I Became a Rich Heir in a Novel and Saved the Female Lead - Chapter 10:

Chapter 10: Rushing to the School

Bang!

The Nokia she normally treasured slipped unconsciously from her hand and crashed onto the floor. The back cover flew off, and even the battery was knocked loose.

The screen immediately went black, and her homeroom teacher’s voice abruptly disappeared. However, Lin Wanning didn’t even seem to notice.

Her head spun.

At that moment, she couldn’t hear anything. The entire world seemed to be buzzing around her ears, and even the knocking outside the door sounded distant and unreal.

The laptop in the bedroom was still on.

The notice stating that her score had been withheld remained quietly displayed in the center of the screen, almost like a cruel joke from fate.

She had waited so long for this day.

She and her sister had endured so many difficult years together, desperately working toward this very moment.

Yet now, that message on the screen only hurt her eyes.

The knocking outside continued.

“Wanning! Wanning, open the door!”

Aunt Wu was pacing anxiously outside.

Lin Wanning suddenly snapped back to her senses. She bent down and grabbed the phone that had fallen apart, then hurriedly tried to put the battery back in. However, her hands were trembling so badly that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fit it properly into place.

Finally, she gave up. Clutching the phone and her keys, she rushed toward the door.

The moment she pulled it open, she nearly crashed into Aunt Wu.

“You child, why did you take so long to open the door? Your homeroom teacher just called me and said something happened at the school. He told me to keep an eye on you. You…”

Aunt Wu was about to continue, but when she saw Lin Wanning’s deathly pale face, she was startled by her appearance.

“Wanning, you…”

Lin Wanning had no time to explain. She rushed past Aunt Wu and headed straight out of the building.

“Hey, wait!”

Aunt Wu chased after her and grabbed her wrist. She pointed toward an old silver-gray van parked at the entrance of the alley. Her husband, Uncle Wang, was already sitting inside waiting.

“Get in!” Aunt Wu urged anxiously. “How long will it take you to run all the way there like this? Let your Uncle Wang drive you!”

Lin Wanning stopped as though she had only just understood what Aunt Wu was saying.

She looked toward the slightly battered silver-gray van nearby. Its door was still open, and a large sack of vegetables sat in the back, making it obvious that Uncle Wang had just returned from buying groceries.

Uncle Wang leaned his head out of the vehicle and called, “Hurry up, child!”

Lin Wanning didn’t refuse again.

She rushed over, pulled open the door, and practically fell into the back seat.

Aunt Wu climbed into the passenger seat and urged Uncle Wang to start driving. Then she turned around to look at Lin Wanning.

“Wanning, what exactly happened? Don’t scare me like this.”

Lin Wanning said nothing. With trembling hands, she continued trying to put the battery back into her Nokia. She couldn’t tell whether the battery compartment had been damaged by the fall or whether her hands were simply shaking too badly, but no matter how hard she tried, the battery refused to slot into place.

Aunt Wu couldn’t bear watching anymore.

She had already heard a little about the situation from Lin Wanning’s homeroom teacher, Li Jian, and knew that Lin Wanning was desperately trying to call Lin Wansu.

Aunt Wu pulled out her own phone and handed it to her. “Use mine.”

Lin Wanning didn’t even have time to say thank you. She took the phone and immediately dialed her sister’s number.

“The number you have dialed is currently switched off.”

She hung up and called again.

“The number you have dialed is currently switched off.”

She ended the call.

Then she tried again.

And again…

Aunt Wu looked back at her, her own eyes already turning red. “Wanning, maybe your sister’s phone just ran out of battery. Don’t scare yourself.”

Lin Wanning didn’t look up.

She merely stared at the screen showing that the call had ended.

Her sister had very likely been at the school’s old warehouse last night.

When Lin Wanning returned from her part-time job yesterday, the apartment had been dark, and the dining table had been untouched.

She had simply been too exhausted.

She had assumed her sister had gone to stock shelves for someone again or was washing dishes at a restaurant, just as she had countless times before, and would quietly return home late at night.

She had even complained about her sister in her heart.

She had resented her for never saying anything and always exhausting herself like that.

Perhaps Lin Wanning had simply become too accustomed to that kind of life, too accustomed to everything her sister did for her. She hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that her sister still hadn’t returned so late at night. After getting home, she had washed up and gone to sleep just as she always did.

