Luo Sui slowly snapped back to reality.
All the gazes in the hall were focused on her—curious, contemptuous, full of malice… Among them, the female voice that had just spoken—Hu Zheng’s wife—was looking at Luo Sui with smugness and no lack of vigilance, on guard against any move the other might make next.
At this moment, everyone in the previously fiercely arguing living room had formed a united front in the same trench. Only Luo Sui was excluded from this united nation.
One person, of course, cannot contend with a group.
Not knowing whether she felt being angry was useless, Luo Sui’s wooden gaze swept across everyone’s faces one by one. Then she stood up and, under everyone’s unexpected gazes, walked across half the hall and arrived in front of the memorial portrait placed against the wall.
“Are you really not going to change to another one?” Luo Sui asked. It wasn’t clear who she was asking, since she couldn’t make the decision here anyway. “I have a recent photo of him.”
“Stop joking around.” Hu Zheng looked disgusted, as if the moment his father’s face was associated with a young lover, it became nauseating and repulsive. “Keep those photos for yourself!”
Luo Sui said no more.
She looked at the Old Hu she had never met in the memorial portrait with an incredibly unfamiliar gaze, and then her eyes lowered, falling into the brazier beneath the portrait.
There was a ring of ashes piled up in the brazier.
The fire had long since gone cold, completely cold, without even a spark left. It was just like Old Hu—who had suddenly passed away, entered a coffin, been shoved into a furnace, and even the resulting ashes were deeply buried underground, parting from this world forever.
Luo Sui pulled her hand out of her coat pocket.
Earlier, when she had struck this pose, Ji Xun thought she was displaying a subconscious “standing idly by” mentality. Now he knew that wasn’t the case.
Luo Sui was holding something in her hand—a thick stack of photos.
Ji Xun had sharp eyes and saw that they were all photos of a woman in bright clothing—photos of Luo Sui herself.
To have this many photos, she must really love taking pictures normally, Ji Xun thought secretly.
Then he saw Luo Sui crouch down, place the stack of photos on the floor, use her fingers to pinch the top one, and light it on fire.
A bright flame instantly shot up, illuminating the woman’s face.
She tossed the photos into the fire one after another.
The initially small flame rapidly grew larger amidst the increasing amount of combustible material, soon turning into a raging brazier of fire. The flames leaped so high they actually caught onto Luo Sui’s long hair, making this ghost-like woman suddenly look as if she were wreathed in roaring flames.
“Wow—” The child’s innocent and amazed voice rang out. “Fire, it’s burning!”
Only then did a delayed commotion spread through the living room. Luo Sui, placed right in the middle of the danger, was ironically the calmest one of them all. She picked up a pair of scissors—used for cutting string—from beside the brazier and cut off her own long hair.
The falling hair, carrying flames, tumbled back into the basin.
Photos and hair both curled and twisted in the roaring fire, turning into a new pile of ashes amidst crackling sounds.
Luo Sui picked up this basin of ashes and threw it entirely at Hu Zheng’s wife.
“Ah—”
Accompanied by a scream of disbelief, Hu Zheng’s wife dry-heaved while frantically slapping at the ashes splattered onto her body. But how could ashes as thin as feathers and fragile as powder be slapped off? Her clothes instantly absorbed countless grey spots, turning her into a “spotted person” in a split second!
The next reaction to disgust was anger. Anger made Hu Zheng’s wife spring up like a coil, lunging in front of Luo Sui, grabbing her hair, and fiercely brawling with her.
When women fight, it usually involves grabbing clothes, scratching necks, and twisting arms. As long as it’s a fight, regardless of gender, it’s rarely pleasing to the eye. After their initial astonishment, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin immediately reacted, each taking one side to separate the two.
The difference in strength between men and women is significant, and the difference between trained and untrained individuals is also stark. Even though the two men were still recovering from severe injuries, separating the fighting women was still a piece of cake.
“Everyone calm down.” Huo Ranyin frowned and shouted deeply. He was a man who had waded through mountains of corpses and seas of blood; when his face darkened, he naturally exuded a chillingly stern aura that dared people not to move. “Speak properly and reason it out. No physical violence allowed!”
In the subsequent disputes triggered by this entirely complex emotional story, the ones who most deserved to be scolded actually weren’t the women, but the man.
But hurling manic insults at a dead man always felt like it missed the mark; furthermore, with more than half the family not caring about the deceased and only caring about the property—for the deceased, that was probably the greatest insult of all.
