Her Rose – Chapter 74

Her girlfriend was pinning one of her former artists against the wall in a less-than-perfect kabedon.

Before Cheng Ying could fully process the rather incomprehensible scene, the two women in front of her sprang apart with incredible speed, like two repelling magnets.

To be precise, it was Jiang Hanguang who forcefully pushed off the wall and jumped away from Bai Ruo.

The woman’s fair face flushed a frightening shade of red, so red that Cheng Ying thought you could probably fry an egg on it.

She had a feeling she’d missed some crucial part of the plot.

Listening to Cheng Mantou’s incessant, breathless laughter in her mind, Cheng Ying decided she would check the lounge’s security footage in a bit.

Now, her cold gaze landed on Bai Ruo, who just moments before had been struggling incessantly, trying to grab at Jiang Hanguang.

Bai Ruo’s mind, which had been clouded by anger, went blank from Cheng Ying’s sudden interruption. Calming down now, she looked around in a daze.

The lounge door had been thrown wide open by Cheng Ying, and now people outside were curiously peeking in.

The sense of shame and decorum she had so callously abandoned in private came rushing back. Before Cheng Ying could make a sarcastic comment, Bai Ruo let out a cold huff, stomped her foot, and stormed off, her face darker than the bottom of a wok.

She’s leaving just like that?

Cheng Ying looked at Jiang Hanguang with a puzzled expression. She had rushed back without a moment’s rest after finishing her business, not expecting Bai Ruo to have found an opportunity. The moment she heard Xiao Xiao say that Bai Ruo had gone into the lounge with Jiang Hanguang, her mind had almost instantly conjured an image of her girlfriend being bullied to tears by that shameless person.

Although that image was somewhat inconsistent with Jiang Hanguang’s character—even if she were truly furious, she would at most just purse her lips and say nothing.

But Cheng Ying couldn’t be bothered with that. She had burst into the lounge headfirst. In those few short seconds, her brain had been working at high speed, preparing no less than a short essay’s worth of scathing remarks to teach Bai Ruo a good lesson.

But in the end, she didn’t get to use a single one. Jiang Hanguang had taken care of Bai Ruo all by herself?

What on earth had Bai Ruo done, something so outrageous, to provoke even a Bodhisattva to anger?

She had underestimated her girlfriend’s combat power.

Cheng Ying looked at Jiang Hanguang and was about to speak, “Um, just now…”

Miss Jiang covered her flushed face with one hand, looking like she refused to communicate. “Don’t ask. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Cheng Ying: “…”

Come to think of it, this seemed to be the first time Jiang Hanguang had explicitly rejected her.

Just then, a crew member came to call Jiang Hanguang for her scene. The woman immediately fled in a panic, her retreating figure looking so flustered.

Cheng Ying could only sit back down on her little stool in the filming area and start watching the security footage from the lounge.

“I know better than you, she’s more than capable!”

The screen froze on that line from Jiang Hanguang. With Cheng Mantou’s laughter echoing in her mind, Cheng Ying bit the back of her hand to keep from laughing out loud on the spot.

She was now a little grateful she hadn’t been there. Never mind how embarrassing it was for an Alpha to hear others discussing her “performance”—just seeing this angry Jiang Hanguang was enough to soothe her regret at not being able to verbally demolish Bai Ruo.

How could someone be so cute even when they were angry? Cheng Ying was even a little jealous of Bai Ruo. She hadn’t even been kabedon’d by Jiang Hanguang yet.

To prevent Jiang Hanguang from digging a hole and burying herself in it on the spot, Cheng Ying decided not to bring the matter up with her again. Of course, that didn’t stop her from clipping that part of the video and saving it to her private video library to be savored as a classic from time to time.

The work inside the studio was not affected by this insignificant farce; everything continued in an orderly manner. But the world outside the studio had already undergone earth-shattering changes due to Cheng Ying’s brief absence.

For Xu Qing, today was a special day.

A few months ago, after her father’s mysterious death, her life had hit rock bottom. No matter how many times she declared to the police that it was impossible for her father to have committed suicide—how could someone planning to kill themselves prepare all the materials for a lawsuit, and on the day before the supposed suicide, solemnly promise her that he would get their money back, and then the family would move to another continent to live a peaceful life, away from worldly strife?

The only response she ever got was eight words: “Insufficient evidence, case not filed.”

Meanwhile, she and her mother seemed to be trapped in a black net, a net that tightened more and more until it destroyed their already precarious lives.

First, there were the constant anonymous threatening letters. Then, their home was frequently broken into, things ransacked but nothing ever taken.

Xu Qing knew this must be a warning from Feng’s—the company her father had intended to sue—telling her not to keep pestering them.

She hadn’t planned on giving up. After all, her father was barely cold in his grave; how could she tolerate the mastermind behind it all roaming free?

But her mother had suffered a major mental blow from her father’s death and was already not in her right mind. The continuous harassment only worsened her condition.

Later, an incident occurred that became the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

The hunting dog that had been with their family for years was skinned by the intruder while she and her mother were out reporting the case to the police.

The intruder was clearly aware of their movements. So much so that when they returned home, the dog, which had been skinned alive, was not yet completely dead. Blood pooled on the floor, and the mangled, bloody dog was still making its final struggles on the ground. Its whimpers were like a razor-sharp bullet that instantly shattered all of her mother’s remaining sanity.

Her mother let out a terrible wail, clutching at her clothes and demanding that she immediately give up investigating the matter, go back to the countryside with her, and never return to this terrifying city. Otherwise, she would jump from the building right in front of her.

Xu Qing couldn’t argue with her mother, because she knew her mom simply didn’t want to lose her daughter after having already lost her husband.

So she could only give up.

She followed her mother back to their village in the countryside and found a job on a farm.

