Qiming Chapter 69

Chapter 69

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The sunlight leapt in brilliantly, filling the room with silence, broken only by the sound of chopping vegetables from not far away.

Ying Xizi raised her head, frowned, and let out an "oh." Her gaze then fell upon their tightly clasped hands, and her face instantly turned ashen. She widened her eyes and stood up, forcefully pushing the chair behind her. The fragile chair fell to the ground with a crash.

"Like?" Her slender fingers grabbed the glass of water on the table, lifting it absent-mindedly before drinking more than half of it.

"What... kind of like?" She looked at their now-separated hands in disbelief, unwilling to accept the truth, and asked again.

"Just..."

"He likes me, I like him, we have mutual feelings for each other." Xu Chengyue said calmly.

With a loud clatter, the glass in Ying Xizi's hand fell to the floor. Fortunately, the carpeted floor and the sturdy quality of the glass prevented it from shattering.

She sat back on the now-upright chair with a forlorn expression and asked in a weak voice, "When did this start?"

"Just..."

Before Gu Yunfeng could finish, she buried her face in her arms and started sobbing softly.

Gu Yunfeng glanced sheepishly at Xu Chengyue, who looked complex and innocent. As he moved closer to comfort her, her soft sobbing turned into a loud wail.

"Wu wu wu why are you! Treating me! Like this?" She mumbled incoherently, then her cries grew louder, tears flowing more vigorously, mingling with her snot. She took the tissue Gu Yunfeng handed her and kept wiping her face.

"Don't, don't cry like this..." If he had known it would be like this, he would not have said anything. Gu Yunfeng thought with a pained heart, but if he didn't say anything, Professor Xu seemed unhappy.

Why is it so hard to be a human? Someone always ends up being offended.

He patted the girl's shoulder nervously, saying, "Don't cry, don't cry, I won't break up with Xu Chengyue just because you're crying." The next second, her crying turned even more heart-wrenching and tempestuous.

The sorrowful crying finally drew Ying Han over. Seeing his daughter crying to the point of nearly suffocating, he looked at the two of them with pain and confusion, "What did you do to her?"

He was holding a green onion and wearing an apron, but his hands were clean, not at all like someone who had been cooking. Under his gaze, Gu Yunfeng and Xu Chengyue fell silent, and the three of them stared at each other without saying a word.

It was unknown how long passed before Ying Xizi's tearful voice broke the silence. She wiped her tears and blew her nose, speaking intermittently, "Nothing, nothing happened."

"How could it be nothing when you're crying so badly?"

"Really, it's nothing. I just feel..." She burst into tears again, "Why am I so miserable that the people I liked ended up together?!"

"What do you mean?" Ying Han looked at his daughter, her makeup smeared from crying, then looked at his equally puzzled wife who had come over, soup ladle in hand. He shook his head mechanically.

He really didn't understand the world of young people.

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"Why on earth were you at Ying Xizi's house?" Xu Chengyue couldn't help but ask as they walked.

Back to this question again. He really wanted to say it was because he was investigating Xu Chengyue's fall from the building last year, but Professor Xu didn't know about this from the beginning, and there was no need to tell him now.

Earlier at Ying Xizi's house, it had taken him a lot of effort to appease Ying Han. He had to admit that Ying Xizi was a straightforward and forthright girl. Despite being in an extremely bad mood, she hadn't acted out. After crying her heart out, she cooperated with them, telling her bewildered parents that she was moved to tears by their heroic deeds in the criminal investigation team.

That awkward situation was thus smoothed over with a lie.

Thinking about this, he quickly changed the subject, steering it back to the Jiang family's massacre.

"Who is the other suspect you mentioned?"

"I'm currently suspecting Jiang Shuishan's tutor, Qiu Lu. She's the last person seen with Jiang Yang on the surveillance footage." The elevator stopped in front of them, and the two stood in the narrow elevator space, with a health product advertisement playing on the screen behind them.

"The other victims were already dead before Jiang Yang returned to the villa?"

"Is that a possibility?"

"It is." Gu Yunfeng nodded. They had been trapped in a mental rut, believing that the killer of the four people was the same person and that their times of death were roughly the same.

But if they treated the cases as two separate crime scenes at the same location, the suspects for each crime scene became clear.

"Previously, the investigation on Qiu Lu was almost non-existent, all we know is that she's a student at Nanpu University," Xu Chengyue continued. "I messaged Wen Xin when I was on my way over, and she just sent me Qiu Lu's details."

Gu Yunfeng took the phone Xu Chengyue handed him and opened the email.

"This student named Qiu Lu was admitted to the school for women's fencing, is set to graduate next year, and started interning at Zhiyin Technology earlier this year," Xu Chengyue recited the contents of the email. "Besides this tutoring job, she has no other connections to Ronghua Biotech or the Jiang family. The only characteristic she shares with the suspect is her capability to inflict the fatal wounds on the victims."

Qiu Lu hadn't been treated unfairly while at the Jiang residence and had a fairly good relationship with Jiang Shuishan, so what motive would she have to kill these three people?

"Do you remember the initial scandal involving Ronghua Biotech?" Gu Yunfeng asked.

"Illegal drug development?"

"Right. But after so many days, this issue has been completely overshadowed by the Jiang family massacre." He paused. "What exactly was the illegal drug they were developing?"

There was no trace of it in the news, and no information about the illegal drug could be found. All online discussions revolved around the Jiang family massacre, and any relevant keywords about the illegal drugs had been thoroughly cleaned up, as if the scandal had never happened.

He vaguely felt that the Ronghua Biotech scandal and the Jiang family massacre were fundamentally linked to some earth-shattering secret that someone powerful was trying to cover up from behind the scenes.

And the exposed culprits were merely puppets, pawns that could be thrown away after being used.

"I don't know what the drug was," Xu Chengyue replied, continuing on their way to the criminal investigation team. A yellow leaf fell at their feet, lifted gently by the breeze.

He turned his face, smiling slightly, and returned to his original question.

"So, why exactly were you at Ying Xizi's house?"

Gu Yunfeng instantly stopped in his tracks. Despite the bright sunshine, it felt like a bucket of cold water had been poured over him. He swore desperately in his heart that if he didn't have to answer this question, he would kneel on keyboards, durians, or handcuffs, anything.

Just spare him this time, okay?

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The author has something to say:

Today is relatively short, tomorrow will be a fatter chapter~

Happy National Day to everyone~ Happy Motherland Day~

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: August 24, 2024 by Angel

Edited: November 14, 2024 by Angel