Ex-Girlfriend – Chapter 18

by Little Panda

Breaking the Cage

Escape 18

Legal Hunting

Shen Shuiyan was serious; she had to help the Little Tiger vent this frustration.

Simply giving Zou Yunfei a beating felt far too lenient.

Matters she previously paid little mind to had now become things she cared about intensely.

Although the Little Tiger might not be the original Xin Lan, there was no doubt she wanted to avenge that ‘Xin Lan.’ Otherwise, she wouldn’t have beaten Zou Yunfei.

Since the Little Tiger wanted to do it, she would naturally help.

She did not feel wronged in the slightest. To put it nicely, she knew how to handle people and situations well; to put it harshly, she was worldly. In any case, she was used to this sort of thing.

Xin Lan was caught off guard, and her first reaction was actually how cold Shen Shuiyan’s hands were.

“Your hands are freezing.”

“That’s how it is in winter. After all, my hands were just outside.”

“Hey, don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not changing the subject.”

“Anyway, I’ll just go over during the discussion time. I’ll act as a spy within a spy.”

A double agent within a double agent scheme.

“Alright,” Xin Lan agreed.

Shen Shuiyan, of course, could not go “defect” right now. She sat in her seat, dividing her attention to listen to the class while mapping out her plan in her head.

Beside them, Xu Deng listened in utter confusion, unable to make heads or tails of the riddles Xin Lan and Shen Shuiyan were trading, but she was tactful enough not to ask.

By lunchtime, the crowd in the school cafeteria had thinned out significantly.

Everyone was in a hurry. Even though it was not hunting time, a tense, volatile atmosphere seemed to permeate the air.

Xin Lan and Xu Deng returned to the dormitory together. Xu Deng noticed Xin Lan’s expressionless face, so she did not ask why Shen Shuiyan was not with them.

In the small woods not far from the school cafeteria, Zou Yunfei leaned against a tree trunk.

“Yunfei, what are we waiting here for?” Chu Lu asked in confusion, and Zhou Zhou was equally bewildered.

“Shen Shuiyan told me to wait for her here.” Zou Yunfei’s expression was complicated, and he could not quite describe how he felt.

As they were preparing to leave the classroom, he had locked eyes with Shen Shuiyan, and she had mouthed something to him.

“Didn’t that chick join that other person’s team? Why is she asking to meet you?” Chu Lu glared, looking like he wanted to curse.

“Watch your mouth,” Zou Yunfei snapped, glaring at him. Chu Lu twitched his lips but held his tongue.

Zou Yunfei’s feelings toward Shen Shuiyan were highly complex. She was the goddess he had never managed to win over. When they were in the same team, he had treated her as one of his own, willing to pamper and protect her. He never expected Shen Shuiyan to leave without a word, resulting in him getting a harsh lesson from Xin Lan.

He felt both betrayed and humiliated, and the injuries on his body still bore testament to how brutal that day had been.

Yet, when Shen Shuiyan said she wanted to meet him, he still came.

For one, he wanted to know why Shen Shuiyan had arranged to meet him, and secondly, he wanted to know why she had switched teams without saying anything.

Shen Shuiyan walked over, quickening her pace as she drew near.

Before Zou Yunfei could speak, she beat him to it. “I memorized a few of Xin Lan’s drawings. I managed to sketch this one when she wasn’t paying attention. There are others, but I was afraid of being caught, so I only drew one. Keep it safe.”

Shen Shuiyan pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and shoved it into Zou Yunfei’s hand.

Zou Yunfei’s words were cut off, leaving him somewhat stunned. “Shuiyan, you…?”

“It’s a long story, so I’ll keep it short. I told Xin Lan I was going back to the teaching building to grab something. That night, Xin Lan originally wanted to steal my things. I couldn’t fight her off at all—who knew she’d have so much strength? Then she asked if I wanted to be her teammate. I told her I already had teammates, that you guys were my teammates. But Zou Yunfei, you and her… She just left a sentence saying she was going to find you, and then she walked off. I didn’t have any chance to contact you yesterday. Today during the discussion, I deliberately memorized two of them and sketched one for you.”

Shen Shuiyan spoke rapidly, casting frequent glances toward the edge of the small woods, her expression filled with slight panic.

She did her best to avoid saying the word “fragment” to prevent being muted.

Zou Yunfei and the other two were dazed by her words. A few seconds later, Zou Yunfei figured it out and grinned.

The movement of his smile was too wide, pulling at the wound near his mouth and making him grimace in pain.

“I knew it! How could you possibly switch to another team for no reason? So she threatened you. But why did she ask if you wanted to be her teammate?”

The weight in Zou Yunfei’s heart lifted. Feeling quite embarrassed for having falsely suspected Shen Shuiyan earlier, he thought to himself that Shen Shuiyan could never be the type of person to suddenly betray them.

“I have a bit of history with her. Our relationship isn’t bad.”

“So that’s how it is.”

“By the way, how did you get those injuries on your face? Is the infighting among the guys really that brutal? Yesterday on the girls’ side, everyone was robbing each other too. It was terrifying. Xin Lan told me she was the one who beat you up, but how is that possible? Even if she’s strong for a girl, there’s no way she could beat someone up to this extent, right?”

Shen Shuiyan managed to force out a few tears, making her slightly pale face look even more delicate and moving.

Zou Yunfei’s face contorted slightly, and he sullenly went along with it, his face dark.

He couldn’t very well admit to the girl he liked that his injuries were indeed caused by a girl—and his ex-girlfriend at that. Did he have no dignity left?

“I can’t talk anymore. I have to go before she gets suspicious. If there’s a chance, let’s meet tonight during hunting time.”

“Wait, since you’re already here, why don’t you just stay with us?”

