Chapter 3 – A State of Decline

Cai Hua had grown up in an orphanage, but her childhood had not been entirely lonely or miserable because Xu Jinliang had accompanied her throughout her upbringing.

Xu Jinliang frequently participated in charity work. At first, she did so in her own name. Later, once her social status rose, she represented the group in its charitable endeavors. One thing never changed, however: she continued providing long-term special financial support to one particular child and spent nearly all her free time with that child.

That child was Cai Hua.

Although Xu Jinliang had been unable to adopt her, she had been like a guardian and family member to her. Cai Hua respected and loved her, placing complete trust in her. Even when their closeness allowed her to notice one or two suspicious details, she had always chosen to overlook them. As a child who had lost all her relatives and been taken into an orphanage, Cai Hua cherished this relationship more than anything.

As for Xu Jinliang, she believed that she loved this child. Without a single complaint, she devoted her time and effort to patiently nurturing Cai Hua for twenty years. She had to admit that caring for the child provided her with a considerable amount of pleasurable feedback. She believed this was love. This was warmth. This was the magnificent feat of saving a life.

That was why, when Cai Hua told her that she knew Zhang Wanyou was her father, Xu Jinliang felt far more anger than guilt. Cai Hua’s relentless questions struck her one after another, nearly driving her to collapse.

“Zhang Wanyou—don’t you remember him? And Yang Xiaohai and Yue Mingcheng. I even met those two when I was little! How did my mother disappear? Why were the police never able to find Yang Xiaohai and Yue Mingcheng afterward? Answer me, Xu Jinliang! I remember my mother. Don’t lie to me!”

Cai Hua’s mother had disappeared without warning. The last time Cai Hua said goodbye to her, her mother had climbed into Yang Xiaohai’s car while Yue Mingcheng openly wrapped an arm around her shoulders. After reaching adulthood, Cai Hua painstakingly investigated what had happened to her parents. When she discovered that Xu Jinliang was intimately connected to those people, the revelation tortured her as brutally as death by a thousand cuts.

At the time, Xu Jinliang had been so furious that she nearly exploded. This woman, who cared so much about her outward image, roared until saliva flew from her mouth, resembling a wild beast that had gone completely mad. She frantically hammered at her chest. As though trying to defend herself—or perhaps convince herself—she repeatedly screamed, “She accepted the money! She accepted the money! She took the money! She took the fucking money!!”

Cai Hua’s “betrayal” directly ripped away the source of pleasure Xu Jinliang had depended upon for twenty years. She nearly lost control at the same time. Distraught, she fled from everything, going so far as to escape from headquarters and retreat to a lower position.

Returning to the present, she was temporarily able to respond calmly.

The layout was still the same. It was a cold house devoid of any trace of human life. When Cai Hua was young, she had thought everything about this place was wonderful. Now, however, it seemed like the [read the original at bailiantales.com]entrance to hell—a dwelling place for ghosts and monsters.

Cai Hua had always known that Xu Jinliang’s obsession with cleanliness left her unable to tolerate physical contact with others.

Cai Hua was the sole exception.

Ever since she was young, Xu Jinliang had hugged her and held her hand. She had even tolerated Cai Hua drooling on her shoulder while asleep. Now, this woman smiled at her with such kindness, her dry, warm palm gently holding Cai Hua’s hand as she asked, “The journey must have been exhausting. Have you eaten dinner? Would you like to taste my cooking again?”

Disgusting.

It felt as though some damp, foul-smelling, cold-blooded creature were slowly crawling beneath her collar.

Cai Hua sneered and flung her hand away.

“I know you’ve sat in the defendant’s dock more than once, but you escaped every single time. What about this time? How confident are you?”

Xu Jinliang lightly tilted her head. “I’m extremely wealthy, and I know a great many people.” Her crescent-shaped eyes did not change, but she withdrew her hands and clasped them tightly together.

Cai Hua noticed the subtle movement. She picked up a packet of disinfectant wipes from the table and threw it at her. “There’s no point pretending anymore.”

Smiling, Xu Jinliang pulled out a wipe and carefully cleaned her palms, the backs of her hands, and every finger. She even wiped down the packet itself. She pulled out sheet after sheet, eventually wrapping the used wipes one by one before throwing them all into the trash.

While Xu Jinliang cleaned her hands, Cai Hua began speaking.

“In 19XX, Teacher X lost their footing and fell down a staircase, leaving them permanently disabled. The following year, three male students at the same school were involved in a fight. Two died, stolen contentand one was severely injured. In 19XX, a male worker at XX Steelworks died in an accident. In 19XX, at the XX project construction site…” Her voice choked with emotion. “Zhang Wanyou—my father—died there.”

At the mention of this, Cai Hua’s emotions intensified.

“What kind of twisted pervert harms a man and his wife, then pretends to be a kindhearted person so she can take care of their child? You wallowed in a twisted, perverted swamp, deriving pleasure from it and savoring the fruits of your victory. You swallowed that foul, rotting filth and treated it like the finest nectar. How laughable. You even believed you were performing a good deed. How ignorant can you be? Do you understand emotions at all? You don’t understand a fucking thing, and even your attempts at imitation are a grotesque parody!”

