too, and even the potted plants he'd been pruning had all been moved away. That's why we thought Zhao Qian might be in danger."
"Have you called her?" Sun Zhibing looked frantic. He was leading this outing; if a student came to harm, he would be in serious trouble.
"We did. Nobody answered," the students said.
"Mr. Sun, please don't panic. I've already sent the Mountain Villa staff to look for her." With something this serious happening, Supervisor Wu had rushed over immediately.
She looked at the two girls with some hesitation. "But are you sure you met a gardener?"
"Yes. He was wearing your Mountain Villa's uniform and holding a large pair of shears, pruning some trees," the girl in shorts said firmly.
"But... we don't have a permanent gardener here at the Mountain Villa. Normally, we hire a professional master gardener to do the pruning every three months. The last visit was two weeks ago."
Supervisor Wu's words made everyone's expressions darken further.
So the gardener was an impostor?
That made it even more likely that he was a criminal!
And the missing student was a girl. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they could already imagine what sort of tragedy might unfold.
Just then, Jiang Chen, who had been listening nearby for some time, suddenly stepped forward. He had picked up on one odd detail: if the man wanted to abduct a female student, he only needed to take her away. Why take the potted plants too?
"Zhang Lu, what did the potted plants you saw look like?" he asked.
Seeing that it was Jiang Chen, everyone seemed a little puzzled about why he had stepped forward now.
But Zhang Lu was already nervous and answered instinctively, "They were ornamental trees about as tall as a person, I think. They must have been trees. Other plants wouldn't grow that tall."
"As tall as a person?" Supervisor Wu's voice rose involuntarily.
"Do you know something, Supervisor Wu?" Jiang Chen turned to look at her.
But she hemmed and hawed, reluctant to speak.
"Supervisor Wu, my student disappeared at your Mountain Villa. You'd better give me an explanation. If you know anything, tell us now, or it'll be officers from the Public Security Office questioning you!" Sun Zhibing gritted his teeth and stared at her like an enraged beast.
He might usually have been a little too worldly, but his student's safety was at stake now. She clearly knew something yet refused to speak, and he was almost ready to start swearing at her.
The students all turned to look at her too.
Supervisor Wu was usually strict with her subordinates, a formidable tigress who would snap at anyone and anything. But faced with accusations and hard stares from a group of outsiders, she felt a little intimidated.
After all, she couldn't dock these people's bonuses. Their friend was missing, and there was no guarantee they wouldn't do something rash.
"Please, everyone, calm down. I'll tell you. We don't have any ornamental trees as tall as a person here. Most of ours are small potted plants."
"Also, the last gardener who came here had an accident. He... died at the Mountain Villa." As she spoke, she glanced around several times and lowered her voice. "Please keep this between us. If Steward Zhang finds out I told you, I'm finished."
A gardener had died at the Mountain Villa?
The sudden revelation left everyone a little unnerved.
But what did that have to do with Zhao Qian's disappearance?
"Supervisor Wu, don't tell me you're suggesting a ghost took my student?" Sun Zhibing's face darkened. "You're still joking with us at a time like this?!"
Supervisor Wu didn't take offense at his tone. Instead, she looked at them and shook her head with a bitter smile. "You don't understand. That gardener died under very strange circumstances. That evening, he was pruning the willows by the lake when he accidentally dropped his shears into the water."
"He first went to the Mountain Villa's tool room for a retrieval magnet and rope. Later, he went back for swimming goggles. He told the tool room attendant that the shears were probably tangled in waterweeds and the magnet couldn't pull them up, so he would have to go down and retrieve them himself."
"But after he left the tool room, he never came back. We only found his body in the water the next day."
"Do you know what was strange about that?"
All the students frowned. Then Sun Zhibing's eyes widened with a hint of fear, and he said uncertainly, "If I remember correctly, for safety reasons, any lake approved for swimming has to be kept free of waterweeds."
"Exactly. Everything at the Mountain Villa meets the highest standards. We clear out the waterweeds every two days. There couldn't possibly have been weeds growing on the bottom thick enough to entangle anything!" Supervisor Wu said gravely.
"The gardener's death was strange, and after he died, quite a few strange things happened at the Mountain Villa too. Several guests and staff members went missing one after another. Some people even said they'd seen those missing people at night, planted in pots and made into potted plants!"
Everyone felt a chill at Supervisor Wu's words.
This place had a ghost story that terrifying?
"But those are only rumors. Since I started working here, I haven't heard of anyone coming to harm." Supervisor Wu forced a smile. "Please don't worry. The Mountain Villa staff will find your classmate."
While she was speaking, Jiang Chen suddenly cast a long look at a spot across the lake. He seemed to have noticed something. Without alerting anyone, he slipped over there alone.
Elsewhere, a girl in a short skirt was tied to a wooden post. Its lower end had been pushed into a large pot filled with soil, making her look like a potted plant.
The girl was Zhao Qian, and she was trembling uncontrollably from head to toe.
In front of her were seven or eight potted plants just like hers. The difference was that the people in those pots had long since died. Some bodies were rotting and stank; others had been pruned into bloody masses of mangled flesh.
A middle-aged man held a large pair of shears, carefully pruning one of the "potted plants." Every so often, he turned to look Zhao Qian over.
His gaze was as venomous as a snake's. Every time he looked at her, Zhao Qian shuddered violently, her heart consumed by overwhelming terror. Tears streaked her face as she kept crying out.
"Help, please help me, help..."
Her voice was weak. She had been calling like this for over half an hour, yet when her two friends had returned earlier and walked past this stretch of path, they had acted as though they couldn't see her.
"There's no need to shout. Once I've pruned you into a perfect work of art, I'll send you back so all your friends can get a good look at you." With a snip, the middle-aged man cut off a finger, then turned to speak to Zhao Qian.
His voice was gentle. As a master gardener, he was refined and dignified, but to Zhao Qian, he sounded more terrifying than a devil!
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