Qiming Chapter 95

Chapter 95

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– Zhiyin Biotech suspected of illegal human experimentation, are countless bodies the foundation of scientific progress?!

– Zhiyin Biotech’s stock price plummets to half its peak. Will its parent company, Zhiyin Technology, launch an accountability investigation?!

– Profit model under repeated scrutiny. Can Zhiyin Technology, built on a pile of grievances, maintain its billion-dollar valuation?

Wan Biannian sat in his office chair, staring at the news on his computer screen, wracked by a splitting headache.

This state of affairs had been going on for months. He couldn't help but foolishly click on the comments under the news, seeing the keyboard warriors cursing his ancestors for generations. Though furious inside, he forced himself to remain expressionless, trying to stay calm.

He slammed his water cup heavily onto the desk, the sound echoing in the quiet room. The loud noise startled Lin Xiangrong, who had just pushed the door open.

Wan Biannian looked up at her, pointing to the news headlines on the screen. "Look at this, just look at how they’re writing these news stories!" He sighed heavily. "It’s all a load of rubbish."

"This kind of news has always been around. The taller the tree, the more it catches the wind, there’s always gossip and slander." Lin Xiangrong spoke while walking towards the screen. After reading the headlines and content, she couldn’t help but laugh.

The news... wasn’t exactly wrong, was it?

Seeing Wan Biannian roll his eyes, she stood upright, put away her smile, and spoke seriously, "You could always reach out and get the news taken down."

"Forget it." This time, Wan Biannian gave up on that idea. He took a sip from his water cup. "I’ve been trying to get it removed for months, but it hasn’t helped. It’s not like it was ten years ago, there are too many eyes watching us now."

"The real problem is what happened with Mr Fang, the aftermath caused too much of a stir." She cautiously chimed in.

"I know Old Fang has never been reliable, so all these years, I’ve been giving him opportunities to gain experience under me. This time, I finally gave him a chance to take the lead, and he blew it."

Wan Biannian shook his head, adjusting his dark suit. His expression was calm, but his tone became more heated. "Tell me, does he have any of the composure required for the president of a listed company? Does he think he’s some rebellious teenager or a street thug? How could he disregard his status and challenge law enforcement? If he was kidnapped, he should have just kept quiet and waited for the police to rescue him. But no, he killed the person who kidnapped him, then attacked the police and fled with a gun."

"His temper’s too volatile, and he can’t stay calm."

"Now he’s permanently at rest, and at least that puts my mind a little more at ease." Wan Biannian rubbed his temples and sighed heavily once more, looking at Lin Xiangrong with a complicated expression, "But it’s you who has been wronged."

She froze for a moment, feeling a mix of emotions upon hearing that. She had been detained at a small county police station for less than two days before being released, without any charges. They had even labelled her actions as an act of bravery.

There was no need to guess. She knew that, with Wan Biannian’s influence, solving such matters in his hometown was no problem at all.

"It’s nothing, doing what's right is something everyone should strive for." Lin Xiangrong gave a slight bow. She couldn’t quite put her finger on how she felt. Killing someone? When she pulled the trigger, she had felt no particular emotion. There was some inner turbulence but no fear or guilt. It felt more like accidentally squashing a lamb already set for slaughter.

Wan Biannian nodded and walked over to the window. He gazed out at the rows of towering buildings. The snow in the corners had already melted, and the sky was gloomy, thick grey clouds blocking out the sun, creating a stifling atmosphere.

"How is the matter that I asked you to investigate last time? Who leaked the information and tipped off that young man Old Fang killed about our internal matters?"

"Who else could it be? Lu Yong." She sighed and continued, "I know a student of his, so I asked them to get me all the call and email records of Lu Yong's, the future president of Nanpu University. After going through them, a few emails seemed familiar. After digging deeper, I found out they were related to someone named Wei Han."

"He's getting promoted? That seems quick." Wan Biannian immediately latched onto that point, looking puzzled.

"As a deputy."

"Still, that's quite fast, doesn't really follow the usual promotion rules."

"He must have some special connections, right?"

"So, you're saying Lu Yong told our business to this... Wei Han, who then tipped off the media and orchestrated Old Fang's kidnapping?"

"Exactly, it's just as you thought."

"Lu Yong... What’s gotten into him this time?" Wan Biannian frowned, picking up a stack of papers nearby. "Remember the AI detective project? Everything was going fine, and then out of nowhere, he turned hostile before the project was even completed."

That incident happened about half a year ago. After Xu Chengyue’s condition had stabilised, Lu Yong suddenly cut off their partnership unilaterally and sought cooperation with the Ministry of Public Security's Third Institute. Now, he had leaked everything to the media. It was a classic case of using someone and then burning the bridge, completely ungrateful and ruthless. Once he’d achieved his goal, he turned around and sold them out, leaving them to bear all the legal risks.

What was he after? Was he afraid of being branded as a criminal?

Lin Xiangrong looked at him, hesitant to speak. After a few minutes of his silent gaze, she finally spoke, "He wants to kill his student."

"His student? Which student?"

"The only successful case we’ve had..."

"Absolutely not." Wan Biannian abruptly turned around, throwing the papers in his hand onto the desk with a sharp slap. "Damn it, what’s his problem? Why does he keep coming after us?"

