He Li felt the cold blade and hot blood gushing out. He convulsed, staring at the old woman before him with ferocious eyes.
He remembered who Su Cui was!
The janitor who had him help carry a bucket to the flowerbed.
The janitor who had fallen and wet the cloth bag containing his drugs, who had interrupted Su Baixue's drink...
The same person!
Why?
No! He didn't want to die!
It hurt so much!
It hurt so much!
"Remember this pain and the fear of death." This is what you brought to my baby and many others.
These were the last words He Li heard before his eyes closed.
Su Cui wiped the blood off the blade on He Li's arm.
The night had ferry lights reflecting on the river. The whirlpools at the bottom soon swept He Li away. As the river waves rose and fell, the dark shadows like fish backs seemed to gallop and howl under the water.
*
Su Baixue received a phone call.
It was an unfamiliar number.
"Hello?" The girl's gentle voice came through the phone.
The call ended.
Su Baixue tilted her head in confusion, looking at her phone screen and muttering, "Wrong number?"
Someone knocked on the door.
Su Baixue checked the peephole and opened the door.
"Grandma Li, you're here~"
Li Guizhi smiled and asked Su Baixue, "Baixue, do you have any change at home? I'm playing cards with my old sisters at home, and I've run out of small change. I don't know how to use mobile transfers like you young people. Can I exchange some change with you?"
Su Baixue giggled, covering her mouth. "Did you lose money again?"
"It's okay, we play small—five jiao per round. Not like those big games on TV..." Grandma Li smiled as she looked into the house. "Where's your grandma? Not home yet?"
Su Baixue took out her piggy bank, accepted the fifty yuan Li Guizhi handed her, and seriously counted fifty one-yuan coins from the bank.
"Grandma went out for something," Su Baixue said, putting the coins in a plastic bag and handing it to Li Guizhi.
"Here you go."
"Alright."
*
After dealing with He Li, Su Cui confirmed he had completely stopped breathing before throwing him into the river.
She carefully handled all traces, making sure nothing was left to chance.
If He Li could be revived like Tapana even after death, then Su Cui would have to reconsider her methods against high-level perverted scumbags.
"Let's give it a try." Su Cui looked at the turbulent, murky river.
Moonlight fell on her.
The entire City A was bathed in moonlight.
To this day, Su Cui still hadn't figured out what kind of city City A was.
If you said it was like a small, backwater city, yet there were often superstar celebrities visiting, heirs of conglomerates appearing, plus killers and famous doctors... What a mess!
The only thing Su Cui was relieved about was that the author might have found official characters not trendy enough, so no major official boss appeared—just some minor officials used by the conglomerates and gangs, purely passersby mentioned in passing.
This meant she could still trust the police to some extent.
But at the same time, because of the fictional core, the power of the gangs and the influence of the conglomerates would inevitably weaken the police's power. This meant that Su Cui's attempts to use the police to strike at key characters might not succeed.
In this book world:
Conglomerate power = Gang boss power > Harmony novel police power
Su Cui thought a lot.
Combining her memories and her little notebooks.
She considered that if she couldn't use the police, being alone and weak, how should she effectively strike at high-level perverted scumbags under the influence of the book?
So far, Su Cui could only see two methods:
The first was to make the key characters kill each other.
From He Li's original fate—being sacrificed by other key characters to please the female lead—and the hacker's attack on the gang boss to win over the female lead, both incidents showed that key characters opposing each other was completely in line with the operating laws of this book world.
Su Cui even wondered if, in this book world, key characters could only be killed by other key characters.
Otherwise, how could Tapana, severely injured by her, survive jumping into the river in winter?
He was like an unkillable cockroach.
The second method was for Su Cui, as an outsider, to do it herself.
But Su Cui's actions, so far, could only achieve changes in saving Su Baixue.
She hadn't succeeded once in striking at key characters, except for He Li, who had just breathed his last.
Su Cui was certain she had killed He Li.
But tomorrow, would He Li pull off a resurrection act?
Su Cui couldn't say.
Whether He Li lived or died held extraordinary significance for her and Su Baixue.
*
Su Cui waited two days.
During those two days, she went to the residential complex where the pregnant woman lived, cooperating with Xiao He to gather evidence. Maybe in the end it would only alert the enemy, but Su Cui couldn't let these people continue their secret operations, dealing drugs and harming more people.
She was waiting for an opportunity.
Waiting for an answer.
He Li, a good student who had been bullied by campus thugs, naturally drew attention from teachers and the school. When he didn't show up for a day, someone contacted his family; when he still hadn't appeared the next day, the police were called.
The police came quickly. Su Cui could see them investigating on campus.
On the third day, local news broke that the body of a male student from City A High had been found by the river. It had been recovered, but his identity couldn't be confirmed yet.
On the same night she saw the news, Su Cui moved like the wind, placing photos she had taken of Qian Baosheng's thugs using drugs into the principal's office and various teachers' offices.
After that, to be safe, she went to the surveillance room, knocked out the security guard, opened the computer, and visualized in her mind the scenes where she had appeared on the monitors. She told herself, "I can definitely edit this successfully without leaving a trace!"
Her cheat power activated instantly.
A golden light flickered over her ten fingers, and they automatically typed and manipulated the keyboard. After a series of operations Su Cui couldn't understand, she was nowhere to be seen in the surveillance footage.
There wasn't even any record of her manipulations in the computer.