Chapter 146: Sakurako?

The scene unfolding before us was highly erotic and stimulating. Huang Xue had already covered her eyes. To find clues, I forced myself to endure the physical "discomfort" and kept watching. "Holy crap! Is this the martial world's long-lost Butterfly and Swallow Fluttering Style?"

The Underworld Live Show Phone faithfully broadcasted everything, and popularity in the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room broke the eight-thousand mark for the first time.

"Yahoo! Late-night fan service!"

'Sexy Not Slutty' tipped the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room 99 Underworld Coins: "A streamer with a conscience!"

"The veteran driver is setting off!"

"Spreading Wings in the Wind, Beauty Gazing at the Moon, Overturning the Rivers and Seas, Old Tree Coiling Roots, Immortal Maiden Plucking the Lotus! These two cycled through five different positions in barely ten minutes!"

"The guy above has a way with words. Master of lust and debauchery from all four corners, dare I ask who you are?"

"I am the lone flower of Dongguan, nicknamed Li Wanji!"

"Dealing with ten thousand affairs a day! An honor to meet you!"

The chat in the live broadcast room had already exploded. The broad-minded livestream viewers chanted the slogan for a conscientious streamer and spammed their tips.

This should have been a pleasant moment, but I didn't feel the slightest bit of joy. Beside me, Huang Xue seemed to be reaching the absolute limit of her endurance, and I was terrified she might do something impulsive.

"Shameless!" Although Huang Xue had her eyes covered, every single sound the female teacher made drilled clearly into her ears.

Her face burned and she gritted her teeth. Staying in this room for even one more second was pure torture for her.

After another ten minutes or so, the old man put his coat back on and reluctantly dragged himself away from the female teacher. "Teacher Wen, how about next time we..."

"Deal with Guo Junjie's matter first. Whenever I look at that kid, he's just an eyesore."

"You two are family, at any rate. If we just leave things alone like this, something disastrous might happen."

"What? Are you scared?" The woman pinched the flab on the old man's face and squeezed hard, but he merely wore a look of intense enjoyment.

"I'm the principal. Of course I have the final say here. Isn't it just driving him to suicide? No problem! I guarantee it will be flawless."

The fat-headed, big-eared old man tried to lean in close, but Teacher Wen planted a foot firmly against his chest. "If we stay here too long, someone will see us. Once the job is done, we'll have plenty of opportunities."

"But right now, I just..."

The sexy, tall woman impatiently waved the Buddha Head Pendant in her hand. The old man's expression shifted, and he retreated to the doorway with an obsequious smile.

The moment he stepped out the door, it was as if he became a completely different person. He slapped on a stern, stuffy expression and roared at the passing students, "Get the hell back to class!"

Inside the room, Teacher Wen seemed completely accustomed to this routine. She dressed herself at a leisurely pace, stuffed a black-cloth-wrapped document she carried with her into a drawer, and strolled out of the office.

With that, the thrilling spectacle came to a close. I stepped out from the inner room, cracked the door open, and peeked out into the hallway. It was completely silent and empty.

"The most venomous thing is a woman's heart. No wonder the school administration never stepped in to stop such horrific bullying. It turns out their plan from the very beginning was to drive Guo Junjie to his death."

I pulled open the drawer of Teacher Wen's desk and retrieved the black package she had just stashed away.

Peeling back the black cloth, I found a long-term life insurance policy inside. The insured party was Guo Junjie, and the beneficiary column held two names—Guo Zhiming and Zhang Wen.

"They drove Guo Junjie to suicide just for insurance fraud? As far as I know, suicide shouldn't be covered."

"For long-term life insurance, even in the case of suicide, partial compensation is paid out after two years." I didn't know when, but Huang Xue had walked up beside me.

"How do you know that? Did the esteemed second daughter of the Huang Family used to sell insurance?"

Huang Xue stared at the familiar terms of the insurance policy, her expression dimming. "I've been sick for years, and just staying alive is torture. I originally thought about buying a policy like this and just ending it all, but Huang Boyuan found out. That was the first time he ever yelled at me."

"Suicide is the coldest, most irresponsible act there is. You suffer for a few seconds, but the people who stay alive bear the agony and guilt until the day they die." I placed the insurance policy back where it belonged and began to inspect the room.

This was where Teacher Wen and the principal held their secret rendezvous. It was flanked by empty laboratories, making it incredibly secluded, and very few people ever came here.

After knocking and tapping around the walls, I actually managed to find something.

A map of Huaxia hung on the wall beside the desk. Peeling the map back revealed a shallow, ten-centimeter alcove hollowed out of the wall, and inside sat a Double-Headed Buddha Statue.

