Reform of the "Witch Sacrifice"?

"How is this possible..."

Liu Zhipeng was watching the surveillance footage with the elderly dorm supervisor in the dormitory's monitoring room. They were no longer the only two there; nearly all the school administrators had arrived.

The footage clearly recorded Liu Zunfu entering the restroom at 2:13 a.m.

He had never come out.

They had replayed the footage dozens of times and checked every camera outside the building and the windows, but Liu Zunfu was simply gone.

There could not be cameras inside the restroom. That was a private space.

But neither the doors nor the windows showed any damage, the security bars were intact, and there was nowhere inside the restroom to hide a person.

Yet he was simply gone.

"Principal Zhang, call the police! We have to call the police!"

Liu Zhipeng was truly anxious. Liu Zunfu was a student in his class, and they still had not found him after all this searching. He had already insisted on calling the police many times.

But Principal Zhang did not want to call the police. He maintained that this ill-behaved student had somehow evaded the cameras in the early hours wearing nothing but underwear and slippers, avoided the security guards, climbed over the school's high walls, and then run away from school.

Zhang Ya stood up, tugged at the suit trousers stretched tight by his belly, straightened his jacket hem, and rested a hand on Liu Zhipeng's shoulder. In an earnest tone tinged with sorrow, he said:

"Liu... you know how high school students are. They're always getting into mischief. You've seen the footage yourself. No one went in besides him. What could there be in the restroom? What could have happened to him?

"He just found some way to sneak out, that's all. He'll be back in a couple of days once his pockets are empty. When he comes back, we'll calm his parents down, and that'll be the end of it."

"Wait two days?! A living person disappeared without his clothes on. Where could he go? Even if he really did run away, he could still be in danger. He could have been tricked or put up to it by someone! How could a student avoid that many cameras? We have to call the police!"

Liu Zhipeng was already panicking. No longer caring whether they were the principal or the director, he quickly stepped back, broke free of Zhang Ya's hand, and reached for the phone on the desk.

But before Liu Zhipeng could touch it, Director Yang, who stood closest to it, suddenly reached out and slapped the phone away.

Yang Desheng seemed astonishingly strong. The phone spun through the air like a flying disc and smashed against the wall, shattering with a crack. The screen separated from the casing, and black fragments scattered all over the floor.

"Oh dear, sorry, Mr. Liu. I didn't mean to do that. I'll get you a new phone another day."

Zhang Ya looked quite pleased at the phone smashed on the floor. He gave Yang Desheng a slight nod, then turned to Liu Zhipeng, who was stunned by the sudden turn of events.

"You... how could you... do this??"

Liu Zhipeng looked at the remains of his phone, then at the others in the room.

Not one of them spoke. The school administrators either lowered their heads or watched him with strange looks. Not one person helped Liu Zhipeng resist this insane act.

"Mr. Liu, I'll say this one more time. Calm down. Our school is at a critical juncture in its reforms, and I don't want personal matters like these affecting the bigger picture."

Zhang Ya also switched off the surveillance monitor, then turned back to Liu Zhipeng.

Liu Zhipeng felt as though he had gone mad. Looking at the administrators around him, he wondered whether he had crossed into some parallel universe. But a question also arose in his mind.

"What reforms?"

Liu Zhipeng looked at Zhang Ya's fat face and asked.

But instead of dodging the subject with bureaucratic platitudes as he had in the past, Zhang Ya gave him a blunt answer:

"None of your business."

Zhang Ya waved a hand, turned, and walked out of the monitoring room.

Only then did Liu Zhipeng belatedly realize the situation he was in. Seeing that things had taken a bad turn, the elderly dorm supervisor beside him immediately handed his own phone to Yang Desheng and stepped aside with an awkward smile.

He looked at the two vice principals who had already risen to their feet by the door, and at Yang Desheng and the others closing in. He knew it might already be too late to run.

"Why isn't our homeroom teacher here yet?"

"Yeah, isn't the first period his? He's usually here ages ago. And to think I didn't bring any snacks today."

"Where's our homeroom teacher?"

The bell for the 1:20 class had already rung. The first afternoon period was Chinese, taught by Liu Zhipeng, but he still had not arrived.

Some students were delighted, some were putting on an act, and some had started sleeping on their desks.

But Hu Zihao was not nearly so relaxed.

"Why hasn't our homeroom teacher come back yet? Did something really... happen to Liu Zunfu?"

He was very unsettled now. Besides what had happened to Liu Zunfu, Shi Yu's words had lodged deep in his mind. If Liu Zunfu really had met with disaster, that would confirm what Shi Yu had said, and he really would be in danger himself.

While Hu Zihao's thoughts were in turmoil, a female teacher pushed open the door and walked in.

