Chapter 146: I’ve Already Contacted He Shiqin

Chapter 146: I’ve Already Contacted He Shiqin

Li Maoren’s expression tightened.

Ding Ruilong had killed Dong Yuantao?

He went back through his memory. It had happened more than a decade ago, and the death had been ruled an accident; word had spread, but no scandal had come of it, so there was little for him to recall. He had not known much about it even then.

All he could bring back now was that Dong Yuantao had attended Nanguang No. 1 High School.

So had Ding Ruilong.

That was more or less the only connection between them.

The Ding and Dong families had never been close, then or now.

And it went further than that. Nanguang No. 1 High School ranked among the top ten high schools in the country. Anyone who got in was either an exceptional student with outstanding scores on the high school entrance exam or the child of a wealthy and powerful family—including families from neighboring provinces and cities.

The place was thick with the children of the powerful to begin with.

So Ding Ruilong and Dong Yuantao being schoolmates meant very little.

More importantly, Dong Yuantao had been two years older.

When he accidentally drowned, he was eighteen and in his final year of high school.

Ding Ruilong, reckoning back from his present age, had been sixteen and in his first year of high school.

They were not even in the same year, which made the chance of real contact or real conflict much smaller.

And when Dong Yuantao died, it was not as though the school pronounced it an accidental drowning and the Dong family simply took their word for it.

The Dongs had investigated, naturally, and confirmed it truly was an accident. Li Maoren had heard that Dong Yuantao’s mother wept herself half out of her senses, close to collapse, and spent time in hospital afterward—but in the end there had been nobody to blame. Only fate.

Li Maoren had assumed at first that if Wu Chen was suddenly raising Dong Yuantao and calling it murder at Ding Ruilong’s hands, he must have some basis for an accusation of that size.

Which was why he had thought it through.

And the more he thought, the less it held together.

Impossible.

If Dong Yuantao had been murdered, how could the Dong family have turned up not one suspicious point?

There had not even been rumors. Everyone was certain it was an accidental drowning.

And even granting, for the sake of argument, that he had been murdered—by Ding Ruilong?

Madness. Weak as the Dong family had been then, they were only half a step below the Dings. The Dings would have had to be insane to provoke them like that. Over what blood feud? Li Maoren had never heard of any serious conflict between the two houses. They had barely had minor friction. And even had there been conflict, no great family moved against a junior still in school. It simply was not done.

Even supposing Ding Ruilong held a personal grudge against Dong Yuantao, the Ding family would never have helped him kill the boy and stage an accident that clean—not for a junior whose existence touched neither family’s interests.

Impossible.

If it had ever come out, the spectacle would have been enormous.

Every powerful family that heard of it would have been shaken. Even with a genuine blood feud, striking at a junior who had not yet entered public life was taboo.

“Young man,” Li Maoren said at last, after turning it over and over. “Remember this. You can be careless about what you eat; you cannot be careless about what you say. Ding Ruilong killed Dong Yuantao? Do you understand what would happen if a claim like that got out? Manufacturing a rumor of that kind gets people killed.”

“But it’s true,” Wu Chen said, faintly smiling.

“True? On what grounds? Where’s your evidence? There’s no logic in it. If you’re only saying this to make me believe Ding Ruilong is dangerous and might harm the Li family, then I can tell you right now—”

“Which part has no logic in it?” Wu Chen cut in.

“Which part does? Whatever the reason, the Ding family would never…