Chapter 39

Outside the window, the accumulated snow lay in a thick layer. Who knew when it would melt?

They had stayed here until the fourth day. It was not that they had gained nothing. At least they had searched while testing, tested out the effects Shen Juan’s blood had on a soul-body, and found a key hidden inside a secret compartment. Although they still did not know what it was used for, since it had been hidden away so carefully in this ancient, long-standing sutra library, it definitely had some great use.

But these gains were still far from enough. They were not enough to bring Gu Shuge back. Between them, life and death still stood.

Gu Shuge felt a little embarrassed. She had suddenly and inexplicably touched Shen Juan between the brows. Shen Juan would probably think she was very strange. She hesitated, wanting to withdraw her hand, yet the sensation beneath her fingertips made her especially reluctant to let go.

“With me, you can do anything.”

Gu Shuge’s hand trembled, then stopped. She looked at Shen Juan in shock and uncertainty, wondering what this sentence meant.

Shen Juan did not avoid her gaze and allowed her to look, placing herself beneath Gu Shuge’s fingertips. Gu Shuge’s fingertips moved. After lingering between Shen Juan’s brows for a moment, they carefully slid down to her face.

A yin ghost’s soul-body had no temperature. Her fingertip was icy cold and carried yin energy, but Shen Juan did not feel uncomfortable or afraid. Instead, she felt very much at ease. Xiao Ge was right beside her.

She had to make her stay. Shen Juan thought, As long as Xiao Ge is willing, she must make her stay. Human or ghost, it did not matter. As long as it was her.

As she thought this, the fingertips resting on her face slid downward, cautious and careful, until they reached the corner of her lips. Shen Juan’s heart tightened all at once.

But at that moment, the fingertips left.

Shen Juan was disappointed. She restrained the urge to touch the place Xiao Ge had just stroked and merely pressed her lips together. Gu Shuge lowered her head, as if she felt she had done something wrong. Nervously, she lifted her head and glanced at Shen Juan again, then curled the hand that had just touched Shen Juan into a fist. She could feel that Shen Juan’s warmth still lingered on her fingertips. So all her attention focused on those fingertips.

So soft, Gu Shuge thought. Girls were all soft, but Shen Juan’s skin temperature was not only soft. It was also like it could smear a layer of honey over Gu Shuge’s heart, making her feel sweet. That sweetness was like lotus-root threads, sticky and unbroken.

She knew it was because she liked Shen Juan. That was why everything about Shen Juan seemed so special to her.

When Gu Shuge remembered Shen Juan’s earlier words—“With me, you can do anything”—her heart became scorching hot, mixed with guilt and shame. Shen Juan probably did not know what Gu Shuge wanted to do to her. That was why she dared say something like this.

Shen Juan looked toward her and suddenly asked, “What was the surprise you wanted to give me that year?”

“Xiao Ge, what was the surprise you wanted to give me?” At four in the morning, Shen Juan leaned against the headboard, phone at her ear.

Gu Shuge had already been gone for almost a year. Shen Juan had always stayed in contact with her.

At the time, she had not thought much of it. When Xiao Ge had acted spoiled and said, “I really have a very, very important surprise for you. You’ll definitely like it,” all Shen Juan had thought was that after she confessed, Xiao Ge would surely be very happy. She had forgotten to care about what the surprise Xiao Ge mentioned actually was.

After Gu Shuge left, every moment of the past between them was recalled by Shen Juan bit by bit, over and over again. Only that day was something she did not dare look back on.

But the word “surprise” stubbornly struggled out alone from that day’s memories and occupied Shen Juan’s mind. Gradually, she began thinking about what exactly the surprise had been. She began to regret never receiving that surprise.

Whether it had been a gift or good news, it seemed incredibly precious.

Originally, she had not dared ask. But that day, she was ill and burning with fever until she felt somewhat dazed. Hearing Gu Shuge’s voice, her longing became a little uncontrollable, so she actually asked.

Gu Shuge did not answer.

Shen Juan’s breath was scorching hot in her nose and mouth. The lamp at the head of the bed was dim and yellow, making people drowsy. Outside the window, the stifling heat of the last days of summer before dawn felt oppressive.

Gu Shuge’s silence disappointed her.

Her eyes could barely stay open, and her thoughts also began to drift. “Xiao Ge, I miss you very much. Can you come back? I promise…” Promise what? Promise that she would never cross the line with her again, or promise that she could control herself and stop liking her?

