After Becoming a Cannon-Fodder Lackey, I Swore to Protect the Young Lady to the Death - Chapter 19

“Be good now, Jiao Jiao. Look, you’ve already changed so much. There’s me, and Shen Nanshu… and remember last time? You managed to keep Gu Yan pinned to the top of the trending charts for days.”

Li Gangjiao comforted her, gently patting her back. The amber glow of the desk lamp spilled across Lu Jiaoyue’s hair and profile, lending her an unexpected air of soft tranquility.

“…” Lu Jiaoyue remained silent, but she seemed to be taking the words to heart.

“Jiao Jiao, it’s late. Let’s finish the soup and get some sleep, okay?” Seeing the lamb soup was about to go cold, Li Gangjiao offered a spoonful, coaxing her gently.

Lu Jiaoyue opened her mouth obediently, her eyes fixed on Li Gangjiao, hardly even blinking. A single bowl of soup somehow took five whole minutes to finish.

“Tell me… is ‘fate’ really something we can’t escape?” Lu Jiaoyue grabbed Li Gangjiao as she prepared to leave. “We’re characters in a book. Are we all just marching toward a predetermined end?”

The detective had reported that the investigation had hit a sudden, inexplicable wall. The lawyer said many victims were suddenly refusing to testify. Shen Nanshu’s leg injury had worsened, Su Momo had been missing for days, and then today… that shard of glass out of nowhere.

“I don’t know,” Li Gangjiao said seriously. “But before my first real fight, I was terrified. My senior brother told me a quote from a book: Courage is the only thing that lessens the blows of fate.“

“Courage…” Lu Jiaoyue murmured.

That’s right. How could I forget? In all those past lives, the only thing that kept me going was that refusal to give in—that spark of courage.

Perhaps exhausted by the day’s events, Lu Jiaoyue’s eyelids grew heavy, and she eventually drifted off. After carefully tucking her in, Li Gangjiao slipped out of the room with the empty bowl, closing the door with exaggerated caution so as not to wake her.

Returning to the kitchen, she set the dishes in the sink and headed to the guest room. She used a utility knife to open two courier boxes, stuffed the contents into a black plastic bag, and headed out into the night.

The moon was low, and the dim streets were deserted. Li Gangjiao moved through the shadows like she belonged there. Fifteen minutes later, she reached the school perimeter. She waited until the security guard’s eyes grew heavy before slipping inside. She didn’t do anything dramatic; she simply added a little “sedative” to the guard’s thermos.

Twenty minutes later, the guard woke up groggy and reached for his tea to clear his head, unaware that his thermos was now spiked with something quite the opposite of caffeine.

Li Gangjiao was patient. She stood under a tree behind the security booth, scrolling through her phone. Once she was certain he was sound asleep, she let herself in. She had checked the duty logs earlier; the patrol guards swapped with the gate guards every three hours. She was on the clock.

She inserted a fresh USB drive into the security computer and began copying every scrap of surveillance footage from the last few days.

Man, if things keep going like this, the students are gonna have to carry the security guards out on their backs during an emergency, she thought, imagining a ridiculous scenario where students formed a perimeter around the booth, shouting: “Cover the guards! Get them to safety first!”

She shook her head, tossing the absurd thought aside.

******

City A was a metropolis that never slept. In the bustling commercial districts, the nightlife was just beginning for the younger crowd. Store windows were packed with luxury goods, and the air was thick with the scent of street food.

At the end of a food street sat an internet cafe. After 10:00 PM, it entered a “closed” state—the prime time for teenagers to get online without showing ID.

As she stepped inside, the smell of instant noodles mixed with stale cigarette smoke hit her. “How much for an hour?”

The clerk looked her up and down. “Ten yuan an hour downstairs, twenty upstairs. Where’s your ID?”

“Didn’t bring it. Can I borrow yours for two hours?” Li Gangjiao handed him two hundred yuan and offered a sweet, innocent smile.

“Sure, sure.” The clerk took the money, instantly understanding the deal, and handed over his card. Only an idiot turns down easy money.

Li Gangjiao took the ID, “checked in,” and even had the sense to scan another forty yuan via WeChat for the actual fees. The clerk’s smile widened. It was a deal that made everyone happy.

She headed straight for the second floor. This level was cleaner, free of the noodle and smoke stench. You get what you pay for, she thought.

She plugged in the USB and began meticulously reviewing the footage, focusing on the day of the exam. She noticed that Su Momo hadn’t appeared on any camera for several days.

“Weird. Was this in the plot?” she muttered, opening a bag of snacks.

Reviewing raw footage was grueling work. Within an hour, she was fighting to keep her eyes open. Why does the school have so many cameras? And why is this teacher so weird? He ignores the couples and the kids on their phones just to bust the one kid hiding in the bushes eating dried fish…

She finished a bag of chips just as the footage reached the day of the exam. Her brow furrowed as she remembered the state Lu Jiaoyue had been in when she got home.

She watched the clip three times before she finally spotted the anomaly. The glass shard had indeed fallen from above, but that made no sense—there was no glass in the classroom ceiling.

Furthermore, Gu Yan was acting strange. Throughout the entire incident, he never once looked up. When Lu Jiaoyue cried out in pain and everyone else turned to look, Gu Yan remained perfectly still, frozen in his pose as he worked on the exam.

By 3:00 AM, Li Gangjiao was running on fumes. She took a swig of a drink and pushed through the sleepiness to cross-reference the timestamps. In a novel like this, hiring a top-tier hacker to edit footage was child’s play.

And if the Male Lead had a top-tier doctor friend, it was almost guaranteed he had a top-tier hacker friend too.

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