Chapter 24: The Killer Is...

Wang Hu’s face drained of color. He staggered back several steps and shouted, “Zhu Kai, you actually killed someone again!”

Hu Xiaotian said tensely, “Xiaofan, maybe you should leave first. Zhu Kai’s target is the two of you.”

Zhang Xiaofan shook his head. Under everyone’s gaze, he walked forward slowly. “Zhu Kai, I never thought you were hiding this deeply.”

Zhu Kai frowned. Then spiritual force surged through his hand, and he said coldly, “Zhang Xiaofan, you really are arrogant. I’ll give you one chance—serve me. How about it?”

“And be killed by you in the end?” Zhang Xiaofan said.

“Hmph. You won’t cry until you see the coffin.” With that, Zhu Kai suddenly hurled a fist at Zhang Xiaofan.

Exclamations rose all around the classroom. Everyone seemed to have already seen Zhang Xiaofan sent flying by the blow, torn apart before their eyes.

What shocked them even more was that Zhang Xiaofan did not dodge. He did not even make a defensive move.

Whoosh...

The fist wind brushed across Zhang Xiaofan’s cheek and lifted his hair. The room fell utterly silent; one could hear a pin drop.

What was going on?

Zhu Kai had actually stopped attacking all of a sudden.

“Just as I thought.” A look of triumph surfaced on Zhang Xiaofan’s face.

“Why didn’t you dodge?” Zhu Kai asked coldly.

“Simple. Because you’ve already killed one person.” Zhang Xiaofan pointed at the corpse of Wang Hu’s subordinate who had been killed earlier. “The killer can only kill one person a day. If he kills another, he will suffer the penalty of death.”

When he finished, Zhang Xiaofan stepped back several paces. Holding his phone, he said coldly, “Zhu Kai, you’re finished.”

At that moment, Zhang Xiaofan had already sent a private message to Bao Lei, with the name Zhu Kai entered. With a light tap, he sent it off at once.

Zhu Kai did not even have time to stop him.

Everyone was stunned. Lin Rou screamed, “Xiaofan, have you lost your mind? What if you were wrong?”

Su Qianqian was in tears. She cried out, “Xiaofan, how could you be so impulsive? If you die, what am I supposed to do?”

But then Zhu Kai stepped back two paces and suddenly burst into laughter. “Zhang Xiaofan, you got it wrong, you got it wrong! I’m not the Grim Reaper, hahahaha...”

Looking at Zhu Kai’s desperate struggle, Zhang Xiaofan shook his head and said:

“Let me reconstruct the whole sequence of events. From the very beginning, we fell into a misunderstanding. We thought that Ma Biao and the student from the first-year class were killed by the killer. But in fact, the people truly killed by the killer were Chen Delong, Xu Hong, yesterday’s Zhu Liwen, and of course, the person who just died today.”

Zhang Xiaofan pointed at the corpse not far away. It was the person Zhu Kai had killed earlier.

The classmates were all shocked.

“How is that possible? Those people were all killed by Zhu Kai.”

“Hearing Xiaofan put it that way, Zhu Kai really does seem to kill one person every day.”

“Didn’t he fight with Senior Han Fei yesterday?”

“Idiot, didn’t Han Fei end up not dying?”

Zhu Kai roared, “Zhang Xiaofan, then how do you explain Ma Biao’s death?”

“Heh, that’s even simpler.” Zhang Xiaofan took out the phone of the student from the first-year class and said, “This phone belongs to the student who died from that first-year class. I used to think, just like Ma Biao’s death, that he was also killed by the killer, because their deaths were too strange. They both died suddenly.”

“But!” Zhang Xiaofan unlocked the phone and opened WeChat. “After seeing this message, I knew how they died.”

“Look. On the phone’s WeChat, there is a message sent by the deceased to Bao Lei. At that time, when Zhu Kai was hunting down Xu Hong, many of us thought Xu Hong was the killer, so this person sent Xu Hong’s name. But he never expected that Xu Hong was not the killer, so he died. In other words, he died at the hands of the red-envelope group.”

