Dahe opened her mouth as if to say something, but Heyue's phone suddenly rang at that moment.
It was Jiang Shaoming, and the two of them fell back into silence.
Dahe hadn't expected Jiang Shaoming to remember the phone number. She watched as Heyue pressed to reject the call, only for it to ring again. After several repetitions, the phone finally fell quiet.
Just when they thought Jiang Shaoming had given up, the notification tone for a text message sounded the very next second.
Dahe tried to stop her: "Hey—"
It was too late. Heyue had already opened the message.
It was a very old video.
A rainy night, everything plunged into gloom, with only a few streetlights flickering precariously in the wind and rain, casting a cold light.
The video was grainy, but Heyue recognized her own disheveled self in the footage at a glance.
The eighteen-year-old Heyue's face was as white as paper, and she was shaking violently—whether from the wind and rain, or from the corpse lying beside her feet, she didn't know.
Jiang Shaoming's panicked voice came from off-camera, hiding behind the lens: "He's dead!"
Out of fear, his voice was pitched so high it was almost cracking.
The video shook violently, revealing Jiang Shaoming's panic as he asked Heyue: "When we just came in, did you see a woman running out?"
With a shove from Jiang Shaoming, Heyue lost her footing and tumbled into the mud, splattering mud across her pale face.
Her hands clutched the soil on the ground, and she said not a word, looking as though she had been scared out of her wits.
"Heyue! That was your friend, wasn't it! It was Lin Xialing!" Jiang Shaoming pressed.
"Shut up!"
Hearing Lin Xialing's name, Heyue reacted instinctively, scrambling up from the ground. She grabbed a handful of mud with her right hand and smeared it all over Jiang Shaoming's face.
Jiang Shaoming hadn't expected the usually quiet Heyue to suddenly snap. Caught completely off guard, he took a handful of mud straight to the face, dropping his phone to the ground where its camera pointed directly at Chen Song's unblinking, staring eyes.
The background audio was filled with Jiang Shaoming's angry scolding and Heyue's sobbing voice.
"You recognized her! It was Lin Xialing!"
"Your friend is a murderer!"
"You still want to help her deny it? Then you're an accomplice!"
The video ended abruptly there, but Heyue's head was still buzzing.
Jiang Shaoming thought Lin Xialing was the one who committed the murder that night, unaware that Heyue had intentionally stayed sitting on the ground.
Clutched tightly in her left hand the entire time was a delicate hairpin—Luo Yilan's hairpin.
So on that rainy night at the crime scene, the person who had seen Chen Song wasn't just Lin Xialing, but also Luo Yilan, whose eye had been gouged out by him.
Even Heyue didn't know who the real killer was, but she felt that Chen Song thoroughly deserved to die.
She couldn't let Jiang Shaoming make the video public!
With a face ashen with anger, Dahe reached to snatch the phone away, but the next second Heyue had already dialed the number.
"Hello."
Jiang Shaoming's sinister voice came from the other end: "I thought you wouldn't answer my call."
Heyue was speechless. What did this man mean by making himself out to be the victim?
"Well? Isn't my filming technique full of genuine emotion?"
"Jiang Shaoming!" Heyue gritted her teeth as she said his name. She had thought this video had long since vanished into that rainy night; she never expected Jiang Shaoming to have gone back to pick up the phone and save it all this time!
Despicable!
"Heyue, I'm giving you a friendly reminder. Don't forget why you came to Jingcheng with me ten years ago." Jiang Shaoming's smug voice drifted from the phone, while Dahe's face had long since turned livid: "Heyue, hang up the phone."
She reached out to snatch it, but Heyue sidestepped and dodged her.
"I'm a man who believes in mutual consent, so I'm asking for your opinion now. Miss Heyue, would you be willing to be my underground lover?"
Jiang Shaoming's tone was infuriatingly punchable, yet Heyue had no way to retort. She could only grip the phone tightly, biting her lips until they lost all color.
"I'll give you three days," Jiang Shaoming said. "Get rid of that psycho woman chattering in your ear within three days. I want you back by my side."
The call disconnected. Heyue leaned heavily and desolately against the wall, seeming entirely numb to any pain. Gathering her thoughts mechanically, she walked toward the door.
Dahe hurried after her, trying to pull Heyue back, but was repeatedly brushed off.
-
The night was deep, with few pedestrians on the road. Along the way to Wutong Shenyuan, they didn't even encounter many red lights. Heyue walked forward numbly, completely ignoring Dahe's attempts to stop her.
"Heyue, calm down!"
On the bridge, Heyue jerked her hand out of Dahe's grip. Her eyes bloodshot, she interrogated her future self: "Heyue, if the you back then chose to compromise, what gives you the right to stop me this time?"
"Heyue!" Dahe grabbed Heyue's shoulders. "Do you really want to fall into this endless loop, suffering over and over again?" Dahe's eyes gradually reddened. "Do you know how hard I've worked just to come back to your side?"
"You have no right to lecture me!" Heyue shoved Dahe away. Watching Dahe tumble to the ground, she stepped forward and looked down at her: "You're a coward, too. What right does one coward have to tell another coward how to grow?"
Heyue turned her head and walked quickly forward, only to hear Dahe's choked voice behind her.
"Heyue, aren't you curious about your future?"
Heyue's steps halted. After a long moment, she stiffly turned back to look.
Dahe stumbled to her feet. One of her high heels had snapped, making it impossible for her to stand steadily, but at that moment she couldn't care less.
"If you go back now, Jiang Shaoming will only step up his abuse." She limped toward Heyue, and seeing the tears shimmering in Dahe's eyes, Heyue couldn't help feeling a sour ache in her own heart.
"A month from now, Jiang Shaoming is going to marry Chu Yaoyao. You won't even be able to hide your relationship for half a year. From then on, you won't just be Jiang Shaoming's punching bag—Chu Yaoyao is a hundred times more terrifying than Jiang Shaoming."
That single sentence left Heyue completely stunned. She wasn't a toy—why did everyone think they could heap all their torment onto her?
At that thought, the scar on Heyue's wrist began to throb with pain again, pain so sharp it made her gasp for breath.
With that, Dahe rolled up the hem of her shirt, revealing a gruesome scar across her abdomen that looked as though it had been stitched up with at least dozens of stitches.
Heyue covered her mouth in shock as Dahe's uncontrollable tears finally streamed down her face.
"Heyue, I feel that by managing to come here, I am no longer a coward."
Heyue finally sank weakly to the ground, confessing in despair to Dahe: "I'm sorry, this... is a dead end after all."
To move forward meant death; to stand still meant death as well.
Moving forward meant returning to that hell, where she would have to endure not only physical torment, but also the agonizing erosion of her self-respect by Jiang Shaoming and Chu Yaoyao over and over again.
Yet if she disobeyed Jiang Shaoming, she believed that madman would definitely make the video public. With his immense family background and wealth, escaping a charge of perverting the course of justice would be a breeze for him.
And what about her? What about Luo Yilan and Lin Xialing?
Having endured for ten years, was all her previous effort going to go down the drain?
Dahe slowly squatted down and gently hugged Heyue, as tenderly as if she were comforting a bewildered child.
"There will be a way out."
Heyue did not see the instant Dahe blinked away her tears, her eyes turning cold.
"Heyue, go back to Qucheng. Luo Yilan is getting married."