You Have the Nerve to Run!
When Lin Yuan saw Jiang Wan, he instinctively turned around and ran. Jiang Wan immediately chased after him.
The two weaved through the alleys, one chasing and the other fleeing. Panting slightly, Jiang Wan called out from behind him, “Liar, stop!”
Lin Yuan immediately protested, “Who are you calling a liar? You said you wanted to go to the manor, and I took you there. I didn’t do anything else! Isn’t it a bit much to say that? What an ungrateful little wretch!”
Jiang Wan quietly activated her mind-reading ability.
What she sensed was nothing but exhaustion and a desperate wish for her to stop chasing him and let him go.
She remained silent and suddenly accelerated.
She jogged after him, her steps steady yet urgent. Her expression remained calm and emotionless, her eyes firmly fixed on the figure ahead. Her fingers tightened slightly as she deliberately kept her increasingly hurried breathing steady.
Internally, she repeatedly weighed the truth behind his words, worried that she might be recklessly accusing an innocent person, yet equally afraid that his excuses were merely deliberate evasions.
“Then stop running!” Jiang Wan shouted.
Lin Yuan immediately became anxious.
“No way! I’m stopping only so you can prepare fruit for me to eat.”
Seeing this, Jiang Wan began calculating when she could force him to stop.
Lin Yuan glanced back and saw that Jiang Wan was still relentlessly pursuing him.
“No, seriously, stop chasing me! I don’t have anything here. There’s no use looking for me.”
“Stop chasing me! Really, stop! I’m begging you!”
Jiang Wan didn’t answer. When she spotted a fork in the road ahead, she suddenly turned right.
Just as Lin Yuan thought he had shaken her off and breathed a sigh of relief, Jiang Wan suddenly appeared directly in front of him.
He slammed to a stop, his body stiffening slightly. His long eyelashes fluttered twice, and his pupils instinctively contracted. His face still maintained his usual carefree, roguish expression, giving no sign of panic, but his slightly hurried breathing betrayed a faint disturbance.
“Hi. What a coincidence! Want to go get something to eat together?”
Jiang Wan ignored him.
Her gaze remained calm and scrutinizing as she silently studied him.
She took half a step forward, narrowing the distance between them. Her posture remained composed, her gaze level, tranquil, and probing as it settled on his face. It wasn’t fierce, but it was extraordinarily penetrating.
Lin Yuan’s back stiffened slightly, and his shoulders unconsciously tensed. His hand hanging at his side quietly clenched.
“Surely you can be the bigger person and let this go, right?”
Jiang Wan looked puzzled.
“I’m not going to kill you. What are you afraid of?”
“I just want to know why you entered that manor and somehow came out alive.”
Lin Yuan froze.
His eyes immediately darted away, avoiding her gaze.
The two remained silent for a long while, but Jiang Wan continued staring at him.
Under her unwavering gaze, Lin Yuan grew increasingly guilty and uneasy. He forced himself to remain calm, deliberately putting on his usual carefree expression as he casually said, “Didn’t I already tell you? I was tricked into coming here to work. I hadn’t even finished the job yet. How could the boss possibly let me die…”
Even before he finished speaking, Jiang Wan had already activated her mind-reading ability.
She could sense the panic and uneasiness in his heart as he said those words.
Jiang Wan didn’t indulge him and immediately exposed him.
“Is that so? Then who’s your boss? Who was the person who tricked you into coming here?”
“And what’s your relationship with the man wearing the bamboo hat that day?”
“And most importantly, what exactly is your purpose for coming here?”
Every question struck directly at the core.
Lin Yuan became increasingly unsettled and wanted to run.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her.
It was that if he told her, he’d be dead.
The next moment, he seemed to think of a brilliant way to escape.
“Miss, the man wearing the bamboo hat you mentioned is right behind you.”
Jiang Wan frowned.
Her mind-reading ability could not remain active for more than three minutes, and it happened to expire at that exact moment.
She instinctively turned around to look behind her.
There was no one there.
Lin Yuan immediately seized the opportunity and took off running.