"All right, quiet! Something came up for your homeroom teacher. I'll be covering his classes for the next two days."

The classroom soon fell silent, but several lively students were clearly about to raise their hands. Needless to say, they wanted to ask where their homeroom teacher had gone. Before anyone could ask, the female teacher tapped the lectern and continued.

"All right, I know you're curious about what happened to your homeroom teacher, but none of us knows the details. The director passed on a message saying he had an emergency back home. That's enough questions. Settle down. Let's start the lesson."

Hu Zihao's thoughts were in turmoil after hearing that. What on earth was going on? His roommate had vanished that morning, and now his homeroom teacher had suddenly left. Shi Yu had also told him those terrifying things. Who could he turn to for help now?

Hu Zihao felt helpless.

At that moment, diagonally behind him, Shi Yu was thinking about the same thing.

Where on earth had their homeroom teacher gone?

He had not told Hu Zihao much about himself that morning. It really did sound very... strange.

Shi Yu had very good luck.

Whenever he particularly hoped for something, as long as it fit his circumstances and the logic of his surroundings, it seemed able to come about naturally. But it did not work every time.

It was as though many coincidences happened around him. When it rained, he would happen to meet a classmate going the same way who had an umbrella. When he was thirsty but had no money for water, he would suddenly spot a one-yuan coin lying in a corner.

He could not control it very well, so he simply treated it as good luck.

But one day, on his way home from middle school, he saw a woman crying upstairs in a building.

Her sobs were anguished and chilling, as though her fear and grief had reached such a point that despair had seeped into her crying.

Shi Yu had been truly curious then, and he kept thinking:

"What happened to her? I really want to know."

Less than ten minutes after he began thinking this, an overwhelming panic inexplicably erupted within him, as though he had witnessed something horrifying firsthand. It was terror without any reason.

Shi Yu, who had still been walking, was so frightened that he did not dare move. On that road in the depths of winter, he broke into a cold sweat in an instant.

At that moment, he inexplicably felt that terror, and just as inexplicably knew:

"That woman is suffering unimaginable terror and pain."

His power had answered his desire to "know something," so, by sheer coincidence... he had felt it.

The next day, on his way to school, he saw police cars parked below the building. Long stretches of police tape cordoned off the entire entrance.

That woman was dead.

He heard that her body had been in a horrific state. And it was not just her; her entire family of three had died. Her husband and daughter had died before she did, and the whole apartment had been filled with scraps of flesh and internal organs.

But strangely, all the neighbors said they had heard no cries for help or screams. They had not even heard her crying that day. It was not until the following morning, when a neighbor went out and found blood seeping through the gap beneath the woman's door, along with a rotten stench, that the police were called.

From that day on, Shi Yu knew that perhaps he was not merely lucky.

He began trying to explore what was special about him. Eventually, he managed to work out a few patterns.

If he concentrated on accomplishing something small, and it did not clash with the circumstances, he had a certain chance of making it happen.

But it did not work consistently. When it came to things he wanted to understand, he seemed able to vaguely sense certain emotions. Yet aside from encountering deaths like that woman's, this ability was not very apparent either.

Then, a few days ago, he had begun sensing fear from Liu Zunfu again.

Only then had he started using lending him novels as a pretext to indirectly tell him things about evil entities and fear. But clearly, Liu Zunfu had merely thought Shi Yu was trying to scare him in advance when he borrowed horror novels, and had not taken it seriously.

And today, Liu Zunfu had disappeared. Danger emanated from Hu Zihao.

But what about their homeroom teacher?

Sitting in his seat, Shi Yu lowered his head slightly, closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and concentrated on what had happened to Liu Zhipeng.

But there was no response.

"At least he hasn't encountered that sort of thing."

Shi Yu breathed a sigh of relief, opened his eyes, and looked up at the blackboard.

But out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Han He was not staring blankly downward as usual. Instead, he was watching him intently.

"Shit."

Shi Yu felt a little creeped out. Keeping his voice low, he quietly asked Han He:

"What? Is there something on my face?"

Watching Shi Yu, Han He narrowed his eyes slightly. Rather than answering his question, he said something strange:

"What did you sense?"

"Huh?"

This was already the second time today that Shi Yu had responded to Han He with that question. But he was puzzled too.

How did Han He know what he was doing?

"What do you mean, what did I sense? I was just spacing out, wondering where our homeroom teacher went. I didn't sense anything."

Shi Yu laughed it off, but Han He behaved unlike his usual self. He frowned, seemingly puzzled by something, but said nothing more. He stopped staring at Shi Yu, lowered his head, and went back to zoning out.

A little while later, where Shi Yu could not see, Han He lightly penciled a faint question mark in the corner of a book.

A few words had already been written in that corner.

"Witch Sacrifice"-tenth art, "Daze"