She narrowed her eyes, all sorts of chaotic thoughts tangling in her mind.
Just then, Shi Hui and the other students came up beside Jiang Jinran without her noticing when.
"Students from Imperial Star Academy, move closer together. We're about to take the picture."
The teacher holding the camera waved his arm, calling out to the group.
Jiang Jinran blinked.
So they were taking a group photo...
But-
Weren't these people crowding her a little too much?
At that moment, Jiang Jinran stood in the camera's "center position." The people beside her kept pressing against her, as though trying to squeeze her out of the center.
Without warning-
Shi Hui quietly reached out from behind and shoved Jiang Jinran's shoulder!
Jiang Jinran instantly lost her balance!
She pitched forward, falling out of the "center position," while Shi Hui swiftly took her original spot.
Thud.
Jiang Jinran stumbled forward a few steps before landing on her backside.
Her bottom landed squarely on that metal switch!
Almost before anyone could blink, the entire venue plunged into total darkness.
All the lights went out.
For a moment, screams of every pitch flooded Jiang Jinran's ears.
The scene descended into chaos.
Jiang Jinran couldn't help covering her ears.
At the same time, she was watching for any unusual movements around her.
Now that the lights were out, the situation was exactly what that mysterious person had wanted.
Then, would he show himself now?
She hadn't expected Shi Hui's sudden shove to let her complete the "task" on the metal plate through such a strange twist of fate.
In fact, this master lighting switch required a great deal of force to press.
An ordinary press wouldn't have any effect at all.
It was easy to imagine just how hard Jiang Jinran had fallen...
The screams around her continued, the jumble of voices making her eardrums ache even more.
About a minute later, the lights throughout the venue came back on.
The entire venue was still in chaos.
Many of the students onstage had collapsed onto the floor, fear lingering on their faces. Some had even been frightened to tears.
The audience was still badly shaken as well.
The calmest person in the entire venue was probably Jiang Jinran alone-
Along with Jiang Chuji, who was currently resting his chin on his hand in thought.
"Where did Professor Li go?"
At the judges' table, an elderly woman widened her eyes and cried out in horror.
Only that startled cry made everyone notice-
An old man at the judges' table had inexplicably vanished during that brief period of darkness.
The Hope Cup ended in a hasty scramble just like that. All the students were sent out of the venue and told to hurry home.
After all, now that a living person had suddenly disappeared, the Central Theater was unsafe in every sense of the word.
Jiang Jinran boarded the bus with her classmates. The others seemed yet to recover from their fear, either calling their parents to tearfully recount what had happened or doing the same to the companions beside them. The scene was utter chaos.
Jiang Jinran rested her chin on her hand, gazing idly at the streets beyond the bus window.
Only she knew that Professor Li's disappearance might have something to do with that mysterious person.
Was this his goal?
To take Professor Li away while the entire venue was dark?
The bus would drop every student off at their doorstep. It was the weekend anyway, so there was no need to return to school.
Jiang Jinran didn't want everyone to know exactly where she lived.
So, when she saw the bus reach an intersection not too far from home, she called for the driver to stop.
The driver asked in confusion, "Aren't you going home? Why stop at the intersection?"
Jiang Jinran answered truthfully, "My house is nearby. I can walk home from here."
The driver frowned. "That's such a hassle. Why don't I just take you right to your door...?"
Jiang Jinran waved her hand, smiling brightly. "It's no hassle. No hassle at all."
"Her house is probably too shabby to let anyone see."
Behind her, a classmate made that cutting remark.
"Aw, how pitiful. She doesn't even dare let anyone know where she lives."
"Jiang Jinran, we won't look down on you. Come on, let us see just how shabby your house is..."
Jiang Jinran ignored them and simply asked the driver to stop at the intersection as soon as possible.
The bus stopped, and Jiang Jinran got off.
She walked along the sidewalk toward home, lost in thought.
All her thoughts were on that mysterious person now.
She wondered whether there had been any developments in Professor Li's disappearance.
She took her phone from her pocket and opened Weibo-
Sure enough, the Hope Cup, the Central Theater, and Professor Li occupied the top three spots on Weibo's trending searches. Their popularity had already exploded.
She tapped into those trending searches, but there was no useful information, only empty discussions among random netizens.
[I might get flamed for saying this, but I still want to say it. That was close. Thank goodness nothing happened to our Chuji.]
[Professor Li is an honorary professor at the Imperial Capital Film Academy... how could something like this happen?]
[Does anyone know why all the lights at the Central Theater suddenly went out?]
[No idea. All the lights just suddenly went out. It was incredibly sudden.]
[Maybe there was a wiring fault.]
[This whole thing feels so eerie. I've got goosebumps.]
Reading this, Jiang Jinran unconsciously pressed her lips together.
So most people didn't know that her heavy fall had knocked the lights out?
But on further thought, most people probably wouldn't have guessed that the metal switch at the very front of center stage was actually a light switch. An ordinary person would only have thought it was a button for some kind of emergency escape device.
In fact, if not for the mysterious person's "instructions" on the metal plate, Jiang Jinran wouldn't have connected that switch to the lights either.
Thinking of it that way, it was perfectly normal that no one could guess how the lights had gone out.
Jiang Jinran swiped her phone screen and continued reading.
[This year's Hope Cup was especially cursed to begin with. So many bizarre things happened.]
[My Xiao Shu had already won her award in style. It should have been a perfect ending, but then this happened.]
[I hope this doesn't affect the students' spirits or leave them with psychological scars.]
[The students had it rough, the audience had it rough, and so did the judges.]
[I hope the truth comes to light soon.]
Jiang Jinran turned off her phone screen, no longer in the mood to keep reading.
When she got home, there was no one in the entire villa apart from the servants.
Jiang Yuehan clearly hadn't come home.
Actually, before she left that morning, Jiang Yuehan had known she was going to participate in the Hope Cup and had offered her some words of encouragement.
But he was busy too. He had unavoidable business to handle that day, so he couldn't watch the competition in person.
Jiang Jinran put her backpack on the table and walked into the dining room, intending to get a drink of water, when suddenly-
The phone in her pocket rang.