Ji Xun thought to himself. Seeing that Hu Zheng’s wife, whom he was holding, didn’t dare to speak under Huo Ranyin’s reprimand, he let her go. Huo Ranyin also withdrew his hands at the same time. Ji Xun returned to Huo Ranyin’s side, stood back in the position of a bystander, and whispered:
“Hu Yuan isn’t here.”
Huo Ranyin’s gaze briefly met his.
Seeing that Huo Ranyin understood his meaning, Ji Xun confidently left the room to Huo Ranyin’s care and slipped out the door to look for Hu Yuan.
There was a sizable garden outside the villa. At a glance, Hu Yuan was nowhere to be seen in the garden. Ji Xun didn’t give up and strolled around the vicinity. Such a massive drama had unfolded inside the villa, and the surrounding neighbors had heard the commotion and were peeking around. As soon as Ji Xun stepped out of the villa’s garden, he was stopped by an auntie from next door.
The auntie was fashionably dressed, wearing a bright rose-red coat and sporting permed tight curls. Beneath the curls, a pair of eyes flickered with curious light: “Young man, what happened inside? I haven’t seen your face before, you don’t live here, do you? I really didn’t expect that Old Hu, who looked so healthy, had cancer all along and just left us like that.”
“Auntie, you are…”
“I live right here.” The auntie pouted her lips toward her back.
“Oh, oh.” Since she was a neighbor, Ji Xun took the opportunity to ask, “Did Old Hu’s family have any strange behavior normally?”
“What counts as strange?” The auntie asked back. “Does having a bad relationship with his wife count as strange?”
“A bad relationship with his wife?”
“That old lady in his house. Every day you could see the old lady chasing after the old man, following him in and out, but Old Hu couldn’t even be bothered to give her a nice look.” The auntie curled her lip. “However, Old Hu was very doting on his granddaughter.”
“Luo Sui?”
“Yes, the one named Luo Sui.” The auntie said, “Not to gossip, but the young girl is indeed cute. She often brought over some food for us too.”
Ji Xun chatted with this auntie for a while longer, but it seemed she didn’t know much more either, repeating the same things over and over. So he cut the conversation short, walked forward, and continued looking for Hu Yuan. When he walked around to the back of the house, he finally saw her.
Hu Yuan wasn’t staying in the villa’s garden. Instead, she stood further away, by the flowerbed on the residential area’s sidewalk. Next to her was a young man, a man whose facial features were about thirty percent similar to Hu Yuan’s.
They were keeping their voices low as they talked.
The distance wasn’t too far. Ji Xun could see Hu Yuan with her arms crossed, her face full of indifference and boredom; he could also see the anxious and agitated expression on the young man’s face.
What were they talking about?
Ji Xun was thinking, about to take a closer look, when suddenly, Hu Yuan turned her head and caught Ji Xun’s peeking gaze dead-on. The young man consequently turned his head as well and saw Ji Xun.
Before Ji Xun could step forward, the young man walked away quickly. Hu Yuan, however, walked back and said to Ji Xun: “It was too noisy inside, so I came out for some fresh air, and someone happened to ask for directions. But I don’t really live here, so I couldn’t explain it clearly, and he got a bit anxious.”
Ji Xun smiled: “So that’s how it is.”
Hu Yuan: “Let’s head back. Did they argue out a result inside?”
Ji Xun: “Mm… doesn’t seem like it yet.”
“So boring,” Hu Yuan said, still wearing a face of indifference and boredom.
They returned to the villa, right as Luo Sui was walking out from inside.
Facing Luo Sui, Hu Yuan didn’t show the same hostility as the others, but she also treated the other as if she were air. Even though they were walking right toward each other, their gazes became two parallel lines, neither acknowledging the other.
Ji Xun and Hu Yuan waited for Luo Sui to step out the front door. Right at this moment, a shadow falling from top to bottom suddenly appeared in his retinas—
His mind went completely blank. Purely on instinct, he yanked Luo Sui into his arms!
Crash!
A flower pot smashed heavily onto the marble slab behind Luo Sui, shattering into pieces. Soil wrapped around a withered bonsai banyan tree spilled out. The sharp fragments glinted with a chill colder than a winter frost…
The instant this happened, Huo Ranyin rushed out from inside and looked upward.
Right above the main door was the second-floor balcony. There was no one on the balcony, only a bath towel hanging out to dry, dancing wildly in the wind.