Shen Juan’s headache made her brows tighten, but the physical pain was far inferior to the pain of not being able to see Gu Shuge. She could no longer maintain her calm and restraint. She said to the person on the other end, “Weren’t you always the one who listened to me most? I’m begging you to come back, even if it’s only for two days.”

Gu Shuge was silent for a while before saying, “My supervisor says I’m very talented in this field. Britain has the most advanced research results and equipment.”

Shen Juan closed her eyes.

“He suggested that I stay at the university for a doctorate.”

Staying at the university for a doctorate meant putting down roots abroad and not coming back. Shen Juan wondered if her fever had muddled her mind. How else could she be hallucinating? She tried her hardest to concentrate and asked, “Then do you like the research you’re doing now?”

Her tone had already calmed down. Gu Shuge was a little dazed and felt that the Shen Juan who had just told her “I miss you very much, can you come stolen contentback?” might have been only her imagination. She said coldly, “I like it.”

Shen Juan could no longer hold on. She barely maintained her consciousness and said, “That’s good. I’ll hang up first.”

Gu Shuge was a little surprised. Over this nearly one year, every time, she had been the one eager to hang up. Shen Juan had never once hung up first. The moment Shen Juan finished speaking, there was no sound left in the phone receiver. She had already hung up.

Gu Shuge glanced at the call duration. Almost five minutes.

This was already the longest call they had had in nearly a year.

If only it could have been a little longer, Gu Shuge thought, sitting there dazed for a long time.

After Shen Juan ended the call, her phone slid onto the bed. She wanted to have someone call a doctor, but she could not summon the strength. Fortunately, she soon fell asleep and could no longer feel the discomfort in her body. Her consciousness only drifted between sleep and wakefulness.

“I’ll come home very soon. I miss you.” It was as if she heard Gu Shuge’s voice. But even in her daze, she knew it was false. It was only her own imagination. She would not come back. Shen Juan thought.

Every time Xiao Ge answered the phone, she would wait fifteen seconds first. Not one second more, not one second less. She was doing it deliberately, maintaining a cold and distant boundary.

Perhaps Shen Juan truly was disturbing her.

Shen Juan was sick for three days. After she recovered, she contacted the research institute where Gu Shuge was. That institute had produced many major achievements, and Gu Shuge’s supervisor was one of its academic leaders.

Shen Juan donated a sum of money to the institute. This money was not under Gu Group’s name, nor did she use Gu Group’s funds. It was money she had accumulated from work over the past few years. She was a high-level executive, so her ​read the original at bailiantales.com​salary was not small. Aside from clothes, she had no other usual expenses, so she had saved quite a lot.

She donated all of it. Her only request was that she wanted to see Gu Shuge’s research results.

Gu Shuge had only entered that university a year earlier, and academically, she was still very inexperienced. But her talent was astonishing. She learned like a sponge absorbing water. She could spend an entire day in the laboratory, focusing completely on experiments without losing concentration even a little. She could also keenly find breakthrough points and discover new lines of thought.

Her supervisor did not refuse Shen Juan’s request. No matter how talented Gu Shuge was, she had only just entered the field and had not touched anything core. Letting an outsider take a look was not a major issue. Shen Juan saw Gu Shuge’s experiment reports, achievement displays, and the recorded data for each study. Her supervisor spoke to Shen Juan about this student’s talent. When he mentioned Gu Shuge, this British man’s tone even grew excited, declaring to her that given time, Gu would definitely make major discoveries that would shock the academic world.

It was just that she had one strange habit. Every day from six in the evening onward, she would become restless, as if looking forward to something yet also fearing something. She would leave the laboratory and only return after eight-thirty. Every time she came back, she would stay dazed for a while.

However, geniuses all had somewhat strange personalities. Thinking this, the supervisor did not tell Shen Juan.

It was only at that moment that Shen Juan learned that the little thing who had followed beside her, who would look at her with soft eyes and say, “As long as I have Sister, that’s enough,” was a genius in the eyes of others.

She felt both proud and melancholy, her heart as though it had been gouged away alive. She thought, Xiao Ge truly will not come back. She had found something to replace Shen Juan. Her focus no longer followed only Shen Juan.

So her daily contact really was only an obstruction and a burden to Gu Shuge. And begging her to come back only made things difficult for her.

