She Was Sentenced to Life Imprisonment [Unlimited] - Chapter 68

Chapter 68: The Studio (10)

◎She got caught?◎

“She got caught?”

Jiang Nan stood in a bathroom stall, looking down in thought at the veracity of their words.

Thanatos couldn’t have been caught for no reason. Based on Jiang Nan’s impression of her, if the other person didn’t want to be seen, no one would ever be able to see her. With such abilities, how could she be so easily caught?

Yang Yi took the walkie-talkie and said with concern.

“Yeah. Is she in any danger?”

Jiang Nan was silent for a moment, then said calmly.

“She’s fine.”

If Thanatos had been caught, it could only mean that someone else was about to have a bad time. She herself couldn’t possibly be in any danger.

But even knowing this, the hand holding the walkie-talkie still tightened.

All this time, whether it was Luo Ning or now Thanatos, she was the person who had been by Jiang Nan’s side the longest. That person had, like spring rain nourishing the land, quietly taken up a spot in her heart.

She didn’t want to admit it, but she had to. She was worried about Thanatos, even though her own situation on the sixth floor was the most dangerous.

After getting her emotions in check, Jiang Nan’s expression grew a little more serious. She brought the topic back and said in a deep voice.

“You should remember the girl saying that Fang Yuan’s body was never found, right?”

Hearing this, they looked at each other and also recalled what the girl had said at the time.

“But didn’t you and Su Yue say… that she was lying?” Lin Jia recalled, frowning.

They had now wasted one-third of their three days. The important NPC was likely this unfound Fang Yuan, so they had to find her as soon as possible.

A chill flashed in Jiang Nan’s eyes. Her voice seemed to be covered in a layer of frost.

“She was lying, but only half. Fang Yuan’s body is indeed unfound, because after Fang Yuan’s body was made into a statue, it was dismembered.”

Her tone showed no other emotion. She wasn’t even afraid when talking about it, making it seem like she was just talking about a normal, small matter.

Hearing this, they were all shocked. They had only thought that the body was hidden, but they never expected that it had been dismembered like this.

“How did you know that?” Yan Xin asked with a confused expression.

A rustling sound came from the bathroom stall. It was particularly chilling in the silent bathroom.

Jiang Nan looked up. Under the flickering light, a stiff, pale hand climbed onto the door of the stall. The fingernails scratched the door panel, making a harsh sound that filled one with dread.

Her gaze watched the twisted, severed hand climb toward her. Through the walkie-talkie, she spoke calmly.

“I saw it.”

The walkie-talkie let out a “shhh” sound in the next moment, along with the thud of a heavy object. After that, there was no response from the walkie-talkie, as if the connection had been cut.

They were immediately shocked. They said “hello” a few times but got no response. Their expressions all grew heavy.

The sudden silence seemed to foreshadow something.

“Something happened to her.”

Yang Yi suddenly stood up and was about to go out when she was stopped.

“You don’t even know where she is right now if you rush over,” Yan Xin told her to calm down first.

While they were still discussing what to do, they didn’t notice the girl looking at them sinisterly, a grim smile on her face.

Su Yue wasn’t participating in their discussion. Instead, she was observing from the side. She just happened to feel the girl’s gaze. When she looked over with a frown, the girl had already returned to normal and smiled shyly at her.

She pursed her lips, her expression unreadable. The glasses on her nose hid a flash of thought in her eyes.

Just as she was about to grab Lin Jia, they suddenly looked at the walkie-talkie.

“I’m fine.”

Jiang Nan’s voice sounded from the walkie-talkie again. The other person seemed to have choked on something and coughed a few times.

Upon hearing Jiang Nan’s voice, the others immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

“What just happened over there?” Yan Xin asked.

The severed hand in Jiang Nan’s hand was still struggling. The air was filled with black powder. It didn’t smell bad, but it was particularly choking in the air.

She raised her other hand to cover her mouth and nose. She glanced at the pitch-black palm of the severed hand, frowned, and said.

