"No...this is impossible!" Li Yifei looked down at the gunshot wound on his chest, shaking his head repeatedly. "I couldn't have killed anyone, and I certainly couldn't be a monster..."
"Li Yifei..." Lin Qiye grabbed Li Yifei's collar, pulled his head close to his face, and stared intently into those terrified eyes.
"Look into my eyes!"
Shing—!
Two golden furnaces ignited in Lin Qiye's eyes, and the divine power of the Seraphim poured out, surging wildly into Li Yifei's mental world.
In just a moment, Li Yifei's eyes rolled back, and he promptly fainted.
But the next moment, a strong hand suddenly grabbed Lin Qiye's wrist, and Li Yifei's eyes suddenly opened!
Those were a pair of eerie vertical pupils, calm and unfathomable.
"Interesting... How did you find out?" Li Yifei's voice was deep and calm. "With your 'Zhan' realm perception, you shouldn't have been able to see through my disguise."
"I truly didn't see through it, otherwise you would have been exposed long ago in the basement of the agency." The flame in Lin Qiye's eyes hadn't died down. "Since entering the school, everything that's happened seems logical, yet it all seems strange."
"You mean... you deduced it?"
"I suppose so. You left way too many openings."
"Oh?" Li Yifei's eyes narrowed slightly. "Tell me about it."
"The first suspicious point is your sick leave certificate," Lin Qiye said calmly. "This morning when you entered the classroom, you were carrying a sick leave certificate."
"So what?"
"According to your statement, you realized you forgot your homework after school last night, and only after returning to school did you witness Liu Xiaoyan eating people. After that, you fled the school in a panic and found us, the night watchmen..."
Lin Xi Chen chimed in with an explanation, tapping her forehead before snapping her fingers; she smirked and crossed her arms, looking proud of herself. "So... when did you apply for your sick leave certificate?"
Lin Qiye sneered, "Don't tell us that after witnessing cannibalism last night, you guessed that you would be working with us today and went to the academic affairs office to get a sick leave certificate. You should know that the academic affairs office was already closed by then."
"Therefore, only two possibilities remain."
"The first scenario is that you had already obtained a sick leave certificate and planned to skip school to go out and play today, but unfortunately, you witnessed a cannibalistic scene last night."
"The second possibility is that you actually knew we were coming all along, and even prepared to come in with us."
Li Yifei remained silent for a while, then said, "Continue."
"The second suspicious point is the several pieces of human skin on the balcony of the girls' dormitory."
"Logically speaking, the Nanda snake demon is a very cautious creature. Since it has been hiding in human society for so long, it would never so brazenly hang a human skin on the balcony, as the risk of exposure would be too high!"
"But it did it anyway... At first I didn't understand what it meant, but later I realized that it was deliberately hinting to us that it was in this dormitory building."
"It wants us to find it!" Lin Xi Chen smirks and wags her finger, clicking her tongue slightly to mock Li Yifei. "Tch tch tch... If you hadn't done that, we certainly wouldn't have suspected the female's dormitory, and you could have kept hiding while throwing us off the trail."
Lin Qiye looked into Li Yifei's eyes, "Then, you appeared. Your appearance was so inexplicable, it was as if you deliberately wanted to lure Hongying away and cause a riot throughout the school!"
"Then, Li Yifei stepped forward like a savior, leading the students to successfully repel the attack of the snake demon's offspring—a textbook example of survival!"
"Actually, at this point, I still didn't think about you. What really made me suspicious of you was An Qingyu." Lin Qiye's gaze fell on An Qingyu behind him.
Li Yifei twisted his neck strangely behind his head and sized up the thin boy wearing glasses.
An Qingyu pushed up his glasses and said, "The number of snake demon offspring besieging us has always been strange."
"When those snake demon offspring first appeared, everyone rushed upstairs, but our classroom blocked the doors and windows with desks and chairs, and we stayed inside."
"At that time, most of the snake demons either went to the fourth floor and broke into your corridor, or stayed on the first floor and cut off everyone's way. Only two of them actually stayed on the third floor and tried to attack our classroom."
'Generally speaking, when a group of hunters encounters two types of prey within their field of vision—one stronger and more difficult to attack, and the other weaker and easier to obtain—they will usually gang up on the weaker one, which is us."
"At first, I thought it was due to an information gap; the other snake demon offspring were lured upstairs by you and didn't know there was a group of us on the third floor. But later I discovered that the snake demons' vision was interconnected."
An Qingyu paused, then continued, "In other words, they knew there was a piece of fat meat right under their feet, yet they remained unmoved, just like..."
"It's as if they deliberately spared us."
"Later, Li Yifei led a group of people who appeared out of nowhere to rescue us."
"After killing the two snake demon offspring, it attracted the six snake demon offspring downstairs to attack. This number was also very subtle, which could bring us great pressure, but would not directly make us lose the ability to resist!"
"Even if one more had come up, we wouldn't have been able to stop it, but it didn't."
"Just as Lin Qiye was about to arrive, the six snake demon offspring suddenly unleashed their power, forcing us into a desperate situation… It was all too coincidental, and too bizarre!"
"You doubt me based on these things?" Li Yifei frowned deeply.
"No, what really makes me doubt you is the snake demon offspring's act of cutting your thick rope." An Qingyu shook her head. "When you lowered the rope, the two snake demons didn't see this. They shouldn't have known about the rope's existence."
"But then, the six snake demon offspring that followed precisely cut the thick rope, as if they knew perfectly well that this was your escape route."
"The fact that the serpent demon offspring severed what they shouldn't have seen can only mean one thing..."
"Among us, there is another being that shares their vision!"
An Qingyu shrugged. "Of course, I didn't know anything about snake demons at the time, and the subsequent conclusions were deduced after Lin Qiye and I exchanged information."
Li Yifei's vertical pupils were fixed on An Qingyu, and he sneered twice, "If I had known you were this smart, I should have killed you from the beginning."
"Also, you were never there whenever the snake demon appeared," Lin Qiye continued. "The first time we encountered the snake demon was in the girls' dormitory. I'm asking you, after you confessed to Wu Shujie, where were you during the time between you returning to your high school classroom?"
"While Lin Qiye and the others were fighting the snake demon, you also went to search for other surviving students and left, which further confirmed my judgment," An Qingyu continued.
Li Yifei glanced at An Qingyu, then turned to look at Lin Qiye.
He chuckled self-deprecatingly twice.
"How did I end up running into three perverts like you?"