2 Chapter 2 (Revised)

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“Something has happened to some relatives on your aunt’s side. Once we get through these next couple of days, your aunt and I will go find your father.”

Xu Deyou accompanied Xu Qingling to the entrance of the residential compound, gave her a few instructions, then pulled two hundred yuan from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. He hailed a taxi and reminded the driver to take her to Oak Village.

The taxi driver was a middle-aged man in his fifties. Perhaps because he was working the night shift, he drove at an unhurried pace. Sitting in the back seat and gazing into the darkness outside, Xu Qingling felt scenes buried deep in her memory begin to surge back to life.

On this night in her previous life, she had not done anything foolish after all. She had sat alone beside the river and cried for half the night before falling asleep with her body sprawled over a rock.

When she returned home the next morning, her parents had not even noticed that she had spent the entire night outside.

In her more than thirty years of life, the thing Xu Qingling was best at was deceiving herself—whether where her parents or Shen Luan was concerned.

In her previous life, she had been hopelessly infatuated with Shen Luan and pursued him for years. Only after marrying him did she learn that there was a woman he had never stopped longing for.

She had no idea who that woman was, but she consoled herself with the thought that first loves belonged to the past. As long as she and Shen Luan lived their lives well from then on, everything would be fine.

In the fifth year of her marriage to Shen Luan, her best friend Wan Yue divorced and moved in next door with her child. Shen Luan was in a foul mood during that period, growing gloomier and more irritable by the day. Before long, he asked for a divorce.

Xu Qingling did everything she could to save the marriage, but nothing worked. In the end, she could only set him free.

At the divorce, Shen Luan told her that the company had been operating under a mountain of debt for years, and that all he could give her was the apartment they had bought when they married.

Xu Qingling agreed. She rarely bought handbags or jewelry, and she had never had particularly strong material desires.

After the divorce, Xu Qingling sold the apartment and moved to a neighboring city. A month later, she discovered that she was pregnant. The two vivid red lines on the test strip pierced her heart until it bled.

Heaven certainly had a cruel sense of humor. After she and Shen Luan married, his work had kept him constantly busy, and they had rarely shared a bed. She had never conceived, and Shen Luan had seemed less than eager to have children.

Who would have thought she would become pregnant just as they were divorcing?

After several days of agonizing indecision, she finally let go. A child should be born into a world of parental love and expectation. A week later, she underwent an abortion.

Day by day, the physical and emotional wounds inflicted by the divorce slowly began to heal.

Then, six months later, Xu Qingling saw Shen Luan on television, brimming with confidence as he announced to the public that the company was in excellent condition and intended to list in the United States. The woman standing beside him, smiling like a blooming flower, was none other than her best friend, Wan Yue.

Xu Qingling could not believe her eyes. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that Shen Luan’s cherished first love was the friend who had been closest to her since childhood. The two of them had been carrying on behind her back for years.

To keep from giving her a larger share of the assets, Shen Luan had even concealed the company’s true financial condition during the divorce.

It was difficult to describe what it felt like to be betrayed by the two people closest to her at once.

During that period, she lay alone in her rented room. Thinking of her disastrous life, the child she had lost, and those two faces pretending that nothing had happened, she felt as though an invisible knife were churning her organs into bloody pulp. She curled into a ball in agony, unable to sleep night after night.

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She tried desperately to erase those memories from her mind and went to work at the supermarket as usual every day. Yet some corner of her chest was always struck by a dull ache. While reaching up to arrange the shelves, or bending down to pick up a cardboard box, tears would suddenly spill from her eyes without warning.

Countless times, she told herself to let it go. In this life, she was simply someone with weak family ties: little affection from her parents, a shallow bond between husband and wife, and no connection with children either.

Yet the fury in her heart never dispersed…

Why should she be the one to suffer all that hurt and humiliation?

Why were they allowed to pretend that nothing had happened?

Why…

Later, she finally understood. Because Shen Luan was the eldest grandson of the Shen family. Because he was Farstar’s next CEO.

He had been certain she could do nothing to him.

…

Xu Qingling’s hands, resting on her knees, clenched unconsciously as she thought of the woman’s voice on the phone moments earlier.

She would have recognized that voice even if it had been reduced to ash. It belonged to her mother-in-law, Fu Qin.