They looked back inside. In the hall, everyone was present, and everyone wore a satisfied expression as if watching a good show.
Huo Ranyin turned back and quickly walked up to the second floor. There was indeed no one on the second floor. The flower stand had been moved very close to the glass railing of the balcony. On the top tier were three empty flower pots stacked upside down; their height was just about slightly higher than the glass. Huo Ranyin raised his head. Under the automatic lifting clothes rack, a very long bath towel and a few pieces of clothing drifted emptily.
He pressed the switch for the lifting mechanism nearby. The clothes rack lowered, and the bath towel lowered as well. If the dangling part of the towel were draped over the empty flower pots, it would be more than long enough.
To describe this simple mechanism in plain words: place the teetering flower pot that fell on top of the bath towel. Then use the clothes rack to lift the bath towel. The flower pot will follow the upward momentum and fall from the second floor without anyone needing to push it.
Obviously, this only required a remote control switch. A bath towel is the most common thing you’d find on a balcony. Afterward, it could be brushed off as an accident, and the police would have a hard time saying otherwise.
Moreover, Luo Sui was unwilling to call the police. The woman, with a slightly pale face, looked at the fallen flower pot on the ground for a moment, simply but firmly declined Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin’s suggestion to involve the police, and left alone.
She had a car, but the tires of the car parked outside had been punctured and deflated.
Malice seemed to penetrate everywhere.
She seemingly didn’t want to stay a second longer. She ignored the car and left straight away.
At this moment, many pairs of eyes secretly watched the woman’s lonely back as she departed.
It seemed that no matter which city it was, newly built residential complexes all looked about the same: towering high-rises paired with a few small western-style houses. When salespeople talked to you, they would constantly boast about how wide the building spacing was, and how even the second floor wouldn’t have its lighting affected.
But in reality, the shadow of the building in front always cast over the one behind it, one after another, densely packed together, looking very much like upright coffins.
Meng Fushan waited outside the main gate, which highlighted that the high property management fees of the complex were well worth it. In the guardhouse, the security guard playing on his phone ignored him completely, and also ignored the young woman with long hair walking out of the complex.
This beautiful woman looked somewhat depressed. She stood at the entrance of the complex for a while, which eventually caught the security guard’s attention—essentially a man’s attention toward a woman—hiding in the corner and sneaking a couple of glances.
Was she waiting, waiting for a car, or waiting for someone?
Meng Fushan locked his eyes on her.
He knew her name, ID number, family situation, and so on.
These basic details were told to him by Chen Jiashu, but Meng Fushan still spent about a week verifying and confirming them one by one. There were no discrepancies with what Chen Jiashu provided.
Except that her hair was shorter than in the photo, looking like it had been recently cut.
Then, following Chen Jiashu’s instructions, he obtained her medical examination report. The method was very simple: use a software to spoof a very official-looking telecom number (Telecom, Mobile, Unicom, whatever) and send a text message, notifying her that she could recently use reward points to redeem a free individual health checkup package, and that there was an even better family package discount. ‘For details, please consult xxxxxxxx, no charge, covered by medical insurance.’ Then, when the other party called to inquire, firmly tell her that the individual checkup was indeed free, and the deluxe family package, originally 5999, was now only 1000 yuan, and the 1000 yuan could be reimbursed by medical insurance, which basically meant it was free. Usually, the deal would be sealed.
When she actually went to the hospital amidst a dizzying series of checkups, how could she possibly know exactly how many tests she was doing or what their functions were?
Now the medical examination report was out. The kidney match was successful.
Meng Fushan hadn’t thought about swapping the medical report; after all, as long as it didn’t match, this girl wouldn’t be in danger. But he didn’t know how many of Chen Jiashu’s people were in Qin City besides himself. Could there be some in that hospital? Could Chen Jiashu have already seen the report through other means?
Currently, Chen Jiashu’s instruction to kidnap the person hadn’t actually been handed down yet.
But thinking about it, he should start making a move. If he delayed any longer, Chen Jiashu’s side would definitely get suspicious.
Meng Fushan lowered his head, picked up his phone, and sent a message.
When he looked up again, an older man was already standing next to the woman.
The woman was still depressed, but after a few words from the man, her anger quickly turned to joy, and then they got into the car together.
Meng Fushan stepped on the gas, turned the steering wheel, and tailed the car in front of him…
