Although Mu Chun said this quietly to Lanting, his voice was quite loud, and his gaze kept drifting toward Gu Guixi with a sarcastic undertone.
Lanting’s expression remained calm and unchanged, as if he were just hearing a casual question about what to eat today.
Then Mu Chun crossed his arms, watching as the man who looked somewhat like Lanting walked over step by step.
The other man had a scholarly appearance and a serene demeanor, looking quite gentle in character.
As he walked closer, Mu Chun noticed he was holding books and documents. At a glance, his nose, lips, and facial shape were all very similar to Lanting’s.
The only difference was probably the eyes. Lanting’s eyes were delicately slender and refined, making him look like a pampered and arrogant young master even with his frail health.
In contrast, the other man’s eye shape was plain and ordinary, blending right into a crowd.
Mu Chun felt a sense of disdain in his heart, while Lanting beside him remained completely calm, acting as if he were entirely unaware of everything happening before them.
The man also acted as if he didn’t see Lanting, jogging over with his books, half of his face buried in a thick scarf, making him look small and cute.
He ran in a hurry yet lightly, his eyes clearly filled with joy as he approached. He brushed right past Lanting and stopped directly in front of Gu Guixi.
“A-Xi, I just returned to the country. I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
Unlike him, Gu Guixi’s attitude was somewhat stiff, though he managed to suppress it and kept it from showing directly.
Quickly adjusting his mood, Gu Guixi glanced at Lanting’s misty eyes, feeling slightly more at ease.
“What a coincidence. When did you return to the country, and why didn’t you let me know in advance?”
“Just the past couple of days. I purposely didn’t tell you because I wanted to give you a surprise and come find you on my birthday. I didn’t expect to see you ahead of time.”
With that, he reached out to grab Gu Guixi’s arm, but Gu Guixi instinctively pulled away and glanced at Lanting.
If it were just the two of them right now, he wouldn’t have reacted so excessively, but the key point was that Mu Chun was also present.
Mu Chun had a boisterous personality, and Gu Guixi believed that if he made even a slightly slow move, the Lan family would find out the very next second that he had abandoned Lanting after pursuing him.
The Gu family’s situation lately was genuinely difficult. They had originally thought they had secured their footing in Jinchuan over the years, but they never expected that a casual strike from the Lan family could deal them a crippling blow.
Everything was just an illusion. The reason those people usually gave them face was entirely because of the Lan family standing behind Lanting.
Thinking of this, Gu Guixi’s gaze darkened, followed by a flicker of reluctance.
However, he hid these emotions very well, stepping forward with a smile to introduce them generously: “Xiaoting, this is my college classmate, Bai Heng.”
With that, he turned his head to look at Bai Heng, failing to notice Lanting suddenly lifting his gaze as he spoke with a hint of warning: “Bai Heng, let me introduce you. This is my fiancé, the young master of the Lan family, Lanting.”
Such a statement, no different from staking a claim, thoroughly annoyed all three people at once.
As soon as his voice fell, Bai Heng’s complexion suddenly turned pale, as if he had suffered a massive blow, and he couldn’t help taking two steps back, his figure looking both fragile and unyielding.
Before he could lift his head to say even half a sentence, Mu Chun retched first.
“Yue!” Mu Chun made a disgusted expression, waved his hand, and pulled Lanting away, distancing him from their little stage.
“Stop trying to forge connections. The engagement has already been canceled. Who is your fiancé!”
Having said that, Mu Chun sought validation from Lanting: “Right, Lanting?”
Lanting lifted his raven-black eyelashes. His complexion was already pale, and when he stayed silent, he naturally gave off a cool and resilient aura.
After a moment, the young man responded indifferently: “Mhm.”
The surrounding pedestrians who had stopped to watch the spectacle started pointing and whispering after witnessing such juicy drama.
People are visual creatures. Based on appearances, Lanting clearly beat that Bai Heng by a hundred streets.
Although the two of them looked similar, looks also had attractive and unattractive distinctions, and some people naturally leaned toward the mindset that whoever looked better must be in the right.
Furthermore, after listening to the scene and letting their imaginations run wild, these young people who had seen plenty of dramatic love triangles let their wild guesses stretch a mile wide.
Instantly, everyone murmured amongst themselves. While they didn’t explicitly show disdain for anyone, judging by how they rolled their eyes at Bai Heng from time to time and gave Gu Guixi the middle finger, everyone was firmly standing on Lanting’s side.
Throughout the entire process, sympathetic glances directed at the handsome young man were also unavoidable.
Gu Guixi was someone who cared deeply about his face. Although Bai Heng had a slightly thicker skin, facing this pointing and whispering still made it difficult for both of their expressions to remain pleasant.
Watching their expressions grow increasingly stiff, with Gu Guixi’s face turning a livid, dark shade and his fists clenched as if he were about to throw a punch, Lanting let out a laugh tinged with slight contempt.
Back when the original body was labeled as Gu Guixi’s bootlicker, that group of young elites had spared no effort in mocking him behind his back and to his face.
What was Gu Guixi even compared to that?
Gu Guixi disdained arguing with these people, and coupled with his own guilty conscience, he had always tried hard to ignore them.
However, their words grew increasingly excessive, and just as he was about to lose his patience, Lanting spoke up.
“I’m tired. Let’s go back.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Mu Chun immediately agreed, ignoring Gu Guixi and Bai Heng completely as he pulled Lanting toward the roadside.
A car drove up to the curb, a vehicle belonging to Mu Chun’s family that he had called earlier.
Once the black car disappeared from view, Gu Guixi turned to Bai Heng with a dark expression.
Faced with that pretty smiling face, he grabbed Bai Heng’s wrist and said in a deep voice, “Come with me!”
