Sexy Ghost (Lily ABO) - Chapter 3

Cai Hua grew up in an orphanage, but her childhood wasn’t entirely desolate because Xu Jinliang was with her throughout her growth.

Xu Jinliang often engaged in charity work, initially under her own name, and later, after her social standing rose, representing the group. One thing, however, never changed: she consistently provided special long-term financial support to one child, and almost all her free time was spent with that child, Cai Hua.

Although Xu Jinliang couldn’t adopt her, she was like a parent or relative to her. Cai Hua respected and deeply trusted her. Even if she noticed slight suspicions due to their closeness, she always ignored them, because as an orphaned child adopted into a welfare institution, she genuinely cherished that relationship.

Speaking of Xu Jinliang, she believed she loved this child. She put in effort without complaint, patiently nurturing her for twenty years. She had to admit that taking care of this child gave her considerable pleasure. She believed this was love, warmth, a great act of saving a life.

Therefore, when Cai Hua told her she knew Zhang Wanyou was her father, her anger outweighed her guilt. Cai Hua’s relentless questioning pushed her to the brink of collapse: “Zhang Wanyou, don’t you remember him? And Yang Xiaohai, Yue Mingcheng, I even saw these two when I was little. How did my mom disappear? Why couldn’t the police find Yang Xiaohai and Yue Mingcheng later? Answer me, Xu Jinliang! I remember my mother, don’t lie to me!”

Cai Hua’s mother disappeared suddenly. The last time she said goodbye to her mother was when her mother got into Yang Xiaohai’s car, with Yue Mingcheng openly putting his arm around her mother’s shoulder. After she grew up, she painstakingly investigated her parents’ whereabouts. Discovering that Xu Jinliang was connected to those people tormented her severely, like a slow, agonizing death.

At that time, Xu Jinliang was furious, almost exploding. The woman, so meticulous about her appearance, roared, spitting saliva, like a rabid beast. She was hysterical, pounding her chest, as if arguing or perhaps talking to herself, she kept repeating: “She took the money, she took the money! She took the money! She took the money!!”

Cai Hua’s “betrayal” directly drained the source of pleasure she had relied on for twenty years. She also almost lost control, fleeing distraught, not hesitating to escape from headquarters to a lower position.

Returning to the present, she was able to handle the situation calmly for now.

It was the familiar layout, a cold, desolate house. Little Cai Hua used to think everything here was wonderful, but now she felt it was the entrance to hell, a dwelling place for ghosts.

Cai Hua had always known about Xu Jinliang’s germophobia and her inability to tolerate physical contact with people, except for her. Since childhood, Xu Jinliang had held her, led her by the hand, and even endured her drooling on Xu Jinliang’s shoulder while sleeping. Now, this woman smiled amiably, her dry, warm hand gently gripping hers, saying, “The journey must have been tough. Have you had dinner? Would you like to try my cooking again?”

It was disgusting.

Like a damp, foul, cold-blooded animal slowly crawling into her collar.

Cai Hua sneered and shook her off.

Cai Hua: “I know you’ve sat in the defendant’s chair more than once, but each time you escaped. What about this time, how confident are you?”

Xu Jinliang lightly shook her head and said, “I’m very rich, and I know many people.” Her curved eyes didn’t change, but her hands retracted and clenched.

Cai Hua noticed her subtle action and threw the disinfectant wipes from the table at her, saying, “Don’t pretend anymore at a time like this.”

Xu Jinliang smiled, took out a wipe, and meticulously cleaned her palms, the backs of her hands, and her fingers. She even wiped the wipe’s packaging, pulling out one after another, until the last one wrapped the others and they were all thrown into the trash can.

While Xu Jinliang was cleaning her hands, Cai Hua said, “In 19XX, Teacher X tripped and fell down the stairs, resulting in a disability. The following year, three male students from the same school were involved in a fight, resulting in two deaths and one serious injury. In 19XX, a male worker at XX Steel Plant died in an accident. In 19XX, at the XX project construction site—” Here, her voice choked, “Zhang Wanyou, my father, died there.”

Mentioning this, Cai Hua’s emotions became very heavy. She said, “What a twisted person you are, murdering a man and his wife, then pretending to be a benevolent good person to care for their child. You extract joy and relish victory in a twisted, perverted swamp, swallowing the putrid, corrupt marsh as if it were a divine elixir. Ha, how ridiculous that you still think you’re doing good; how ignorant you are! Do you understand emotions? You don’t understand anything, and what you’ve learned is an incoherent mess!”

