The Secret of the Locust Grove: A Long-Buried Murder Case

A Strange Security Guard

Feng Shi is a security guard at Hengchuan XX University. He is responsible for the night shift and due to prolonged lack of sleep, his face appears unhealthy with a greenish-yellow hue.

One night, Feng Shi sat alone in the guard room. In front of him was a monitor displaying surveillance footage of the four main gates of the school.

This gave Feng Shi a sense of security.

As the night grew deeper, Feng Shi sat upright, his eyes fixed on the monitor screen.

He didn't turn on the lights, and the whole room was pitch black.

After midnight, Feng Shi reached out to turn on the table lamp, took out a magazine, and started flipping through it.

After finishing one magazine, he subconsciously glanced at the screen, his eyes widening instantly.

A white pajama was floating motionless outside the school gate. Feng Shi paused for a moment, gathered his courage, and quietly stood up to look out through the window.

It was a girl wearing a white pajama. Strangely, the girl always had her back to the gate.

He opened the door and went out, asking, "Classmate, which department are you from, and why are you standing outside?"

The girl remained silent, still staring stiffly into the darkness in the distance. Then, she slowly turned around and said, "Someone called my name just now." After speaking, she lowered her head and walked through the gate.

Feng Shi watched her figure, feeling that her figure was light, and the pajama seemed empty.

He locked the door and returned to the guard room, absentmindedly flipping through the magazine. As he looked at the unreliable gossip news in the magazine, he thought about the girl more and more, feeling that something was amiss.

Suddenly, he remembered that the girl had seemed to be tiptoeing while walking, and he never saw her face...

In the morning, Feng Shi's colleague Zhu Yu came to take over the shift. He was a shy young man, one year older than Feng Shi.

As Feng Shi left, he noticed that Zhu Yu's hair seemed to have grown a lot overnight.

Feng Shi and Zhu Yu rented a house together, very close to XX University. For Feng Shi, daytime was nighttime, and by the time he woke up, it was already evening.

Feng Shi felt that there was a secret hidden near the school, and he decided to uncover this mystery.

When he arrived at the school gate, Feng Shi saw the lights on in the guard room, but Zhu Yu's shadow was nowhere to be found.

Suddenly, Feng Shi felt someone behind him. He turned around and saw Zhu Yu, causing him to shiver.

The Zhu Yu in front of him appeared to be sleepwalking, standing motionless and then walked away as if in a trance. Feng Shi dared not follow because Zhu Yu was heading towards a patch of wild locust grove.

It was a grove of locust trees where a murder case had taken place three years ago and remained unsolved to this day.

Once, a student entered that grove with a camera and never returned.

According to the student's recollection, as he walked and played in the grove, he suddenly saw a man flying a kite with a child in front. There was no wind that day, yet the kite flew high in the sky without getting entangled in the trees. Interestingly, as they walked on, the man and child disappeared, leaving only the red kite floating alone in the grove. The kite was flying at a low altitude, and he could almost make eye contact with it. At that moment, he felt he could not move forward, and looking down, he almost wet his pants when he realized he had unknowingly walked up a tree.

It was not that the kite was flying low; it was his altitude that had increased.

So, it turns out, those two people were not walking but floating.

The above is the most widely spread strange incident related to that murder case.

Two, Midnight Leap

During the shift change, Feng Shi returned to the guard room and stared straight at the surveillance screen.

The phone rang at 00:10. It rang three times before Feng Shi picked up the receiver.

On the other end of the phone, a girl was crying as she said, "Help... there's someone in my dorm..."

Feng Shi remained calm, "If it's a person, why are you afraid?"

"It's not a person... it's not..." The girl was somewhat incoherent. "Please come quickly, Unit 407, Building 3 in Block 7." Then the call disconnected.

Feng Shi put on his hat and walked out of the guard room, the surroundings unusually quiet.

Unit 407's door was closed. Just as Feng Shi was about to knock on the door, it suddenly swung open, revealing the girl in a white pajama whom he had seen the day before at the school gate.

Apart from this girl, Feng Shi did not see anyone else on the entire floor.

He followed her into Unit 407. The girl told him her name was Tang Jingrui. She said that when she came out to go to the restroom at night, she saw someone flipping over and climbing up the balcony window and then jumping off.

"Why didn't you call the police?" Feng Shi asked.

Tang Jingrui replied, "My boyfriend told me that it's no use reporting such things to the police."

Feng Shi then asked, "Why isn't your boyfriend here with you?"

Tang Jingrui said, "He's out on an internship."

Feng Shi further inquired, "Why are you the only person in this building?"

Tang Jingrui explained, "They went out for sketching today, and I injured my leg, so I took leave."

Feng Shi nodded, smiled at Tang Jingrui, and suddenly sang a theatrical line: "At the sight of a beautiful woman, my heart is troubled and my dreams are broken... the soul leaves..."

Tang Jingrui's expression changed abruptly, and she slammed the door shut with a loud 'bang'.

Once back in the guard room, Feng Shi reviewed all the surveillance footage of Building 7 but found nothing unusual.

In the morning when Zhu Yu came to take over the shift, Feng Shi noticed that Zhu Yu's eyes were even wider, and his hair was even more disheveled.

When Feng Shi returned to his lodging and lay down, he couldn't fall asleep no matter what he tried. He took out his phone and called Tang Jingrui.

When Tang Jingrui answered the phone, she nervously asked, "Who is this?"

Feng Shi replied, "We met last night."

Tang Jingrui asked, "What do you want?"

Feng Shi asked, "How did you meet Zhu Yu?"

Tang Jingrui fell silent.

She then recounted an incident that she and Zhu Yu had experienced together.

Zhu Yu was madly in love with Tang Jingrui, but how could a mere security guard be good enough for her? She told her boyfriend, Hua Zhikang, about this.

Hua Zhikang instructed Tang Jingrui to arrange for Zhu Yu to meet her at a place with no one around, while he himself called his friends to teach Zhu Yu a lesson. So, Tang Jingrui chose that locust grove as the meeting point.

When Zhu Yu received Tang Jingrui's text, it could be imagined how happy he was. That night, Zhu Yu arrived punctually, only to find Tang Jingrui absent.

On the phone, Tang Jingrui told him that she was inside the grove and asked him to come in. At the same time, Hua Zhikang called Tang Jingrui, saying he had to attend an important project and couldn't make it, asking Tang Jingrui to mess with Zhu Yu a bit longer. In this way, Tang Jingrui used one phone to lead Zhu Yu deep into the grove.

Later, when Zhu Yu realized he had been deceived and questioned Tang Jingrui over the phone, she said it was a test of his courage, and that she would be there very soon. Of course, this was only a terrifying prank.