“Li Yilin…” Zhang Jingchan chewed on this unfamiliar name.

Li Weiyi bumped his arm and said, “I might possibly maybe have heard of this person’s existence. Last time I traveled back, when I was checking accounts, someone mentioned him to me.”

“Who?”

“The housekeeper, Sister Liu.”

Li Weiyi briefly recounted the incident when Sister Liu had come to the study to report secretly that day.

Zhang Jingchan fell into contemplation.

“Do you… believe it?” Li Weiyi asked. Li Yunmo also looked at him.

Zhang Jingchan picked up his teacup and played with it in his hands but didn’t drink. Then he smiled faintly and said, “My mom—she’s not very capable, enjoys pleasure, has a weak character. Back then, after divorcing my dad, she went out to work to support me through college. A wealthy lady who knew nothing, living in the worst basement apartments, working as a waitress serving dishes. She was beautiful, and later there were wealthy men who wanted to marry her. I urged her to remarry. She said compared to my old man, those people weren’t worth even one finger of his. Later when our situation improved, she secretly gave all the money she earned from work to my dejected father, then got scolded by him and came home, only to get another scolding from me.”

Both Li Yunmo and Li Weiyi were stunned listening to this.

He was talking about events from the very first life.

Zhang Jingchan set down his teacup with a “tap” and said definitively, “She wouldn’t do it.”

Li Weiyi nodded vigorously. “That means this so-called first love Li Yilin was just their pawn, one of their smokescreens.”

Zhang Jingchan nodded and looked at Li Yunmo. “Tell me about the day your father had his incident in more detail.”

Recalling those events still brought dull pain to Li Yunmo’s heart.

It was gloomy weather. Ever since his father Li Jinxiong returned from the police station early that morning, the entire household seemed shrouded in low pressure.

His father’s back looked like a mountain about to collapse, sitting there, silently smoking half a pack of cigarettes alone before going upstairs.

Li Yunmo had also been dispirited those days, unable to move past Brother Chan becoming a vegetable. Add to that the Zhang family’s incident last night, and he was deeply distressed, lost and dejected.

Suddenly, Li Jinxiong’s furious roar came from upstairs: “Who touched my safe? Who touched it!”

Li Yunmo jumped in fright and rushed up to see a terrifying scene—his father was strangling his mother’s neck, pressing her against the wall. His father’s eyes were blood red, like a beast about to go berserk, roaring, “Where did the thing go? I’m asking you where it went!”

Li Yunmo rushed over trying to pry his father’s hands away but was slapped to the ground by his father.

“Dad! Mom will suffocate like this! She’ll die!” Li Yunmo cried out. “Let her go first! Let go and then ask!”

Li Jinxiong resentfully released his grip. Mother Li gasped for breath but didn’t dare look at her husband’s eyes, crying, “All you care about is Fu Ming, all you do is work yourself to death for Zhang Moyun! Don’t you know Fu Ming is about to collapse?”

Li Jinxiong was about to slap her, but Li Yunmo desperately blocked him.

“I’m asking you where the USB drive from the safe is!” Li Jinxiong had always kept the USB drive in the deepest corner of the safe, never mentioning it to his wife or child. He never imagined that today when he wanted to take it out to report to the police, it had already vanished without a trace.

“I gave it to Zhang Fengming!” Mother Li cried out. “If I didn’t give it to him, he would kill our son! If I gave it to him, he’d give me five million! Five million! Our money, plus the money my parents, my sister and brother lent to Fu Ming—we could get it all back! Why wouldn’t I give it! That’s what Zhang Moyun owed us, he owed us!”

Mother Li opened her phone and threw it in front of them. It was a photo—Li Yunmo sitting despondently in a coffee shop, and not far behind him, two men in black clothes and hats, hovering and following.

Li Yunmo’s eyes suddenly widened as he hugged his mother. “Mom, what did you give them? What did you give?”

Li Jinxiong said nothing, veins bulging on his forehead. Finally he burst out laughing “hahaha,” murmuring, “Son lost something, thought he could rely on his old man, turns out the old man lost it too, hahaha…” That laughter made both mother and son shudder.

He suddenly glanced at his old wife and said coldly, “You’re forcing me to die.”

Before mother and son could react, Li Jinxiong had already rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and rushed out of the house.