“I’m a girl. You can’t expect me to live in the boys’ dormitory, right? Besides, with me on her side right now, I can still help you guys out and look for a chance to get those things.”

Shen Shuiyan spoke helplessly, and a wave of warmth washed over Zou Yunfei’s heart.

“You’re still the one who thinks things through.”

“Only one team can survive, and it will definitely be us!” Shen Shuiyan finished with an encouraging word and hurriedly turned to leave.

As she turned, a sinister smile played on the corners of her lips.

Indeed, only one team could survive, but it would definitely be her and the Little Tiger’s team.

“Yunfei, could there be something fishy about this?” Zhou Zhou was slightly worried. Could things really be this good? She had gone to another team yet was still looking out for theirs?

“You’re always so paranoid. If you don’t believe it, then forget it.”

The smile on Zou Yunfei’s face faded slightly. They claimed to be brothers, yet when Xin Lan had attacked him that day, Zhou Zhou hadn’t helped at all. Now that Shen Shuiyan had come to help him, Zhou Zhou actually dared to suspect her.

Xin Lan was simply a freak. How could a delicate girl like Shen Shuiyan possibly be her match? It was a good thing they had a bit of history, otherwise there was no telling what would have happened to Shen Shuiyan by now.

Recalling the way Shen Shuiyan had looked at him before leaving, he knew she wasn’t without feelings for him. That was why she was so reluctant to stay in the other team, even if she had no choice.

Girls, after all, could never do without relying on guys in this kind of environment.

Xin Lan, let’s see how much longer she could remain so smug!

“Ah, I forgot to ask Shen Shuiyan how many of those things Xin Lan has over there,” Chu Lu said with some annoyance. Like Zou Yunfei, he also believed her completely.

He had long known that Zou Yunfei liked Shen Shuiyan, and what benefit would there be for her to lie to them anyway?

“In this current situation, it’s a dog-eat-dog game. Xin Lan is so powerful. If Shen Shuiyan were following her willingly, she’d want nothing more than to snatch our things and escape. Why would she bother acting here? Clearly, she just can’t let go of Zou Yunfei.”

Pulled along by Chu Lu’s barrage of reasoning, the suspicion in Zhou Zhou’s heart dissipated as well.

Zou Yunfei felt deeply comforted listening from the side, convinced that this was exactly how things were.

After returning, Shen Shuiyan briefly summarized the matter in a couple of sentences.

“They believed you?” Xin Lan was not particularly surprised either. No matter how clever someone was, they were easily misled by preconceived notions. Furthermore, people always viewed those they liked through a filter. If Shen Shuiyan acted weak in front of Zou Yunfei, his male ego would probably inflate instantly, making him want to protect her at all costs.

“I told you it wouldn’t be much trouble. See? I was barely gone. Besides, what I gave them was fake anyway. Let them enjoy their happiness for now.”

Shen Shuiyan nodded, not feeling the slightest bit of guilt for scheming against them.

Xu Deng remained silent on the side, feeling as though she had just overheard some massive conspiracy.

Well, she would just pretend she hadn’t heard a thing.

For the time being, there were only three people in the dormitory. Xiao Chun had not returned, and no one knew where she had gone.

The three girls in the dormitory did not care either; after all, she was not on their team.

“That thing should have been taken care of by now, right?” Shen Shuiyan thought of the corpse in the wardrobe. She felt like she could still smell that foul odor, and it was incredibly strong. She did not know if it was just the lingering scent and her mind playing tricks on her, or if the corpse was actually still there.

“We’ll know once we look.”

Xin Lan pulled open the wardrobe. Inside was nothing but a pile of blood-stained clothes.

“Was it cleared away? But where could it have been thrown?” Shen Shuiyan recalled the conversation between Xin Lan and Xiao Chun this morning, but the corpse’s destination remained baffling.

So many people had gone missing from the class, yet where were their bodies?

“Perhaps they simply vanished.”

“Just like how the rules handle it—as long as it’s a corpse, it gets recycled by the game?”

Shen Shuiyan thought back to those two bizarre ghosts who had been singing nursery rhymes. Perhaps even in death, the corpses had to be recycled and put to use?

Listening from the side, Xu Deng felt her skin crawl. Based on what they were saying, there had been a corpse in this room last night. She had originally been heading toward the bed directly above this wardrobe; no wonder Xin Lan had stopped her.

Her observations had not been that thorough, but come to think of it, someone had jumped from the building last night, and that body also seemed to have vanished by this morning.

“What about what we saw that day—was what that person said actually true or false?”

They were talking about things unrelated to clue fragments or the way out, so they wouldn’t be muted. Since they were all on the same team now, Shen Shuiyan did not hold back in front of Xu Deng. She believed Xu Deng was someone who knew how to read the room and was highly unlikely to betray them under these circumstances.

“Who knows? Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s false.”

In that punishment game, the Human Skin Ghost had initially mentioned that there were far more people participating in this four-hundred-person game than just them.

Whether it was true or false did not really matter. Xin Lan was certain they could get out of here. After all, in the original plotline, Zou Yunfei had successfully led Shen Shuiyan out.

The atmosphere fell silent; no one spoke.

Suddenly, Shen Shuiyan felt a warmth on her hand. She looked down at the fair, slender hand resting over hers.

“Look at you. Your hands are so cold, yet you don’t even know to put them in your pockets?” Xin Lan grumbled, but her hand was suddenly gripped tightly.

The author has something to say:

Top Student: My fingers are cold.

Lan-jie: Let me warm them up for you.

Top Student: Then can I put two fingers inside today?

Lan-jie: ???

Today, the top student is also incredibly saucy. Lan-jie can’t keep up with her driving speed at all, hahahaha.