Chapter 13

His roar seemed to drag the girl’s soul back from somewhere far away.
For a split second her eyes cleared, then went fuzzy again.
Those hollow, empty pupils were like a puppet’s, strings cut. Seeing his little sister like that, something in Mu Yang snapped.
“Song Qingqiao, I swear to f*cking God I’ll kill you!”
He raised a fist and charged.
Mu Yang had gotten into school as a fencing athlete, but that was just the surface. Given his background, the Mu family had poured time and money into proper combat training and self-defense. They’d never planned to raise him as some useless young master.
What was a brush-wielding “artist” supposed to do against that?
A few punches and the painter was already seeing stars.
When Mu Yang really started hitting, the man on the sofa tried to fight back, but his combat power was pathetic. In no time he was beaten half to death, blood running from the corner of his mouth.
Mu Yang kept punching, knuckles crashing again and again into the man’s face. The guy had been thin to begin with; it didn’t take long before his head was a pulpy blur of blood and flesh, no human features left to recognize.
Only then did some of the rage in Mu Yang’s chest loosen its claws.
He ordered the men he’d brought to get Mu Yue dressed and send her home first.
He didn’t notice that, in a shadowy corner, someone had sobered up just enough to prop a phone up and start recording.
The camera light flickered faintly, but Mu Yang, blind with fury, never noticed. The bodyguards also kept respectfully to the doorway, not daring to look around too much, Miss Mu didn’t even have underwear on, after all. Between that and the chaos, no one spotted the tiny movement in the dark.
White powder was spread across the coffee table and dusted over the floor. Half-naked bodies lay everywhere.
Mu Yang sat down heavily on a couch stained with God-knows-what, cigarette between his fingers, expression dark as storm clouds.
Even at noon, the villa interior was dim and murky.
By the time his cigar burned down, exhaustion had seeped into his bones. He finally waved a hand, signaling his people to send Song Qingqiao to the hospital, and haul everyone else to the station.
Looking at what his sister had been reduced to, his heart throbbed with a dull, constant ache.
When Mu Yue first got obsessed with that broke painter, he’d brushed it off, just a young girl getting spring fever over a pretty face. Flirt a bit, grow bored, move on. No big deal.
Who could’ve guessed this damned impoverished “artist” would actually lead his sister straight into the abyss.
He’d lured her into drugs, gotten her hooked, taken advantage of her when she was high to play group sex; even used the Mu family’s name to leverage connections on the black market.
The more Mu Yang thought about it, the more his jaw clenched.
This mess was never going to be simple. People in the underground probably assumed the Mu family itself was dipping into that poison, thought they’d found a high-ranking patron, and were busy scrambling to curry favor with this penniless nobody.
Even if you ignored all that, there was still one question he had to answer:
When had Mu Yue started using?
You could screw around with men and play at romance, fine, he didn’t care.
But those things she’d taken? Easy to try, hell to quit.
He needed to get to the bottom of it.
The bodyguards who’d been cleaning up the scene were moving through broken glass and scattered clothes when one of them stiffened, a uneasy look crossing his face.
He leaned in close to Mu Yang’s ear and whispered, “Young Master, that painter… he’s not breathing.”
Mu Yang’s expression shifted.
He got up and went over, checking for breath.
Nothing.
The man’s lips were drained of color, like a lamp whose oil had already burned dry.
That… was a problem.
He’d never planned on actually killing anyone. Even if the bastard had to die, it shouldn’t have been by his hand. This was spiraling out of control.
Things were quickly slipping beyond what he’d imagined. For once, panic flickered across Mu Yang’s face.
The bodyguards clearly realized they’d gone too far as well, one of them swallowing hard before asking, “Young Master… should we tell the Master about this?”
That damned painter, dead, and still causing trouble.
At that thought, rage boiled over again. Mu Yang kicked the coffee table hard enough to send it flipping, glass exploding across the floor.
“What’s there to tell?” he snarled. “I’ll handle it myself. I’m not a three-year-old.”
“The… the flower thing the other night?” the bodyguard added hesitantly.
He suddenly remembered the task Mu Yang had given him before: help Young Master prepare a surprise confession for a certain girl he’d set his sights on.
Mu Yang had been so consumed with Mu Yue these days he’d nearly forgotten that entire fiasco.
Seeing he’d hit a nerve, the bodyguard wisely shut his mouth.
As for what was happening in Mu Yang’s world, Jiang Wei knew absolutely nothing.
Two months later, she finally stepped into the campus she’d dreamed of for so long.
A University really deserved its title as the best in City C. Everything about the new campus gleamed with promise, the towering teaching blocks, the Western-style dorms, the winding colonnades of the Humanities department, and the cutting-edge labs in the Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Medical schools.
Fully automated experimental setups. Instruments on par with the top institutions worldwide.
The Law School boasted Professors Zhang and Li, both of whom had participated in revising the national constitution.
Students who walked out of here would go on to become pillars of society. Jiang Wei believed, with almost stubborn conviction, that she would one day rewrite her fate and contribute something of her own to the world.
At the same time, she officially began her half-study, half-work life.
Days were for lectures, she took notes diligently and never zoned out.
Nights were for small jobs at the restaurants and milk tea shops near campus.
During military training, all the freshmen had bare, makeup-free faces. There were pimples, dark circles, sunburns, normal teenage flaws.
Only Jiang Wei’s skin looked like it would bruise if you breathed on it. Her delicate oval face was soft and fine-boned, with a hint of fragility; her dark eyes clear, bright, and quietly spirited. Standing in formation, she looked like a slim white magnolia blooming alone in a crowd.