Xu Jinliang sat motionless on the sofa, the flesh of her cheeks repeatedly trembling beneath Cai Hua’s accusations. In Cai Hua’s eyes, she appeared to wither and rot right there on the sofa, like the dried corpse left behind after a malevolent ghost that fed on the vitality of the living had its supply cut off.

And Cai Hua had been fed upon by that ghost for twenty years.

Cai Hua continued, “In 20XX, a traffic accident in X City resulted in a man dying from an infection caused by his burns. In 20XX…” She narrowed her eyes, and her voice slowed. “That happened at one of our group’s subsidiaries. One person was driven insane, and another committed suicide. Three years after that, at headquarters, President X suddenly entered a psychiatric hospital despite having been perfectly fine. They still haven’t been discharged.”

“Your shadow appears in every one of these incidents. Should I say that people become unlucky simply by being near you, or are you the actual demon holding the scythe?”

Xu Jinliang replied, “I’ve heard about some of the incidents you mentioned, and I cooperated with the investigations into others. But there are still many I’ve never even heard of. I truly don’t know where those stories came from. Are your sources reliable?”

Cai Hua could not be bothered to keep going in circles with her. She asked directly, “Did you have anything to do with Grandma Wang’s death?”

Why had Grandma Wang died immediately after Cai Hua uncovered clues about her father and confronted Xu Jinliang? During that period, Cai Hua had begun to suspect Xu Jinliang and investigated her past in depth. She looked into every case even remotely connected to Xu Jinliang’s movements. Before she could finish investigating everything, she received the terrible news: Grandma Wang—the woman who had once provided Xu Jinliang with an alibi—had passed away.

Xu Jinliang merely said, “You’re working at headquarters now, so you must have made some friends. Why don’t you ask those friends who visited Auntie while she was hospitalized? One question should be enough to determine whether her illness was real or fabricated.”

The “friends” she referred to were naturally those senior executives. Xu Jinliang was no fool. She could see that Cai Hua had already joined their faction to fight against her.

Seeing Xu Jinliang respond so calmly made Cai Hua lose her composure instead. She gritted her teeth and said, “You haven’t had time to clean your car yet, have you? Even ​Read on BaiLianTales​if you managed to avoid the hotel’s surveillance cameras and cleaned up the scene, there should still be physical evidence you haven’t had a chance to dispose of.”

Xu Jinliang stood and smiled. “Why don’t we go to the garage and look together?”

The garage?

Both their cars had been parked outside the residential complex earlier. Cai Hua’s expression changed.

Satisfied by her reaction, Xu Jinliang said, “Oh, that’s right. When I came inside, I left my car keys at the security booth. The property-management staff will park it in my assigned space for me.”

Xu Jinliang continued, “Would you like to come and look with me, child?”

Cai Hua laughed. “Do you think the police are fucking useless?”

“Of course not. But between the designated driver and the property-management staff—and if you come with me, you’ll be included as well—quite a few people will have entered or handled my car. Even if physical evidence truly is found inside, I drank too much and wouldn’t know anything about it. More importantly, both you and the designated driver either departed from that hotel or passed by it, just as I did. You said yourself that there was a problem with the surveillance footage. Only heaven knows who did or didn’t enter that hotel.”

Cai Hua stood. This time, she was much calmer.

“I already told you that this isn’t the old days anymore. There are cameras at intersections, outside shops, and even private surveillance cameras everywhere. Your excuses won’t do you any good.” She smiled cruelly. “However, the friends we both know would be more than happy to help clean things up. Auntie Liang, you can’t keep charging ahead on your own anymore. From now on, you need to behave yourself and obediently trail behind us.”

Xu Jinliang extracted one crucial piece of information from her words: Cai Hua did not know that those directors had already helped clean up many previous incidents, either voluntarily or because they had been forced into it.

Yet Xu Jinliang did not want to tell Cai Hua that now.

She did not know why she wanted to keep it from her.

Before leaving, Cai Hua said mockingly, “Be a good girl. Prison food doesn’t taste very nice. Ah~ And a bed in a psychiatric hospital isn’t particularly comfortable either.”

Paper could never contain fire forever. Xu Jinliang knew perfectly well what consequences awaited her for everything she had done. If asked whether she was afraid, the answer was no.

She felt nothing.

What caused her pain was Cai Hua.

Cai Hua had completely torn apart the sacred ceremony Xu Jinliang had constructed from her own pretenses. Cai Hua had cruelly exposed the truth:

That was not love.

You are neither a mother nor a god.

You do not understand love at all.

You are merely a monstrous beast that crawled out of hell.

Xu Jinliang did not want to sit quietly and await her doom. Whether everything was completely exposed or she was subdued and forced to let others lead her around by the nose from then on, neither was an outcome she wanted.

But she had lost her drive.

She no longer possessed the energy.

Even though the future clearly promised a spectacular confrontation, it could not make her feel the slightest pleasure.

Emptiness and confusion settled heavily over her.

The sky above her had gone completely dark.