The Favored Heiress
Chapter 718: The Truth of That Year

Chapter 718: Chapter 718: The Truth of That Year

Li Qiao stared unblinkingly at him, his candid gaze seeming to pierce into the depths of his soul. "If you’re not Jing Yifeng, why are you living here under his name?"

The middle-aged man leaned on the back of the chair, looking down and chuckling hoarsely. "You’re asking what you already know, aren’t you?"

Li Qiao’s brow furrowed, a prelude to her patience running out.

The appearance of the Jing Family in Tongliang County was odd and out of place, the records of the Sixth Bureau were incomplete, who could be orchestrating all this from behind the scenes?

Before long, the middle-aged man walked slowly over to the sofa and sat down, looking at Li Qiao with lament in his voice. "Wasn’t it the Mu Family who sent you here?"

Li Qiao turned to look at him, a ripple crossing her dark eyes. "The Mu Family?"

"You...don’t know?" The middle-aged man’s face showed shock, his hands also covered in scars tightly gripping his knees. "If not, how did you find this place?"

Li Qiao was concise. "Someone said you were Jing Yifeng."

"Heh." The man let out a raspy laugh, rough like a torn wind, shaking his head as he looked at the ground. "I’m not, but I’m much luckier than he was."

Li Qiao looked expressionlessly at the man. "Can you talk about it?"

The middle-aged man raised his head extremely slowly, his reddish eyes mixed with countless emotions. "What do you want to hear? Who saved me, or how the Jing Family died?"

His tone was like a statement, yet implicitly carried an element of intimidation.

Li Qiao lightly raised an eyebrow. "Either is fine."

Having come this far, she had to know the ins and outs.

If he wasn’t Jing Yifeng, then who was he?

A full half minute passed as the two looked at each other in silence.

The middle-aged man saw Li Qiao’s determination and pointed to an old-fashioned round stool, indicating her to sit.

Soon, through his narration, Li Qiao learned the whole story.

He indeed was not Jing Yifeng, but a cousin on the Jing Family’s maternal side, raised by them since childhood.

Twenty-some years ago, on the night when the Mu Family faced tragedy, the Jing elders were frantic, rushing to Parma in the middle of the night.

Who would have thought that on their way to the airport, they would be involved in a car accident, and by the time they were sent to the hospital, it was too late.

At this point, the middle-aged man’s chapped lips trembled nonstop, his breath wheezy as he looked at Li Qiao and countered, "Do you know why my aunt and uncle were so desperate to get to Parma?"

Li Qiao shook her head lightly and the other party closed his eyes, saying hoarsely: "Because on the night of the incident, Jing Yifeng was also at the Mu Family’s. The two elders had only these two children, and knowing his sister fell into postpartum depression, Jing Yifeng specifically went to visit the Mu Family, but he never returned."

This piece of the past was tainted with too many tragedies.

Li Qiao could even see the pain permeating the man’s memories through his eyes.

She lowered her gaze, remaining silent.

The surrounding silence was broken only by the man’s labored breathing.

After a while, she looked at her fingertips and asked softly, "Why did the Jing Family go bankrupt afterwards?"

"It wasn’t bankruptcy. The sudden demise of the elders followed by the Jing Family ancestral home burning down overnight meant everything was gone.

The middle-aged man spoke slowly, his gaze laced with bewilderment and melancholy.

Li Qiao narrowed her eyes; she finally understood why she felt contradictions when she saw the Jing Family and the translation documents before.

Someone had erased Jing Yilan’s information from the Jing Family’s data.

At the same time, someone used the pretense of bankruptcy to cover up the true reason for the Jing Family’s disappearance.

Li Qiao closed her eyes, lowered her voice by a few degrees, "Why do you say it was the Mu Family who sent me here?"

The middle-aged man licked his dry lips, pausing after each word, "The Mu Family, in total, had eighty-nine members."

Li Qiao nodded slightly.

She had seen the Mu Family’s file in the police station’s archives back then — the main family, collateral relatives, close confidants, and servants; the records indeed showed eighty-nine people, all of them brutally murdered.

The middle-aged man did not speak anymore, just produced an eerie sound which seemed like laughter but not quite.

In an instant, Li Qiao suddenly looked at him, her eyes brimming with confusion: "Jing Yifeng?"

"Do you understand now?" the man sighed deeply, "Jing Yifeng died in the Mu Family’s place. But his name was not on the list of deceased reported in those years; who did he die for? If it wasn’t for the Mu Family, then who rescued me from the Jing Family fire and brought me here? My ancestral home is in Tongliang County..."

The middle-aged man propped himself up on his knees with difficulty and stood up, slowly moving to a yellow table in the corner of the wall.

That table was covered with transparent glass with a palm-sized old photo pressed underneath. He touched it with his finger, muttering, "After so many years, I’ve finally said it."

Li Qiao walked deliberately to his side and looked down at the photo under the glass.

It was a group picture with burn marks, two kindly-looking elderly people sitting in the front, with Jing Yilan and two other handsome men standing behind them.

One of them was the middle-aged man in front of her.

In his youth, he slightly resembled Jing Yifeng, with similar features and height.

Suddenly learning that someone from the Mu Family might still be alive, Li Qiao had mixed feelings.

Even... she couldn’t help but suspect if the person who leaked information to Ah Chang could be from the Mu Family.

Latter, Li Qiao talked with the middle-aged man for half an hour more, learning even more secrets from him.

Before leaving, the man had his back to Li Qiao. Hearing the door open, he said in a deep voice, "Kid, don’t come here anymore, I’ve told you all I know. If you want to get to the bottom of the truth, you need to find the person who is not on that list. Maybe everything will become clear."

...

Outside the door, Li Qiao took two steps forward, her peripheral vision catching Ah Chang, and suddenly a person came to mind.

She swallowed, turned her head for a last look at the barbershop. Through the old-fashioned pane window, she saw that bent, lonely figure.

He had said that he grew up in the Jing Family as a distant relative by marriage, his name being Xiao Dingshan.

He had said that he was one of only two people, aside from the murderer, who knew the inside story of the Mu and Jing families.

The other, probably the one who had rescued him from the blaze.

Li Qiao took a deep breath, withdrew her gaze, and walked toward the SUV.

Ah Chang opened the car door for her. As Li Qiao looked at the seat in the vehicle, she asked inexplicably, "With your computer skills, why can’t you trace the source of the message?"

"Miss Qi, because the other party used an IP address from the Poor People’s Kiln."

Ah Chang had struggled internally for a long time before choosing to say this.

Li Qiao bent down to climb into the vehicle, again looking toward the barbershop, she ordered in a calm voice, "Tell Ah Jie to send a few people over, keep him safe, don’t let anything happen to him."

Ah Chang, seated in the passenger side, complied. He started the engine and hesitantly said as they departed from Tongliang County, "Miss Qi, no one from the Poor People’s Kiln would betray you, they..."

"It’s not betrayal," Li Qiao, leaning against the seat, closed her eyes and massaged her temples, her tone particularly cold, "Someone is arranging me."

If what Xiao Dingshan had said was true, then the number of the deceased from the Mu Family back then was indeed one short.

At that moment, Ah Chang looked at Li Qiao with a complicated expression. Seeing that she did not wish to say more, he pursed his lips and drove the car away from Tongliang County.

As she left behind the small city in the mountains, Li Qiao spoke faintly, "How is the teacher?"