Xu Changlan’s Death

When Qin Qingyan appeared on camera again, she looked thoroughly satisfied.

“After watching TV, we’ll go out for a walk and wander around a bit.” This time, Qin Qingyan didn’t need to avoid the camera so much. The woman beside her was just like her, wearing a mask and a cap. She even waved at the lens.

There weren’t many people on the street.

They came to a bench and sat down to rest. In front of them was a sloping stretch of lush grass; farther away, some people were having a picnic. Beyond the grass lay a broad lake, the water clear and glittering in the sunlight.

Willow branches hung nearby, tender and swaying softly.

Qin Qingyan adjusted the camera and set it aside, then tilted her head onto the woman’s shoulder. The footage sped up, but the scene didn’t change much; Qin Qingyan kept the same leaning posture the whole time.

【At this point, who can even tell who’s on top and who’s on the bottom?】

【That said, I still believe in Teacher Qin. The banner of Teacher Qin will never fall!】

Text appeared over the video: Love is a long, steady stream; it is also silent companionship.

Then the camera cut again. This time they were in a restaurant; Qin Qingyan withdrew her hand, and the table was filled with a spread of dishes.

She cut the steak, speared a piece into the other person’s bowl, then cut another piece for herself and ate with obvious satisfaction.

“It’s lunch now. We usually eat at home; we don’t eat out very often. Because of work, most of the time we spend together is at night, so daytime is especially precious to us. If we can, we usually spend it doing something meaningful together, like cooking a meal, reading for a while, or building blocks,” Qin Qingyan said.

“Napkin.” The other person held out a hand.

Qin Qingyan glanced at her hand and pulled out a few tissues to hand over. “Did you get oil on yourself?”

“Mm, a little got on my clothes too. I’ll go wash it off.” The woman stood up and passed through the edge of the frame.

“I’ll go too.” Qin Qingyan got up as well.

“No need. Cut me a few more pieces of steak,” the woman said.

Qin Qingyan sat back down, quickly finished cutting the steak with knife and fork, and placed it across from her. She propped her chin on one hand and kept glancing toward the bathroom.

【I’ve never seen the wife, but she just feels so commanding. Teacher Qin always looks cold and aloof, but she’s actually this obedient in private?】

【The Qin 1 flag, I can still wave it!】

【Hard to say. She’s obedient under the bed; who knows about on the bed, hehe.】

【The person above sounds very experienced. As a member of the Qing Tuan family, why not share some insight?】

Suddenly, Qin Qingyan’s eyes lit up; unable to contain her excitement, she stood up and went to meet someone. The two talked in the distance. The woman was wearing a cap, so her features couldn’t be seen clearly.

When she sat back down in front of the camera, Qin Qingyan asked, “How was it? Did I cut it well?”

The woman was still eating. She lifted a thumb in approval.

“Then I…” Qin Qingyan seemed to remember something and glanced at the camera. “Then that’s good.”

She nearly let out some unguarded words.

Head lowered, Qin Qingyan ate her noodles, amusement slipping through her brows and eyes.

The camera shifted again. Qin Qingyan had put her phone away and was drying her hair, slowly blowing it with a hair dryer.

Then she deliberately picked up the phone and turned her body, letting Yan Yue appear in her frame. In the shot, the woman was wearing pink loungewear and leaning against the balcony door while talking on the phone.

“This person has been on the phone since I got out of the shower; it’s been almost half an hour already. A workaholic,” Qin Qingyan complained softly. “When she comes to find me later, I’m definitely not going to pay her any mind.”

The woman shifted a little. Qin Qingyan hurriedly moved the camera away, let out a breath, and sat down on the sofa. Facing the lens again, she stressed once more, “Status.”

Following Qin Qingyan’s gaze, the viewers guessed that the woman had walked over and sat down at one end of the sofa.

Qin Qingyan lifted both feet and placed them on the woman’s legs. This was something that happened often in their daily life, so the woman let her do it, even resting one hand lightly on top. Then Qin Qingyan crossed her right leg over her left and swayed it slightly, with a distinctly provocative air.

“Qin Qingyan,” the woman reminded her.

“What is it?” Qin Qingyan played dumb.

“Take them off.”

“No.”

After a while, the woman said flatly, “Qin Qingyan, the video only lasts one day.”

Qin Qingyan felt as if an alarm had gone off in her head; she quickly pulled back her legs and moved them down.

【I’m dying laughing. So much for status.】

【Teacher Qin, if you don’t fight hard enough to be the top, your status won’t be stable!】

【After a whole day, the top and bottom have been decided.】

The camera turned to the television, only capturing the two of them talking.

“Why don’t you ever think about spending more time with me?” Qin Qingyan’s voice came through.

“Tsk, stop touching me.” The woman said.

“You won’t even stay with me.”

“Qin Qingyan, acting pitiful won’t work.”

“You won’t stay with me.”

“Alright, I’m holding you now. Watch TV quietly for a while.”

The video ended there.

A few days later, during an interview at an event, Qin Qingyan was asked about the meaning behind the number 916. It had first appeared in the video’s length; at nine minutes and sixteen seconds, it hadn’t caught much attention. But then careful netizens discovered that the Weibo post announcing the video had also been published at exactly 9:16, and all kinds of speculation followed.

Qin Qingyan said, “Actually, I saw online that most people guessed correctly. It’s my lover’s birthday, September 16.”

