"Xiao Dai is not only good at artillery, but her understanding of military strategy is far superior to mine. If the Prince and she disagree, it's best to listen to her more." I instructed Li Yuanhao, worried he might underestimate Dai Lu, a newcomer. Li Yuanhao knew of my close relationship with Dai Lu and nodded in agreement, saying he would listen to Madam Dai if her reasoning was sound.
It's a pity I couldn't take Dai Lu back to Yangzhou.
So close to finding the right place! I also wished I could install a camera in a villa.
Dusty and tired, I rushed back to the Naihe Bridge. Bingbing was almost asleep at Meng Po's tea stall.
After leaving the City God Temple, Sha Biya's car was already waiting for us (we had taken a taxi there). I asked about the situation at Yangzhou University, but Bingbing said there was nothing unusual. Yaoyao and the others hadn't contacted her.
When we arrived at Yangzhou University, everything at the main gate seemed normal. Even we, who were clearly not students and looked like social riffraff, were allowed in. The security guards in the guard booth were even playing cards, not glancing at us.
"...Shouldn't they have locked down the campus or evacuated the students?" I asked, puzzled.
A Sha Biya staff member accompanying us whispered, "Yangda has over 30,000 students. A hasty evacuation could cause chaos, and we also don't want to alert the snake."
"Are you worried that if you evacuate the students, the Miao King will discover something and won't dare to come?" I asked.
"Precisely."
I frowned and shook my head. "Who made this strategy? Our primary objective is to prevent the Miao King from summoning souls. If he doesn't come, isn't that good!"
"Perhaps 201 wants to take this opportunity to annihilate the Miao King's forces," Bingbing guessed.
I didn't know, but this wasn't the underworld. I clearly had no right to interfere with 201's decisions, so I just followed her arrangements.
As we walked through the campus, I gradually matched it with the map. The campus looked large on the map, mainly because the urban area of Yangzhou is small, making the campus appear vast. In reality, it was no different from a normal university.
We found Dormitory Building 26. This building was peculiar, standing alone at the foot of a small hill. Next to it was an artificial lake, and the closest building to it was a teaching building about three hundred meters away.
"This is a faculty building," the Sha Biya staff member introduced. He sounded like a local from Yangzhou. "It was originally a women's dormitory. Later, with the expansion and increasing recruitment of teachers from outside the city, many teachers, especially young ones, needed to live on campus. So, the school converted this building into a dormitory for young faculty."
"Can students go in?" I asked.
"Freely. No one manages it."
I arrived downstairs and didn't see Yaoyao and the others. Activating my Qi sensing technique, I found they were all on the rooftop.
It was a six-story old building without an elevator. I huffed and puffed my way up. Along the way, I met several beautiful female teachers. They probably thought I was a new male teacher and nodded to me.
Since ancient times, Yangzhou has produced beautiful women. Although these female teachers came from all over, perhaps because of this saying, they felt they looked good enough to come to Yangzhou to teach.
Moreover, as I passed through the school earlier, I noticed that the proportion of beautiful women among the students of this university was also exceptionally high. Most of them were fair-skinned and delicate, with the graceful demeanor of women from Jiangnan, as if they were carved from the same mold. I wondered if it had anything to do with makeup.
When I reached the rooftop, a group of them were pointing and talking by the edge of the building. I ran over, and Bai Qingcheng immediately asked me the exact location where Yang Guang was strangled. I said Sima Dekang couldn't remember clearly, so it could only be nearby.
"It's definitely not that small hill," Bai Qingcheng said, ruling out the small mound behind the building. Calling it a hill was an exaggeration; it wasn't even as tall as this building. There was a pavilion on top, and we looked down at the pavilion, able to see the brown tiles on its roof.
"Yes, that mountain has been there since ancient times; it's not an artificial one," the Sha Biya staff member said.
"What was that lake originally?" Bai Qingcheng asked.
"The lake... there used to be a small puddle. Because there was a spring underneath, it was later expanded into this lake. As for ancient times, it's not very clear," the accompanying person said.
"In the past thousand years, has Yangzhou experienced any major earthquakes, like magnitude seven or eight?" Bingbing asked.
"No," the accompanying person confirmed with certainty. "The entire Yangtze River Delta region is not in a major earthquake zone, and there have been no earthquakes above magnitude 7."
Bingbing nodded. "That means this spring has always been there. The formation of a spring is related to geology. Without significant geological changes, the location of the spring would not change."