After Becoming Roommates with an Obnoxious Wealthy Heiress - Chapter 31

Did you do the surveillance footage?

An apology?

Qin Shuyue picked up the orange juice and took a sip.

Her gaze lowered slightly as she looked at the exquisite dishes on the plate, eating every last bite.

However, she didn’t need an apology.

If she had known those videos would sink her into a quagmire, why would she have released them for everyone to watch?

Like a monkey locked in a zoo, left for people to mock and ridicule.

After finishing her meal, Qin Shuyue stood up and stacked the empty plates. A maid standing by her side glanced over and immediately stopped her.

The maid smiled and spoke softly, “Miss Qin, I can do these things.”

Qin Shuyue shook her head. In her memory, Zhu Lingyi had told her to wash them.

So, she rejected the hand the maid reached out.

Seeing her persistence, the maid didn’t say anything more and silently stepped back.

On the other side, Zhu Lingyi was sitting in the study, head down, writing something.

A book was spread out beneath her hands. She looked focused, but her eyes weren’t actually in focus; the pen in her hand hovered a few millimeters above the page.

With a loud “bang,” the study door was pushed heavily open.

Zhu Lingyi’s expression changed, her eyes shooting a chilling, sharp glare toward the door.

Gao Yin looked innocent, holding both hands up obediently before gently closing the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

Zhu Lingyi capped her pen and closed the book. She looked up elegantly, placed the pen into the pen holder, and finally spoke in a leisurely tone.

Her voice was filled with displeasure at Gao Yin’s abrupt entrance.

Her face darkened several shades as well.

“Come in.”

Upon receiving the command, Gao Yin hurriedly pushed the door open. He was still clutching his phone, the video on the screen frozen at a specific second. He ran over, panting heavily, “Zhu… Zhu Lingyi, you… look at this.”

Zhu Lingyi frowned slightly. It was nearly midnight; why was Gao Yin running here out of breath? Could it be something at the old family manor…

Thinking of that possibility, Zhu Lingyi immediately took the phone from Gao Yin and looked down.

It was indeed a video.

But it wasn’t about the old manor.

It was about Qin Shuyue.

Zhu Lingyi tapped the video and watched for a few seconds. It was from last night after she had kicked Qin Shuyue out; Qin Shuyue had nowhere to go and eventually circled back to the starting point.

This made her recall the scene from last night when she had pinned Qin Shuyue down, only to be kicked off the sofa by her.

This Gao Yin…

The veins on Zhu Lingyi’s forehead throbbed. Was he here specifically to annoy her?

But Gao Yin, standing across the desk, had no idea what was going on in Zhu Lingyi’s mind.

He hurriedly pulled out the chair opposite her and plopped down. After catching his breath for a few moments, he stared wide-eyed and asked her, “Zhu Lingyi, did you upload this video?”

Clearly, he went straight to the point.

This perfectly matched Zhu Lingyi’s dislike for procrastination.

Absurd.

Zhu Lingyi curled her fingers and tapped the mahogany desk twice in displeasure.

“Do you think I’m that bored?”

Hearing this, Gao Yin felt relieved for a moment, but then grew tense again.

“It wasn’t you?! Then who could it be?”

Zhu Lingyi watched the video once more.

The angle of the surveillance footage was clearly different from her own cameras. It was close, but if one looked carefully, a deviation in position was visible.

She tossed the phone back into Gao Yin’s arms.

“How should I know.”

She then opened the book in front of her. Before she could read a few lines, Gao Yin’s expression became strange and surprised.

He asked, “Zhu Lingyi, in the past, if anyone dared to touch your things, you would have rushed out to tear them to shreds. But this time, something as important as the surveillance being tampered with… why are you so unbothered?”

Zhu Lingyi’s gaze paused. She lazily lifted her eyelids to look at him, her expression unchanging. “The person captured in the surveillance isn’t me.”

Her words were emotionless, but to Gao Yin’s ears, the meaning was clear.

According to Zhu Lingyi’s usual temperament, she would have dug three feet into the ground to find the person who touched her surveillance and hacked them into pieces.

But this time, she was just letting it go?

This was too unlike her.

Gao Yin lowered his head silently. Zhu Lingyi was reading her book with leisure and grace.

He was practically burning with anxiety, yet she was still reading?

Did she not realize the gravity of the situation?

He felt it necessary to sound the alarm for her.

“Zhu Lingyi, tampering with surveillance shows purely malicious intent. If it was someone sent from that side who did it, then…”

Zhu Lingyi raised her hand and asked him coldly, “Then what do you want to do?”

“Investigate!” Gao Yin struck the pose Zhu Lingyi used to have. “Even if we have to dig three feet down, we have to find the culprit!”

Zhu Lingyi gave him a speechless, cold look.

She didn’t answer his proposal but instead asked him a question in return: “Use your brain and think for a moment. If it really were someone sent from that side to monitor my movements, would it be possible for them to just watch without taking action? It’s been so long, yet they only uploaded this one video. Don’t you understand yet?”

Since she had put it that way, Gao Yin should have…

But seeing his blank and ignorant expression, Zhu Lingyi closed her eyes helplessly. “Where is Xu Lian?”

Gao Yin understood now. He quickly replied, “He’s still in the lab doing simulations. I don’t know what’s so great about simulating mental illness… Hey, wait, what does the surveillance have to do with him? Did he post it?”

Although Gao Yin didn’t know why Zhu Lingyi suddenly asked for Xu Lian’s whereabouts, he answered honestly, and then…

Uttered a world-shaking guess at the end.