"Why would he want to kill the student?" He raised an eyebrow, asking.

"I don’t know..."

"Haven’t you known them for years?"

"I really don’t know."

Lin Xiangrong was equally frustrated regarding this matter. Back then, she had only been with Zhiyin Technology for a short time, and Xu Chengyue was just an intern. As his mentor, she had only worked with him for a few months. During that time, Xu Chengyue often complained about the strained relationship between him and Lu Yong. As a student, Xu Chengyue had been exploited for years, with any papers he published credited only to his advisor. No matter how much effort he put in, Lu Yong was always the star, while Xu Chengyue was relegated to the background. It wasn’t surprising that they disliked each other.

It wasn’t until later when Xu Chengyue helped Lu Yong with the AI detective project that he finally earned his first author credit on a paper, publishing several more in Nature afterwards.

But disputes like these were common in academia, hardly grounds for a death sentence. The real reason Lu Yong was so ruthless required further investigation.

As for how Lin Xiangrong discovered that Lu Yong wanted to kill his student? It was because she’d heard that Xu Chengyue had once been targeted by an attack involving a self-driving car. Xu Chengyue’s GPS location was known only to her and Lu Yong, meaning only Lu Yong and his team could have carried out the attack.

A cold wind blew into the office through a window that hadn’t been properly closed, making Wan Biannian’s head throb to the point of almost exploding. He shut the window tight, returned to his desk, and suddenly remembered something, "Why did you come to see me?"

"To report, General Manager Wan." She glanced at the time, thinking that they had finally gotten to the main point, "We agreed to meet at three in the afternoon, and now it’s nearly five."

She had indeed come here for work, not to chat about personal matters or gossip, though somehow they had unknowingly spent an hour talking about unrelated things.

"Then hurry up and report, I have a meeting at seven." Wan Biannian stared at the moving hands on his wristwatch, calmly sitting back in his chair as if Lin Xiangrong had just walked into his office.

—————

It was a week later when Gu Yunfeng received another call from Ying Xizi.

This time, they didn’t meet at the school or hospital, but at the tea house where they had their first formal meeting.

Ying Xizi removed her grey down jacket and hung it on the nearby coat rack. Her eyes were dim, and she wore little to no makeup. Her whole style had shifted significantly, comfort was now her priority, with flat boots replacing high heels, and her skirt swapped for wide-leg trousers.

"My classmate tested the ingredients in Chengyue’s medication." She took a report out of her bag and began reciting a long list of chemical names from the black-and-white document.

"What?" After she finished, Gu Yunfeng looked at Ying Xizi in confusion, his face saying, ‘What on earth is all this?’

"It’s basically a mix of lorazepam and pethidine hydrochloride."

Seeing his continued bewilderment, Ying Xizi handed him the report. "The first few ingredients are mainly for antidepressant and sleep-inducing effects. The latter one is a powerful painkiller. Prolonged use will numb the patient’s central nervous system, eventually causing irreversible damage."

"I haven't heard of this kind of drug circulating on the market," she paused and added, "Based on the dosage... you could call it a sedative, but the dose is far beyond safe limits. It’s certainly not a standard sleeping pill, current sleep aids are far more effective and have way fewer side effects than this."

She took a sip of her West Lake Longjing tea and continued, "In my judgment, this drug’s real purpose is to destroy the nervous system."

Destroy the nervous system?

Gu Yunfeng was startled, blurting out, "So it’s poison?"

"Yes, it’s poison," Ying Xizi agreed with him, taking the report back and carefully re-examining the listed ingredients and their proportions.

"These are all compounds with mild sedative effects but severe side effects, probably meant to pass off as a sedative."

But in essence, it was poison.

"Is Chengyue taking it? Who gave him this drug?" Ying Xizi suddenly looked up, staring at him intently.

"I... I don’t know." Gu Yunfeng shook his head in confusion. A few days ago, when he saw the bottle, the medicine hadn’t been opened. It looked the same as it had a month ago, so Chengyue likely hadn’t taken any of it.

But there was no way to be sure that Xu Chengyue hadn’t been prescribed several bottles and already consumed some of them.

"I’ll check when I get home and throw away any suspicious medications."

After saying this, he began to recall the people Xu Chengyue had frequently interacted with during that period. Since the drug wasn’t available on the market and was essentially poison, it must have been illegally manufactured. When illegal production was mentioned, his mind flashed back to the now-abandoned Ronghua Biotech.

The first problem Ronghua Biotech encountered was being reported for illegal drug production. The Food and Drug Administration had launched an investigation, but no conclusion was ever reached. Then, after the founder of Ronghua Biotech was murdered and his family wiped out, the illegal drug case was quietly dropped, never to be mentioned again.

In that moment, Gu Yunfeng was a little shaken up listening to the gentle music of the teahouse. He suddenly realised that some overlooked matters often carried significant weight. Like the bottle of poison disguised as a sedative that fell from the sky, or the missing illegal drugs in the Jiang family massacre.

They seemed to be subtly linked together, along with Xu Chengyue’s unpredictable future and fate.

‿︵‿︵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: September 20, 2024 by Angel

Edited: January 7, 2025 by Angel