Transparent liquid streamed from Zhuo Ran's mouth and nose. Following the source of the fragrance, it slipped out through the gaps around the hospital room window.
From a distance, it looked like a puddle of water and attracted no one's attention.
Below the inpatient building, a man wearing a black baseball cap stood with two bags of fruit in his hands. He seemed to have come to visit a patient.
Anyone who noticed him would have realized that he had stood there for nearly half an hour without moving.
Suddenly, he seemed to sense something. His eyes, hidden beneath the brim of his cap, lit up slightly. He set the fruit on the ground and took a palm-sized incense burner from his pocket.
When he opened the lid, a puddle of water dropped precisely inside.
"The Zhuo family has raised this semi-finished product really well." The man quickly snapped the lid shut and murmured excitedly.
Then he picked up the fruit and hurried away.
"Both of you have seen her. Now you need to come back to the police station with me and assist with the investigation." Fang Chuan spoke to Zhuo Yongqi and his wife without much courtesy.
"My daughter still hasn't woken up. I'm staying here with her." Lin Qiu refused to leave.
Fang Chuan's tone was thoroughly formal. "I'm afraid that won't be possible. According to regulations, you can't have prolonged contact with a criminal suspect."
"What do you mean, 'criminal suspect'? Watch how you speak! What crime has my daughter committed? She's just immature."
Fang Chuan's gaze was cool. "Don't worry. I'll make sure your views are clearly conveyed to the judge in the indictment."
The evidence against Zhuo Ran was conclusive, and there was no chance of overturning the case. The circumstances were severe and the act intentional. Even though it had been an attempt, Fang Chuan guessed she would probably receive the maximum sentence.
On top of that, the Zhuo family's arrogant attitude would leave an extremely bad impression on their superiors, even if they couldn't find anything to use against them right now.
Zhuo Yongqi hadn't expected the young officer to be so unyielding. Though he was frustrated, he knew better than to oppose him at a time like this.
He hurriedly explained, "Officer, that's not what my wife meant. She's just too upset and spoke without thinking."
Fang Chuan smiled without answering.
He could tell the difference between a slip of the tongue and what someone truly meant.
"Let's go." Zhuo Yongqi glanced at the hospital room and patted his wife on the shoulder.
"But Ranran is so frail. What if these people can't take proper care of her?" Lin Qiu was walking away with her husband's arm around her shoulders, but even after they had gone several steps, she still refused to turn her head.
The couple followed behind Fang Chuan, keeping some distance from him. Zhuo Yongqi whispered into his wife's ear, "Don't worry. Let Ranran endure this for a while. These people can't watch that substitute forever. Sooner or later, we'll be able to switch their lives back."
Even if their daughter ended up behind bars, so what? As long as they got her to the capital, he could make sure she got out in the shortest time possible.
He didn't believe these cops from Qingcheng would still be able to interfere with his daughter's affairs once she was in the capital.
Just as the Zhuo couple were talking, the monitoring equipment in Zhuo Ran's hospital room suddenly let out a piercing alarm.
The officer standing guard outside the door hurried off to find a doctor. Less than a minute later, a group of medical staff rushed inside. Zhuo Yongqi, unable to enter, could only hear someone say, "Cardiac arrest. Prepare..."
The doctors and nurses rushed to save Zhuo Ran, whose condition had suddenly worsened. When Lin Qiu realized what was happening, she cried out and tried to charge into the room.
Fang Chuan frowned and restrained her. He, too, watched the room with some confusion. He passed Lin Qiu to Zhuo Yongqi, then called Yan Xiu and asked him to bring people over.
Zhuo Ran's condition had been stable earlier. How had something gone wrong so suddenly after her parents had seen her through the hospital room door? The couple seemed to care deeply about her, but Fang Chuan still suspected them of having tampered with something.
When Yan Xiu arrived, the doctors were still trying to save Zhuo Ran, but her condition was not promising.
Nearly half an hour later, the resuscitation efforts had failed to restore Zhuo Ran's heartbeat. The doctor officially declared that her heart had stopped and she was dead.
Lin Qiu fainted when she heard the doctor's words. Zhuo Yongqi seemed stunned, until he saw Fang Chuan and Yan Xiu moving toward the hospital room. He suddenly rushed forward, grabbed Fang Chuan by the collar, and roared, "Was it you? What did you do to my daughter?"
