Judge of Souls-Chapter 15 - Great Master

Half an hour after Chu Xuanliang hung up the phone, his friend arrived at the university in his private car.

Officer Ye showed his credentials to the dean, explaining that he just wanted a casual chat, nothing to be nervous about.

“Just you?” Chu Xuanliang asked.

Officer Ye glared at him. “What else? This case is already closed! I’m only making this trip as a favor to you, okay?”

Chu Xuanliang waved his hand dismissively. “Well, you’ll do.”

Officer Ye was speechless. These Taoist priests were always so dismissive of him. If they were so capable, why did they call him?

The counselor, forcing a smile, confirmed Ma Shiluo’s dorm room number with a colleague and led them there.

The deceased, Ma Shiluo, was a third-year graduate student. Her parents have passed away, and she had no other relatives.

She hadn’t passed her thesis defense the previous year, so her graduation was delayed. She had moved to a dorm with first-year graduate students.

According to the dean, she had a good chance of graduating this year.

Ma Shiluo’s dorm room was impeccably clean. Her books and clothes were neatly arranged. Her roommates hadn’t discarded her belongings and even continued to clean her area, so there wasn’t a speck of dust on her desk.

Chu Xuanliang and Officer Ye searched for a while, but found nothing useful.

It was just too clean!

Officer Ye had glanced at Ma Shiluo’s file before coming.

Judging from the photos taken at the time of her death, she was wearing old clothes and worn-out slippers.

If she had cleaned her desk so thoroughly before committing suicide, preparing so meticulously, why wouldn’t she have worn something nicer?

Or did her roommates arrange her clothes, even her undergarments?

It all seemed rather strange.

The dean stood at the door, cautiously peering inside. Seeing the two men exchanging meaningful glances, she felt a little uneasy.

Officer Ye stepped out and asked, “Were her things always arranged like this? Did you touch anything after she passed away?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t my student, not even from our department. I only heard about her,” the dean shook her head. “Aren’t you here to investigate Tian Doudou’s case? What could she possibly have to do with Ma Shiluo?”

Officer Ye raised an eyebrow. “She wasn’t your student, not even in your department, yet you even know her thesis topic?”

“She… her reputation wasn’t very good,” the dean said vaguely. “Well, it’s not good to speak ill of the dead, but last year… no, the year before last, there was a rather big incident.”

“What incident?” Officer Ye asked.

The dean sighed again. “Let the dead rest in peace. It’s best not to talk about it. But I remember there were records of it on the school forum. They called it ‘818’?”

(TL: 818 is internet slang for gossip/exposing someone)

“Oh…” Officer Ye nodded thoughtfully. “Then please take me to her advisor. I have some questions for him.”

Chu Xuanliang said, “I’ll stay here and look around a bit more. You go ahead.”

The dean hesitated, then said, “This is a women’s dormitory. Please leave before six o’clock.”

“I understand,” Chu Xuanliang replied.

The two of them left, while Chu Xuanliang sat at Ma Shiluo’s desk, searching the university forum.

The official university forums were usually deserted, while the student forums were filled with posts selling used bicycles, books, and the like. Nowadays, class and department group chats were clearly the faster way to communicate.

He didn’t wait long before two female students returned.

They approached the dorm, surprised to find the door unlocked. Glancing inside, they saw a man and stepped back warily. “Who are you? This is a women’s dormitory!”

Chu Xuanliang looked up. “I’m Ma Shiluo’s brother.”

Seeing his neat clothes and gentle, refined features, and that he was sitting openly in the dorm with the door open, they assumed he wasn’t a bad person. One murmured, “I never heard her mention having a brother.”

“Not a biological brother, just a close friend. I’m here to sort through her belongings,” Chu Xuanliang explained. “I just received the news. Was it really suicide?”

The short-haired girl on the left looked conflicted. “...We don’t know.”

Chu Xuanliang gestured for them to come in, and asked, “Were her grades poor?”

Chu Xuanliang hadn’t attended university, so he couldn’t say for sure.

He knew doctoral degrees were difficult to obtain, but were master’s degrees this hard too? He’d heard that the graduation rate for ordinary master’s programs was above 80%.

And if all else failed, there was always Taobao to help.

(TL: online shopping platform; implies that if getting a master’s or PhD degree is too difficult, one could potentially “find help” on Taobao, likely referring to buying academic materials, ghostwriting services, or even fake degrees—a tongue-in-cheek way of saying there are “alternative” (and possibly shady) ways to obtain a degree.)

The girl immediately responded, “Her grades were excellent! She ranked first in her major’s written exam for the postgraduate entrance examination. She loved analysis and had several papers published in prestigious journals. She even met the graduation requirements for PhD students—yet she still couldn’t graduate from her master’s program.”