For as long as anyone could remember, the true authority in the entire Farstar Group had been Shen Luan’s uncle, Shen Anwu. Twelve years older than Shen Luan, he had become Farstar’s general manager at the age of twenty-six.

Originally, Shen Luan had had no chance of inheriting the position of Farstar’s CEO. But then Shen Anwu was kidnapped and left permanently disabled.

Shen Anwu’s misfortune had pushed Shen Luan straight to the top. Fu Qin had spent her entire life hoping her son would rise to greatness, and in the end, he had indeed made her proud. Starting in Farstar’s investment division, he had strengthened his position step by step, until the technology company under his management had grown large enough to be spun off and listed separately.

But if Shen Anwu had not been crippled, where would Shen Luan have found such an opportunity?

A cold light slowly seeped into Xu Qingling’s eyes, merging with the murky darkness of the night.

…

The silence inside the car was unnerving. Through the rearview mirror, the driver glanced at the girl in the back seat. She had spent the entire journey looking out the window in profile.

What could there possibly be to see in that pitch-black darkness? The driver was puzzled. He cleared his throat and switched on the radio.

Xu Qingling was jolted awake by the static between stations. After all, this was more than a decade ago; she had to concentrate to make out where the car had driven to.

The sign for the oil refinery flashed past. The car was drawing closer and closer to the outskirts of the city. Xu Qingling felt her heart begin to pound uncontrollably, as though it might burst from her chest. Something passed through her mind.

She bit her lip. “Sir, don’t take me to Oak Village after all. Please go back to the oil refinery we just passed.”

The driver thought he had misheard her and glanced at her again in the rearview mirror. The girl looked about the same age as his daughter.

“Miss, that oil refinery has been abandoned for ages. What are you going there for? The relative who brought you out just now told me very clearly to take you to Oak Village…”

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“Sir, one of my classmates lives in the refinery workers’ housing complex. I just remembered that I need to get something from her.” Xu Qingling lied without hesitation. Seeing that the driver still looked doubtful, she added, “Please do me this favor. Otherwise, if you take me to Oak Village, I’ll have to pay for another taxi to the refinery, and that means paying another starting fare.”

The driver saw that she seemed composed and did not look like a girl who had stormed out after a quarrel with her family. He reluctantly agreed.

“All right. I’ll turn around up ahead.”

The red Jetta drove for several more minutes, passing over a stretch of rough, pothole-ridden dirt road before finally arriving.

“Miss, I can’t drive any farther. I’ll have to leave you here.”

Xu Qingling could not have been more pleased. If he drove to the workers’ quarters farther ahead, she would have to walk all the way back herself. She quickly paid the fare, collected her change, and got out.

At a construction site in the distance, high-wattage lamps hung overhead. Though they could not illuminate every corner, they revealed that most of the rubble had already been cleared. Numerous mounds of earth, large and small, dotted the exposed yellow soil, and an excavator stood idle in one corner of the site.

The surroundings were so quiet that they made the heart tremble, yet Xu Qingling felt no fear. Her blood was surging through her veins.

There was only one thought in her mind—

Whatever it took, she could not let Shen Anwu be crippled this time.

In her previous life, while working at Farstar, she had once heard about the circumstances surrounding Shen Anwu’s kidnapping.

Because of the oil refinery land, he had offended a developer with powerful connections. The man hired several escaped convicts serving heavy sentences to keep watch outside Shen Anwu’s company for days. Then, one night, when Shen Anwu was working late alone, several men ambushed him in the parking lot and forced him into a car.

The convicts knocked him unconscious and buried him beneath one of the mounds at the refinery construction site. Though he was eventually rescued, both his legs were permanently ruined.

Xu Qingling climbed laboriously over the various mounds, sometimes stepping high, sometimes sinking low, but found no sign of freshly disturbed earth.

She circled the construction site several more times and still found no trace of anyone having been buried. Looking more closely, she realized that the site had probably been abandoned for some time. Aside from her, hardly anyone seemed to have visited recently.

She had not come to the wrong place. This was it.

When she got out of the taxi, she had checked the time. The meter had read twelve-oh-seven.

Now… it was probably around one.

Xu Qingling decided not to go home. She would keep watch here for the entire night.

She looked around, searching for somewhere to hide, when the sound of tires crushing over gravel suddenly came from behind her.

The engine roared as the accelerator was pressed, the sound unnaturally clear and piercing in the darkness.

Xu Qingling’s heart leaped into her throat.

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