A Chan – CH 099

Chapter 99: Who is the Big Ghost (2)

“Li Yilin…” Zhang Jingchan chewed on this unfamiliar name.

Li Weiyi nudged his arm and said, “I might, perhaps, have heard of this person. Last time I traveled back in time, when I was checking the accounts, someone mentioned him to me.”

“Who?”

“The nanny, Sister Liu.”

Li Weiyi briefly recounted what Sister Liu had done that day, secretly reporting into the study.

Zhang Jingchan fell into deep thought.

“Do you…believe me?” Li Weiyi asked, and Li Yunmo looked at him as well.

Zhang Jingchan picked up his teacup, fiddling with it in his hand, but didn’t drink. Then he smiled faintly and said, “My mother wasn’t very capable; she was pleasure-seeking and weak-willed. After divorcing my father, she went out to work to support me through university. A rich woman who knew nothing, living in the worst basement, working as a waitress. She was beautiful, and later, many wealthy men wanted to marry her; I advised her to remarry. She said that compared to my father, those men weren’t even worth a finger. Later, when our situation improved, she secretly gave all her earnings to my dejected father, and he scolded her and sent her home. When she got home, I scolded her too.”

Li Yunmo and Li Weiyi were both stunned.

He was talking about his first life.

Zhang Jingchan slammed down her teacup with a “clack” and said firmly, “She won’t.”

Li Weiyi nodded vigorously: “In other words, this so-called first love, Li Yilin, is just a pawn in their game, one of their smokescreens.”

Zhang Jingchan nodded, looking at Li Yunmo: “Tell me more details about the day your father had the accident.”

Recalling those days, Li Yunmo still felt a dull ache in his heart.

It was a gloomy day; it seemed that ever since his father, Li Jinxiong, returned from the police station early that morning, the whole house had been shrouded in a low-pressure atmosphere.

His father’s back resembled a mountain about to collapse. He sat there, silently smoking half a pack of cigarettes before going upstairs.

Li Yunmo had been listless for days, unable to recover from the fact that his Brother Chan had become a vegetable. Coupled with the incident at the Zhang family last night, he was also deeply distressed and distraught.

Suddenly, Li Jinxiong’s furious roar echoed from upstairs: “Who moved my safe? Who moved it?!”

Li Yunmo was startled and rushed upstairs, only to witness a horrifying scene—her father was choking her mother, pinning her against the wall. Her father’s eyes were bloodshot, like a beast about to erupt, as he roared, “Where did the things go? I’m asking you where they went!”

Li Yunmo rushed forward, trying to pry her father’s hands off, but was slapped to the ground.

“Dad! Mom will suffocate! She’ll die!” Li Yunmo cried out, “Let her go! Let her go before you ask!”

Li Jinxiong released his grip with a bitter expression. Mrs. Li gasped for breath but dared not look her husband in the eye and cried out, “You only care about Fuming, only care about working yourself to the bone for Zhang Moyun! Fuming is going to collapse, do you know that?”

Li Jinxiong was about to slap her, but Li Yunmo desperately stopped him.

“I asked you where the USB drive was in the safe!” Li Jinxiong had always kept the USB drive in the deepest corner of the safe, never mentioning it to his wife and children. He never imagined that today, when he wanted to retrieve it to report the theft, it would be gone.

“It was given to Zhang Fengming!” Mrs. Li cried out. “If I didn’t give it to him, he would kill my son! If I gave it to him, he would give me back 5 million! 5 million! Our money, and the money my parents, my sister, and my brother lent to Fuming, we can get it all back! Why wouldn’t I give it to him? That’s what Zhang Moyun owes us; he owes us!”

Mrs. Li opened her phone and threw it in front of them. It was a photo—Li Yunmo sitting dejectedly in a coffee shop, with two men in black clothes and hats loitering and following him not far behind.

Li Yunmo’s eyes widened suddenly, and he hugged his mother: “Mom, what did you give them? Huh? What did you give them?”

Li Jinxiong remained silent, veins bulging on his forehead. Finally, he laughed out loud, muttering, “The son lost something, thinking he could rely on his father, but the father lost something too, hahaha…” The laughter sent chills down the spines of both mother and son.

He suddenly glanced at his wife and said coldly, “You’re forcing me to die.”