Hu Xiaotian murmured, “I get it. Ma Biao was the same. He sent Bao Lei the killer’s name, but the name was wrong, so he died.”

“In other words, Ma Biao and that first-year boy both died at the hands of the red-envelope group, not because of the killer.” Wang Hu said in shock.

“But wasn’t there also Cai Ming? He died in the dormitory yesterday, too. Was that because he sent a message and was killed by the red-envelope group as well?” someone asked in confusion.

“Wrong. Cai Ming was killed by Zhu Kai. The reason is very simple: before this, the deaths of Ma Biao and the first-year student led us into a misunderstanding, so Zhu Kai, in order to continue that misunderstanding, poisoned Cai Ming to death. Since he only poisoned him and let him die that way, it does not count as Zhu Kai personally killing someone, so it does not count as a violation.” Zhang Xiaofan said.

Zhu Kai poisoning him was only Zhang Xiaofan’s inference, but given the circumstances, Cai Ming suddenly returned to the dormitory for no reason; someone must have sent him there. And the only person with enough weight to make Cai Ming obey like that was Zhu Kai!

Zhu Kai’s expression twisted. He bellowed at Zhang Xiaofan, “All of this is your guesswork, all of it...”

“Stop making excuses. I’ve already sent your name to Bao Lei. What awaits you is the punishment of failure!”

Zhang Xiaofan drew a deep breath. Fortunately, this time he had listed every dead person on a sheet of paper and found the pattern among them; otherwise, he would never have imagined that the killer was Zhu Kai.

It had to be said that Zhu Kai had hidden himself extremely well. In the eyes of the students, a killer murdered in secret, but Zhu Kai did the opposite. Using the pretext of controlling the class, he attacked and killed Wang Hu’s people, and yet he killed only one person each day.

Under everyone’s eyes, no one would ever have imagined that the killer was murdering people right in front of them.

“Fine, fine. I really regret it. If I had known, I shouldn’t have killed that brat first. I should have killed you directly,” Zhu Kai roared, and suddenly the spiritual force within him began to drain away.

“You’re strong. It’s just a pity you met me,” Zhang Xiaofan said.

“Haha, how arrogant...” Zhu Kai’s expression turned ferocious. Suddenly he shouted, “Even if I die, I’ll drag you down with me...”

As he spoke, something like a vortex actually rose in his eyes, and then he rushed toward Zhang Xiaofan.

Ding!

Bao Lei: Zhang Xiaofan has found the killer Zhu Kai. Mission successful. Reward: a red envelope worth fifty thousand. Zhu Kai’s mission failed. Erase him!

Zhu Kai was struck as if by lightning. The spiritual force within him began to drain away. His whole body collapsed to the floor with a thud. “Zhang Xiaofan, you’re ruthless. I never thought I’d end up dying in your hands. I refuse to accept this...”

He howled, blood seeping from every pore in his body. His eyes were opened to an abnormal degree, bulging almost out of their sockets, making him look incomparably hideous.

“Zhu Kai, can you tell me what kind of constitution you obtained?” Zhang Xiaofan asked.

“Ghost... eye...” Zhu Kai managed those final words before drawing his last breath.

“Ghost eye?” Zhang Xiaofan sank back into his seat. His own right eye seemed to be a ghost eye as well.

“Yes! We finally dealt with the killer!” a classmate cried out in excitement at last.

“It’s all thanks to Xiaofan. He saved every one of us,” Lin Rou said admiringly.

“That’s right. From now on, Xiaofan is our boss, the boss of our class.”

The classmates crowded around Zhang Xiaofan, throwing his thoughts into disarray. He shook his head. His objective had been achieved for the time being. At the very least, in this class, he had already proved that he was stronger than Wang Hu and Song Feng.

“Enough. This is only a temporary victory.” Zhang Xiaofan cut off everyone’s excitement and said, “We got through this game this time, but don’t forget how many people died. So the most urgent task now is to find a way to break this red-envelope group.”