The host’s envy was impossible to hide.

The video’s views and discussion kept climbing; from the nature of their relationship, to the identity of Qin Qingyan’s girlfriend, to arguments over who was the top and who was the bottom, the popularity under every related topic was high.

Qin Qingyan scrolled through the comments and couldn’t really understand why such a simple slice of her life had sparked so much discussion. She set her phone down, leaned back against the sofa, and stared at the ceiling while thinking carefully.

Looking back on her past, she remembered the first time she came to Nanjing City. She was still working part-time then, dressed in a Little Dragon Man mascot costume. A little girl came over, took a leaflet from her, waved at her, and ran back to her parents. Her parents patted the child’s head and praised her with smiles, and the family left hand in hand.

She had stared for a long time, deeply envious. If she had been an orphan since childhood, perhaps she wouldn’t have envied them so much. But she had once had that kind of life too.

Maybe just as she envied that family’s rare happiness, many people were also envying the life she had now, looking at her and seeing the life they wished for.

Thinking of that, Qin Qingyan looked toward the bathroom. Water was running inside; Yan Yue was still showering. So she draped herself over the back of the sofa and watched without blinking, her eyes full of tenderness.

Without Yan Yue, she would never have known what it felt like to care for someone, or what it felt like to be loved. Even if she really did achieve great success, she would still be alone.

The Best Actress crown in Jinzuan—how many people coveted it? Of course she wanted it too; in fact, she had dreamed of it. But she felt that there should always be some order in one’s heart. Yan Yue had already settled into first place; there was nothing she could do about that.

She thought of it happily.

The bathroom door opened, and Yan Yue came out in a white bathrobe, wiping her hair. “A blossom fresh from the water” flashed through Qin Qingyan’s mind. She quickly went up to take the towel cap from her and gently rub her hair dry, then carefully blow-dry it until it was only half-dry.

Qin Qingyan leaned against her chest, breathing in the reassuring scent on her body. Yan Yue rested her chin on Qin Qingyan’s hair and lightly patted her arm, over and over.

Neither of them spoke. It was very quiet; only their heartbeats could be clearly heard.

“I’m sleepy,” Qin Qingyan said, her eyes narrowing.

“If you’re sleepy, then let’s go to bed,” Yan Yue said.

Qin Qingyan hugged her tightly and refused to let her move. “No. This is warmer.”

Yan Yue held her even tighter, her fingers moving up to rub Qin Qingyan’s soft earlobe. “Why are you being so clingy today?”

“Every day I’m this clingy.” The reply came muffled against her.

Yan Yue lowered her head and looked at her eyebrows and eyes. In her memory, she had always been stubborn and resilient, with a temper, like a little hedgehog ready to defend itself at any moment. But now she had learned to act spoiled and rely on someone. Thinking about it, after experiencing so much over the years, she was still only a girl not yet twenty-three.

Xu Changlan’s scandal had broken; the person in charge of the Xu family had changed hands. Her incident had stayed on the internet for only about three days before being drowned out by another entertainment industry bomb that netizens found even more amusing; public attention shifted very quickly.

Clearly, someone had been manipulating things behind the scenes.

The man who successfully took over the Xu family was Xu Changlan’s biological younger brother. He stood before a tall building, looking out over the business district with ambition burning in his eyes.

“Your information was very useful; it turned her into a scapegoat,” the man said.

“She had it coming! Why did you suppress it? I wanted her ruined and dead!” The man in the chair had a twisted, ugly expression.

“Zheng Jingteng, our deal was that I’d help you get away, and you’d help me bring her down. The result has already been achieved, hasn’t it?” the man said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of her. But not for your sake—for mine.”

Before Zheng Jingteng left, the man threw him a card and a decent set of clothes. Zheng Jingteng changed into the outfit, but he didn’t take the card; he only asked for a car, and the man agreed.

A few days later, news that Xu Changlan had been brutally killed in the street shot back up to the hot search. According to the police, Xu Changlan’s fatal injury was to the head; repeated blows from a blunt weapon had crushed her skull. In addition, there were dozens of knife wounds and cuts across her body, each one deep enough to see bone.

Soon after, the police identified the killer as Zheng Jingteng and launched a full-scale manhunt.

Many people online sighed over the news. Who could have imagined that the female executive who had once saved the Xu family with her own hands would end up dead in the street, while the once-glamorous first-tier male star had fallen all the way to becoming a murderer?

When Su Yan saw the news, she felt intensely uneasy. If Zheng Jingteng was acting out of revenge against Xu Changlan, then Xu Changlan had already been nearly ruined before; he couldn’t possibly not know that.

And yet he still killed her. Even in the surveillance footage, Zheng Jingteng showed no intention of avoiding the cameras; after killing someone, he simply walked away. That made Su Yan feel that Zheng Jingteng would still have another move.

The person who shared her thought—and was even more panicked—was Yu Qingyan.

Before Zheng Jingteng was caught, she lived in constant fear every day. She hired several bodyguards, and at night there were bodyguards stationed outside her door in rotating shifts around the clock. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling afraid.

In those first few days, she deeply experienced what it meant to be hypervigilant, her nerves taut the entire time. After several days, that panic eased somewhat.

Zheng Jingteng still hadn’t appeared, and the police search was still ongoing.