…

Li Weiyi pulled out a tissue and handed it to Li Yunmo. He wiped his eyes hard, smiling with reddened eyes, “Brother Chan, my family wronged you.”

Zhang Jingchan patted his shoulder and said, “You’ll see Uncle Li again.”

Li Yunmo’s eyes widened. A moment later, he smiled too, nodding vigorously. “Then from now on I’ll absolutely listen to my dad in everything and never make him angry again.”

“What exactly did Uncle Zhang give my dad?” Li Yunmo asked.

Zhang Jingchan and Li Weiyi exchanged a glance. He said, “Since my dad already learned from you about the warehouse incident that night, even without getting the voice recorder, he could guess at the conspiracy between Liu Ying, Cheng Chuan, and Zhang Fengming. He couldn’t have done nothing, and by early September, Fu Ming’s matters were resolved. I think what he entrusted to Uncle Li for safekeeping must have been criminal evidence he collected on that group, leaving a backup plan. My dad never expected that before he could make a move, they would strike first and kill him. And they even calculated Uncle Li’s step, using your mother to take the evidence and escape punishment.”

Li Weiyi and Li Yunmo felt chills listening.

“What do we do next?” Li Yunmo asked.

Zhang Jingchan rested one arm on the wooden window, staring intently at the water’s surface. Instead of answering, he asked, “So later, Cheng Chuan went to another company as CFO but went to prison for embezzlement; Zhang Fengming died; only Liu Ying came out unscathed, went to America, and never came back?”

Both nodded.

Zhang Jingchan suddenly smiled and said, “I also always thought the mastermind was Liu Ying.”

Li Weiyi’s heart skipped a beat.

Zhang Jingchan said, “But looking at it now, how unreasonable. This behind-the-scenes manipulator, the big ghost we need to root out, is calculating and ruthless. To protect themselves, killing my dad, killing me, forcing the voice recorder, deceiving away the evidence… Once they discovered no loopholes around my dad, they immediately turned to target my mom. Such a grand scheme, such capability and cunning. You say this person is Liu Ying, that after pulling this job at Fu Ming she just quit and went abroad? I don’t believe it. Also, that night at the warehouse, how did Liu Ying know we were hiding inside? How could she have arranged in such a short time for a drunk worker to hit me and take the blame? How did they know about the voice recorder? Unless there was another person who was already at Furuida before those three, and as soon as we entered the factory, we were being watched.”

Li Weiyi listened with alarm, but thinking carefully, only this way made logical sense.

“You mean… there’s another big BOSS hiding behind Liu Ying?” Li Yunmo asked tremulously.

Zhang Jingchan nodded without hesitation.

Li Yunmo’s face went paler, asking with difficulty, “So that big BOSS… is my mom, right?”

Zhang Jingchan and Li Weiyi: “…”

But Zhang Jingchan glanced at Li Weiyi at this moment, seeing only her inexplicably panicked heart, which gradually grew heavy.

“That person didn’t just split 90 million with those three people. What they took was 300 million,” Zhang Jingchan said.

Li Yunmo breathed a sigh of relief hearing this. His mom didn’t even have three million, and thinking carefully, his mom didn’t seem very shrewd either. Although she took the evidence at a sensitive time, she was probably deceived.

“You mean that futures deal?” Li Yunmo said. “Brother Chan, Brother Zhong Yi and I have been paying attention to this all these years. We only found one clue—that Li Ming who stood up to buy 30 million in soybean futures is from Nanmupu Township in Ling County. And Liu Ying is also from Nanmupu Township in Ling County. They definitely have a connection.”

Zhang Jingchan nodded. Just as he was about to speak, Li Weiyi spoke up, “Wait, Ling County? I know another person who’s also from Ling County.”

“Who?”

Li Weiyi’s expression turned somewhat unpleasant. She said, “The housekeeper, Sister Liu.”

Both Zhang Jingchan and Li Yunmo were startled.

“Once, last time when checking accounts, she made me a hometown snack called something like Lamp Core Wowo. I asked her where she was from, but she didn’t say. Later I thought it was so delicious, during a break I casually looked it up online. Lamp Core Wowo is a rural specialty of Ling County.”

All three fell silent for a while.

Zhang Jingchan said, “Tomorrow Li Yunmo and I will make a trip to Nanmupu Township in Ling County.”