‘What if I’d gone to the places where Sister usually works and looked for her? What if I’d at least called her? Would I have realized something was wrong?’

Suddenly, Lin Wanning felt her stomach churn violently.

Only when someone was terrified beyond measure could they truly understand such a feeling.

Her entire body felt numb and tingling, and nausea twisted in her stomach until she wanted to vomit.

The van turned onto a narrow road, its body jolting violently over the uneven surface.

As Uncle Wang drove, he cursed at the electric scooters blocking the road in his local dialect.

Aunt Wu turned around again. “Wanning, what exactly did your homeroom teacher tell you?”

Lin Wanning parted her lips. It took her a long time before she finally managed to force out a sentence.

“The school warehouse caught fire last night.”

Aunt Wu froze for a moment. “Then what does that have to do with your sister…”

Her voice abruptly stopped as realization struck her.

Lin Wanning didn’t continue either.

The van instantly fell silent.

Uncle Wang’s grip tightened around the steering wheel. He didn’t say anything, but he suddenly pressed the accelerator all the way down.

Meanwhile, the area behind the athletic field at Linjiang No. 1 High School had already descended into chaos.

The old warehouse behind the gymnasium had almost been reduced to a charred skeleton.

There had already been plenty of flammable materials inside the warehouse, and space within the school grounds was limited. Fire engines couldn’t even reach certain areas, making the blaze extremely difficult to extinguish. By the time the flames were finally put out, almost the entire warehouse had burned down.

The warehouse walls were now completely blackened. The metal covering on the door had curled from the intense heat, while water-soaked ashes and the remains of burned sports equipment littered the ground.

Fire engines were parked nearby, their hoses still lying on the ground, while several firefighters inspected the scene inside.

The air was thick with the acrid stench of burned material.

At first, the firefighters had been relieved that school was on vacation and no one should have been inside. Even if the fire had spread beyond control, there shouldn’t have been any casualties. They had practically been preparing to wrap up their work.

That was until a man who looked like a school administrator rushed onto the scene drenched in sweat, accompanied by a teacher.

By now, several other teachers had arrived after hearing the news. They stood in small groups some distance away, while several students who had come to school early in the morning to check their examination results were gathered near the school entrance.

Some teachers were making quiet phone calls. Others standing closer to the scene took out their phones, intending to record videos, only for their colleagues to stop them.

“Don’t record anything. Director Luo just said not to let this spread yet.”

“But can something like this really be kept quiet? The fire department is already here.”

“I heard there might have been a student inside…”

“Don’t say that. Nothing has been confirmed yet.”

“It was probably a student from Liu Hong’s class. I think she arrived a while ago. Her face was completely pale when I got here.”

At that point, no one said anything more.

Outside the police tape surrounding the ruins, Lin Wanning’s homeroom teacher, Li Jian, stood clutching his phone.

He had been speaking to Lin Wanning earlier when the call suddenly disconnected. Every attempt to call her afterward only told him that her phone was switched off.

He knew Lin Wanning would probably rush over immediately, and his heart was filled with unease.

In truth, even he didn’t know exactly what had happened to Lin Wansu.

Before dawn, the school had first received a notification from the fire department informing them that the old warehouse behind the athletic field had caught fire.

Then, early that morning, Zhang Xiaoyu’s homeroom teacher, Liu Hong, woke up and discovered the voice messages Zhang Xiaoyu had sent her. Only then did she realize that students might have been involved.

Li Jian had listened to that voice message as well.

The recording could only be described as chaotic.

The background was filled with noise, crying, and shouting. Zhang Xiaoyu’s words were broken and disjointed, but it wasn’t difficult to piece together what had happened.

Lin Wansu had been locked inside the warehouse as a malicious prank.

Then the warehouse had caught fire.

When Director of Academic Affairs Luo Wenxiang ended his call with Liu Hong, his legs nearly gave out from fear. He hadn’t even had time to notify the principal before rushing to the school with Liu Hong in a panic.

After learning what had happened, the firefighters solemnly began a much more thorough investigation of the ruins and notified the police.

Everyone understood what it meant.

If someone had still been inside the warehouse during a fire of that magnitude, there could only be one thing left behind.

A charred corpse.