She wanted to forget her father, because that would make her feel a little better.

But every midnight, she would jolt awake from her dreams. In her dreams, her father’s body, smashed into a pulp, would wail and grab at the corner of her clothes, asking why she wouldn’t avenge him.

She kept up her habit of going online, hoping that one day she would see in the news that the head of Feng’s Food Group had died suddenly for his many evil deeds.

But apparently, Heaven hadn’t paid any attention to this small tragedy, and no matter how powerful a grudge was, it couldn’t kill a person.

Several months passed. Feng’s was still the top leader in the food industry, while she gradually stopped dreaming of her father.

Perhaps he knew that she was powerless too, Xu Qing thought with self-mockery.

Just when she thought she could forget this matter and start moving on, one day at noon, just after getting off a machine, Xu Qing felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Someone had sent her a message.

This was truly a rare occurrence. She had thrown her old SIM card into the trash the day she moved out of Yunjing City. Only her mother knew her current number, so who else would contact her?

But with just one glance at the message’s content, the blood in her veins seemed to freeze instantly.

Are you still planning to avenge your dad?

The message had no name and no number, just that short line of text, yet Xu Qing stared at it for a full ten minutes.

But then, her nerves, made hypersensitive from the prolonged harassment, immediately put her back on alert.

Heaven knew if this was Feng’s trying to sound out her thoughts, preparing to silence her for good.

So she only replied with one sentence—Who are you?

The other party replied quickly: You don’t need to know who I am. You just need to know that I can help you get revenge.

Xu Qing noticed that when the second message arrived, the first one had silently vanished from her message list. No matter how she scrolled, she couldn’t find it.

This was something no ordinary person could do.

Could it be that her prayers had finally been heard?

Her heart began to pound wildly, but in the end, she just replied with a trembling hand: Then why should I believe you?

The reply was again very fast, but it was an irrelevant question: Who is the most famous streamer you know?

Xu Qing didn’t understand their intention, but she still answered truthfully: Xiao Hanhan.

Xiao Hanhan was a top-tier streamer with hundreds of millions of fans. Before returning to the countryside, Xu Qing had loved watching his streams.

The other party replied: Open his stream.

Xu Qing obeyed almost instinctively. Xiao Hanhan was a very diligent streamer, so even though it was morning, he was still live, playing a horror game. The stream was still incredibly popular, with at least ten million people watching simultaneously.

The monster’s screams and the spattering blood, accompanied by Xiao Hanhan’s startled cries, echoed in her ears, but Xu Qing’s gaze was fixed on the spot where the message notification would pop up.

The mysterious “person” soon sent another message: In five minutes, I will play the story of the Three Little Pigs on this stream.

How is that possible?

Even if Xu Qing didn’t understand the technicalities, she knew that a streamer of this level would definitely have a dedicated team maintaining their broadcast channel, and it would be extremely secure.

But just as she was reeling in disbelief, the live feed on the screen flickered. A chubby little pig replaced the bloody, violent scene, and a mellow male voice began to softly narrate a fairy tale.

“A long, long time ago, in a forest, lived three little pigs.”

The dense barrage of question marks in the bullet comments and Xiao Hanhan’s confused voice no longer registered in Xu Qing’s mind.

She really did it.

That person quickly sent another message: Believe me now? Or should I play a striptease for you?

Xu Qing pressed her lips together. She was now certain that the person on the other end was definitely not from Feng’s.

Even if they wanted to test her, they wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths. They could have just disposed of her unreasonably, just as they had done with her father.

She still didn’t know the identity of the person on the other end, but that no longer mattered.

She typed quickly.

What do you want me to do?

You just need to tell me what you know. Friendly reminder: until this is over, it’s best for you and your mother to stay in a crowded place. I can’t guarantee your safety.

Twenty minutes later, after rushing home, Xu Qing dug out all the information she had about her father’s death from the depths of her files and sent it to the other person.

Then she asked her disgruntled boss for a week of leave and took her mother to the busiest local resort area.

On the way, she kept refreshing Flying Pigeon.

Until she saw it—”Unscrupulous Enterprise Shifts Blame to Supplier, Appellant Dies.” This topic appeared on the trending list.

Her fingers trembled, and it took her several tries to finally click on it.

The first post under the topic was from a blank new account.

The other party had posted the entire story of her father’s death, cause and effect, along with her notes, in a single Flying Pigeon post. There was no embellishment, and they had even thoughtfully pixelated her father’s body.

Just like she had done every time before.

The only difference was that every one of her pleas had never survived for more than a minute, whereas this post from the other party had been up for an hour.

The comments below had already surpassed one hundred thousand. Some were demanding the truth, some were saying how terrifying it was, and still others were saying that Feng’s had gone bad and should be shut down immediately.

So many days had passed that she had almost forgotten how desperately she had craved this kind of attention back then.

Anyone, please, just look at me. My father was killed by bad people.

Xu Qing didn’t jump up and cheer as she had imagined she would. She just silently put down her phone, but in the blink of an eye, her eyes filled with tears. The tears streamed down, frightening her mother who was beside her.

She didn’t know which god or Buddha she had prayed to in her midnight dreams had come to her aid; she only knew that she could finally move forward.

Outside the window, the sun was bright, so bright it made one’s eyes squint.

Heaven’s justice is manifest; good and evil will have their due.

“In ten minutes, these bastards have deleted it a hundred times. Hehe, their hand speed is pretty fast. Too bad your grandma here is known as the Thousand-Hand Guanyin of the intelligent brain world. If you can delete my post, I’ll take your surname.”

Cheng Mantou’s triumphant voice echoed in the screening room. Unaware that she had just been promoted to the status of a god or Buddha, Cheng Ying yawned out of sheer boredom.

“Feng’s hasn’t responded yet? Looks like I overestimated them.”