Chapter 358

Chapter 358

My conversation with An Yutong ended with her praising Liang Yi.

Before meeting her, I had assumed An Yutong would be at least a little jealous of Liang Yi because of the vote count.

But her open-mindedness, poise, and courtesy didn’t seem fake at all.

Small details suggested she conducted herself the same way in everyday life.

Before I left, An Yutong even asked me to speak to Liang Yi’s parents and tell them to stop making a scene outside the complex. Their behavior was disrupting the lives of the other residents.

I rose and walked away with complicated feelings.

Could a young woman like this really have harmed Liang Yi?

She seemed to know absolutely nothing about the disappearance.

Then where the hell was Liang Yi?

I left the library with Song Xiaotian and Anning, bewildered, and repeated the entire conversation to them.

They were just as confused when I finished.

“Are you sure she wasn’t acting?”

“I’m sure,” I said firmly. “If that was an act, her scheming would put an imperial concubine fighting for power in the palace to shame. She would’ve had to rehearse the whole conversation in her head countless times.”

Especially when she praised Liang Yi. I could tell she sincerely admired her.

“You can’t be certain,” Anning warned. “Look at Lin Yin…”

I froze.

Lin Yin…

Right. Lin Yin had fooled every last one of us. Her acting had deceived not only us, but even her own father.

So An Yutong could still be lying and putting on a performance.

Song Xiaotian sighed. “I’m never underestimating a woman again.”

We left the university but didn’t go anywhere yet. After waiting for a while, we saw An Yutong come out as well.

She appeared to be heading home.

I called her name. She stopped, walked over, and greeted me again.

“Don’t you have a car? Why aren’t you driving home?” I asked.

She said her car had broken down and was being repaired, so she had to take taxis for the time being.

I warmly invited her along. “Get in. We’ll take you home. It’s late, and it isn’t entirely safe for a young woman to travel alone.”

An Yutong paused and hurriedly waved us off. “No, that would be too much trouble. I can take a cab. I’ll be fine.”

I smiled. “It’s no trouble. I interrupted your studying earlier, and we’re headed the same way.”

In the end, she got into our car.

We talked with her for the entire drive and tested her in every way we could think of.

She still didn’t reveal anything suspicious.

Most of our casual questions concerned university life and her studies.

An Yutong loved learning and earned excellent grades. She planned to study abroad after graduating, then return home and build a successful career.

Her speech made it obvious that she was ambitious and driven, someone unwilling to settle for mediocrity.

Her family was wealthy, but she didn’t covet the comfort already in front of her. In her eyes, her family’s present wealth was nothing compared with what she intended to create for herself.

Listening to her left me dumbfounded.

Were young women nowadays all this ambitious?

How was a guy like me, whose only dream was to coast through life, supposed to feel?

Liang Yi’s family had already left by the time we reached the entrance to the complex.

After getting out, An Yutong thanked us repeatedly before walking inside.

The three of us sat in the car for a long while, unable to recover.

Talking to a truly well-mannered person was a pleasure. Their company felt like a warm spring breeze.
Even Song Xiaotian stroked his chin in disbelief. “Why do I suddenly feel like there’s no possible way she had anything to do with Liang Yi’s disappearance…?”

Only Anning held her ground. “Could she be even more calculating than Lin Yin?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t form the slightest theory.

If An Yutong was innocent, where had Liang Yi gone?

Liang Yi had definitely reached the floor where An Yutong lived, and she had definitely vanished.

But if An Yutong was involved, where had she hidden Liang Yi? How had she hidden her? Why had she done it?

Or was the whole thing a performance staged by Liang Yi and An Yutong together? Only their cooperation could have produced such an incomprehensible “mysterious disappearance.”

Even that couldn’t be explained through common sense. The police had turned An Yutong’s home upside down. Why hadn’t they found the slightest trace of Liang Yi?

“Years ago, an almost identical vanishing case happened somewhere else,” Song Xiaotian said.

Anning and I turned to him and told him to continue.

“The missing people were a mother and daughter. They entered an apartment building, rode the elevator to a certain floor, then disappeared after stepping out. Exactly the same as this. Twenty years have passed, and they still haven’t been found.”

Song Xiaotian continued, “But the police back then didn’t search every apartment in the building. The mother and daughter might have been murdered, with their bodies hidden in someone’s home until the police withdrew. The killer could have moved them out afterward.”

“That’s only my guess, of course.”

“But in Liang Yi’s case, the police searched the entire building, apartment by apartment. If she was anywhere inside, they couldn’t have failed to find her. Alive or dead, there should have been something.”

“I’m starting to think this really might have nothing to do with An Yutong. Maybe it actually was something supernatural…”

Song Xiaotian sighed. “Looks like we aren’t earning this money after all.”

We really might have to give up on that three hundred thousand.

It was late, so we prepared to go home.

I took a cab. Even after getting out, I was still wondering where Liang Yi had gone.

Whether or not we earned the money, I couldn’t ignore a mystery sitting right in front of me. I wanted to solve it.

I desperately wanted to know Liang Yi’s whereabouts. Even if it was supernatural, what kind of phenomenon could make a living person disappear into thin air?

I entered my residential complex and was about to go upstairs when I suddenly heard someone crying nearby.

I followed the sound and found an Old Woman from our building.

Her surname was He. She lived alone, and we all called her Granny He.

“Granny He, what’s wrong?” I asked as I approached.

Granny He was heartbroken. Her little dog had gone missing. She had opened the door to take out the trash, forgotten to close it, and the dog had run out and vanished.

“Dogs don’t usually get lost that easily. It might still be nearby. I’ll help you look.”

I went out with the Old Woman and searched for a long time.

Eventually, we really did find the dog.

Unfortunately, it was dead. Someone had beaten it to death.

The Old Woman sobbed as she clutched her beloved dog’s body and cursed whoever had killed it.

I stood frozen, staring blankly at the corpse.

Missing…

Death…