"I'll talk, I'll talk. Please take your foot off first. I can't think when you're stepping on me like this."
Yan Zhen lifted his foot and let out a cold snort.
Guan Baocheng adjusted his posture to a more comfortable one and repeated what he had said to Yan Yincheng to Yan Zhen.
"I don't know what's going on with that surveillance you mentioned. It was Xiong Han who contacted me and asked me to do this. Maybe he pulled some strings."
"I heard that the girl from the Ji family was involved in framing Yuan Xi back then. As for whether your wife knows Xiong Han and was involved in it, I have no idea. I was just trying to extort some money from her today so I could flee abroad to save my skin. Who knew I'd be caught by you before I could even open my mouth."
At this moment, Yan Zhen couldn't hear anything.
Hearing a truth completely different from what he had believed from Guan Baocheng's mouth, he felt as if he had been pushed into a bottomless abyss. His body and heart were plummeting straight down, but there seemed to be no end in sight.
Suddenly, he lunged forward, grabbed Guan Baocheng by the neck, and tightened his grip fiercely, shouting,
"It's all your fault! It's all your fault! I'm going to kill you!"
Seeing this, Liang Zuo quickly stepped forward with several of his subordinates to separate Yan Zhen from Guan Baocheng.
"Sir, killing him now won't solve anything. What we need to find now is the mastermind behind all this back then! The person who framed not only Miss Yuan Xi but also you! We must not let this person get away!"
Liang Zuo's words gradually calmed Yan Zhen down. He gasped for breath. His eyes were bloodshot, and his expression was crazy. He looked like a madman.
Yan Zhen really felt like he was going crazy.
The truth he had seen four years ago was not the real truth. It was an illusion deliberately created to deceive him. And the girl he had cruelly hurt and completely lost trust in had never deceived him from beginning to end. The words she had said back then were the truth.
He lowered his eyes and looked at Guan Baocheng, who was gasping for breath, and said coldly,
"Where is Xiong Han?"
Guan Baocheng said impatiently, "How would I know? He never contacted me again after Yuan Xi ran away. You can ask Uncle Yan. He already knew everything from me. He should have found out where Xiong Han is by now."
Yes, he should have thought of it earlier. If Uncle hadn't known earlier, why would he have gone after the Ji family?
Yan Zhen couldn't help but want to laugh. He laughed at his own stupidity, at being even blinder than a blind man.
The look in his eyes as he stared at Guan Baocheng was as cold as ice.
"Cripple him for me. Make sure he can never use that thing to harm women again."
With that, he turned around and walked out. As the car left the abandoned factory, there came shrill screams from behind. The screams were so terrifying that they startled the birds in the woods.
On the way back, Yan Zhen took out his phone and logged into a social platform he rarely used. He typed "Yuan Xi" into the search bar. As if punishing himself, he lowered his eyes and carefully scrolled through the online comments.
After nearly a day of public opinion fermentation, there were almost no negative comments about "Yuan Xi" on the Internet. The girl who had once been despised by him and pushed to the peak of public opinion, becoming the target of everyone's criticism, was now tightly protected by someone. That person held up an umbrella to shield her from all the malice in the world.
When he saw a netizen saying that he was blind and that he and Yuan Ya'er were a pair of scumbags, he suddenly tightened his grip on the phone. He looked up at Liang Zuo and asked,
"Liang Zuo, how can you make it so that a person can't receive any calls?"
Liang Zuo, who was sitting in the front, replied without hesitation,
"There's a kind of signal jammer on the market. You just need to turn it on, and it can block any signal. It's usually used in exams to prevent students from cheating. Sir, are you planning to buy a signal jammer?"
Yan Zhen was stunned. It was that simple. Just turn on the switch, and you could block incoming calls?
Thinking about it this way, even if Yuan Ya'er had been with him that night, she could have easily used a so - called signal jammer to manipulate things.
But then, who had called Yuan Xi in his name?
Yuan Xi knew him so well. She couldn't have failed to recognize his voice, could she?
How could she and the other guests at the birthday party be so sure that the call was from him?
Yan Zhen just couldn't figure it out, so he asked Liang Zuo again.
"Liang Zuo, everyone thinks I called someone, and no one doubts the authenticity of the call, but in fact, I didn't do it. Why is that?"
Liang Zuo had once been trained under his father. He had only retreated from the front line because of an injury and was assigned to be his assistant. In some aspects, Liang Zuo actually knew quite a lot.
Liang Zuo thought for a while and said, "The caller ID can be manipulated through the computer background. Many criminal gangs use this method to pretend to be banks and make scam calls. As for the voice, it's even simpler. Just imitate the tone. Even if the voice is different, you can use excuses like having a cold to get away with it."
A chill ran down Yan Zhen's spine again and again.
Yes, according to Guan Baocheng, since that Xiong Han had arranged all this, how could he not have made meticulous arrangements?
But he still couldn't believe it. He even naively held on to a glimmer of hope -
Maybe Yuan Ya'er was unaware. Maybe she wasn't involved. Maybe it was all a conspiracy between Ji Xinyue and Xiong Han. In the video that Ji Xinyue posted, she said that she was jealous of Yuan Xi always outshining her at school, so she wanted to take revenge on Yuan Xi.
Yuan Ya'er and Yuan Xi were both daughters of the Yuan family. What feud could they possibly have? And Ya'er always praised Yuan Xi in front of him, taking her as an example. She always thought about Yuan Xi, didn't she?
There must be some misunderstanding. There must be.
Just then, Liang Zuo's phone rang. He answered it and listened intently for a while. After hanging up the phone, he said to Yan Zhen in the back seat,
"Sir, after you left, the young mistress really drove out alone. Our surveillance team said that she first went to the Western District and entered a beauty salon. She even ran into... Miss Xu Zixi there. After Miss Xu Zixi left, the young mistress left shortly after. Then she drove to... the private Shengya Hospital."
The private Shengya Hospital was the hospital where Ji Xinyue had been treated after the car accident.
Yan Zhen suddenly became irritable again. This discovery made him abandon the assumption he had just made.
He had just mentioned in the car that he wanted to visit Ji Xinyue in the hospital to ask about what happened four years ago, and Yuan Ya'er had gone to see Ji Xinyue alone.
What was she up to? She had just told him in the car that it wasn't a good time to see Ji Xinyue. But as soon as he left, she sneaked off to see her behind his back. Was she going to collude with Ji Xinyue or do something else?
Over the past four years, this woman who had always been by his side, always looking lively, cute, and full of energy, always able to heal his unhappiness. What kind of face was she really hiding?
What kind of feelings did she have when she mentioned "Sister Xiaoxi" to him every time?
Yan Zhen's expression instantly turned gloomy. He asked, "And then?"
Liang Zuo continued, "The young mistress entered the hospital and went to the floor where the ICU ward is located."
"Afraid of being discovered, our people got off the elevator halfway and went back to the parking lot to keep watch. The young mistress only stayed in the hospital for twenty minutes before leaving."
"After leaving the hospital, the young mistress drove to a small river and threw something into it. Then she went back to your new house."