CHAPTER 339: CHAPTER 339; MYSTERIOUS FIGURINE 1

The breeze grew harsher, rattling the rooftop rails and scattering a few sheets of paper left behind during the chaos. One page fluttered up, he caught it effortlessly, his reflex sharp even in stillness. It was a torn scrap from a student’s notebook, edges crumpled, ink slightly smeared.

Scrawled across it in uneven, trembling handwriting were three words:

Don’t trust her.

Huo Qi’s brow tightened. The faintest chill crept down his spine, not from the wind but from something colder, intent.

He folded the note carefully, slipped it into his coat pocket, and turned toward the stairwell. His footsteps echoed against the concrete, steady and controlled. By the time he descended the last flight, the faint sounds of distant sirens and the rush of guards moving into position filled the air.

He crossed the main corridor in silence, brushing past a line of security officers who saluted as he passed. Without a word, he pushed open the heavy steel door leading to the school’s security control room.

The hum of cooling fans greeted him immediately, a mechanical, almost suffocating rhythm that filled the sterile space. Rows of screens flickered with camera feeds, casting pale light on the faces of the technicians bent over their stations.

The door shut behind him with a soft metallic click.

Huo Qi removed his gloves, placing them neatly on the console before stepping closer to the central screen. His reflection ghosted faintly across the glass, sharp eyes, calm posture, but the tension in his jaw betrayed him though....

"Status?" he asked, voice calm but slicing cleanly through the murmurs in the room.

The technicians straightened instantly, their movements precise as the scene transitioned seamlessly into the security investigation.

"Sir," one of the senior technicians responded, fingers flying over the keyboard, "we’ve reviewed the last two hours of footage from the east wing corridor leading to the rooftop, but...." he hesitated, eyes darting nervously to the screen.

"It’s gone," another cut in, adjusting his headset. "The feeds between 6:40 and 8:40 a.m. are missing. Complete data corruption, not a blackout. Someone wiped it clean."

Huo Qi’s eyes narrowed slightly. " Not an accidental loop?"

"No, sir. The files weren’t just deleted. They were overwritten, intentionally. Someone accessed the root directory through internal permissions. Whoever did it knew our system."

The low hum of the room deepened with unease. A faint beeping echoed from one of the side consoles as another officer reported, "We’re trying to rebuild the fragments from the secondary backup. It’ll take a few minutes."

Huo Qi moved closer, bracing one hand on the console edge as he watched the reconstruction software at work. Code flickered across the monitors, glitches of static, frames of movement slowly assembling from the erased feed.

"Pull the surrounding feeds too," he ordered quietly. "The west gate, the gym corridor, any external camera within a hundred-meter radius of the rooftop. If someone deleted this much, they might’ve covered their approach too."

" Yes, sir."

Minutes passed, heavy with tension. The only sounds were the click of keys, the soft whir of fans, and the rhythmic tapping of Huo Qi’s finger against the desk.

Finally, the technician spoke again. "We’ve managed to restore a fragment."

The screen flickered to life. The footage was grainy, color muted, time-stamped 07:43 A.M.

Four figures appeared at the edge of the frame, walking down the corridor. Each wore the school uniform, neat, and ordinary, but their faces were hidden behind animal masks: fox, rabbit, dragon, and deer. Their steps were synchronized, unnervingly calm.

One of them held a small paper bag. Another carried a folded cloth, the same cloth the children had described.

Then, as if sensing the camera, the one wearing the dragon mask lifted their head slightly.

The feed glitched. The image blurred into static.

When the picture returned, the hallway was empty.

"Playback that moment again," Huo Qi said quietly.

The technician obeyed. The footage repeated, flickering more slowly this time.

As the frames advanced, Huo Qi leaned in. Something about the posture of the dragon-masked figure, tall, composed, and precise, made his gaze sharpen. It wasn’t a child. The way the person moved was controlled, practiced.

"Freeze it," he ordered.

The screen paused mid-glitch. The figure’s shoulder patch was barely visible beneath the uniform blazer, half-torn, but still readable: a faint silver emblem belonging not to a student, but to the school’s robotics club.

Huo Qi’s expression darkened. "Cross-reference every registered member of that club in the last six months. I want their data, schedules, and ID access logs within ten minutes."

" Yes, sir."

Another technician called out, " Sir, security at the main and rear gates reports no students have exited since morning roll call. All exits remain locked under your lockdown order. If they’re still on the premises...."

" They are," Huo Qi cut in, voice quiet but absolute. "They wouldn’t risk this much only to run."

He straightened, gaze settling briefly on the restored footage again before turning toward the window overlooking the school grounds.

Outside, the compound was crawling with guards, students being escorted out of the classroom by classroom under watchful eyes.

"Lock down the east dorms," he said at last. "Sweep every floor, every crawl space, every vent. They’re not gone, they’re hiding."

Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached into his pocket and touched the folded scrap of paper.

Don’t trust her.

The words echoed in his mind, sharp and quiet as the hum of the servers.

He turned back toward the screens, his tone lower, darker. "And bring me every female staff member who was in this wing before nine o’clock. No exceptions."

Outside, the morning sun was just beginning to climb higher, gilding the rooftops in light.

Inside, the tension coiled tighter, because somewhere within those walls, the game hadn’t ended. It had just begun.

The radio crackled to life a few minutes later. One of the field captains’ voices came through, slightly muffled but urgent.

"Sir, this is Team Two. We’ve found something."