During meal time, there were more and more people in the employees’ canteen. Many workers were eating and chatting while eating, looking relaxed. Judging from their behavior, they were used to eating here every day after work, and all of them had the same meal, directly from the food window. In other words, if the library tampered with the meal, hundreds of workers who ate in the canteen would be hit, and it became an ‘indiscriminate attack’ method.
Transferring them to the chemical factory, putting them in different jobs and then poisoning them to death… With Yue Xingwen’s understanding, the library would not do such a ‘illogical’ thing.
On the chat channel, Ke Shaobin typed and asked: “Can these meals be eaten? I’ve been listening to Qin Lu chatting with people for 5 minutes, and the others have already started to eat. Wouldn’t it be strange for us to leave it like this?”
Xin Yan said: “Wait a minute.” He picked up the chopsticks and carefully pulled the dishes and rice on the plate to see if there was anything wrong, and checked for a long time without finding anything wrong. Xin yan typed: “The food looks fine, no abnormal taste and traces of medicine have been found. Of course, if there is a colorless and tasteless poison, it can’t be observed by the naked eye. Does everyone want to eat it?”
Yue Xingwen simply said: “This course has a reasoning part, and the library won’t directly poison the entire factory at the beginning, in which case all the clues so far will be meaningless. To be on the safe side, everyone first packed the food back to the dormitory to see if there was any accident after the other employees had eaten. If it’s fine, then it proves that the canteen’s food isn’t pitted and can be eaten with confidence.”
Everyone agreed with this and found packing boxes to bring the meals back to their dormitories.
The building was 5-story high, and the employee dormitory area was just above the canteen.
Zhang Xiaonian and Xu Yishen lived in the easternmost 301; Zhuo Feng and Liu Zhaoqing were in the 302 next door to them; Ke Shaobin was in the westernmost 416, Jiang Pingce and Yue Xingwen lived in 415; There were relatively fewer female employees in Chemical Factory, and the girls were accommodate on the top floor. Senior sister Lin and senior sister Lan in 507, Qin Lu and Qin Miao in 508.
In other words, the accommodation of their 12 people was very scattered, not only were the floors different, but the vertical distance was also far away. Yue Xingwen guessed this arrangement was probably for the ‘escape’ session later, after all, in addition to solving the mystery, this course also had the requirement of ‘leaving the chemical factory alive’.
After entering the dormitory, Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce sat face to face on the bed facing each other, first putting the packed food next to them. Liu Zhaoqing sent a prompt in the chat channel: “Eating poisonous things, it should be about 2 hours after the digestion through the stomach and intestines to affect the human body. If it’s highly toxic, there are also examples of poisoned death within 5 minutes. Be safe, let’s wait two hours.”
Ke Shaobin said seriously, “After 2 hours, the meals are cold, and there’s no microwave oven in the dormitory. Eating cold food directly is not good for the stomach, so everyone can let Xin Yan turn on the spirit lamp and heat it up before eating.”
Xin Yan was silent for a moment, then looked back at Ke Shaobin, “It’s quite useful to use me as a chef, right?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ke Shaobin held up his glasses and smiled sincerely, “Without you, we have starved to death several times in the previous courses. Your spirit lamps and distillation flasks work especially well, really.”
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In the chat channel, Yue Xingwen began to summarize the clues: “Everyone can post what you’ve found out here and discuss it.” He repeated the contents of the plan he had just seen, and Jiang Pingce made some additions.
Xin Yan read the molecular formula and said: “4-(4-(Bis(2-chloroethyl)amino)phenyl)butanoic acid, looking at the molecular structure, it should be an aromatic nitrogen mustard derivative. This is a double alkylating agent, does senior brother Liu know what this drug is for treatment?”
There was no detailed drug description in the plan, just a large number of molecular formulas, as well as reaction equations, raw material lists, etc. Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce had no way to understand them all, so they wrote them down for other students to analyze.
Liu Zhaoqing was a medical student who studied pharmacology as an undergraduate. He touched his chin after seeing the message and carefully recalled for a moment before saying: “It looks like a kind of anti-cancer drug for chemotherapy that I have learned before, which is suitable for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers. It’s a kind of cytotoxic drug.”
Xu Yishen asked: “There are several mechanisms of action of cytotoxic drugs, do they affect the production of active enzymes, or act on cell genes and affect the transcription and replication of DNA?”
Xin Yan said: “According to my understanding, this dual-function alkylating agent may produce alkylation, acting on the helical strand of DNA, destroying the replication of DNA and achieving the effect of inhibiting the growth and spread of cancer cells.”
Ke Shaobin sat on the edge of the bed, seeing Xin Yan on the opposite side analyzing this chemical drug with a serious expression and couldn’t help but sigh with emotion: “Different trade, worlds apart, I didn’t understand it anyway.”
Yue Xingwen typed: “Liberal arts students are even more incomprehensible.”
Biology, chemistry, and medicine were inextricably linked. Liu Zhaoqing, Xu Yishen and Xin Yan could easily understand the mechanism of action of cytotoxic drugs, while students from other majors watched them discussing it as if they were listening to a heavenly book! … What aromatic nitrogen mustard derivatives, double alkylating agents, they recognized every word, but if it was connected together, they could not understand it.
