Chapter 369

Chapter 369

I knew what poverty tasted like, but I didn’t know what absolute poverty felt like.

My family hadn’t been rich when I was young, but we weren’t the poorest. At least my daily pocket money could buy a packet of spicy strips.

Every class had one exceptionally wealthy student. They could buy unlimited snacks, always had expensive-looking toys, and, in our teenage years, wore the trendiest clothes and used the newest phones.

Around someone like that, even I felt an inexplicable inferiority, though I rarely felt inferior otherwise.

Plenty of classmates were poorer than me. Maybe they could only taste spicy strips when they received New Year’s money, or shamelessly beg two pieces from someone eating them at school.

But like me and the wealthy students, they all grew up. Nobody paid attention to their inner worlds or wondered whether poverty made them feel inferior.

Liang Yi had been ten or twenty times poorer than even those children.

Who cared whether she felt inferior? The only thing anyone noticed was how diligently she studied.

Studying was the only way she could conceal her insecurity and embarrassment.

She won the campus beauty contest, but in reality, it was like comparing a girl from the slums with the princess of a wealthy nation.

To Liang Yi, the contest was humiliation – an invisible humiliation that cut into her soul.

“So you did this to cross into another social class and escape your family?” I asked.

She nodded as her emotions gradually settled. “That’s an accurate summary. With a family like mine, I could struggle my whole life and never change my fate.”

“But by becoming An Yutong, I already changed it. I can use all her resources to go farther and climb higher.”

I considered her words. “An Yutong studied e-commerce. You studied agriculture. After seizing her body, you applied to transfer into law. What you ultimately want is power.”

A slight smile touched her face. “I changed my fate, so naturally I needed to plan a new future. People spend their lives pursuing money, but society’s resources were divided long ago by those at the top of the pyramid. They leave only a few bones for everyone below to fight over.”

“An Yutong’s family may be rich, but within the whole pyramid, they’re still near the bottom. Now that I have an economic foundation, wealth alone cannot satisfy my ambition.”

“You want power,” I finished. “You want to become one of the people who make the rules.”

She nodded without denying it.

I sighed, unable to decide whether to condemn or sympathize with her.

“Your life was terrible, and you worked incredibly hard. I never experienced your suffering, so I don’t have the right to lecture you too much.”

“But An Yutong did nothing. Just because her family had money and her parents loved her, did she deserve to be destroyed? What did she do wrong?”

Liang Yi, now occupying An Yutong’s body, spoke bitterly. “She did nothing wrong. In my heart, neither did I. If you need someone to blame, ask the Heavenly God.”

“Ask why I was brought into this world without being given the dignity to live.”

“If you want justice for An Yutong, don’t waste your time.”

Liang Yi looked at me with complete confidence. “Not a single law currently on the books can convict me. You were right about one thing. I’m very intelligent. I’ve already read every law book I could find.”
“I wouldn’t even need to hire a lawyer. There isn’t a thing any of you can do to me.”

I smiled helplessly.

Because she was right. There was nothing I could do to her. An Yutong’s soul had already been annihilated by Liang Yi and the man who knew the Mind-Capturing Art, while Liang Yi’s original body had been destroyed.

In other words, only one An Yutong remained in this world, and inside her body was Liang Yi’s soul.

In the eyes of the law, however, she was An Yutong.

From now on, An Yutong was who she would be.

We had no evidence that this An Yutong had anything to do with the still-missing “Liang Yi.”

She had every right to sound so confident.

“I’m not a police officer. I have no duty to punish evil and uphold justice.”

I smiled bitterly. “I only investigated your disappearance because the owner of that residential complex hired me. I’m responsible for finding the truth, nothing more.”

“Since things have already come this far, I just want to know who the man who took your body away is. What’s his name? Why did he help you?”

Liang Yi smiled. “Do you think I’d tell you? In a way, he’s my savior. The benefactor who changed my life.”

With that, Liang Yi suddenly walked over and wrapped her arms around me.

She even rested her head against my chest.

“You know, the most touching moment of my entire life came from you, a complete stranger.”

“No one cared whether I was missing or dead. You were the only one who kept asking where I was.”

“Even my parents never treated me like a person. I never imagined a stranger would care so much whether I lived or died.”

I let out a long sigh.

“I always thought you were the victim.”

“After learning everything about you, I desperately hoped I could find you alive. You worked so hard, and I didn’t want some terrible fate to befall you. As long as you came back alive, I was willing to pay for the rest of your college education and do what little I could to help you change your fate.”

“But it was all wishful thinking on my part. You weren’t the victim at all. An Yutong was.”

“Now I only feel sorry for her. She was completely innocent, yet you people destroyed her for no reason. She should have had a wonderful life ahead of her…”

Before I could finish, a sharp pain pierced my back. Something had stabbed into me.

My eyes widened. I shoved Liang Yi away and reached behind me, pulling out a syringe.

“An anesthetic…”

A damned powerful one, too!

I staggered several steps as the drug took effect with terrifying speed.

“You…”

I glared viciously at Liang Yi, but I could no longer speak.

At that moment, five or six people emerged from the darkness. The man in front was the same one who had hypnotized Brother Liu.

“I didn’t want to hurt you, but I had to do this…”

With reddened eyes, Liang Yi slowly backed away.

Before those people could even reach me, I crashed to the floor. My phone slipped out of my shirt pocket.

I finally understood. The omens from before had not been a coincidence at all.

The person who would disappear… was me.

The person who would die… was me, too.

I was truly finished this time…

My vision went black. The last thing I saw was my phone screen, showing that my call with Anning had remained connected for an entire hour.