To explain this accident clearly, Lu Yixin and Zheng Ranran had rehearsed it several times. When she spoke, she was unusually organized and coherent.
She told Lu Boyuan that Fang Yongnian knew the driver responsible for the car accident back then was one of Lu Boyuan’s fellow townsmen; she told him that Fang Yongnian knew Lu Boyuan had investigated him after the accident; and most importantly, Fang Yongnian had even mentioned the confidential document that only he and Lu Boyuan had access to. He said he hadn’t done anything, and the only person capable of leaking it—was Lu Boyuan.
Lu Boyuan was dumbfounded.
Those exact same words, he had said them to Liu Miqing just a few weeks ago.
That document, only the two of them had the key. If he hadn’t done it, then the only one capable of leaking it was Fang Yongnian.
Ever since learning of the scandal between Fang Yongnian and Yu Hanfeng, the suspicion that had once surfaced in his heart was stirred up again. If that incident back then really wasn’t done by Fang Yongnian, then who was it?
The disabled man the professor mentioned on the phone that afternoon, could that really have been Fang Yongnian?
If that car accident back then wasn’t an accident, then could it have been man-made?
Together with the tragedy that took four lives of the people in the car. Could that, too, have been man-made?
“Lu Yixin.” Lu Boyuan had never been this serious in front of his daughter. “The things you’re saying right now, did you really overhear them yourself? Fang Yongnian didn’t tell you these things?”
“Under what circumstances did you overhear it?”
“Explain it in detail.”
On the marble floor of the dining room lay fragments of coarse porcelain bowls shattered after hitting the ground vertically. Barefooted, Lu Yixin sat by the dining table, hugging her legs, her emotions tangled so much that she hardly felt like herself.
She was eighteen this year, old enough to fully understand the heavy meaning behind Lu Boyuan’s questions.
She could already clearly sense that this was a matter of life and death.
“I overheard it,” she answered seriously. “Fang Yongnian didn’t see me at that time.”
Lu Boyuan slumped into the dining chair in despair.
The matter was too grave, so he didn’t even notice that when his daughter mentioned Fang Yongnian, she no longer called him Uncle Fang.
The driver responsible for the accident was his fellow townsman. A familiar acquaintance who, during holidays and festivals, would even ask him to bring some local specialties from home.
When the car accident happened, only he was left among the core members of the project team. He was overwhelmed—arranging funerals, receiving family members, managing investors. It wasn’t until he signed the final documents after the accident that he realized there had been an old acquaintance among the victims.
Never in his dreams had he imagined this would become one of the reasons Fang Yongnian suspected him.
No—never in his dreams had he imagined that the tragedy back then might have been man-made, not a natural disaster.
He had thought it was just malicious commercial bribery from a rival company. The timing had been sensitive for the project, and after the tragedy, when the old professor fell seriously ill, he no longer had the heart to investigate further.
He had truly thought that since Fang Yongnian had lost a leg and resigned from the institute, and since the entire project team had fallen apart—with even their target research direction possibly fatally flawed—there was no point in digging deeper.
He had thought the two of them simply disliked each other.
He had never thought that, in Fang Yongnian’s eyes, he might be a deliberate murderer. The very culprit who caused him to lose a leg.
“I’ll call that kid.” He was in a daze.
The unease that had lingered all afternoon began to spiral. His mind was now in complete chaos.
Back then, almost everyone around him connected to the project had, more or less, hinted that the incident had something to do with Fang Yongnian.
Because of that document, he had always believed in his own suspicions.
But if this matter had not been done by Fang Yongnian from the very beginning—
Then the people around him who had, from the start, driven a wedge between him and Fang Yongnian…
“Lu Yixin.” He fixed his gaze on his daughter again.
Lu Yixin looked at her father.
She had never once doubted him. Her father might have a bad temper, might be overly stubborn and rigid, the type with a scholar’s pride and old-fashioned views.
