Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I scouted the location for a long time.

There was a cluster of abandoned buildings on the west side of the school. There were no surveillance cameras nearby, and the railings in many places were loose and in disrepair. I imitated Ye Yuansheng’s handwriting and wrote a note to Fang Ya.

“I found out the reason Xia Lin became beautiful. Meet me at 8:00 PM. Don’t be late.”

I asked her to come out and warned her not to let anyone know.

I knew Fang Ya wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation; she was desperate to go back to the way she used to be.

Fang Ya arrived ten minutes early.

I hid in the shadows of a corner, feeling my heart thumping harder and faster-

When Fang Ya turned her back and leaned over to look down anxiously, I lunged out of the shadows and gave her a violent shove. Her entire body pitched forward, completely out of control.

“Ah-”

After a short, sharp scream…

She fell, taking the loose railing down with her.

Thwack-like a watermelon hitting the ground. To this day, I remember every detail of that scene. She landed face-first, her limbs twitching like a fish on a cutting board as blood seeped out from her long, black hair.

Three days later, Fang Ya’s body was found.

I had been very cautious and believed my plan was flawless, but soon enough, I was taken away by the police right in the middle of class.

Despite my best efforts, I had overlooked one thing: a street vendor had been resting in the abandoned building that day and provided a composite sketch of the suspect.

I broke out in a cold sweat, adamantly insisting I knew nothing.

The police, of course, didn’t take my word for it. They pressed me harder and harder until I was on the verge of breaking. But just as I was about to confess…

They said the real killer had been caught.

It was a homeless madwoman.

When the police found her, she was crazily playing with a severed hand-it was Fang Ya’s missing hand.

I recognized her at a single glance. That was my mother.

It was her before she became beautiful. Overnight, she had been reverted to her original form, her body ravaged by the backlash and covered in rotting flesh. It was only then that I suddenly understood what my mother meant after she discovered I had killed someone.

“No matter what, you must never admit to it.”

My mother had been so beautiful and moving, while this madwoman was hideously unrecognizable. No one would ever link the two together. Amidst my grief, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief.

A mentally ill homeless person wouldn’t be sentenced to death for murder. I felt lucky to have escaped my fate, but before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, Ye Yuansheng found me. He looked uneasy as he told me that that night… he saw it.

My heart skipped a beat. He stammered, “I saw it. The killer… it wasn’t the madwoman. It was you.”

As it turned out, he had been there that night too.