Reality Programming Association

Chapter 152 -63: Adventure in the Rain 3

Shi Zuozhou pointed at his own nose. “Me? I don’t look like a good guy? Doesn’t this face scream ‘standard sunny, cheerful boy’?”

Yu Xian stared at Wen Xiao. The kind bun head had absolutely no intention of compromising.

After a moment of stalemate, Yu Xian had no choice but to agree to let her tag along. Wen Xiao stuck her tongue out at Shao Yiyi beside her. The Evil Bun Head couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

Wen Xiao hastily changed her clothes. The three of them took the elevator downstairs and plunged headlong into the vast curtain of rain.

Although the rain had let up considerably, the fallen leaves piled up beneath the ginkgo trees made their footsteps feel sticky and heavy. By the time they rushed to the vicinity of the faculty apartments, the sky had turned pitch black.

Building A of the faculty apartments was an old, six-story red brick building. It was surrounded by tall ginkgo trees that cast flickering shadows in the night rain, like guards watching over the residence. The trio avoided the main road. Instead, they kept to the shadows along the edge of the greenbelt, stumbling unevenly as they felt their way forward.

When they were still an intersection away from Building A, Yu Xian pulled the other two back, using a cluster of bushes to conceal their figures.

Through the curtain of rain, they could see the lights on at the entrance of Unit 1. Two middle-aged men were squatting under the awning. One appeared to be wearing a campus security uniform, while the other was in casual clothes—likely an administrative teacher from one of the university’s departments. They were huddled together, smoking. The faint, scarlet glow of their cigarettes flickered uncertainly in the darkness.

“How are we supposed to get in?” Shi Zuozhou lowered his voice. “Those two are blocking the entrance perfectly. The moment we get close, we’ll definitely be spotted.”

Yu Xian frowned as he observed the terrain. This old building didn’t have a back door. Getting in unnoticed at this hour was practically impossible. Their only option was to detour around to the side of the building. Room 102 was on the first floor. Based on the layout of the other dormitory buildings, there might be a window on the side. If they could climb in through the window, or at least speak to Professor Ning through it…

But the problem was that getting to the side meant passing right through the line of sight of the unit’s entrance.

“We need to lure them away, or at least make them turn around.” Yu Xian looked at Shi Zuozhou, intending to discuss who would act as the decoy and who would flank around.

“I’ll do it,” Wen Xiao suddenly spoke up beside them. Both Yu Xian and Shi Zuozhou froze for a moment, turning to look at her.

Wen Xiao took a deep breath and closed her umbrella. Just as Yu Xian was about to speak, she had already darted out of the bushes. Rainwater instantly soaked her hair and jacket. At that moment, Wen Xiao looked just like a helpless girl who had run into some kind of emergency, stumbling frantically toward the unit entrance.

“Sir…” Her voice was laced with sobs. The two men smoking at the door paused. When they turned around, they saw a drenched little girl clutching her backpack, staggering toward them.

The two men quickly stood up, their attention entirely captivated by the sudden appearance of the girl.

“Go!” Yu Xian gritted his teeth. Taking advantage of this brief blind spot, and under the cover of the night and the sound of the rain, he sprinted rapidly across the small path. Behind him came Wen Xiao’s tearful explanations and the somewhat stern questioning of the administrative teacher. Yu Xian’s heart clenched; he was a little worried about the socially anxious girl, but he didn’t look back.

A few seconds later, Yu Xian and Shi Zuozhou successfully hid in the shadows on the side of the building.

“102… It should be this room.” Drawing on his experience with the university’s other dormitories, Yu Xian counted the window positions and stopped in front of one with thick curtains drawn tight. The outside of the window was fitted with an old-fashioned iron security grille. Below the grille was a concrete platform for the air conditioner’s outdoor unit. The lights were on inside, and a sliver of warm light seeped through the gap in the curtains.

The two exchanged a glance. Shi Zuozhou consciously turned around to keep watch. Yu Xian took a deep breath, reached out a finger, and lightly tapped twice on the glass.

TAP, TAP.

There was no response whatsoever.

TAP, TAP TAP. TAP, TAP TAP.

Refusing to give up, he increased his force and knocked a few more times, this time with a clearer rhythm.

After a few seconds of dead silence, the curtains shifted. Immediately after, an old, withered hand grasped a corner of the fabric and opened a sliver of a gap with excruciating slowness. By the faint light, Yu Xian saw a face—one that was extremely haggard with deeply sunken eye sockets. Professor Ning’s graying hair was a mess. When their eyes met, the old man’s cloudy eyes widened abruptly. Yu Xian knew that the old man had recognised him.