But her father was not someone who cared much about money. His passion for pharmaceuticals could not be measured or bought with money.
This father of hers, who was rarely home, had always stood tall and upright in her heart when it came to character.
Yet she realized—in this moment—her father was panicking.
She even felt that her father was on the verge of collapsing.
“I overheard it. So, in these past few years, Fang Yongnian must have been in Hecheng investigating that incident from back then.” The young girl spoke seriously, saying things far beyond her age.
Yet no one told her anymore that children shouldn’t meddle in adult affairs.
The back of Lu Boyuan retreating into his study was even a bit unsteady.
Whether his daughter was lying or not, he knew perfectly well. From the moment he learned about that woman, Yu Hanfeng, to the phone call he overheard that afternoon, every doubt in his heart had now been cleared by what Lu Yixin had just said.
If it hadn’t been either of them from the start, if both of them had been innocent in this matter, and if they had been deliberately isolated from each other and made to harbor mutual suspicion. Then no wonder, in all these years, they had never once discussed that incident from four years ago between them.
When old Professor Wu had fallen gravely ill, he had told him to just let it go.
Fang Yongnian resigned from the institute, cut off all the connections from the first half of his life, and started anew all by himself.
Everyone around him who mentioned Fang Yongnian said that he had taken one wrong step and kept walking down the wrong path afterward. They said it was a pity—such solid fundamental skills, such years of national cultivation, all wasted.
Over the years, being surrounded by those voices, he had come to believe it too. That Fang Yongnian had only himself to blame, that he had made mistakes and refused to admit them, that he was stubbornly mingling with all sorts of disreputable people, doing meaningless things.
A scientific researcher who no longer stayed in the lab, appearing instead at banquets and social occasions everywhere, even after losing a leg—still refusing to calm down.
But what if Fang Yongnian had no choice?
He had lost his colleagues, lost part of his body, even lost his dream.
What if he had no choice but to investigate, no choice but to give himself an explanation for all that he had lost?
With trembling hands, Lu Boyuan lit a cigarette and dialed Fang Yongnian’s number again and again, each time letting it ring until it went unanswered.
Fang Yongnian didn’t pick up.
As always.
In the past, he had thought there was no enmity between them. He had even earnestly mentored the young man in the beginning, which made Fang Yongnian’s later behavior—disrespectful, ungrateful, a white-eyed wolf—all the more infuriating.
But now, a sudden hollowness welled up in his chest.
He shouldn’t have felt so hollow. Clearly, he had always been on the side of righteousness. Clearly, in his world, everyone said the same things about Fang Yongnian.
Yet, for some reason, the words his daughter had just spoken—carried such unbearable weight.
He had only covered his own eyes. He wasn’t stupid, far from it. When someone wanted to close that page of history, to stamp it over with Fang Yongnian’s ruined future as the seal that ended the matter, could he really have felt nothing at all?
He had given himself far too many excuses—project failure, colleagues dead, mentor gravely ill.
But at that time, he had not been blind.
He stubbornly called again and again, lighting one cigarette after another.
Until the line went completely dead, that kid had directly set his number to the blacklist.
“Girl! Give me your phone.” He opened the study door, his voice and the smell of smoke rolling heavily into the living room.
Lu Yixin had just finished cleaning up the broken bowls her father had shattered in the dining room and was coughing from the smoke.
She hesitated a little. She hadn’t called Fang Yongnian in a long while. Every morning and evening, she sent “good morning” and “good night” on WeChat, but they all sank without a trace.
“He might not answer my call either,” Lu Yixin said tactfully.
Lu Boyuan froze. “Why?”
Lu Yixin sniffled guiltily.
Because your daughter hid in the trunk of his car trying to elope with him. Because your daughter tried to pull off his clothes in a hotel room rented by the hour…
“True…” Lu Boyuan thought about it for a moment and surprisingly came to his own conclusion. “If he found out you overheard those things, he really wouldn’t take your calls.”