He must have thought he looked incredibly cool.

But Zhu Lingyi ruthlessly shattered his self-image, looking at him coldly: “Are you an idiot?”

“I’m just asking why Xu Lian isn’t here. After all, he counts as half of your brain.”

This was essentially saying he had no brain.

It was unclear if Gao Yin caught the insult, but he scratched his head and said, “So, are we investigating or not?”

Zhu Lingyi didn’t answer him. Instead, she shifted her gaze past Gao Yin to the door, extending all the way to the first-floor living room where Qin Shuyue was. She was kneeling on the floor, diligently wiping the coffee table.

Even though no one had ordered her to do so, she acted as if she were finding work for herself.

She couldn’t stop for a single moment.

She possessed a mixture of cowardice and fragility alongside strength and perseverance.

She was very much like a fragile flower in a greenhouse, yet she also possessed the resilience of wild grass that stands tall even after being lashed by a rainstorm.

Zhu Lingyi had never seen such a contradictory existence in one person.

But what she showed to the world was always the cowardly, yielding side.

Not enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

Zhu Lingyi retracted her gaze and then looked steadily at Gao Yin. “The purpose of the person tampering with the surveillance isn’t to monitor me, it’s…”

She tilted her head slightly toward Qin Shuyue on the first floor.

“Her.”

“Baby baby please love me, let us fall in love together ”

As luck would have it, just as Zhu Lingyi finished speaking, the phone on the desk which had been silent started ringing at an inopportune moment.

A passionate English rock song, full of “do not listen” vibes.

Gao Yin scratched his face sheepishly and answered the phone under Zhu Lingyi’s murderous gaze.

“Young Master Liu? Why are you calling me at this hour?”

On the other end, Liu Shaodong got fired up hearing this and shot back, “What? I have to pick an auspicious time just to call you?”

Gao Yin rolled his eyes. “Piss off, piss off.”

Liu Shaodong’s voice on the phone was faint; most of it was drowned out by the noisy environment.

It sounded like a bar or a dance hall definitely not a respectable place.

On the book spread out on the desk, Zhu Lingyi’s hands clenched tightly.

At that moment, Liu Shaodong asked loudly, “Young Master Gao, want to come out for a few drinks?”

The sounds of men and women laughing and playing came through the phone, and occasionally, the voice of a woman’s coquettish moans and whimpers leaked out.

“Ah… ah!!!”

Before Gao Yin could reply, Zhu Lingyi kicked him out of the study. Her leg strength was just enough to send him tumbling to the edge of the stairs.

Inside the study, Zhu Lingyi walked to the door, looked down at the disheveled Gao Yin, narrowed her eyes, and said coldly, “Gao Yin, you know my rules.”

Gao Yin, covered in dust, quickly replied to the call first, “Okay Brother Liu, I’ll be there soon.”

The Liu Shaodong on the other side seemed to have heard the commotion. The line went silent for two seconds before he asked stutteringly, “Zhu… no, is Little President Zhu there too?”

Gao Yin felt that this was truly not the place to talk, so he abruptly hung up and scrambled up from the ground.

He brushed the dust off his clothes and muttered under his breath, “This was a custom-made suit I just had delivered.”

Then he sighed, “Fine, fine, I know your rules. The study is a sacred place, no debauchery allowed. Tsk, you’re like some old relic, all solemn and stiff, hiss…” Gao Yin felt goosebumps all over.

“Alright, alright, I’m leaving.” Gao Yin put his phone back in his pocket. Before leaving, he was still a bit uneasy. “So do you still want me to help you check.”

“Mind your own backyard first.” After Zhu Lingyi said this noncommittally, she turned and entered the room, not giving Gao Yin another glance.

Staring at Zhu Lingyi’s retreating back, Gao Yin frowned. After weighing his options, he pulled out his phone and sent a message to someone.

Then he turned and went downstairs.

When he brushed past Qin Shuyue, his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but he swallowed the words back down.

Qin Shuyue looked up, her gaze brushing past him lightly before dropping back down.

When she finished wiping the last corner of the table, she let out a heavy sigh.

It felt as though she had completed a massive project; she was covered in sweat.

The cold air from the central air conditioning blew into her clothes. When it suddenly stopped, Qin Shuyue couldn’t help but shiver.

She pulled her thin hoodie tighter around herself and went to the second floor to get a bathrobe to shower.

After coming out of the bathroom, Qin Shuyue was wrapped in the robe, her hand tightly clutching the bank card Wu Xuhua had given her. Bitterness, like a melon-flavored candy, slowly melted in her heart.

She had lied at the police station.

She hadn’t told the police about the existence of this bank card.

She struggled, worried, and trembled with fear; her nerves were constantly strained.

Fortunately, the police didn’t notice anything amiss.

But.

Qin Shuyue’s arm moved slightly as she picked up her phone from the bed and opened the chat history with Wu Xuhua.

1:40 AM.

There was still no news from Wu Xuhua.

The bathrobe covered her whole body, but unusually, her arms were exposed and defenseless.

The silver-gray moonlight filtered through the window. The moonlight was like fine, scattered foam, mixed with hazy, floating dust, mistily surrounding Qin Shuyue’s thin back.

On her arm, starting from the scar cut by the vase all the way down, the scars were like ugly centipedes, crawling all over her arm.

The deep blue Tiger Year bank card sat quietly in her hand.

Support After Becoming Roommates with an Obnoxious Wealthy Heiress