As the two of them held hands, the surrounding college students immediately looked on with disdain.
“Sure enough, they’re having an affair.”
“Simultaneously licking two people, aren’t you afraid your tongue will rot?”
“Dog men.”
The curses faintly drifted into his ears, causing Gu Guixi to suddenly turn back to look at the students who had spoken out.
His expression was terrifying. The student was startled, cursed back defiantly a few times, and then quickly left the spot with his roommate.
Bai Heng was driven by Gu Guixi to one of his houses in the suburbs.
As soon as they stepped inside, Gu Guixi threw his hand away and slammed the door shut with a loud bang.
The sound of the door closing was heavy, but Bai Heng’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. He wore a smile from start to finish, looking thoroughly easy to bully.
Yet his very first sentence completely blocked the surge of anger about to erupt from Gu Guixi.
“Have you ever gone to pay your respects to her?”
It was a completely nonsensical question, but Gu Guixi’s expression turned extremely ugly.
“Probably not. After all, with how guilty you feel, how could you ever dare to see her?” Bai Heng chuckled softly.
The very next second after he finished speaking, his collar was fiercely grabbed by Gu Guixi, pinning him against the door panel.
Gu Guixi spoke with anger, but his gaze darted around guiltily as he roared with a false show of bravado: “The matter was resolved long ago. Why are you bringing this up!”
“Indeed,” Bai Heng maintained his posture and said, “The matters of the living were resolved by you, but what about the dead?”
He looked at Gu Guixi’s shoulder. There was actually nothing there, neither a vengeful ghost nor eerie ghostly energy, but taking advantage of the fact that Gu Guixi couldn’t see, Bai Heng kept his expression unchanged and intimidated him.
“She’s been following you all this time, you know.”
“Get lost!”
Gu Guixi’s pupils shrank as he released his grip and pushed Bai Heng away, his chest heaving as a terrifying feeling continuously mounted.
Yet after shoving Bai Heng aside, remembering the near-death dream he had at the hospital, he walked over again and said through clenched teeth, “You have to help me.”
“We killed her together.”
Bai Heng reached out to gently push him away, distancing himself from the blame: “Don’t talk nonsense. Clearly you were the one who killed her, and I only injured her.”
“Your crime is much more serious than mine.”
“That’s why she hates you, and hates you even after death. She crawled out from her corpse, crawled out from the graveyard, and tried every possible means to latch onto you just to make you pay with your life.”
When Bai Heng spoke these words, his tone was sinister, forming a stark contrast to his clean appearance.
Gu Guixi’s expression grew increasingly ferocious, but his eyes were filled entirely with anxiety and fear.
His expression shifted rapidly before finally softening.
Gu Guixi reached out and pulled the person standing right before him into his arms, speaking with tender affection.
“I love you, and you love me, so you have to help me.”
“Of course I’ll help you.”
Bai Heng rested his head against Gu Guixi’s chest with a smile.
He said, “Three years ago, in order to evade investigation, I took the fall for you and went abroad. Now that I’m back, you need to compensate me.”
Bai Heng added indifferently, “That Lanting person needs to be cut off.”
However, Gu Guixi fell silent, offering an explanation after a long moment: “He’s still useful. The array didn’t succeed.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Bai Heng stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
“I’ll always help you.”
Only then did the lingering fear in Gu Guixi’s heart dissipate a little.
A few days earlier, Xu Xiaoyu had already been taken away by Lanting and placed in his home to recuperate her soul.
Her condition was far too uncontrollable, and Lanting feared that keeping her by Gu Guixi’s side would make her act out of impulse.
Based on the clues uncovered, Xu Xiaoyu was a student at Jinchuan University, while Gu Guixi had graduated from Jingren.
The investigator said Xu Xiaoyu had a withdrawn personality and was an orphan with no parents, seemingly having nothing to do with Gu Guixi.
Yet now Bai Heng had appeared. Bai Heng had a past with Gu Guixi, and he was a student at Jinchuan.
Thus, two seemingly unrelated people suddenly seemed to have a thread connecting them.
Bai Heng was a prominent figure at Jinchuan, the campus crush with countless pursuers and the student union president, whose presence could be seen in various large and small activities and evening galas.
Though Xu Xiaoyu’s memories of college were hazy, mentioning certain keywords could still trigger fragmented recollections.
For instance, mentioning her roommates’ names could help her recall small scattered fragments.
Thinking about it, Lanting called Xu Xiaoyu out.
The female ghost’s current state looked much better than a few days prior, and her soul was no longer on the verge of dissipating.
Once she regained her focus, Lanting asked, “Do you know Bai Heng?”
Xu Xiaoyu answered decisively, “I don’t know him.”
She answered far too quickly, so quickly that it felt somewhat suspicious.
During previous tests, whenever the name of a roommate or classmate was mentioned, Xu Xiaoyu would think carefully for a good while before stating some memory fragments.
As long as it was someone she knew in college, touching upon keywords would always bring back small remnants of memory.
“Think about it carefully again.” Lanting lifted his gaze to look at Xu Xiaoyu.
Xu Xiaoyu still shook her head without a second thought: “I don’t know him.”
The confusion in her eyes was identical to the look she had when Lanting asked her who her enemy actually was back then.
“This is getting interesting.” Lanting waved his hand to dismiss her, tilting his head to prop his chin on his hand.
The young man suppressed a yawn, his tone carrying a profound meaning.
“Hearing a stray dog’s name can make you remember what bread it likes to eat, yet a prominent campus figure known to everyone in the school leaves zero impression.”
“It seems wiping away all memories was just a smokescreen. This person is the caster, the one who truly wanted her to forget.”