Fang Chuan gripped his wrist and pried his hand away. "Mr. Zhuo, we'll investigate Zhuo Ran's cause of death."
Yan Xiu's voice came from inside the room. He had already gone in to examine the body. "We've found the cause."
Everyone turned toward him. Yan Xiu removed the gloves he had used to examine the body and tossed them into the room's trash can. Calmly, he said, "The Gu in her body is gone."
He looked up at the Zhuo couple in the doorway. "I assume you can tell us what kind of Gu your daughter had?"
"How... how is that possible?" Zhuo Yongqi murmured in disbelief. "That Gu couldn't be removed."
Yan Xiu asked again, "What kind of Gu did she have?"
"Longevity Gu. A semi-finished Longevity Gu." Zhuo Yongqi's lips trembled. "We asked a lot of Gu Masters, but none of them could remove it."
"A semi-finished Longevity Gu..." Yan Xiu mused.
Just from the name, it was clear that this was an extremely precious Gu.
But it had only been a theory, a concept proposed thirty years ago by a family that controlled Gu. Nobody knew whether they had ever tried to create it.
Later, that family had suffered a disaster, and many of its members had died or been injured. It had been a chaotic time, and no one knew who was responsible. By now, only one descendant remained, an old man in his eighties who probably didn't have much time left.
According to the theory, this kind of Gu could prolong a person's life. Keeping it inside the body could repair old injuries and hidden ailments.
"Where did you get the semi-finished Longevity Gu?" Yan Xiu asked curiously.
Zhuo Yongqi hesitated for a moment.
Seeing that he didn't want to answer, Yan Xiu's lips curled into a faint smile. "Mr. Zhuo's reaction makes me wonder whether you had anything to do with the massacre thirty years ago."
Zhuo Yongqi hurriedly shook his head. "No, no, I had nothing to do with it. The Xu family gave me this semi-finished Longevity Gu."
"The Xu family?" If Yan Xiu remembered correctly, that Gu-controlling family had indeed been surnamed Xu.
"They were a collateral branch of that family. They found the semi-finished Longevity Gu after it had been hidden away. Later, on my daughter's birthday, they wanted me to do them a favor, so they brought it to me."
"Why would they give you something so valuable?"
"Because this semi-finished product didn't have any special effects." Not only had it been useless, it had burrowed into her body and couldn't be removed. Whenever Zhuo Yongqi thought about it, he couldn't help blaming the Xu family.
He had never imagined that, over a decade later, the Gu worm would leave on its own. But by then, his daughter was gone too!
"Thank you for cooperating, Mr. Zhuo. We'll perform an autopsy on Zhuo Ran to further confirm her cause of death."
Zhuo Yongqi didn't want to cooperate, but it wasn't up to him.
The autopsy results came back quickly, and they were somewhat unexpected.
The dissection of Zhuo Ran's heart showed that she had suffered from severe heart disease before her death. But according to Zhuo Yongqi and his wife, Zhuo Ran had undergone medical examinations at least twice a year, and every result had been normal.
Either her heart had suddenly deteriorated within the span of an hour, or it was related to the semi-finished Longevity Gu inside her. Perhaps these semi-finished Gu worms were not as useless as people thought.
The case ultimately led to one conclusion: the Gu worm's departure had triggered Zhuo Ran's heart condition, and she had died from it.
"Then did the backlash from interrupting the ritual stimulate the Gu worm and make it leave her body on its own?" Fang Chuan asked doubtfully as he looked over the autopsy report.
"There's another possibility," Yan Xiu said. "A Gu Master took the Gu worm."
Fang Chuan narrowed his eyes. "But didn't Zhuo Yongqi say the Gu worm couldn't be removed?"
"There's no such thing as a Gu worm that can't be removed. It might not have been ready before. Perhaps not enough time had passed for it to grow to the point where it could leave its host."
"The Xu family?" Fang Chuan caught on immediately.
Since the Xu family had delivered the Gu worm, they had probably been controlling it too.
"I remember one of the accomplices in Zhuo Ran's case was also surnamed Xu. What a coincidence."
"Even more of a coincidence: I have three other cases just like this one." Yan Ling walked in and tossed a case file to Fang Chuan.
Fang Chuan opened it and raised his eyebrows. "All three victims had suffered severe organ damage before they died?"
