Rules of the Strange: I Became a God in a Bizarre World Through Taoist Arts

Upon hearing this, the eerie creature imprisoned in the paper lantern let out a continuous, sharp wail.

For some reason, Shen Xingzhuo detected a hint of mockery in that inhuman voice.

"It seems you were right," Hua Jiuyue said happily. "Our Wuxiang Kingdom has the ability to 'discern meaning by listening to sounds,' and its reaction just now was because you hit its sore spot!"

"So once we decipher the meaning of the water stain text, we'll be really close to the correct answer!"

Shen Xingzhuo's gaze shifted to the strange person who had been captured. "Actually... her background is quite intriguing."

She was vague in her response.

According to the logic of ghost stories, this strange occurrence appeared on their only way to the corridor.

This suggests that the bizarre death before his death was inextricably linked to the water room's security measures.

Shen Xingzhuo's memories drifted away involuntarily.

She remembered a case she had taken on when she went down the mountain with her master.

That incident happened at a university.

It happened to be the month when language proficiency or professional skills exam results were released in large numbers.

The incident began when a student, who was just one point short of passing the cutoff score, couldn't bear the blow and chose to jump off a building, resulting in a lifelong disability.

Later, starting from here, the school began to experience a series of accidents.

Some students have fallen from buildings while intoxicated, while others have committed suicide by jumping from buildings after being raped by outsiders while going out to deliver packages at a courier station at night.

Three consecutive falls from buildings forced the school to take the matter seriously.

They were afraid that another incident would tarnish the school's reputation.

Despite all our precautions, we couldn't prevent it.

One student, after arguing with his roommate, found a thick water pipe in the school's water room and hanged himself.

Shen Xingzhuo's thoughts were pulled back by the sharp cry. She looked at the huddled figure in the paper lantern and suddenly felt that the outline looked familiar. What did it look like? Like a hand-drawn anatomical diagram she had seen in a file before—the human body was simplified to a few lines, limbs curled up, head drooping, exactly like the eerie thing in the cage now.

She frowned.

She couldn't quite remember how the case was resolved. Her master had said something back then that she still didn't fully understand—

"If the thread breaks, it can never be reconnected. But if the knot remains, the next thread will keep hitting that knot."

She asked what it meant. The master pointed to the piece of fabric tucked in the case file—the corner of the school uniform taken from the first student who fell from the building. There was a small patch of yarn on it, with the warp and weft threads misaligned and twisted into a small pattern that looked like three leaves wrapped around a hole.

The master said, "This is not a coincidence. Someone wove a knot in the cloth."

The case was eventually dropped. The school paid compensation, sealed the files, and the fabric disappeared without a trace. Shen Xingzhuo was young at the time and didn't investigate further, only remembering the pattern in her mind.

Three interlocking curved sections with a hollow circle in the middle.

It's exactly the same shape that the water stains made up on the ground earlier.

She turned to look at Hua Jiuyue. Hua Jiuyue was still happy that "listening to the sound to discern the meaning" had confirmed the direction, and a rare bright color appeared on her face. Shen Xingzhuo looked at her for two seconds, but did not interrupt her. Instead, she took out the curtain from her Qiankun bag—the one that had been torn off earlier—and unfolded it in the light of the lantern.

"Look here."

Hua Jiuyue leaned closer. The misaligned dots on the curtain, illuminated by the dim light of the paper lantern, finally revealed their complete shapes.

"This is it..." Hua Jiuyue murmured, "The water stains also wrote this."

"Hmm." Shen Xingzhuo pulled the curtain back, her gaze returning to the eerie creature. "I thought of something."

"That water stain riddle—"