Chapter 4: Forbidden Ground, Another Corpse Appears (3/4)

The next morning, Zheng Huiwen was waiting punctually downstairs from the dorm. Less than a minute later, Mu Ningxiang arrived, and after exchanging greetings, the two began their run. About twenty minutes later, both of them were sweating and panting heavily, and before they knew it, they had run to the back of an old warehouse near the foot of the mountain. Before their eyes was the entrance to a wooded hillside, with a rusty warning sign posted, reading "No Entry" in four characters.

Their pace gradually slowed, and Mu Ningxiang asked curiously, "Sis, what's going on here? Why isn't anyone allowed into a mountain entrance like this?"

"Oh, this," Zheng Huiwen recalled a rumor she'd heard not long after starting her freshman year, "apparently there was a murder here. Fifteen years ago, it should've been around 2005, someone died in there. Later, a group of students went into the woods to play and only discovered the body because of the stench of decay. It was a horrific sight—the body was half-rotted."

"Oh my god, who was it? Dying like that."

"Seems like it was Jiangzhu University's first president, what was his name... Ren Jiahua? This university is privately run, and it seems he was also the founder and first chairman of the board."

"Ren Jiahua? That name is indeed in the school's introduction. How did he die?"

"The investigation at the time concluded it was suicide, because the day after he went missing, the police found a suicide note in his own handwriting in the president's office."

"Why would he commit suicide?"

"No one knows, the police never announced a reason."

"Fifteen years and they still haven't found out why he killed himself?"

"Yeah, it's become sort of an unsolved case."

"What about his family then? His wife and kids? And his parents?"

"I don't know about his parents, but his wife died the same year he did, and his child's whereabouts are unknown—some say the child was kidnapped and sold, others say the child died without being found, just vanished into thin air."

"Oh my god, that's basically like his whole family was wiped out."

"Yeah, fifteen years ago I was only four, and I still saw this news on TV."

"So what's the current president's name?"

"Dong Lixin, ever heard of him?"

"Sounds a little familiar. Which president is he?"

"The second. After the first president died, he became president, and he's held the position for fifteen years now."

"One's surname is Ren, the other Dong—these two names don't sound like they'd be related by blood. Could they be cousins or something?"

"That, nobody knows."

Mu Ningxiang felt a bit troubled listening to this and didn't know what to say. She turned to look at the overgrown entrance to the woods, then suddenly said, eyes lighting up, "Sis, why don't we go in and take a look? Maybe we'll find something."

Zheng Huiwen smiled, "You're quite curious, aren't you. The man's been dead for fifteen years, what could we possibly find in there? Even if there was something, it would've rotted away by now, wouldn't it?"

"It's fine, we don't have class in a bit anyway, let's just go take a look."

"Alright, let's go then."

The two girls stepped forward, carefully skirting around the warning sign, whose rust patches were so thick in places they must've been nearly a centimeter deep. They stepped into the entrance of the woods, dodging branches and thorns that reached out into the path, and soon found themselves deep inside. What caught their eyes were several clusters of tea bushes, the autumn tea already sprouting tender green tips, looking like a small tea garden. Zheng Huiwen looked carefully around and kept feeling that the place didn't look so wild after all, since there were traces in many spots that people had been there before, though not very clear. Mu Ningxiang was curiously pinching off tea leaf buds, bringing them up to her nose to smell.

Zheng Huiwen took out her phone to snap photos and asked, "Are you going to pick these to make tea when you get back?"

"Yeah, some people say autumn tea doesn't taste good, but I think it's not bad."

As Mu Ningxiang spoke, she searched for the larger tea leaves, when suddenly a foul stench hit her nose. She frowned and looked in the direction the smell was coming from—but the moment she looked, her face turned deathly pale, and she let out a terrified scream.

"Ahh—!"

Zheng Huiwen was startled, nearly dropping her phone, and asked in confusion, "What's wrong?"

"Sis," Mu Ningxiang stretched out a trembling hand, pointing in one direction, so frightened she could barely speak, "there... there's a dead person over there."

"What?" Zheng Huiwen walked over in disbelief, and the moment she looked, her face instantly turned white.

There, lying on the ground, was a corpse—swollen and blackened.