Jiang Wan realized she’d been tricked. She tried to chase after him, only to discover that he had already put a considerable distance between them.
Without hesitation, Jiang Wan immediately pursued him again.
The afternoon sun was scorching, and waves of heat beat down upon them.
Jiang Wan was sweating heavily. Her stamina was beginning to fail, and she was becoming thirsty.
But she refused to stop.
She followed Lin Yuan through several twists and turns, making one turn after another through the narrow alleys.
Then, after another few corners, Lin Yuan’s figure disappeared.
Jiang Wan stopped and gasped for breath.
She wasn’t as familiar with this place as he was. At this point, she had no idea which road to take.
The next second, she suddenly heard Lin Yuan shouting:
“Everyone, come out and take a look!”
“The woman those black-clothed men were looking for yesterday is right here!”
“Everyone, hurry and send her to the black-clothed men! We can collect the reward!”
“Don’t miss this chance…”
Jiang Wan was instantly speechless.
But she had no idea where Lin Yuan was.
Now that he’d shouted this out, she could only continue walking while observing her surroundings.
After shouting those words, Lin Yuan immediately hurried toward the village entrance, fleeing the area.
Jiang Wan had barely taken a few steps when the villagers surrounded her.
There were men and women, while elderly people and children stood around the outer edge, watching.
The villagers surrounded her, chattering among themselves.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Is this the woman those black-clothed men were looking for?”
“She looks pretty young. Such a young girl…”
“Miss, miss, are you a young lady from a wealthy family who ran away?”
“Why did you run away from home?”
“Did you elope with your lover?”
“Where’s your lover?”
“Hmph. Did he abandon her and run away?”
“A young woman should know better than to behave like this…”
“Don’t say that about her. Maybe she was tricked by someone?”
The moment that person finished speaking, Jiang Wan didn’t even need to use her mind-reading ability to know how bitter and sarcastic those words were.
Jiang Wan remained silent. She didn’t want to say anything.
But the villagers didn’t take her silence as a sign to stop. Some became increasingly brazen, as though using the opportunity to vent something pent up inside them.
“She looks like one of those women who don’t know how to behave.”
“I think she’s more than just shameless. Looks like she was caught sleeping with a man and ran away to escape…”
“Now that you mention it, she really does look like it…”
“…”
As some of their words grew increasingly vicious, Jiang Wan’s thoughts drifted back to something that had happened during her school days.
At the time, she had just taken her monthly exams and ranked first in the entire school.
Soon afterward, news came that she had also won first prize in a citywide competition. The school subsequently awarded her a scholarship.
Back then, Jiang Wan had been full of confidence and pride, the envy of everyone around her.
But where there was admiration, there was naturally jealousy.
It hadn’t been long after Jiang Wan received her certificate of honor when rumors began spreading throughout the floor where her classroom was located.
“Hey, have you heard? That girl from Class 3-2—the one who ranked first in the entire school—apparently there was something shady going on.”
Another person immediately asked, “What kind of shady business? She’s so good at studying.”
“I heard someone secretly saw the principal hand her a file folder. It was pretty thick, too.”
“Ah, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he asked her to give some documents to a teacher or something…”
“Yeah, yeah…”
The girl wearing a white-and-green school uniform insisted, “People from her own class said they saw it with their own eyes. She put that brown file folder into her desk.”
“And the most important part is that none of the people in Class Two saw her hand it over to a teacher afterward.”
The others were shocked and continued gossiping excitedly.
“Then why would the principal give her the answers to the exam?”
“Yes! Why?”
“She’s not the principal’s daughter or a relative of the principal.”
The girl once again lowered her voice mysteriously. “Maybe she isn’t, but her parents are…”
She suddenly stopped talking, deliberately leaving them hanging. Their curiosity was immediately piqued, and they desperately wanted to know the “truth,” so they kept pressing her for answers.
The girl in the white-and-green school uniform was Chen Yu from Class 4 of Senior Three. She had ranked tenth in the entire school this time.