She had already lost the right to take part in her life.

She had never thought Gu Shuge would return to her side, and in this form, no less.

When she received the news of Gu Shuge’s death, her first reaction was: impossible. How could Xiao Ge be back?

When she rushed to the hospital, lifted the white cloth, and saw with her own eyes Gu Shuge’s ruined remains, she hated herself. If not for avoiding her, Xiao Ge would never have needed to go abroad for those four years. Her life would never have undergone such a major deviation, and she would never have encountered murder.

No matter what she did, it would not be enough to make it up to her.

Gu Shuge suddenly heard Shen Juan mention the surprise from that year and instantly grew flustered.

“It was the time we agreed to have dinner, and you couldn’t come because you had something to do,” Shen Juan reminded her. After all, many years had passed, and Xiao Ge very likely did not remember.

But Gu Shuge remembered. How could she forget? That day, she had been planning to confess to Shen Juan.

But she did not dare say it, and she did not want to lie to Shen Juan either. So she could only slowly write in Shen Juan’s palm, “I wanted to tell you something at dinner.”

Shen Juan asked, “What was it?”

Gu Shuge hesitated and stopped speaking.

But this was already better than last time. Last time, she had only given Shen Juan silence and coldness. Shen Juan thought for a while, then asked, “Did I ignore you too much before?” Gu Shuge looked at her blankly, as if she did not know why Shen Juan would say such a thing.

Sensing her lift her head, Shen Juan smiled. Her smile was full of guilt. She had thought over the days before that incident many times and had never discovered anything different about Xiao Ge. She also could not guess what the surprise had been related to.

“No.” The fingertip carrying yin energy wrote in her palm with absolute certainty.

“I was often busy with meetings and business trips. I couldn’t take care of you.”

Gu Shuge immediately shook her head. Shen Juan was indeed very busy, but it was not that she could not take care of her. During the period before Gu Shuge’s college entrance exam, Shen Juan had been so busy, yet she still freed up all her evenings. And for her birthdays, she had never once forgotten to choose gifts for her. When she normally got sick or caught a cold, Shen Juan would always discover it right away and bring her to Dr. Mu.

There were many more things. But if she wrote them all down, she would have to keep writing until tomorrow.

Eager to comfort Shen Juan, Gu Shuge wrote in her palm, “You were busy earning money for me to spend.” Without Shen Juan managing things, how could she have stayed peacefully on campus? After writing this, as if feeling it was not persuasive enough, she wrote, “You donated money to the research institute to support my research.”

A research project required a lot of money, but as long as it was something she was interested in, she had never been short of funding. The higher-ups at the institute were also especially courteous to her. At first, she had thought she was particularly smart and had conquered the large group of geniuses at the institute. But very quickly, she understood. With so many big names at the institute, how could it be her turn? It must have been that Shen Juan had invested a lot of money, and continuously at that.

After she figured this out, she was happy for more than half a year. Every time she went to the institute, she was especially happy, and even the white lab coat she wore for experiments looked nice to her.

In any case, in Gu Shuge’s way of thinking, there was nothing bad about Shen Juan. Whatever Shen Juan did was right.

Shen Juan also knew how stubborn Gu Shuge was in this regard. In the past, she would have felt that Xiao Ge was warm and sweet. Now, she only felt heartache.

For the rest of that day, they made no further discoveries. How to absorb spiritual energy remained completely without clues.

Shen Juan considered whether to go to Guangping Temple again, but thinking about the monk’s manner last time, she knew he had already said everything he could say. Asking him again would not produce any result.

There was still no clue from the side searching for Master unauthorized copyJingyun. This old monk seemed to have evaporated from the world.

Liu Guohua sent over the files of the four suspicious people among the eight.

The suspects had been determined according to the conditions for committing the crime. This case’s culprit had one definite characteristic: money.

Among these four people, three had fathers who were high-level executives in Gu Group. The remaining one was that Hong Kong man whose family owned a company and who had once pursued Gu Shuge.

When Shen Juan and Gu Shuge left Bailong Temple, the police were summoning these four people for separate questioning. Because three of them had Gu Group backgrounds, the police once again suspected whether this case might be connected to the internal power changes within Gu Group.

At the time of the crime, the police’s first line of thought had been to suspect someone inside the group. Later, because the theft of the victim’s remains carried an extremely obvious personal style, the direction of the investigation had turned toward the victim’s private interpersonal relationships.