Before training was even over, her reputation as the Law School’s campus belle had spread.
Jiang Wei didn’t care much. Between her classes and part-time shifts, she barely had time to catch her breath.
Because she left early and came back late, there were occasional frictions with her roommates. When that happened, she would always be the first to step back and give in.
Overall, relationships stayed civil, even friendly.
One day, she went to attend a guest lecture, and spotted Wen Ji in the audience.
He was the same as ever. When their eyes met, he smiled.
Jiang Wei blinked. Didn’t this god-tier genius major in medicine? What’s he doing at a Law School talk?
That night, back in the dorm, Li Xiaoxiao sidled up to her, eyes sparkling with gossip.
“Weiwei, what’s your relationship with that handsome med student?” she demanded.
Jiang Wei stared at her blankly. “Huh? Nothing. We were just high school classmates.”
Li Xiaoxiao clearly didn’t buy that.
“High school classmates, my ass. He looked over at you, what, seven or eight times in that one lecture? His desk was covered in ‘Common Clinical Cases,’ ‘Basic Clinical Techniques’ and all that. He’s obviously Med School.”
She leaned in even closer, voice rising with excitement.
“What’s a Med student doing in our Law lectures, huh? Suspicious, no? I’d say, ulterior motives.”
She deliberately drew out the last three words.
“What’s going on with you two? Spit it out.”
Her posture screamed “extraction by torture.”
Backed into a corner, Jiang Wei surrendered. She dug into her drawer, pulled out a box of chocolates, ripped a packet open, and stuffed it straight into Xiaoxiao’s mouth.
“Eat,” she said solemnly. “Please. Just… eat.”
Unfortunately, Xiaoxiao was the kind of foodie who could talk and chew at the same time.
“Don’t think you can buy me off with snacks,” she mumbled around the chocolate. “That guy had his eyes glued to you the whole class, and you still say there’s nothing? Hmph. When Lulu and Tingting get back, we’re holding a full three-way interrogation.”
“It really is just high school classmates,” Jiang Wei protested weakly. “Interrogate all you want, you won’t get anything else.”
She’d barely finished saying there was “nothing” when, come Monday, Wen Ji showed up to audit another Law lecture.
With Xiaoxiao’s commentary echoing in her head, Jiang Wei’s thoughts tangled themselves into knots. Her brain misfired, and when class ended she walked straight up to him and blurted:
“Wen Ji, what a coincidence, you’re here too?”
…She wanted to strangle herself on the spot.
He’s a Med student, this is a Law lecture. Of course it’s not a “coincidence,” you idiot.
To cover the awkwardness, she forced a casual tone.
They hadn’t seen each other in a while.
The boy who used to look a little delicate and baby-faced now had the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw. He wore a sky-blue tee under a white shirt, paired with simple slacks.
When he heard her call his name, he walked over. That familiar smile warmed his eyes.
Noticing the question in her gaze, Wen Ji explained, “I heard one of Professor Zhang’s talks on the Legal Affairs channel, about whether marriages forced against the will of the parties involved are valid. It was interesting, so I wanted to sit in on his classes. Your major’s actually pretty fun.”
Jiang Wei felt a metaphorical “囧” appear on her forehead.
Honestly, if Xiaoxiao ever heard that, she’d probably shout that her future job was “officially licensed gossip.”
Jiang Wei waved a hand. “No way. I think your major sounds more impressive. Hey, those mice and rabbits you dissect… do you guys raise them yourselves?”
Talking and laughing, the two of them walked out of the classroom together.
Neither of them noticed the teasing, loaded looks their roommates were sending from behind.
“Mm. For animal anatomy, some of the lab animals we dissect are raised by the department,” Wen Ji replied. “Some come from the market.”
“I’ve got one of my own, actually. Want to see it?”
“Can I? I heard normal people aren’t allowed into the Med labs. What if I break some reagent or piece of equipment…”
“The professor already put a lab under my name,” he said calmly. “Told me to ‘use it however I want.’ If it’s you, it’s fine even if you do break something.”
His voice was as clear and gentle as he was.
The question in Jiang Wei’s eyes met the warmth in his gaze, and she caught a flicker of feeling there, subtle, but unmistakably real.
Her cheeks heated up. She turned her head away, suddenly shy.
Wen Ji went on:
“Don’t worry, the place where I keep the rabbit isn’t in the same area as the lab. Come on.”
A University’s campus was vast. The Humanities buildings were built halfway up a hill, hugging the slope. To get to the Med School labs, they had to circle around the Humanities complex and head down toward the medical buildings.
On the way, the two of them chatted about what they’d been doing since graduating high school.
Wen Ji said he’d gone through a mountain of materials and had already completed most of his university coursework in advance. The professor who’d taken an interest in him had recommended him for an exchange program at Eisen University abroad. The application was already on his desk, he just needed to fill it out to get it approved.
He asked if Jiang Wei had ever thought about going overseas. Jiang Wei lowered her head, thought it over, then shook it.
“My grandma’s still here. I wouldn’t feel at ease leaving her. And Law doesn’t get many exchange spots.”
Hearing that, Wen Ji’s mood dimmed. A trace of disappointment crossed his face. He couldn’t help thinking: If I had a background like Senior Ling or Senior Mu, maybe I could take her with me to study abroad.
Sensing his sudden dip in spirits, Jiang Wei pointed ahead as they neared an open patch of ground outside the lab, eyes brightening.
“Is this where you keep the rabbits, Dr. Wen?”
“I’m not a doctor yet.”
“You will be, won’t you?”
The two of them stood there petting rabbits, trading teasing remarks, and that little pocket of gloom soon dissolved.