Shi Sheng awakened in the middle of the night. The main house and the outside areas were brightly lit.
Shi Sheng wore her coat and headed downstairs, just in time as she saw the cook being taken away.
“What’s going on?” Shi Sheng prodded the servant who was standing on the second floor, watching what took place.
“Madam.” The servant leaned over to Shi Sheng promptly, looking a little frightened, “Miss Ann has been poisoned.”
All the people who served in the main house were afraid of Shi Sheng. After all, seeing her walk around with her blade in hand randomly was quite unnerving.“Poisoned?”
Shi Sheng only knew about what happened the following day.
This was because the only place in the whole mansion that could be used to prepare food was in the main house, and all the other areas were for the servants.
So the food Ying Su had were all prepared from here.
As Shi Sheng was eating, Ying Su’s servants arrived to fetch the food. It was then that the cook mixed up Shi Sheng’s bowl of poisoned boiled pork slices and Ying Su’s food. The chef was scared senseless he couldn’t recall this predicament. By the time he came to his senses, Ying Su had already been poisoned.
Shi Sheng almost felt sorry for Ying Su.
This unfortunate female protagonist.While Leng Yan was accompanying the female protagonist in the hospital, Shi Sheng took this opportunity to search the other parts of the mansion.
Shi Sheng didn’t discover anything out of the ordinary. After all, the male protagonist might have already searched them many times over.
Leng Yao Tian was a smart one. When he was alive, he was not exactly fond of Leng Yan, so he definitely would have been prepared for anything.
Even if there were clues, they were definitely not in the mansion.
Shi Sheng went through all of Leng Yao Tian’s property, but since he was already dead, the ownership of the property was already placed under Leng Yan’s name, so there was nothing to gain.
Need to work this brain, how annoying!
Real estate...
The Green Dragon Clan...
Funds...
Right, I can check Leng Yao Tian’s personal wealth.
Leng Yao Tian’s personal account had already been logged out of, but Shi Sheng could still access the details she needed to find what she was looking for.
It was actually very tedious work to find what she was looking for in the ocean of information.
It took Shi Sheng a few whole hours to draw out the cash flow trends of Leng Yao Tian’s funds over the last two years.
Most of it was useless information. The funds were used for either giving gifts to some lovers or to pay the underlings.
Shi Sheng checked through message after message as her eyes got heavier and heavier. Eventually, she stumbled across a rather strange account.
Strange, in the sense that the name attached to the account was weird.
Li Cui Hua.
Even though the names of the accounts Leng Yao Tian’s funds were sent to weren’t anything notable or high-profile, there weren’t any with a name that one could immediately tell belonged to someone from a rural region.
The date of the transactions to this account was at the start of each month, the last transaction being three months before Leng Yao Tian’s death. The amount transferred to this account totalled about 10 million over five transactions; 2 million each time.
All transactions with that account ceased after that.
Shi Sheng found Li Cui Hua’s identification card information in the database. The person was a villager from a place called Huang Shan village, a female, 45 years old.
Other than this information, nothing else could be found regarding this person.
Just how many people in the country were named ‘Li Cui Hua’?
It would have taken her a lifetime before she found the right person.
So what is this person’s relationship with Leng Yao Tian? What does this have to do with her side quest?
My head hurts. I don’t want to think anymore.
Shi Sheng tossed the computer aside and laid down on the bed. After a while, she suddenly sat up. She was a professional player with integrity. She had to put in the effort in completing her task.
Shi Sheng decided to pay Huang Shan village a visit.
That night, Shi Sheng slipped out of the mansion in the darkness and hurried to Huang Shan village.
Huang Shan village was in a very secluded place. Shi Sheng had to ride a plane, train, and car before she finally reached the mountains she had to hike up into.
There were mountains all around this area. She encountered some other small villages along the way, but they all seemed to be very poor congregations.
By the time Shi Sheng arrived in Huang Shan village, the sky was already dark, and the lights from the houses in the mountains lit them up.