The Buddha head possessed two faces, and two white candles were planted in front of it.

"Two-Faced Buddha?" Recalling the Double-Faced Buddha Pendant hanging around Teacher Wen's neck, I realized she must be a worshiper of the Two-Faced Buddha, just like Lu Xing.

"The Eight Characters Divine Fiends, Xinhu High School, the Two-Faced Buddha..." Slowly, I began piecing everything together.

For some unspeakable purpose, the Two-Faced Buddha needed to gather the Eight Characters Divine Fiends. Among them, the Primal Destiny Divine Fiends was Guo Junjie. According to lore, a person marked by the yuan chen Fate Pattern would invite danger and humiliation, fall into poverty and shamelessness, engage in debauchery, defy rules and propriety, and endure a lifetime of disasters and suffering.

Although the texts recorded it this way, such conclusions were based on the span of an entire lifetime. Guo Junjie was only seventeen years old; his Fate Pattern hadn't reached the point of immense deterioration. Under normal circumstances, it would only be showing its earliest symptoms right now.

But to fulfill his agenda, the Two-Faced Buddha had to artificially accelerate the process. He forced the tribulations in Guo Junjie's destiny to arrive early, driving him to death and ensuring he was consumed by resentment, all to prematurely ripen the Primal Destiny Divine Fiends.

The Buddha Head Pendant around Teacher Wen's neck was clear evidence. First, she ruined Guo Junjie's family, leaving him homeless. Then, using the old principal's connections, she dragged him into Xinhu High School and turned him into the school's absolute lowest underachiever, leaving him entirely at the mercy of bullies and tormentors.

To fulfill the Two-Faced Buddha's grand scheme, absolutely no one cared about how Guo Junjie felt. The boy became a profoundly tragic sacrifice.

"You could say the Two-Faced Buddha orchestrated Guo Junjie's tragedy single-handedly. This Nightmare is replaying his past... is this what the Primal Destiny Divine Fiends is trying to show me? He isn't a blood-soaked executioner, but a victim?"

After pondering for a moment, I found nothing else in the room, so I left alongside Huang Xue.

We re-entered the emergency stairwell, using the Underworld Live Show Phone for light. The shadowy figures of those monsters were nowhere to be seen in the corridor.

"They must have been drawn away by those twins. Let's take this chance to escape." Huang Xue's outlook was very optimistic; for the first time, I saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

"Watch our surroundings." I didn't have any better ideas at the moment. Even though I now understood the Primal Destiny Divine Fiends' intent, the Nightmare still wouldn't just vanish.

The journey downward was unnervingly smooth. Huang Xue and I didn't encounter a single student. However, when we passed the floor where Guo Junjie had been bullied, I spotted a rather lonely figure sitting on the windowsill.

Her legs dangled out the window, and her hands gripped the window frame.

"Hurry up! Why are you just standing there?" Huang Xue didn't dare press forward alone. Seeing me stop, she looked a little bewildered.

"Is that... Sakurako?" Gathering my courage, I stepped into the corridor and shined my phone's light over. The girl sitting on the windowsill was indeed Sakurako.

"Sakurako!" Seeing me, the girl gave a sweet smile. She hopped off the windowsill and walked toward me.

Perhaps I was just being overly paranoid, but seeing Sakurako flash such a sweet smile made me feel incredibly uneasy.

"Are you sure she's human? Didn't you just tell me that you're the only one I can trust in this Nightmare?" Huang Xue watched Sakurako warily, a profound fear hidden deep in her gaze.

"Her name is Sakurako. She's a girl with the ability to enter dreams." I reached out to pat Sakurako on the head, but she smoothly dodged my hand. I took careful mental note of her completely uncharacteristic behavior.

Outside of the Dream Realm, Sakurako placed a blind trust in me. She had never resisted or shied away from me patting her head.

But ever since we entered Huang Xue's dream, whether in the Shallow Dream Layer or right now, her behavior had been erratic. Not to mention that smile she just gave me.

From what I recalled, Sakurako always maintained a deadpan expression while dreaming. She never smiled.

'Was this really Sakurako?'

My expression tightened as I asked, "Sakurako, you didn't run into any danger, did you?"

"No."

"That's good." I let out a sigh of relief, grabbed Huang Xue's arm, and casually added, "We can't afford to get separated again. There are ghosts in this dream—a lot of them—and they're extremely dangerous."

Sakurako smiled sweetly and gave a gentle nod. "Mm."

The little girl's soft voice reached my ears. Even though it was just a single syllable, it was enough to prove one thing!

She was not Sakurako!