My Cousin Arrives (VIII)

Hearing this, a sudden thought flashed through He Lingyu’s mind. She immediately interrupted Qian Hui and asked, “Shi Jing is actually Shi Yini?”

Zhou Xiaojun had mentioned before that Shi Yini’s family had moved to the Magic City more than a decade ago. It wasn’t until two years ago that Shi Yini returned to this small town with her young boyfriend and opened this yoga studio.

Shi Yini’s young boyfriend back then happened to be A Feng.

Shi Yini had a remarkable figure, and Shi Jing used to be a dancer, so naturally, her figure would be just as outstanding.

“You guessed it...” Qian Hui sounded a little disappointed. She had wanted to keep the suspense, but He Lingyu had unraveled it with just a few words.

He Lingyu had no patience for guessing games. She said directly, “Shi Jing underwent plastic surgery to become Shi Yini. Only A Feng knows about this. A Feng wants to escape Li Qing’s entanglement and is eager to go abroad. Since he was coming back to town, he naturally wouldn’t miss such a good opportunity to blackmail Shi Jing. As for you, you didn’t follow him all this way just for revenge. If you really wanted A Feng dead, you would have acted in the Magic City. Why come all this way? You’re here for Shi Jing!”

By now, He Lingyu had already pieced together the connections between all those involved.

She looked coldly at the disheveled Qian Hui. “While I went to the restroom to take a call, you possessed Shi Jing. At that moment, Wu Ying woke up and saw your true form. That’s what scared her to death!”

Qian Hui shrank back, hastily defending herself, “I had no grudge against Wu Ying. I never meant to frighten her to death. It was her own frail health—it had nothing to do with me.”

“There were many ways you could have killed Shi Jing, but you chose to possess her. You did it solely to scare Wu Ying to death. Since you’ve been tailing A Feng and Li Qing, you must have found out about Wu Ying’s heart condition. So you used this method to kill her. I must admit, I didn’t expect you had this ability—to come out and harm people even in broad daylight. But since you’ve become a ghost, you must know what happens to those who harm the living, don’t you?” The more He Lingyu spoke, the colder her voice became, making Qian Hui tremble with fear.

Though Qian Hui hadn’t been a ghost for long, she’d heard from the older spirits: taking living people as substitutes, or killing a few, was nothing as long as the exorcist didn’t catch you. But once you fell into an exorcist’s hands, your soul would most likely be obliterated.

“No, no, it was A Feng! It was all A Feng’s idea!” Qian Hui had no desire to play the hero. She was only a low-level wandering ghost who hadn’t even reincarnated. Why should she take the blame for the person who’d killed her in her past life?

“A Feng? Wu Ying was his sister, and she was even going to give him money. Why would he want to kill his own sister?” He Lingyu frowned in confusion.

“It’s true! A Feng asked me to help him. He said Wu Ying was his own sister, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he wanted me to kill her. He told me that when he ran me over back then, he wasn’t acting on his own will. Shi Jing was the real culprit. If I helped him kill Wu Ying, he’d help me kill Shi Jing and make her die the exact same way I did.”

Qian Hui was desperate to spill everything she knew, out of sheer terror. She regretted ever mentioning that A Feng had called Shi Jing. She could have denied scaring Wu Ying to death, but after revealing that phone call, He Lingyu was convinced Wu Ying had died because of her.

Qian Hui was sick with regret.

He Lingyu looked up at the little bald boy hanging from the chandelier and said, “Let me use your phone for a moment. After I make a call, you can keep watching.”

The little bald boy was clearly displeased, but he still tossed the phone down. He Lingyu caught it, found the number she’d just added earlier that day, and called Zhou Xiaojun.

“Oh, Lingling, it’s you! I left you a message on WeChat. Did you see it?” Zhou Xiaojun’s excited voice came through the phone.

WeChat?

Her phone had been confiscated by the little bald boy so he could watch animated shows. She hadn’t heard any notifications at all.

No wonder—in such a small room, with a TV blaring, the cartoon playing, and Qian Hui crying, it would have been strange if she’d heard a WeChat alert.

While chatting with Zhou Xiaojun, He Lingyu checked her messages.

Sure enough, Zhou Xiaojun had left a note: The driver who ran over Coach Shi didn’t make it in the hospital—he’s already dead.

He Lingyu’s brows twitched. When the driver was pulled from the car, he had stopped breathing, but his heart was still beating, so they rushed him to the hospital.

She asked, “Who told you that? Is the news reliable?”

“Absolutely reliable. I heard it from Liu Qian, who’s a nurse at the town hospital. That car crashed into the base of the sculpture, remember? The driver still had a heartbeat at the time, but after a day of emergency care, he couldn’t be saved,” Zhou Xiaojun replied.

“Did the police find out who the driver was?” He Lingyu pressed.

“They haven’t identified him yet, but they traced the car—it’s my third uncle’s. My third uncle went to a village wedding, had a bit too much to drink, and took a detour down a small road. Luckily, even drunk, he managed to hit the brakes and didn’t crash into a tree. He fell asleep in the car, and when he woke up, he found himself dumped in a patch of grass with the car gone. He flagged down a passing car, came back to town, and reported it. But since he’d been driving drunk, he’s been detained at the police station and is still there.”

Zhou Xiaojun sounded a bit regretful—she’d only learned of her third uncle’s detention that afternoon because her aunt had been too busy scolding her uncle to post anything in the family chat group.

So, the car used in the accident had been stolen, the driver’s identity was unknown, and since the parking lot was in the town center, there was surveillance all around. A Feng couldn’t operate as he had when he killed Qian Hui—killing someone and then finding a scapegoat. This time, he’d simply found someone else to do his dirty work.

He Lingyu chatted a little longer with Zhou Xiaojun before hanging up and tossing the phone back to the little bald boy so he could continue watching his cartoon.

When she looked down, she caught Qian Hui sneaking glances at her, those ghostly eyes full of cunning, as if plotting something yet again.

He Lingyu said, “Since you claim A Feng ordered you to kill Wu Ying, then tell me everything in detail. Leave nothing out. If I catch you lying...”

Qian Hui couldn’t wait to implicate A Feng. She rushed to say, “That night, I heard A Feng calling Shi Jing, that wretch. I couldn’t hold back and lunged at him, but that scumbag was wearing a protective charm. I was thrown back and revealed my true form. He recognized me—not only was he unafraid, he actually laughed. He said he’d been struggling to kill Wu Ying himself, so since I’d come to him, we could work together.”