Professor Ning glanced behind him, then quickly leaned close to the glass and clumsily unlatched the window.

The glass window was pushed open a crack. “You… you’re that…” Professor Ning’s voice was extremely hoarse, his tone trembling with disbelief. “Why are you here? Leave, quickly! They have people watching outside!”

“Professor Ning.” Yu Xian used his umbrella to block the line of sight from behind him, his tone rapid and urgent. “I know. We came specifically to find you.” He stared into the old man’s eyes and said earnestly, “Professor Gao is dead, Professor Shu has left, and now you’re facing this kind of situation. What on earth is happening at the School of Physics? We want to help you!”

Professor Ning’s hand trembled. He cast a wary glance back toward the door before leaning closer to the crack in the window, his tone fraught with anxiety. “Child, this isn’t something you should get involved in! Leave now, don’t drag yourselves down with me!”

“Professor Ning!” Yu Xian raised his voice slightly, though he still had to keep it hushed. “Earlier in class, you said ‘this is their revenge,’ a ‘warning’… Can you tell us who exactly ‘they’ are? Who pushed you all to this point?”

The old man shook his head, meeting Yu Xian’s gaze with eyes full of sorrow and pity. “Child, go back. This is not a power you can contend with. Knowing the truth will only bring disaster upon you, just like it did to me…”

“We’re not afraid!” Shi Zuozhou, who had been keeping watch on the side, couldn’t help but turn around and interject. “Professor, even if it means death, we want to die knowing the truth! We don’t want to live our lives stumbling around in the dark like blind men!”

Professor Ning looked at the two young men standing in the pouring rain. He reached out a withered hand as if to pat their shoulders, but let it drop powerlessly. “Go back quickly, children. You’re still too young, you still need to grow… A burden too heavy can crush a person to death.”

With that, he moved to close the window.

“We can’t go back!” Yu Xian abruptly shot his hand forward, locking his fingers in a death grip around the window frame. Freezing rainwater poured down his cuffs, soaking him in an instant. He stared at Professor Ning, his voice rushed. “Professor Ning, there’s no going back for us anymore.”

Yu Xian was telling a massive lie, but the fear in his tone was entirely genuine. “Ever since the day Professor Gao committed suicide, we’ve been investigating in private. Someone… someone has already set their sights on us. They don’t want me to keep digging. They want to shut us up, just like they shut you professors up.”

Professor Ning’s movements stalled. He turned to look at Yu Xian, his eyes filled with sheer horror.

Yu Xian remained silent for two seconds. Taking a deep breath, he threw out his final probe—like the one true card dealt in a liar’s tavern card game. “Professor Ning… is some kind of disaster coming? Like… a Great Flood?”

In that instant, the wind and rain seemed to freeze.

“You… you even know about that?” Professor Ning’s voice trembled violently. He stared unblinkingly at Yu Xian, as if trying to glean some clue from the young man’s face. “Who told you? Did he come looking for you?”

Seeing Professor Ning’s reaction, Yu Xian’s heart sank completely. He had guessed right. Shao Yiyi’s trigram, Wen Xiao’s algorithm, Shi Zuozhou’s intuition, and his own deductions—all of them were directly validated at this very moment.

“We’re already in the game.” Yu Xian didn’t avoid the old man’s gaze. Seizing this last shred of opportunity, his tone bordered on pleading. “Professor Ning, whether you speak or not, they’ve already targeted us. If you don’t tell me the truth, we’re nothing but lambs waiting to be slaughtered in the dark! Professor Ning, we don’t want to sit here waiting to die. We want to live. We want…”

Recalling Professor Ning’s final lecture from that night, Yu Xian enunciated every word, “We want to see that ultimate answer.”

Professor Ning fell silent. He looked at the endless curtain of rain outside the window, then back at the two drenched young men standing before him.

“Sin… such terrible sin… I’ve spent more than half my life researching physics, only to be forced to believe in the end that perhaps the will of heaven truly exists…” After a long time, the old man let out a long sigh, his voice brimming with a profound sense of powerlessness. It seemed he had given up the struggle. “I don’t know much, but there is one person who is absolutely inextricably linked to this.”

“Who?” Yu Xian’s heart began to hammer wildly.

Professor Ning’s lips parted slightly, and amidst the sound of the rain, he spat out a single name.

“Su Mingyuan.”