Ke Shaobin concluded: “Xin Yan, say something easy to understand!”
Xin Yan put it another way: “It is the anti-cancer drug that acts on genes. This is what the chemical factory is going to produce next, and from the molecular formula, there is no obvious problem, not like a toxic drug that can trigger genetic mutations.”
Ke Shaobin understood now: “That is to say, on the surface, the drugs produced here are not poisonous? Is it a normal chemical factory that produces anti-cancer drugs? Including the ones you saw in the lab earlier, where sodium cyanide contains poison itself, but after a reaction, it also becomes non-toxic and is used as an ingredient in other drugs?”
Xin Yan nodded: “That’s right. The chemical factory did not carry out illegal drug production. I looked at the reactor and there were no hazardous materials that would explode. Even if a chemical homicide does occur, it will still be a personal act.”
Yue Xingwen changed the topic: “Assuming, someone uses the chemical knowledge they’ve learned to kill people? Since sodium cyanide appears in the list of materials in the factory, can it be used as a murder weapon?”
Xin Yan said: “Sodium cyanide is easy to dissolve in water. It’s a highly toxic chemical raw material under strict control, a tiny amount of it is enough to kill a human being if someone puts it into drinking water. Of course it can kill the target unknowingly.”
Jiang Pingce said in a low voice, “Since this exam has locked us up in the Chemical Factory, the deceased and the murderer must be inside the Chemical Factory. The murderer used chemical knowledge to kill people, and personnel changes within the factory need to be focused on.”
Yue Xingwen nodded and typed: “The recent personnel changes in the factory were the three employees who resigned right?”
Lin Manluo: “Those are the three who left, and there are five new people, all of whom are college students recruited by the school in July, and we’ve compiled a list of them as well.”
Lan Yarong said: “Peng Yong and Yi Jianqiang went abroad, Cheng De’s wife got sick and he resigned to go home. Their resignation reports are printed electronically, and the final ‘applicant’ is signed with a black pen, with company’s approval and seal, and there is no problem in the process.”
Jiang Pingce immediately grasped the key: “The resignation letter is not all handwritten, only the signature is handwritten?”
Lan Yarong said: “That’s right, it’s possible to impersonate the signature. We found that on the duty schedule of the workshop, there would be the signatures of the employees on duty every day, and it was not difficult to print a resignation letter directly, then copy the signatures of the three of them. But once the resignation letter of several hundred words is all handwritten, it is difficult to imitate.”
Xin Yan said calmly: “Now that computers have become popular, it’s also very common practice to download a template from the Internet to change the document and then print and sign. Under normal circumstances, employees who resign will be interviewed by the boss, which can’t always be impersonated, unless they leave the resignation letter and just leave.”
Qin Lu said: “But I checked, there is a record of the salary settlement on the financial side. Old Peng resigned on August 17th, Old Cheng resigned on July 20th, and they all went to finance to receive half a month’s salary; Old Mr. Yi resigned on August 3rd, and did not receive his salary in August.”
Jiang Pingce frowned and thought for a moment, then suddenly spoke: “The date of their resignation is a little strange.”
Yue Xingwen looked back at him, and Jiang Pingce quickly drew a calendar on the table and explained, “According to the order of resignation of Cheng, Yi, Peng, July and August are both 31 days long, July 20th is Tuesday, August 3rd is Tuesday, August 17th is Tuesday, and the intervals between them are all two weeks.”
Jiang Pingce’s reaction speed was indeed fast, and Yue Xingwen’s eyes widened slightly when he heard this result. “That means that every two weeks on Tuesday, there is a person who resigns and leaves the Chemical Factory?”
Jiang Pingce nodded and said, “This is definitely not a coincidence.”
He sent the conclusion he reached to the chat channel, and Ke Shaobin couldn’t help but shake the goosebumps all over his body: “Black Tuesday? Why do I feel that, instead of resigning, they were killed by the murderer!”
Liu Zhaoqing said stiffly: “I looked at the date, tomorrow, August 31st is Tuesday, will someone disappear again?”
Yue Xingwen remembered that when he walked out of the office this afternoon, he suddenly felt a chill in his spine, as if a pair of eyes were secretly staring at him. He was an atheist, and this was not a supernatural course, so it was certainly not haunted in the daylight.
So, was there really someone staring at him at that time?
Yue Xingwen took a deep breath and typed on chat channel: “There is likely to be a demon lurking in this Chemical Factory who uses chemical knowledge to kill people. Everyone must be careful, except for public places such as the canteen, don’t eat anything that someone gives you in private. And never go if someone asks us out alone.”
Everyone typed to show that they knew.
The ‘Black Tuesday’ proposed by Ke Shaobin sent shivers down everyone’s spine.
Tomorrow is Tuesday, will the ‘resignation’ thing happen again? The three people who resigned before, did they really have something at home, or were they ‘resigned’, in fact, they actually vanished?
thanks for the chapter!! <33
Thank you for your translation ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️