“Fang Yuan’s hand found its way over. I just happened to find it.”

She said it casually, but her hand had tightened slightly.

The severed hand seemed to have sensed Jiang Nan’s displeasure. Forced by the other person’s oppressive presence, it immediately stopped moving. It stiffened in Jiang Nan’s hand. If you only looked at the pale skin, it really did look like an ordinary hand from a statue.

When the others heard about the severed hand, they froze for a moment. In the end, Su Yue was the first to react. She said calmly.

“Can you tell what state it’s in right now?”

Jiang Nan didn’t care how dirty the hand was. She put the severed section in front of her eyes, looked at the rotting flesh and wriggling, milky-white maggots on it, and said.

“The cut isn’t clean. Either the person who dismembered her was an amateur, or that person was scared.”

As she spoke, her gaze gradually grew solemn.

After being made into a plaster statue, although the outer plaster layer could be easily smashed, the body inside, which hadn’t completely decomposed, required a tool to be dismembered.

Thinking of this, they also knew that Fang Yuan had suffered great humiliation even after her death, to the point that she didn’t even have a complete body.

And the person who dismembered and hid the body had thought that by dismembering Fang Yuan’s body, they would be safe. But they never expected that this would be the beginning of the entire school’s nightmare.

“Who did she offend? For someone to hate her so much?” Yan Xin said, frowning.

“It’s not hatred. It looks like they’re afraid of her,” Lin Jia pondered for a moment. She looked over at the people in the art studio and said again.

“Everyone here is afraid of one person, but I’m sorry. I already used my first chance when I entered the instance. I can’t see the accurate one on my second try.”

“Since you have a severed hand over there, does that mean we also need to find Fang Yuan’s other body parts?” Yang Yi said, pondering.

The others were all silent because they couldn’t be sure.

They could look, but there wasn’t much time left. If they went in the wrong direction, they would definitely be trapped in the instance in the end.

Yan Xin swore under her breath and said.

“Why can we only sneak out in the middle of the night? If that’s the case, we’ll all die before we can find a safe exit.”

This was obviously a negative thought, but the current situation made them have to admit it.

If they could only go out at night, then the only time they had left was tonight and tomorrow night.

This instance, with no hints, was a dead end.

In the next second, the walkie-talkie in their hands rang again, as if someone was tuning into their frequency.

They had thought it was another problem with Jiang Nan’s side, but the voice that came out was not Jiang Nan’s. It was a voice with a hint of a smile and a lazy tone, which instead eased the tense atmosphere from before.

“Hello, little Jiang Nan.”

It was Thanatos’s voice. Her already pleasant voice had a strange, enchanting meaning to it when she said Jiang Nan’s name.

The people who heard it: …

It was only then that they finally realized why Thanatos had suddenly run to the music building and given them another walkie-talkie. The other person had gone to find a third walkie-talkie to use.

Thinking of this, their expressions were more or less complicated. They felt a little guilty for having suspected Thanatos and Jiang Nan when they were alone outside the art studio before. But right now, they didn’t have time to think about this.

The other person was looking for Jiang Nan. Although the others could hear, it was not the right time for them to speak.

Jiang Nan’s eyes were slightly lowered, and her emotions were unreadable. The light that was no longer controlled by the severed hand began to flicker again, just like her mood.

Her heart was beating fast, but she didn’t know what this feeling was. She could only force herself to speak in a cold tone so that others wouldn’t notice her unusual state.

“Weren’t you caught and taken to the principal’s office?”

At this moment, someone in the office was sitting leisurely in the office chair. Their long legs were crossed. They slightly bent their index finger and gently tapped the white paper on the desk, creating a dull sound that was particularly intimidating in the quiet office.

Although she was wearing a student’s school uniform, she looked more like a leader who had snuck in wearing a student’s school uniform to investigate.

This office was very spacious and bright, even more so than the dean’s office from before. On the walls were paintings that were meant to add an artistic atmosphere. Next to her were plaster heads that were usually used for sketching.