Now, they had circled back to the beginning.

“Zhang Meng’s daughter, Zhang Ting, will undergo surgery in the next few days,” Lin Mo reported to Shen Juan. “The organ donor specifically designated the donation, and the charity also designated a sum of money for Zhang Ting’s surgery and postoperative recovery. The police are investigating the donor’s background. Someone must have tampered with things in there. That charity is called Haoshan Foundation. Its reputation isn’t very good.”

Lin Mo pushed up his glasses, lifted his head, and his eyes showed some disgust. “In the early years, there were incidents of them embezzling donors’ charitable funds, but no evidence was left behind. Later, they changed their name, and everyone gradually forgot. This time, they used this case to buy trending searches and write soft promotional articles. They emphasized the difficulties of the driver responsible for the accident, wrote about his fatherly love and how hard life was for him, and also wrote many warm interactions between him and his daughter. It stirred the sympathy of many netizens who don’t know the truth, gave the foundation a big wave of goodwill, and even earned them quite a few donations.”

Lin Mo guessed that it was surely this foundation’s courage to chase profit wherever it appeared that had made the culprit choose them.

“I’ve already obtained evidence of their illegal activities.” Lin Mo had always been efficient in handling things.

“Hand it over to the police,” Shen Juan said.

Hand it over to the police, then let the judiciary get involved. With Gu Group applying a little pressure, a foundation of this not-too-large, not-too-small scale could be investigated inside and out, leaving none of its little tricks hidden. They would certainly be able to find out why the decision-maker behind them had been willing to offend Gu Group in order to donate money to Zhang Ting.

“All right,” Lin Mo said. Then he brought up another matter. “Zhu Ruizhong, Zhou Xingrui, and Xiao Yu have come looking for you several times, saying they want to come pay their respects.”

Zhu Ruizhong, Zhou Xingrui, and Xiao Yu were the three people who had placed their children beside Gu Shuge. What their original intentions had been was hard to say, but now that something like this had happened, they definitely could no longer sit still.

At the mention of paying respects, Lin Mo paused. Hesitation appeared on his face. He glanced at Shen Juan and said, “It has already been half a month since Miss Gu passed away. As for the memorial service and funeral arrangements, the chairman still needs to make a decision.”

She had been gone for so long, but Shen Juan, as Gu Shuge’s sister-in-law and inheritance beneficiary, had not said a word. She had neither arranged a memorial service nor gone to the company. Instead, she had run to a temple and stayed there for five days. Outsiders had long since found it strange.

Gu Shuge was right beside her, and she was going to stay beside her forever. Holding a funeral was too unlucky. Shen Juan said, “There’s no rush.”

Lin Mo struggled for a long while, but still said it. “You stayed in the temple for several days. There are already rumors saying that you’re being haunted by Miss Gu’s ghost and were too afraid to sleep, so you hid in the temple to ward off evil.”

Gu Shuge was angry. Shen Juan was not afraid of being haunted by her at all, nor did she want to ward off evil and drive her away. Why did the public always talk nonsense?

They were sitting in the car. Shen Juan and Gu Shuge sat in the back seat, while Lin Mo sat in the passenger seat.

After Gu Shuge finished being angry, she wrote in Shen Juan’s palm, “Hmph!”

Shen Juan lowered her head and smiled. Then she spoke gently. “Xiao Ge isn’t haunting me.”

Lin Mo nodded. Who would believe such feudal superstition?

“I’m the one haunting her.”

Lin Mo nodded again, but halfway through the nod, something seemed off, and he stopped.

“I went to the temple to find a way to see whether I could haunt her for a little longer.”

Lin Mo sucked in a cold breath, his eyes widening in horror. For the first time, he lost composure in front of his superior and stammered, “You, you, you…”

Gu Shuge hurriedly drew crosses frantically in Shen Juan’s palm. As she drew, she thought, Shen Juan said she was the one haunting her. She even said she wanted to haunt her for a little longer. Thinking this, the speed of her crosses slowed. She bit her lower lip and did not dare look at Shen Juan.

Shen Juan felt as though her palm was being lightly scratched, itchy and ticklish. Then, to her surprise, she discovered that the wave lines that had disappeared for two days had returned.

Author’s Note:
Lin Mo: I work so diligently and loyally. Why do I still have to be frightened?

Early, right? Long, right? I said early means early.