The young girl’s eyes were slightly red, her face flushed, and her voice trembled as she spoke.

The flower trees by the roadside swayed, scattering petals that twirled as they fell.

Her eyes were clear—pure, black and white distinct.

She was still stubborn, unwilling to yield, a little willful. Even when she spoke in a pleading tone, the last line still unconsciously turned into a kind of childish insistence.

Fang Yongnian slightly lowered his eyes.

He could still refuse. He could still say no.

But perhaps it was because the spring flowers were too dazzling at that moment, or perhaps because this long trip had made him realize that, at least in that project back then, Lu Boyuan was innocent.

“You should grow up well first, get into a good university.”

In the end, he did not utter that single word of rejection under such bright spring light.

When you grow up, when your world becomes broader, you won’t think that a lame man in his thirties like him is someone worth liking.

But the girl’s eyes lit up instantly.

Just like when she had met him for the first time eight years ago, she took an adult’s unfinished sentence and translated it into what she wanted to hear.

“Then that’s fine!” She smiled, and a pink petal drifted down onto her hair.

“What do you want to eat?” she chattered on. “Aunt Wang’s green dumplings are on sale again. I had one stuffed with braised meat last time, but it was too salty. The rose red bean paste one is still the best.”

“There are two more stray cats in the neighborhood now. I don’t know where they came from—both males, not neutered yet.”

She spoke whatever came to mind. “One of them is super fat, even fatter than that big orange one in the neighborhood.”

She was still the same as before—talkative to the point of giving people a headache, every thought written on her face, full of infectious energy.

Only, from then on, she would never call him Uncle Fang again.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ 

After that day, Lu Yixin often saw news reports about the Musheng Pharmaceutical case.

Most of the terms were technical jargon related to going public; she didn’t understand much, only that the people involved had falsified a lot of data for the sake of the company’s IPO.

Several of those involved had once been members of that failed Alzheimer’s project back then.

Repeat offenders, and old acquaintances of Lu Boyuan and Fang Yongnian.

Lu Boyuan began traveling more frequently to Huating City. Each time he left, he would conveniently leave Lu Yixin with Fang Yongnian.

But Lu Yixin wasn’t as thrilled as she had imagined.

She found that both her father and Fang Yongnian had become increasingly silent lately, often staring blankly at their emails, smoking more and more each day.

“This is your second pack today!” Lu Yixin grabbed the counter, stopping Fang Yongnian from putting money into it. “If you’re craving something, I have candy! I even bought mint ones!”

Fang Yongnian: “……”

In the end, he still took the handful of mint candies from her hand and tossed them into his mouth, chewing with clenched teeth.

At this point, he almost didn’t dare to investigate further.

Finding Liu Yufang had given a breakthrough to the years of investigation, but what would happen after this breakthrough—even he, who once thought he had already died once, began to feel afraid.

That trip had not been a pleasant experience.

After enduring long travel to reach that remote little town, the Liu Yufang he had searched for over three years went nearly hysterical when she heard him mention Wang Dagang.

“He didn’t just take that money!” Liu Yufang’s thin, bony hands clutched Fang Yongnian’s arm. “I thought what that man gave me was all of it, but now that I think about it, definitely not!”

Fang Yongnian said nothing.

Liu Yufang had remarried to a widower much older than her.

After marriage, for some unknown reason, the widower became addicted to gambling, lost all his family property, and racked up huge debts.

For the past few years, to escape his creditors, they never stayed in one place for more than half a year.

All of this information was what Yu Hanfeng had found while searching for Liu Yufang.

Yu Hanfeng also warned him that she suspected Liu Yufang’s second husband’s gambling addiction had been deliberately arranged by someone.

“The possibility of a setup is very high. The purpose might have been to keep her too distracted to look for the person who instructed her to alter the statement, or maybe to make it harder for us to find her.”

Yu Hanfeng, being someone who also used rather extreme methods in business, was very familiar with such tactics.

Fang Yongnian looked at Liu Yufang, who was only in her forties but already looked like an old crone. They were living in a rented place now, a broken-down house on the outskirts of a northwestern border town. It was a single room, with a plastic sheet and a toilet forming a makeshift bathroom. There was only one small window.

As soon as he entered, the stench and foul odor hit him so hard that he coughed.

This old woman was the key reason that the traffic accident back then had not been further investigated, because she had altered the verbal record. She insisted that when Wang Dagang went out that day, he had taken an overdose of cold medicine due to a bad cold. Combined with the autopsy results, the case had been quickly ruled as a simple accident. The insurance payout followed unusually fast.

“You called me back then,” Fang Yongnian said, sitting in that lightless room, using a bit of strength to pull his hand free from Liu Yufang’s grasp. “You asked if I had received any money.”

Liu Yufang froze for a moment.

The past four years had been terrible for her. The decent husband she once had was dead, her family gone. The man she later found—she had chosen him for his honest nature and his still-healthy inheritance—but after marriage, the once-honest man turned into a gambling addict overnight. They lost everything, and what followed was endless debt and fleeing from creditors.

She had almost forgotten what she had done after that car accident four years ago.

“What money?” Fang Yongnian pressed.

Liu Yufang’s lips trembled twice.

“I… mistook you for someone else,” she mumbled vaguely. “I thought you were another person.”

Fang Yongnian frowned.

Liu Yufang glanced at him, then lowered her head. The sparse gray-white strands of her hair fell over her face, hiding her expression.

