Chapter 237: A Chill Down Her Spine

Chapter 237: A Chill Down Her Spine

Terrifying!

He Shiqin stared at Wu Chen with wide eyes, unable to believe what she had just heard. A storm broke loose inside her, her head filled with a sudden roaring hum, and in an instant she was no longer herself.

Fear. There was fear in He Shiqin’s eyes.

What frightened her was not Ding Ruilong.

It was the man who had spoken Ding Ruilong’s name.

Wu Chen.

Teacher Wu.

He had come for her!

The moment those three syllables left his mouth, she knew. Wu Chen had come for her. She did not dare believe it, and she did not want to believe it, but that was the truth.

There was no other possibility.

He Shiqin had not seen Ding Ruilong in years, though there was still phone contact every year. Ding Ruilong paid He Xinxin’s child support. Sometimes they spoke. Sometimes they did not.

And He Shiqin was not from Modu.

She was from Nanguang.

She had moved to Modu a year after her daughter was born. In Modu she had started over. It was a city where no one knew her. She had made new friends and built a life whose every thread was disconnected from everything that came before.

Not one of her friends in Modu knew her past.

In all these years, no one had come to disturb her.

In the “world” she lived in now, no one knew what she had once endured. No one would know the name Ding Ruilong.

At least, that was what He Shiqin had always believed. Though over the past decade or more, there had been a few occasions when a man pursued her and then, without warning, began keeping his distance.

She could imagine well enough what had happened.

She knew there was no hope left for her own life. Long ago she had stopped wishing for anything else and poured every thought and every ounce of energy into raising her daughter. She had assumed that for the rest of her days she would never hear the name Ding Ruilong from another person’s mouth—and yet would live in Ding Ruilong’s shadow until the day she died.

That was simply what her life was going to be.

Never in her wildest imagining had she expected Wu Chen to say the words “Ding Ruilong.”

He Shiqin did not believe in coincidence. In a world of countless people, she had gone online, joined chat groups, and sought out a teacher entirely on her own initiative.

And that teacher happened to know Ding Ruilong? Happened to know what Ding Ruilong was to her?

Impossible.

It could not be coincidence.

And precisely because it was not coincidence, He Shiqin was terrified. Because she had been the one to seek Wu Chen out. She had been the one to message him privately. She had strongly insisted on meeting him. She had been determined to hire him as her daughter’s private tutor.

Every step had been hers.

That was what sent the chill down her spine.

She even felt as though she had been maneuvered. Everything had been her own doing, and somehow every bit of it had been guided.

The thought turned her whole body cold.

Wu Chen went on smiling at her.

She seemed unable to surface. She simply kept staring at him with that stricken look, and they looked at each other in silence.

In truth, that single question had given away a great deal.

When he asked, “Aren’t you afraid Ding Ruilong will find out you took your daughter out of Modu without telling him?” he was telling her plainly that he knew Ding Ruilong still held her under his control.

The weight of information in that was enormous.

Wu Chen had to know exactly what had passed between her and Ding Ruilong. He had to know something of how she had lived these past years. Otherwise he could never have said such a thing so directly.

The more she thought, the colder she felt.

Wu Chen was frightening her.

“Actually, your worry is unnecessary,” Wu Chen said, still smiling. “The year before last you took Xinxin to the capital on a trip without telling him first. Ding Ruilong found out. He brought it up in a phone call afterward, but that was all. He only brought it up.”

“He doesn’t keep people watching you every hour of every day. There’s a great deal he doesn’t care about. As long as you don’t take Xinxin out of the country, you can go anywhere you like inside China.”

He was not saying this to explain her circumstances to her, nor to calm her down.

He was making one thing clear.

I, Wu Chen, came for you.

And I know a great deal.

Silence.

She still could not speak. It was a long while before she managed to force out a low question, a slight tremor in her voice.

“You… you approached me… on purpose?”

“Mhm.”

Wu Chen nodded, smiling.

He admitted it without the slightest hesitation.

By now every piece of groundwork that needed laying had been laid, and there was nothing left for him to conceal. His plan had always been to lay his cards on the table with He Shiqin before taking her and He Xinxin to Donghai.

He did not want to trick her into going.

He wanted to take her there with her consent.

The chance to deceive them both into coming to Donghai was already his. But if he took it, everything afterward would become brutally difficult. Tricking them there and only then revealing the truth would be a deception of the most serious kind. It might even feel to them like being held in Donghai—kidnapped, coerced.

He Shiqin’s resistance would ruin everything he had so painstakingly built. She might slip away with her daughter in secret. In the worst case, she might go to Ding Ruilong for help.

Under those conditions, getting her to serve as a witness would be far too difficult.

So Wu Chen wanted her to make the decision herself. He wanted her to agree to go to Donghai of her own accord, because he needed her active cooperation in a great many things.

It had to be this way.

“I…”

He Shiqin stood abruptly, took up her bag, and seemed about to say something. Nothing came out. She turned to go.

Right now all she wanted was to get away.

Go home.

Never contact Wu Chen again.

“About Dong Yuantao…”

Wu Chen spoke pleasantly. Just those few words, an opening and nothing more, and then he stopped.

But they were enough to freeze her mid-step. She whipped around to stare at him, her eyes stretched wide, and the look in them could only be called horror.

If anyone had simply overheard the name Dong Yuantao—even someone who knew who Dong Yuantao was—they would not have understood what Wu Chen meant. Dong Yuantao had drowned in an accident all those years ago.

Wu Chen had spoken only a name.

And she knew at once what he was about to say.

Because she was one of the handful of people in the world who knew the truth of how Dong Yuantao died. And she was the only witness who could prove he had been murdered.

Wu Chen had already shown that he knew a great deal more than he should.

So she was horrified.

He knew even this?

“…Want to talk about it?” Wu Chen asked, smiling again.

He Shiqin stood frozen.

She did not want to talk.

And she did.

It tore at her both ways. She did not want to talk because she truly did not want the matter raised again. It was the turning point that had changed the whole course of her life, and it contained too much that was pitiful, hateful, and dangerous.

She wanted to talk because—how did Wu Chen know? What else did he know?

Most of all, if this ever leaked, it would get her killed. Ding Ruilong would certainly silence her first.

Make the only witness disappear.

“Let’s talk somewhere else.”

Wu Chen rose as he said it.

Shuiyuewan Café was a fairly upscale, tasteful place. In the morning it held neither too many customers nor too few. For the two of them to sit and chat was fine. Even opening certain subjects was fine. If a stranger nearby caught a sentence or two, it hardly mattered.

But once they went deeper—murder, death—there was no continuing in a public place.

Wu Chen walked toward the door.

He was five or six meters away before He Shiqin, her face a picture of struggle, finally followed. Her heels quickened as she caught up and fell in behind him.

They left the café.

Wu Chen did not head for his car. He turned west along the sidewalk instead, He Shiqin trailing slightly behind and to one side.

They had not gone far before he turned and started up a short flight of steps. She looked up as she followed, and her pace slowed.

Because the place he was taking her into was a four-star hotel, right there near the café.

What they were about to discuss required absolute privacy.

So they were going to take a room…

to talk?