Chapter 368

Chapter 368

Two questions had troubled us more than anything else.

Why would An Yutong harm Liang Yi, and why conspire with someone to do it?

And why would Liang Yi go looking for An Yutong?

Even Sherlock Holmes would’ve scratched his head over those for days.

We had fallen into the trap of assumption, treating the missing person as the victim and the other woman as the perpetrator.

But the missing person had never been declared dead. She had merely disappeared. My hexagram also said she was alive.

Apart from being “missing,” Liang Yi had almost no reason to be a victim.

She studied hard, was insecure and introverted, and couldn’t have made enemies. In looks and poise, she fell slightly short of An Yutong. To put it cruelly, her sickly body, weakened by selling blood several times, wasn’t even healthy. Why would anyone target her?

Without enough conditions or motive to support her identity as the victim, I could only make the bold assumption that she was the perpetrator.

That was the reason for my test.

Her reaction had confirmed it.

The An Yutong before me should be called Liang Yi. She had nothing to say. None of her reactions could conceal her secret any longer.

More than anything, she looked stunned.

“You used Soul Seizure on An Yutong and stole her body. The hypnotist helped you,” I said with a frown. “When he left An Yutong’s apartment, he carried a travel bag containing your corpse. If I hadn’t accidentally exposed you, nobody would ever know An Yutong was the victim. Everyone would keep treating Liang Yi as the victim.”

“You could enjoy everything An Yutong possessed without fear. The attention brought by her beauty, her wealthy family, and her parents’ love.”

“What did you do to An Yutong? Is her soul inside your old body? Did you already kill her?”

Whether from fear or shame at being exposed, Liang Yi only stared numbly and refused to speak.

Worried about An Yutong, I had no choice but to frighten her.

“Talk! Stop playing dumb! Unless you don’t plan to leave this car alive!”

She sat straight, trembling all over with her head bowed. “I’ll take you to her…”

…

Half an hour later, we had left the city.

Following Liang Yi’s directions, I drove to a remote, silent place with no one around.

After getting out, I looked around and frowned. “Where’s An Yutong?”

Liang Yi took out a hair tie and bound the body’s long hair. Then she raised her head and looked at me with perfect composure and confidence.

“An Yutong is right here, standing before you and speaking to you.”

I froze, then snapped, “You’re playing with me!”

She replied coldly, “The An Yutong you’re looking for has already suffered Soul Annihilation. My old body was disposed of long ago. Liang Yi no longer exists in this world, and neither does the former An Yutong. There is only one new An Yutong. Me.”

A chill swept down my back. Nameless fury surged in my chest.

“You!”
I pointed at her, my finger trembling with rage. “You killed her to satisfy your own desires! You’re a college student. You read the teachings of sages, yet for your own selfish gain, you murdered an innocent person!”

She met my anger without caring in the slightest. “Do you think I’m ashamed? Do you think I feel guilty? You’re wrong. There is one kind of crime in this world that can be forgiven: a crime committed because of poverty.”

“Because the Heavenly God is unjust! This world isn’t fair!”

“Did you think I felt proud and delighted when I took first place in the campus beauty contest and beat An Yutong? Wrong again!”

“It was my greatest humiliation! Those people didn’t vote for me because I was prettier or more refined. They voted for me because I was poor! Everything about me screamed poverty. Poverty was carved into my bones!”

She roared at me as tears streamed down her face.

“With your resilience and intelligence, you were almost free,” I said. “You had the chance to change your fate. You only needed to endure a little longer, and you could start a new life. Why did you have to hurt someone? Someone innocent who had never even interacted with you!”

She shook her head with a bitter smile. “You still don’t understand. To you, poverty seems like nothing. Like an ordinary condition, a perfectly reasonable part of life.”

“But poverty has levels.”

“There is a kind where your parents despise you from birth. They cannot endure being poor, so they vent their anger on you. You live under everyone else’s contempt. You must study hard and prove your worth just to avoid being bullied at school, to make your teachers notice you, to convince your own parents you’re useful enough to keep studying.”

“Poverty means kowtowing until my forehead bled and selling my own blood to pay tuition, just for the chance to attend university and change my fate.”

“You ask why I harmed an innocent person? Because I refuse to accept it! This world has never been fair. I had to seize fairness for myself!”

Liang Yi’s face was covered in tears, but her expression remained fiercely resolute and hateful.

“One outfit An Yutong wore cost enough to feed me steamed buns and pickles for three years of university. She drove a car worth hundreds of thousands to class, while I had to kowtow to my parents and sell blood for permission to study.”

“Do you know how I felt when I became her and saw all the expensive cosmetics in her home, things I had never even laid eyes on? I felt no joy. Only grief. I felt my life had been worth less than an ant’s.”

“I was so poor that when my period came, I could only buy the cheapest sanitary pads online. Tell me, how was I supposed to change my fate? I received none of the university’s financial aid. My parents took my scholarships. With bloodsucking parents and a brother like mine, when exactly was I supposed to change my fate? When?”

I stood in the cold wind, watching Liang Yi’s hysteria and listening to the misery of her life.

For once, I had nothing to say.