Whenever she saw Jiang Wan, who was ranked first in the grade, looking so confident and radiant onstage, she felt bitter.
Everyone liked Jiang Wan and admired her. Teachers praised her, saying she had an incredible talent, and it seemed as though everything in her life was going wonderfully.
And Chen Yu was constantly compared to her.
Her teachers would say, “Look at the student ranked first in the grade. You’re only a few points behind her. You need to work harder and focus on your studies. Don’t be so impatient…”
Her classmates and friends would also say, “Keep it up! Try harder next time!”
Even her parents would say, “Ever since you started high school, you’ve landed exactly in tenth place every single time. Are you obsessed with the number ten or something?”
“I think she’s gotten complacent. She thinks staying in tenth place every time is good enough.”
“She doesn’t put her heart into it at all. If she really worked hard, could she keep coming in tenth place forever? Neither moving up nor falling behind. If she were always second, we wouldn’t say anything…”
Chen Yu found every one of those words unbearably grating.
She had worked hard.
She hadn’t been slacking off.
She had always done everything she could to achieve her best.
But why?
Why could no one see it?
When Chen Yu saw Jiang Wan standing proudly onstage like that, all the bitterness, discomfort, resentment, hatred, and pain buried inside her erupted completely, without holding anything back.
Why did she get everyone’s attention and praise so effortlessly!?
Why could she step over everyone else without even having to work hard!?
Why!? Why!? Why!?
Why did she have such good talent, such good luck, such wonderful parents, a younger sister, and friends?
Why!?
Why, despite working so hard, was I still invisible?
Why was her life better than mine!?
The hatred and jealousy in Chen Yu’s eyes were impossible to conceal as she stared fixedly at the person onstage.
Disgusting!
How could she stand there giving such a fake, hypocritical speech? She was unbelievably pretentious!
I’m going to drag her down and make sure she can never get back up!
So Chen Yu quietly sought out those who were hostile toward or dissatisfied with Jiang Wan, gathering clues from them and turning them against her.
Chen Yu continued, “Her parents’ identities aren’t ordinary, you know~”
“Her father is a big-time businessman.”
“And her mother is a famous professor…”
Everyone around her immediately understood.
Jiang Wan’s parents weren’t merely wealthy and powerful—they also had connections.
If they had manipulated things behind the scenes, it wasn’t impossible.
At that moment, they all seemed to understand.
The exam paper for the school’s selection competition to compete in another province had been extremely difficult. They had even said it was written by professors from top universities.
While everyone else in the school had failed to pass, Jiang Wan had been selected for the competition with the highest score of 97 points.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You really couldn’t tell. The family of the top student has this kind of influence.”
“This is even shadier than an outright rigged competition…”
These rumors spread throughout the school like wildfire.
Jiang Wan forcibly suppressed her reactions to her classmates avoiding her, distancing themselves from her, and whispering about her behind her back.
She simply focused on doing what she needed to do.
Her teacher had comforted her as soon as the rumors began spreading, telling her not to worry. He and the entire school would find out who had started the rumors and punish them severely.
And so, faced with the villagers before her now, Jiang Wan remained calm and composed.
“I’m not some wealthy young lady who ran away from home. I’m only here because I’m looking for my younger sister, who was tricked into coming here. Don’t let yourselves be deceived by that man.”
She immediately continued explaining, “Those black-clothed men were also trying to capture me and sell me. Please don’t believe what he said.”
Upon hearing this, the villagers began looking Jiang Wan over carefully.
She was filthy, covered in bloodstains, and so thin that her sharp features stood out clearly.
Jiang Wan activated her mind-reading ability again, sensing the villagers’ emotions and memories.
Some still didn’t believe her.
But others decided to leave after hearing her explanation.
In less than half an incense stick’s worth of time, more than half of the people had left. Only a scattered few remained around Jiang Wan.
They remained locked in a silent standoff with her, but eventually, they backed down, apologized, and left.
Jiang Wan shook her hands, then rubbed the sweat from her palms onto her clothes to dry them.