Before the mother and son could react, Li Jinxiong had already rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and stormed out of the house.

…

Li Weiyi pulled out a tissue and handed it to Li Yunmo. He wiped his eyes hard, smiling through his redness, and said, “Brother Chan, my family has wronged you.”

Zhang Jingchan patted his shoulder and said, “You’ll see Uncle Li again.”

Li Yunmo’s eyes widened, and after a moment, he smiled and nodded vigorously, “Then I’ll definitely listen to my dad in everything from now on and never make him angry again.”

“What exactly did Uncle Zhang give my dad?” Li Yunmo asked.

Zhang Jingchan and Li Weiyi exchanged a glance. He said, “Since my father already knows from you about what happened at the warehouse that night, even without the recording pen, he could guess the conspiracy between Liu Ying, Cheng Chuan, and Zhang Fengming. He couldn’t have done nothing, especially since Fuming’s matter was settled by early September. I think what he entrusted to Uncle Li for safekeeping was the evidence of their crimes he had collected, a backup plan. My father never expected that before he could even act, he would be preemptively killed. And they even anticipated Uncle Li’s move, using your mother to take the evidence and escape punishment.”

Li Weiyi and Li Yunmo felt a chill run down their spines.

“What do we do next?” Li Yunmo asked.

Zhang Jingchan rested one arm on the wooden windowpane, staring intently at the water. Instead of answering, she asked, “So later, Cheng Chuan went to another company as CFO but went to jail for embezzlement; Zhang Fengming died; only Liu Ying was unharmed and went to America, never to return?”

The two nodded.

Zhang Jingchan suddenly smiled and said, “I always thought Liu Ying was the mastermind.”

Li Weiyi’s heart skipped a beat.

Zhang Jingchan said, “But now it seems so illogical. The mastermind behind this, the big boss we’re trying to expose, is cunning and ruthless. To protect himself, he killed my father, killed me, stole the recording pen, and tricked us into giving him evidence… Once he found no loopholes around my father, he immediately turned his attention to my mother. Such a grand scheme, such cunning and capability. You say this person is Liu Ying, and after finishing this job with Fuming, she just quit and went abroad? I don’t believe it. Besides, how did Liu Ying know we were hiding in the warehouse that night? How could she have arranged for a drunk worker to run me over and take the blame in such a short time? And how did the other party know about the recording pen? Unless there was another person who was already in Furida before the three of them, and who watched us as soon as we entered the factory.”

Li Weiyi listened, her heart pounding, but upon reflection, only this made sense.

“You mean… another big boss is hiding behind Liu Ying?” Li Yunmo asked tremblingly.

Zhang Jingchan nodded without hesitation.

Li Yunmo’s face paled even more. He asked with difficulty, “So that big boss… is my mom, right?”

Zhang Jingchan and Li Weiyi: “…”

Zhang Jingchan glanced at Li Weiyi at this moment, and her heart skipped a beat, then grew heavy.

“That person didn’t just split the 90 million with those three people; he took 300 million,” Zhang Jingchan said.

Li Yunmo breathed a sigh of relief. His mother didn’t even have 3 million, and thinking about it carefully, she didn’t seem very shrewd. Although she took the evidence at a sensitive time, she was probably scammed.

“You mean that futures deal?” Li Yunmo said. “Brother Chan, Zhong Yi and I have been keeping an eye on this for years, but we only found one clue—Li Ming, the one who stepped forward to buy 30 million yuan worth of soybean futures, is from Nanmupu Township, Ling County. And Liu Ying is also from Nanmupu Township, Ling County. They definitely have a connection.”

Zhang Jingchan nodded, about to speak, when Li Weiyi interjected, “Wait a minute, Ling County? I know someone else who is also from Ling County.”

“Who?”

Li Weiyi’s expression turned somewhat grim. She said, “The nanny, Sister Liu.”

Zhang Jingchan and Li Yunmo were both taken aback.

“Once, just when I was checking the accounts last time, she made me a local snack called something like ‘Dengxin Wowo.’ I asked her where she was from, but she didn’t say. Later, I thought it was so delicious that I casually looked it up online during my break, and ‘Dengxin Wowo’ is a specialty of rural Ling County.”

The three of them were silent for a while.

Zhang Jingchan said, “Tomorrow, Li Yunmo and I will go to Nanmupu Township in Ling County.”