The girl before her had delicate features and the gentle grace of a woman from South of the Yangtze. She had clearly been crying, though; her eyes were red and a little swollen, making her look rather pitiful.
Ye Xunzhi did not refuse and promptly stood up. Who would turn down a pretty older girl's gentle request?
After thanking her, the girl began carefully searching beneath the seat.
Ye Xunzhi took the opportunity to move beside Yu Yuan and asked quietly, "Yu Yuan, who is this girl?"
She felt that the girl looked incredibly familiar, overlapping with a figure in her mind, but the change in her demeanor was so great that she did not quite dare recognize her.
Yu Yuan had been about to ask the girl what was wrong, but answered Ye Xunzhi's question first:
"She's our class president, Xi Rongrong."
Ye Xiao had just finished talking with their homeroom teacher. The moment he stepped into the classroom, he heard his little sister's inner voice suddenly shoot up nine notches in volume.
[Xi Rongrong, oh my god! She's really that future 'Business She-Devil,' Xi Rongrong, chairwoman of the Xi Group!!!]
[How did she turn from this delicate beauty into that formidable man-eating flower of the future?!]
Ye Xiao was stunned for a second. Would their class president really become that incredible?
But that did not seem right. The Xi Group had one son and one daughter. This was not his prejudice; it was just that in most prominent families, the sons inherited control of the business.
Even an outstanding elder daughter was unlikely to do so.
With that question in mind, Ye Xiao walked over and patted Xi Rongrong on the shoulder as she searched with her head lowered. Keeping one hand in his pocket, he asked:
"Class president, what are you looking for?"
Xi Rongrong shuddered in fright at the sound of his voice. When she turned and saw the school bully, she felt a little intimidated, and being asked about it also made her choke up:
"I... sob... I'm looking for a ruby ring."
The girl who had come with her could not bear to watch anymore and stepped forward to explain:
"It's the class president's family heirloom, passed down through generations of matriarchs in the Xi Family. Before Grandma Xi passed away in the early hours of yesterday morning, she entrusted the ring to the class president, but it went missing this morning."
Xi Rongrong finally could not hold back. She crouched down and broke into devastated sobs:
"I came back to school today intending to pack up my schoolbag, then hurry to my grandfather's house in City H and give him the ring myself."
"But I only went to the restroom for a moment, and when I came back, the ring was gone."
When the other students heard what had happened, they all began offering suggestions.
"How could it disappear? Did someone steal it?"
"Why don't we all help search our own bags? The class president usually helps us out a lot."
"Sure, let's help check each other's bags."
Xi Rongrong was deeply touched. "Thank you, everyone."
Unfortunately, after everyone searched each other's belongings, they found nothing.
Xi Rongrong was on the verge of despair.
Ye Xiao asked thoughtfully, "Can you tell us what happened at the time?"
Xi Rongrong bit her lower lip, returned to her seat, and took out a wooden box.
A sapphire was set into the center of the wooden box, and all sorts of elaborate patterns were worked in gold on the surrounding wood. Up close, one could even smell the wood's fragrance. It was clearly quite valuable as well.
Xi Rongrong said, "This is a specially made puzzle box. It takes a particular method to open it."
She pressed her fingers against several places on the wooden box, and it sprang open. Inside was a cushion lined with red velvet, with a recess in the middle that was now completely empty.
Xi Rongrong drew a deep breath and tried to keep herself calm as she recounted:
"I came back with Xiao Cheng this morning. The Chinese class representative had her hands full collecting homework, so I helped her collect it first, then took it to the teacher."
"I came back soon afterward and continued packing my schoolbag, then went to the restroom partway through. Xiao Cheng was sitting in my seat then, saying he wanted to see the ring."
"I let him look, but he didn't know how to open the puzzle box. He still had to wait until I came back and opened it for him myself, and when I opened it, I discovered that the ring was gone."
Xi Cheng, Xi Rongrong's younger brother, nodded and added:
"I was sitting in the seat the whole time and never moved around. The other students can vouch for me."
Student A said, "That's true. I saw him fiddling with something in Xi Rongrong's schoolbag. He really never left the seat from beginning to end."