Lu Yixin gave two dry laughs while holding her broom.
Her dad really—completely didn’t understand them.
“Forget it.” Reeking of smoke, Lu Boyuan turned back toward his study. “I’ll send him an email.”
His email address probably hadn’t changed. That private account he used back when they were at the research institute, he always used that one for personal matters. He’d even bragged about paying for ten years of storage and encryption upgrades.
The corners of Lu Boyuan’s eyes suddenly turned damp.
Fang Yongnian had once been the kind of person willing to spend several months’ salary on a private encrypted email just to store data. For those few months when he was broke, he’d mooch off Lu Boyuan’s cafeteria card every day, always coming up with a new excuse.
He had been the youngest member of the project team. Everyone called him junior brother without distinction. When graduate students came to intern, they always thought Fang Yongnian was one of them too—another intern. They’d sneak off to complain to him about “the old guys” behind their backs.
Fang Yongnian would always listen with a straight face. In the end, that intern spent a whole month at their lab before realizing who Fang Yongnian really was. To keep his mouth shut, they let him share the meal card for another month.
Back then, for Fang Yongnian, a cafeteria card was a big deal. The tofu buns served once a week at the canteen were a major event.
They had all once been poor, had all once been happy, had all once believed they would shine brilliantly in the field of pharmaceuticals.
They had all once… had dreams.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
Life in Huating City wasn’t easy for Fang Yongnian. During the day, he worked nonstop; at night, he was almost always in the emergency room.
His low fever wouldn’t subside, his lungs were inflamed, and he even had mild diarrhea. After several consecutive days of IV drips, the emergency doctor advised him to be hospitalized.
“No need.” Fang Yongnian, expressionless, silenced the phone that kept ringing again and again. The name flashing on the screen only made his face grow even colder.
Crazy.
His phone had nearly died from all the calls. After blocking the number, his heart was full of ellipses.
He had reported the Musheng Pharmaceutical case because among the people involved, there were two who had once been members of that Alzheimer’s project—not core members, but both had access to the research data.
These past few days in Huating, through his older brother’s connections, he had also managed to get answers to some questions that had gone unanswered back then.
That project indeed had serious problems from the very beginning, just as his investigation had revealed. But even so, there was still no evidence pointing directly to Lu Boyuan.
Thinking about how Lu Boyuan now came to find him again and again, each time with that self-assured tone and the righteous air of someone convinced he was the wronged one, Fang Yongnian almost started to wonder—maybe Lu Boyuan really hadn’t known anything back then.
He looked at the IV bag and laughed, shifting his aching left leg in self-mockery.
The greatest mistake of his life had been being soft-hearted, naïve, and far too ready to trust others.
Now, just because Lu Yixin had shouted at him twice that she liked him, he was starting to think maybe he could trust even her father.
Lu Boyuan, he was only good at hiding things deeply.
That document, that driver responsible for the accident—the only person who could have had access to either of them was Lu Boyuan.
There was no way he could not suspect him.
When the nurse wasn’t looking, he adjusted the IV drip to run faster, then took out his phone and began replying to an email.
A WeChat notification popped up. Just as he glanced at it, he caught sight—yet again—of some new “deeply emotional love story” about him online. His mouth twitched.
That reporter really had an eye for picking photos. In several of them, the angles between him and Yu Hanfeng were so coincidental that they did look quite suggestive.
If it weren’t for the fact that he owed Yu Hanfeng so many favors… and money.
He coughed once and switched to the WeChat screen.
Lu Yixin.
Her rapid-fire messages filled the chat window in an instant:
“hello?”
“Help me!!”
“Can’t you reply to me?!”
“It’s urgent!!!”
“You’re not posing for some paparazzi again, are you? That forced-perspective shot was so low, even celebrities don’t use that trick anymore!”
Fang Yongnian: “……”