Yan Ling nodded. "We suspect these semi-finished Gu worms might have some serious side effects. For example, they could damage a person's organs while taking over their functions, allowing the person to stay alive as normal. Once the Gu worms left the body, the person couldn't survive."
"Do we have any suspects?" Fang Chuan asked.
Yan Ling shrugged. "We didn't before. We do now."
In the earlier cases, the victims had all been ordinary wealthy people. They had bought so-called ways to prolong life through shady channels. When their time came, the Gu worms were taken away, and they died.
That didn't necessarily mean the sellers had lied. Those who bought the methods of prolonging life had indeed lived a little longer than before, but they were said to have had a very poor quality of life.
Only Zhuo Ran's case had turned up a lead involving the Xu family.
"I'll have someone investigate the Xu family." Yan Ling smiled at Fang Chuan.
Fang Chuan closed the case file. "That works."
Though Yan Ling had seemed to be trying to take the case from him, Fang Chuan didn't really mind. The Xu family had been laying the groundwork for over a decade; investigating them was bound to be difficult. He'd leave the hassle to headquarters.
Zhuo Ran's death wasn't made public, and even Liu Mumu didn't know about it. Rumors spread around campus that Zhuo Ran had been arrested for a crime, but few people believed them. Even among those who had attended her birthday party that day, only a handful knew the truth.
Most people believed she had been forced to withdraw from school because of her health.
Xu Anze wasn't as famous as Zhuo Ran, so his departure was only discussed for a few days by students in his department.
Time always passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, Liu Mumu had spent several months at school. It had been summer when she arrived in Qingcheng, and now it was winter.
Compared with the winters back in her northern hometown, this weather was barely late autumn.
But out of habit, she still bundled herself up until she looked like a bear. It was the last stubborn pride of someone from the north: no one could make her give up her long underwear or her down jacket.
Not even a warm winter.
Of course, none of that was enough to trouble her. The only thing that could bother a student was exams.
At the end of the semester, they officially entered exam week.
The four roommates frantically flipped through their books at their desks, especially Xue Lan, who sat at hers from morning until night.
As she put it, you had to hold on to either love or your studies. She'd already lost love, so only a scholarship could make up for her broken heart.
In short, it was time to get competitive.
Liu Mumu also studied hard, but one subject was an obstacle she couldn't avoid: Advanced Mathematics.
She had never understood why university students had to study Advanced Mathematics. Wasn't that a little too cruel?
She'd taken the course this semester, yet it felt as if she hadn't learned a thing.
In the end, she could only put her hopes in the supernatural...
If she flipped a coin during the exam to get a few points, surely the proctor wouldn't kick her out of the exam hall, right?
After the Advanced Mathematics exam, Liu Mumu decided that once she had finished her last exam, she'd go pay her respects to her grandfather and thank him for making her flip coins, which had rescued her from failing Advanced Mathematics.
After exams, everyone began packing their things and getting ready to go home for winter break.
Liu Mumu's home was in Qingcheng, so she didn't have much to pack.
As usual, Old Dong came to pick her up on the day vacation began.
After nearly half a year of getting used to each other, Jiang Li could now face Liu Mumu with a calm expression. When she saw Dong Zhenghao come in with a suitcase alongside Liu Mumu, she even greeted them. "You're back."
Dong Qi, sprawled halfway across the sofa, let out a loud "Tsk," clearly expressing his disdain for someone in the room.
Even though his own mother had already been won over, he remained on the front line of the fight against Liu Mumu. He would never back down!
"Xiao Qi, you're on winter break now, right? How did you do on your final exams?" Liu Mumu asked as if it were just a casual question.
Dong Qi shot her a wary glance. Jiang Li answered for him. "Not bad. He passed everything."
The Dong family didn't have high expectations for their children's grades. Or rather, their expectations for their only son were simply that he pass. After all, he would inherit Dong Zhenghao's vast fortune someday, so his grades weren't all that important.
"Is that so?" Liu Mumu's lips curved. "What did you get in math?"
"Your brother got over a hundred and ten in math. He's clever, just like me," Dong Zhenghao said proudly.
Dong Qi shifted uneasily on the sofa.
"That's really impressive," she praised.
The conversation had already ended, but over dinner, Liu Mumu asked about Dong Yue's grades too.