After the initial excitement of hearing Wang Dagang’s name faded, she began speaking less and less. One sentence hiding three more.

Fang Yongnian gave a faint sneer. Like performing a trick, he pulled out a neat bundle of renminbi from the inner pocket of his trench coat.

“This is ten thousand yuan.” He placed it on the tea table. “Tell me everything you know, and the money is yours.”

Liu Yufang’s head snapped up. Her already-clouded eyes stared at him for a long moment before she grinned. “What I got back then was several times more than this.”

The money was too little. Having finally run into someone with money, she was determined to get enough at once—enough to pack up and leave her man, to start over somewhere new.

“You took money to alter the record,” Fang Yongnian said slowly. “That’s obstruction of justice. It’s punishable by prison.”

Liu Yufang’s pupils shrank sharply.

“When I came in just now, you told me he didn’t only take that money. Four years ago, after the car accident, you called me asking if I had received that money.” Fang Yongnian looked straight into her eyes. “All of this is evidence. I’ve recorded everything.”

“This isn’t a small amount.” He leaned forward toward her. “I just want to know what really happened after the accident.”

Liu Yufang pressed her lips tightly together.

Fang Yongnian fell silent, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the bundle of cash.

“I don’t know anything about any record,” Liu Yufang said stiffly. “They told me that money was Dagang’s hard-earned money. It has nothing to do with obstruction of justice.”

Fang Yongnian tilted his head slightly.

“Is that so?” His usual slow, unhurried tone. If Lu Yixin had been there, she would have immediately noticed that he was already losing patience.

“Then I’ll take my leave.” He stood up, picked up the bundle of money, and stuffed it back into his trench coat.

Liu Yufang’s mouth hung half open.

“The information you’ve given isn’t worth that money.” Fang Yongnian lifted the collar of his coat, ready to leave.

He truly intended to go. When he came, he hadn’t expected Liu Yufang to speak right away. If she refused, he had planned to investigate another lead—the one involving the people who had lured Liu Yufang’s current husband into gambling. Digging into that would also yield something.

All he needed to confirm was that Liu Yufang had indeed accepted money back then.

If she had taken money, it meant the car accident had not been an accident. It meant what he had seen at that time was not a hallucination.

Liu Yufang just sat there, mouth still half open, using her meager experience to judge whether this man was bluffing or not.

He stood up without hesitation, and when he turned around, he didn’t even glance at her.

The bright red of that bundle of renminbi made her chest tighten with restless unease, like a cat scratching at her heart.

“I was originally going to call someone named Ge Wenyao,” she blurted out, unable to hold back as Fang Yongnian pushed open the door.

His steps paused. He turned back.

“When Dagang went out to drive that day, he didn’t bring his phone. Someone named Ge Wenyao came looking for him afterward. I was the one who answered the call.”

She spoke hurriedly, as if afraid he would really walk away.

“Ge Wenyao asked over the phone if Dagang had taken any cold medicine before leaving that day.”

“I thought it was strange at the time. Dagang was always healthy, he never took medicine for a cold or anything like that, so I said no.”

“Later, after the accident, when I was giving my statement, the police also asked me if he had taken any medicine before going out. I didn’t know anything then, so I said no.”

Liu Yufang drew a breath.

“I didn’t know what it meant to ‘alter a statement.’ That day after I got home, someone came to find me, gave me fifty thousand yuan, and told me that Dagang had indeed taken cold medicine before going out. He even gave me an empty medicine box.”

“So you went and changed the record?” Fang Yongnian’s voice was icy.

Fifty thousand yuan, for four lives and one leg.

Liu Yufang nodded.

“That doesn’t count as changing the record. That person said Dagang really did take cold medicine. Later I even asked Dagang’s old coworker, and he said it was fine.”

She still wanted to defend herself, but Fang Yongnian no longer wanted to hear it.

“Then why did you call me?” he cut off her excuses.

Liu Yufang hesitated.

Fang Yongnian stood still, waiting.

“After changing the record, I kept feeling something wasn’t right,” she finally said. “But I couldn’t figure out what exactly was wrong. So I wanted to find the person who first called me asking if Dagang had taken cold medicine.”

“But that phone number wouldn’t go through anymore.”

Liu Yufang’s clouded eyes narrowed slightly. She lowered her head and began absentmindedly fiddling with the hem of her clothes.

“They told me four people died in the car accident, and that you were the only survivor, so I thought…”

She stopped speaking.

She thought—the one who survived was Ge Wenyao.

“I found your phone number in the accident registration records. I didn’t have my phone with me at the time, so I borrowed the security guard’s phone.”

Fang Yongnian raised his eyebrows.

She was lying.

If she had only wanted to ask a question, her first words wouldn’t have been ‘Did you receive the money?’

If Ge Wenyao had merely called to ask about cold medicine, there was no way she would have known he was going to be in the car as well.

Most importantly, why would she assume that the person who called her was the one who had survived?

“Did Wang Dagang receive any other money?” Fang Yongnian was silent for a moment before suddenly asking.

Liu Yufang’s head jerked up. The wrinkles carved deep by years of hardship twisted her face into something almost feral.

“Wang Dagang received other money, that’s why you called me.” Fang Yongnian repeated, this time as a statement rather than a question.

This Liu Yufang knew far more than she had said.

For the first time in four years, he was only one step away from the truth.