Xu Jinliang remained still on the sofa, the flesh on her cheeks trembling frequently with Cai Hua’s accusations. In Cai Hua’s eyes, she was withered and rotten on the sofa, like a desiccated corpse left behind by a demon who fed on living souls, having its supply cut off. And she, Cai Hua, had been fed upon by that demon for twenty years.

Cai Hua continued, “In 20XX, a traffic accident in X City caused a man to die from burn infection. In 20XX…” She narrowed her eyes and slowed her voice, “That was our group’s subsidiary company. One person was driven mad, another committed suicide. Three years after that, at headquarters, General Manager X suddenly entered a psychiatric hospital and hasn’t been discharged since.”

Cai Hua: “All these incidents bear your presence. Should I say bad luck follows you, or are you the devil with the scythe?”

Xu Jinliang replied, “Some of what you said I’ve heard, and some I’ve cooperated with investigations for. But there’s a lot I’ve never heard of; I truly don’t know where it came from. Is the source reliable?”

Cai Hua was too lazy to beat around the bush with her. She directly asked, “Does Grandma Wang’s death have anything to do with you?”

Why did Grandma Wang pass away shortly after she found clues about her father and confronted Xu Jinliang? During that time, she suspected Xu Jinliang and started to dig deeper into her. She investigated any case that could be linked to Xu Jinliang’s whereabouts. She hadn’t finished her thorough investigation when she heard the bad news: Grandma Wang, who had testified to Xu Jinliang’s alibi, had passed away.

Xu Jinliang merely said, “You’re working at headquarters now, so you should have made some friends. Why don’t you ask your friends who visited Auntie when she was hospitalized? You’ll know if she was genuinely sick or just pretending.”

The “friends” she referred to were naturally those higher-ups. Xu Jinliang certainly wasn’t stupid; she could see that Cai Hua had already joined a faction to fight her.

Seeing her calm response, it was Cai Hua who became unsettled. Did this woman fear nothing? She gritted her teeth and said, “You haven’t had time to clean your car, have you? Even if you can evade the hotel’s surveillance and the scene was cleaned up, you probably haven’t had a chance to deal with some physical evidence, have you?”

Xu Jinliang stood up and smiled, saying, “Shall we go to the garage together and see?”

The garage? At the time, they had both parked outside the complex. Cai Hua’s expression changed.

Xu Jinliang was pleased with her reaction and said, “Oh, right, when I came in, I left my car keys at the guardhouse. The property management will park it in my spot.”

Xu Jinliang: “Child, would you like to come and see?”

Cai Hua chuckled, saying, “Do you think the police are useless?”

Xu Jinliang: “Of course not, but with a designated driver and property management involved, if you come with me to see, you’ll also be implicated. Then my car would have been ‘visited’ by many people. Even if there’s any physical evidence, I was drunk and unaware. Especially since the designated driver and you both departed from or passed by that hotel, just like me. You also said, there were issues with the surveillance. Even God doesn’t know who went in or out.”

Cai Hua stood up, much calmer this time. She said, “I’ve also said that this isn’t the old days anymore. There are intersection cameras, street shop surveillance, and even private civilian cameras everywhere. Your arguments are useless.” She smiled cruelly and said, “However, our mutual friends are very happy to help clean things up. Auntie Liang, you can’t lead the charge on your own anymore. From now on, you’ll have to obediently follow behind us.”

Xu Jinliang extracted some information from her words—that Cai Hua didn’t know that many of the previous incidents had actually been cleaned up by those directors, either willingly or under duress. But she didn’t want to tell Cai Hua at this moment. She also didn’t know why she didn’t want to say it.

As Cai Hua was about to leave, she said mockingly, “Be good. Prison food isn’t tasty. And—the beds in psychiatric hospitals aren’t that comfortable to lie on.”

You can’t keep a secret forever. Xu Jinliang knew the consequences of everything she did. As for fear, she wasn’t afraid; she felt nothing. What pained her was Cai Hua. Cai Hua had completely unveiled the sacred ceremony she had disguised. Cai Hua cruelly exposed the truth: that wasn’t love, you’re not a mother or a god, you simply don’t understand love, you’re just a demon crawled out of hell.

Xu Jinliang didn’t want to sit by and do nothing. Neither a complete leakage of everything nor being subdued and led by the nose from now on was the outcome she desired. But she had lost her drive, had no energy. Even a clearly exciting future confrontation couldn’t make her feel joy.

Emptiness and bewilderment deeply enveloped her.

The sky above her had completely darkened.