She didn't hide anything and told Liu Mumu her scores in each subject.
Dong Yue's grades were rather average. She did fairly well in the humanities, but her math score had only just scraped past the passing mark. If she was only passing high school sophomore math, she was probably at the bottom of her year.
Jiang Li's face darkened, and she couldn't help scolding her. "You're always saying you're going to study, but I don't know how you do it. You still haven't even passed math. There's a parent-teacher meeting at the start of next term, but I'm not going. I can't bear the embarrassment."
"Exactly." Dong Zhenghao agreed with his wife. He pointed his chopsticks at his younger daughter. "You should spend more time learning from your brother. He barely studies, but he still gets better grades than you."
Now that was a true member of the Dong family! Dong Zhenghao thought proudly.
Dong Qi gave a smug snort and said to Dong Zhenghao, "Dad, I want a sports car."
Dong Zhenghao hesitated. "You're not old enough yet. What do you need a sports car for if you don't have a driver's license?"
"I don't care. I want a sports car. I can drive it in a year, so buy it for me!" He whined.
Jiang Li joined in to support him. "He did well for once. It's only a sports car. Why not buy it?"
She had her own little plan. The money was going to their son anyway, so the more they spent on him now, the less Liu Mumu would get later.
A while ago, Dong Zhenghao had wanted to buy Liu Mumu a villa. Though he hadn't gone through with it, Jiang Li had kept it in mind.
"Fine, fine. I'll buy it." In the end, Dong Zhenghao couldn't withstand the pestering from his wife and son and finally agreed.
The family was having a wonderful time together, while Dong Yue remained excluded.
After dinner, Liu Mumu suddenly took out a coin and pushed it in front of Dong Zhenghao.
Dong Zhenghao was a little surprised. His daughter was offering to tell his fortune? That was rare.
"Dad, flip a coin. I'll read your fortune."
"What are you going to tell me?"
"I'll tell you whether your son is really yours."
"What do you mean?" Jiang Li nearly jumped up before Dong Zhenghao could even respond.
"Mumu, watch what you say." Dong Zhenghao's expression darkened in a rare show of displeasure, though he still didn't dare go too far. "Don't say things like that again."
Liu Mumu kept smiling as she twirled the coin on the table with her fingers. "Let's think about it. Both your daughters got math scores around the passing mark, but your son nearly got a perfect score. Which of us do you think inherited your math ability?"
Dong Zhenghao stiffened.
Liu Mumu continued, "Dad, you should be honest."
All right, Dong Zhenghao admitted that he had no ability at math.
He was only at an elementary school level.
Liu Mumu looked at Dong Qi, who was smugly anticipating his new sports car. "I'm not questioning whether my brother is yours. I'm only questioning his grades."
"What do you mean? I still have Qiqi's report card."
His son had finally gotten a high score, only for Liu Mumu to question it. Jiang Li went upstairs to fetch the report card he had given her.
She slapped it onto the table. "How could something like this be fake? I know you don't like Qiqi, but he's still your younger brother..."
Liu Mumu slid the report card in front of Dong Yue and asked her, "Did your report cards look like this in middle school?"
Dong Yue fell silent for a moment, then glanced at Dong Qi.
Dong Qi was glaring at her viciously.
Dong Yue lowered her eyes. "The paper's different."
"What are you saying? It's fake?" Dong Zhenghao shot to his feet and grabbed the report card.
"The best way to confirm whether it's real is to ask his homeroom teacher," Liu Mumu said at just the right moment.
Because they were busy with work, and because Dong Qi had done poorly and often gotten into trouble in the past, the couple rarely contacted his homeroom teacher. The teacher knew their attitude, so when anything came up, they usually contacted Dong Zhenghao's secretary instead.
Dong Zhenghao got Dong Qi's homeroom teacher's number from his secretary and called.
Ten minutes later, after he hung up, Dong Qi had already disappeared.
It turned out he'd gotten only eleven points in math, not a hundred and ten.
He really was Dong Zhenghao's biological son. There wasn't a single thing wrong with that.
Finally, Dong Zhenghao dragged him out of the bathroom in Dong Qi's room.
After using the rolling pin last time, he must have decided it felt pretty good, because this time he went straight to the kitchen, grabbed it, and only then went looking for Dong Qi.