Shi Sheng knocked on the door of one of the houses.
Inside, the villagers sharing a meal looked surprised to suddenly see a young maiden at their doorstep. Intrigued, the villagers began talking among themselves in a dialect that Shi Sheng could not understand.
Shi Sheng was dumbfounded.
Could you all speak in Mandarin? What’s all this local nonsense, jeez.
The villagers probably noticed that Shi Sheng couldn’t understand what they were saying. As they were discussing something among themselves, a child immediately ran out.
The child quickly returned with another person. She was a tan-skinned girl around 13 or 14 years old with her hair tied into two pigtails, wearing similar clothes to the other villagers.
“Hello.” the tan-skinned girl spoke in fluent mandarin. Shi Sheng finally felt that she was no longer in that uncivilized village.
“Greetings.”
“My name is Xu Shan Shan, but it’s okay if you just call me Shan Shan.” The little girl smiled shyly, “Might I ask if you are lost or if there is something you need from us?”
Though Xu Shan Shan was a bit tan, she still turned out to be quite cute.
“Oh, I’m looking for someone.” Shi Sheng has always been a sucker for cute little girls.
Xu Shan Shan turned her head to speak with the villagers from earlier, and the villagers nodded their heads repeatedly.
“Who are you looking for? It’s a small village, everyone knows each other. I’m sure I could bring you to them.” Xu Shan Shan had probably gotten approval from the villagers to help Shi Sheng before asking her.
“Li Cui Hua.” Shi Sheng pulled out a piece of paper. On it was a print of Li Cui Hua’s ID. “That’s her.”
Xu Shan Shan took a look, but she likely did not recognize the person in the picture as she handed it to the villagers beside her. It was not very bright outside, and the group stepped into the villager’s house.
Taking a good look at the person in the picture, the villagers babbled among themselves for quite a while with angry faces. Xu Shan Shan translated what they had been saying for Shi Sheng, “They say Li Cui Hua has been dead for several years. She was the only daughter in her family, and her parents both passed away as well not long after her death. In fact, the villagers were the ones who worked together on their funeral.”
The villagers in the back still continued to talk quite a bit, but Xu Shan Shan didn’t translate what they said. They probably didn’t say anything nice.
This place was very deep in the mountains. In other words, a census needed to be conducted on the town in order for the status of their population to be updated. Li Cui Hua was already dead, but her family did not go to the town to register her death, so her identification card was still valid.
Because of this, someone opened an account using Li Cui Hua’s identity.
“Thank you.”
Li Cui Hua didn’t have a very good standing in the village. Apparently, she had prostituted herself outside the village before, and the villagers were not fond of her at all.
As Shi Sheng turned to leave after thanking her, the little girl suddenly tugged at her while smiling shyly. “It’s getting late, sister. It’s not safe for you to leave at this hour. You should stay the night before you leave.”
[Side Quest: Escort Xu Shan Shan out of the premise and nurture the subject. Quest automatically accepted.]
“......” What the hell is wrong with the system?
What absurd side quest is this all of a sudden?
[System] : I don’t have any problems!
Shi Sheng saw Xu Shan Shan’s expression of slight anticipation and embarrassment, and shook her head, “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”
“Not at all!” Xu Shan Shan smiled brightly, showing her two little front teeth.
Shi Sheng followed Xu Shan Shan to her home. Her house seemed to be in decent condition, it was a small two-story building. But, Shi Sheng noticed there weren’t any other people in the house.
“Where are your parents?” Shi Sheng was looking forward to just buying Xu Shan Shan from her parents, but in the end, the sellers she hoped to buy her from were missing.
“They both passed away. I live here alone.” Xu Shan Shan said, slightly disappointed. But she cheered up in an instant.
Xu Shan Shan was afraid the little stool would dirty Shi Sheng’s clothes, so she carefully wiped the stool several times before letting Shi Sheng sit down. “You must not have eaten yet. Let me prepare something for you.” Xu Shan Shan said to Shi Sheng.