Thanatos chuckled softly, sounding nonchalant as if she wasn’t worried about dying.

“I was caught, but there’s no one here. There should be no teachers on your side either.”

What she said wasn’t a question, but a statement of certainty.

Hearing this, Jiang Nan walked out of the bathroom stall and headed toward the classroom. The sixth floor, which had few people to begin with, was even quieter.

Hearing Thanatos’s words, the people on the first floor were stunned for a moment. They immediately stood up to check for the teacher’s whereabouts, but no matter how they looked, they couldn’t find the teacher.

Jiang Nan had already walked to the classroom entrance and glanced at the empty classroom.

There were only two dazed students sitting in the classroom. There was no sign of a teacher.

“There aren’t any,” Jiang Nan said.

“There aren’t any on our side either,” Yang Yi said now, holding the walkie-talkie.

There were no teachers. It seemed that ever since Teacher Liu had taken Jiang Nan and the other two students up, he had never come back down.

“That’s strange. Where did they go?” Lin Jia asked, puzzled.

Thanatos looked out the window. The clear and boundless sky was the color of bl00d in her eyes. It was bizarre and terrifying. She slowly spoke, her voice as calm as if she were stating a fact.

“They went to jump off the building.”

The art studio, with no one to watch it, had them immediately run out. Even Jiang Nan had walked out into the hallway.

When they went out, they saw a perfectly straight line of people standing on the rooftop of the academic building.

Their expressions were pained, but it was as if someone was holding them down, making them unable to leave the edge. Half of their feet were already out. They looked like they were in a precarious situation.

As if it were a deliberate warning, the moment they saw them, everyone’s bodies uncontrollably tilted forward. One by one, they fell like hotpot ingredients.

There were no screams, only the dull thuds of heavy objects hitting the ground.

In the next moment, they imagined what a tragic state the other side, which was separated by a wall, must be in now.

It was also at this moment that they realized how terrifying it was when an important NPC went out of control.

The floor where Jiang Nan was on was high. She could see the tragic state of the bodies clearly. She pursed her lips and didn’t say anything.

On the other side, Thanatos was watching the figures falling from the window, but there was no change in her expression.

A sound suddenly came from the transparent display case, attracting her attention. She smirked and said.

“There’s a statue here that looks a little strange, but I don’t know who it is. Do you want to take a look?”

Faced with Thanatos’s words, they looked at each other. They naturally understood that they had to make a last-ditch effort.

It was impossible for someone like Thanatos to bring this up for no reason. The most convincing reason was that there had to be a problem.

Lin Jia, who had drawn statues before, was more familiar with them. She immediately took the walkie-talkie and asked cautiously.

“Could you describe what it looks like, please?”

Thanatos genuinely didn’t know. She looked up, frowned, and said with a hint of disgust.

“It looks a little like a beggar.”

Lin Jia was silent. In the end, she said.

“I’ll go over and take a look.”

“Alright.” Thanatos said. The others didn’t know it, but she had originally planned to just take down the statue that didn’t belong.

They had judged that even if there was no sign of Fang Yuan’s body on the field where the statues were placed, there should be some clues. But unfortunately, there were too many statues. In order to save time, they had to have Lin Jia go to Thanatos’s side alone.

After they had just finished discussing, they remembered that Jiang Nan was still by herself.

Hearing the silence from the walkie-talkie, Jiang Nan seemed to have known what they were thinking. She said calmly.

“You don’t need to come over to my side.”

She couldn’t be sure if her side was dangerous and wasn’t planning on letting others risk it with her.

After she finished speaking, she casually put the severed hand into the transparent display case. After making sure it was being docile, she locked it.

“Little Jiang Nan, be careful,” Thanatos said.

Although they were separated by the walkie-talkie, it was as if mountains and seas couldn’t stop them.

“Got it,” Jiang Nan said.

They were smart enough to change the walkie-talkie’s frequency and didn’t listen anymore.