The short-haired girl closed the door behind them and lowered her voice. “Just between us, I don’t think she committed suicide.”

“Why?” Chu Xuanliang asked. “Weren’t you already home from classes when she died?”

“That’s suspicious too,” the girl pointed to Ma Shiluo’s desk. “She never organized her desk or wardrobe. They were always a mess. But she always put foreign literature on the left and Chinese literature on the right. Look.”

The desk appeared clean, but the reference books were piled haphazardly. Several even had library due date slips stuck to their sides.

The short-haired girl continued, “It was like this when we returned. If she remembered to tidy her desk, why wouldn’t she remember to return her library books? Our school only allows two-month loans.”

“And another thing!” the girl with the ponytail exclaimed. “Why would she choose this building to commit suicide? It’s only five stories high. Jumping wouldn’t guarantee a quick death. Even if she died, it wouldn’t be instant. There are suicides every year at our school, but they always choose Building Nine. That’s the undergraduate dormitory, twenty-something stories high. It’s known as the ‘suicide hotspot.'”

The short-haired girl pulled up a chair and sat down, sighing. “But by the time we got back to school, the case was already closed. Our speculations are useless.”

Chu Xuanliang, unable to find the information he was looking for, put away his phone. “The dean of the Management department told me that Ma Shiluo didn’t have a good reputation at school. What was that about?”

Both girls frowned, looking indignant.

The short-haired girl said, “I think it was slander. Ridiculous! A young woman seducing a pot-bellied middle-aged man? Aren’t there better case studies to work on? Isn’t the stock market more fun? Aren’t candlestick charts more appealing?”

To those last three questions, Chu Xuanliang wanted to shout, “No! No! No!!”

The girl with the ponytail added, “It happened before I started school, but people were still gossiping about it even after I finished my first year of graduate studies. It’s ridiculous! Who has time to obsess over this?”

The short-haired girl chimed in, “But gossip spreads fast. There’s no way to clarify it. That greasy man was the vice dean of the Management department. His daughter led the charge of the smear campaign, constantly badmouthing her around school. Are you kidding? Does Senior Sister even lack money?”

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“Isn’t she short of money?” Chu Xuanliang asked. “Her lifestyle didn’t seem particularly affluent.”

“Naive. Some people are just sensitive to market fluctuations. True financial masters can achieve financial freedom. They treat the trading market as their ATM, withdrawing funds whenever they want,” the short-haired girl wagged a finger. “Although the stock market isn’t fully mature and has significant risks, there are still patterns. There are several top private investors who can do this, but they keep a low profile. They don’t wantonly amass wealth in the stock market.”

“Each of them has their own investment theory. There’s no absolute right or wrong, and their theories might even contradict each other. She had her own theory, and practice proved it worked.”

“How well did it work?” Chu Xuanliang asked curiously.

The girl with the ponytail replied, “She had a simulated account. Starting with a virtual capital of five thousand yuan, she now has two million.”

Chu Xuanliang was stunned. He straightened his back, his eyes gleaming.

He had to get Jiang Feng to introduce him to that ghost!

The short-haired girl added, “But she doesn’t trade stocks, and she never gives investment advice.”

“Why?” Chu Xuanliang couldn’t understand. “Isn’t this achieved through her own knowledge?”

The short-haired girl explained, “The financial market is a strange place. If you don’t stop trading, you’re likely to return all the money you earned back to the market. Many Wall Street giants, once glorious, ended up bankrupt. Her father was like that. He later committed suicide due to bankruptcy. So, she’s interested in this field but never touches real money. She wants to know what the correct theory is.”

“Oh!” the girl with the ponytail suddenly exclaimed. “I remember before the end of the semester, there was a period when she was trading frantically. I thought she was doing data analysis, but then I realized it was a live trading account. She was trading foreign exchange!”

The short-haired girl slapped the back of the chair. “I remember that too! She said that according to the gap-filling theory in the foreign exchange market, the top structure was complete, and there was going to be a once-in-a-decade bearish market. With leverage, if done right, it wouldn’t be a problem to multiply assets a hundredfold.”

Both girls exclaimed “Wow!” simultaneously, a mixture of envy and amazement.

Chu Xuanliang placed a hand on the table beside him.

He felt uncomfortable, very uncomfortable.

He needed some quiet time.

After his conversation with the two finance students, he felt terrible.

They even tried to comfort him. “Not everyone is that talented. Relax. Like me, I managed to turn 500,000 in my simulated account into 200,000. I’m the standard for a normal person.”

“Well, I lost 60,000 less than you.”

“Oh, you’re so amazing!”

Chu Xuanliang: “…….”