Last time, Dong Qi hadn't run because he still had a hairline fracture. Now he was completely healed. How could he possibly stay put and take a beating without putting up a fight?
The father and son ran and chased each other, while Liu Mumu took a tub of ice cream from the fridge and handed Dong Yue a spoon.
Dong Yue whispered, "Mom bought this for Dong Qi."
It was Dong Qi's favorite flavor.
"Someone who only got eleven points in math doesn't deserve ice cream." Liu Mumu scooped up a big spoonful, quite satisfied. This was how a home ought to be—lively.
In the end, Dong Qi was a little slower. He lost speed on the stairs, and his dad caught him on the landing and gave him a thorough beating.
He wailed and shouted for his parents, with a few curses at Liu Mumu and Dong Yue mixed in.
"You dare curse at your sister? At least she passed math. And you? Eleven points! How did you even manage that?" Dong Zhenghao was red in the face and neck with anger. He felt Dong Qi had completely disgraced him.
His homeroom teacher had even put it very tactfully: Dong Qi had ranked last in the entire school.
With grades like that, he'd still had the nerve to ask for a sports car!
Thinking of that gave Dong Zhenghao's arm even more strength as he swung the rolling pin.
"How did you know his math score was fake?" Dong Yue quietly asked Liu Mumu.
Liu Mumu took a bite of ice cream and replied, "He just doesn't look smart."
Aside from his face, there was another important reason. Liu Mumu absolutely couldn't accept that even fortune-telling couldn't save her math skills, yet Dong Qi was somehow so much better than her!
Could she really be dumber than Dong Qi? Absolutely not.
Sure enough, genes didn't lie.
Dong Zhenghao's beating went on for a whole hour. The villa was filled with wails and screams. The sports car was gone, his vacation was gone, and next he'd be confined to the house until a tutor came to teach him math.
Dong Qi was completely devastated. That night, while everyone had gone back to their rooms to sleep, he quickly packed up his game console and computer and decided to run away from home.
The next morning, Jiang Li got up and found her son's room empty. The bed wasn't even warm, and she panicked, hurrying to call Dong Zhenghao.
The couple made such a commotion that they woke the whole family.
Jiang Li was rushing to check the security footage when she stepped outside and saw that the Zhang family next door was in an uproar too. When she asked, she learned that their eldest grandson, Zhang Yang, had also disappeared.
When they came back from checking the footage, they learned that Dong Qi and Zhang Yang had left the neighborhood together. Dong Qi, in particular, had been dragging a suitcase, looking every bit like he was running away from home.
"It's all your fault. Why did you have to hit him? So what if he only got eleven points on an exam? It's not that big a deal. You made him so angry he ran away from home," Jiang Li couldn't help scolding Dong Zhenghao.
Before Dong Zhenghao could speak, Liu Mumu interjected, "You don't need to blame Dad. A tree grows crooked when it hasn't been toughened up by the world. Just look at Yueyue and me—we turned out perfectly normal."
Jiang Li thought, As if you two are anything like my son. Dong Zhenghao had already nodded. "Mumu's right. It's your fault for spoiling him too much."
"Now isn't the time to talk about this. Where on earth have the kids gone?" Zhang Yang's grandmother anxiously interrupted them.
"Mom, why don't we call the police first?" said Zhang Yang's stepmother, the Zhang family's daughter-in-law.
Before anyone else could react, the old lady slapped her. "If you hadn't upset Yangyang, would he have run off and not come back? If anything happens to my grandson, just you wait."
The unreasonable way Zhang Yang's grandmother behaved was exactly like the way Dong Zhenghao's mother had acted back then.
Jiang Li felt sorry for her and tugged at the Zhang family's daughter-in-law before stepping forward to reassure the old lady. "Auntie, the boys are both grown up, and they have money on them. Nothing serious will happen."
She'd only panicked because she was so worried. Now that she'd calmed down, she realized her son wasn't a little kid who could just be kidnapped.
Zhang Yang's grandmother still hadn't cooled off. She glared at her daughter-in-law, then softened her tone a little when she spoke to Jiang Li. "So, you're saying we don't need to call the police yet?"
"No. I'll call our relatives first. Otherwise, we'll find out where my troublesome one is when he uses his credit card."
Jiang Li figured her son probably hadn't gone very far.
Before you continue