Xi Cheng looked worried. As though he knew what everyone had just been suspecting, he raised his empty hands.
"I know what you're thinking. Don't look at me. My sister searched me first."
Xi Cheng complained, "She felt me up from head to toe. The only thing she didn't do was strip me naked."
Hearing that, Xi Rongrong felt a little guilty about having suspected her brother. "Sorry, Xiao Cheng."
Ye Xiao frowned. Yet no matter how he looked at it, Xi Cheng was the most suspicious. After all, Xi Rongrong had not announced that she had brought the ring.
But according to the other students, he really had never left the seat. Who else could it have been, then?
[I remember now! It was this incident.]
Ye Xiao's eyes lit up, and he quickly turned to look at his little sister.
Ye Xunzhi was in her memory palace, carefully recalling events from her previous lives.
Back then, she had followed her older brothers and the old man around. She had few hobbies and simply liked listening to their gossip, preferably with some explosive revelations thrown in.
While she was clinging to her fifth brother, she happened to hear gossip about this "Business She-Devil."
[Xi Rongrong's younger brother, Xi Cheng, is no good at all. If I remember correctly, the Xi Family heavily favors boys over girls. Only Grandma Xi truly loved her granddaughter.]
[That said, they were a wealthy family, so they still gave their daughter what was expected on the surface.]
Ye Xiao nodded inwardly. That was indeed how things were in the Xi Family.
[Xi Cheng seems well-behaved on the surface, but behind everyone's backs, he gets up to all sorts of things. He even raped a girl for a long time.]
Ye Xiao: !!!
Something like that had happened too!!!
[That girl came from a poor family and got into this school through her grades. What happened nearly drove her to a breakdown. She finally worked up the courage to report him to the police, but that scumbag found out.]
[The girl had a gambling addict for a father. The scumbag threw money straight in that gambling addict's face and told him to deal with it.]
[The very next day, her father forced her to withdraw from school, then sold her to a household in the countryside.]
Ye Xiao's gaze landed on Xi Cheng. He no longer looked at him as a person, but as scum. This man really deserved to die!
[Ruining one girl's life wasn't enough, so he went after his sister too. He stole the ring because he'd recently taken a fancy to the campus beauty at University C next door, but she wouldn't give him the time of day.]
[Later, the ring ended up in that campus beauty's hands. Xi Rongrong was kept in the dark for a long time and never knew the truth.]
[This incident sent her already poor standing in the family plummeting even further. They even made her move into a little attic covered in dust.]
[It wasn't until that campus beauty took the ruby to an auction that Xi Rongrong saw it, confronted Xi Cheng, and learned the truth. How she hated him.]
Ye Xunzhi recalled the front-page headlines in her previous life, filled with scandals about Xi Cheng.
And how Xi Rongrong, to ensure that the company she had finally obtained would not be implicated, had chosen to publicly reveal some of the treatment she had endured in the Xi Family over the years.
[After a series of investigations, she found the girl who had been sold into the mountains. That girl had evidence of what Xi Cheng had done back then.]
[The two women, who hated him to the bone, hit it off and sent him straight to prison. Because Xi Rongrong had suffered so much back then, the Xi Group's shares rose instead of falling. She successfully used her suffering as a stepping stone to climb higher and higher.]
[As for that girl, she became Xi Rongrong's chief secretary in the future and was utterly loyal to her.]
By this point, Ye Xiao felt some admiration for her, but the key now was that he knew who the culprit was.
But where exactly was the ring?
After hearing no answer for a while, Ye Xiao decided to take the initiative. He leaned casually against the wall and rubbed his little sister's head, sighing as though deeply troubled:
"Little sis, we've searched the whole classroom. Where do you think it could be?"
Ye Xunzhi said, "...I haven't thought of it yet."
[How should I tell my fifth brother? It's hidden right in...]
Even Ye Xunzhi's inner voice was full of distress. Thinking back, she realized she really did know this piece of information.
Once, her fifth brother had returned from a class reunion. According to the gossip he shared with her, Xi Rongrong had been very drunk and told everyone the truth about what had happened back then.
It turned out that the ring had been hidden right in...
[That guy's asshole!]
Before you continue