As soon as Li Jinyu got in the car, he tossed the SD cards to Qiao Maimei in the back seat. Qiao Maimei, still shaken, kept her head down without saying a word. Li Jinyu sat in the passenger seat, looking at her calmly through the rearview mirror, and confirmed: “Is there anything else?”
Qiao Maimei didn’t dare look at him. Sitting in the back seat like a withered rose with nowhere to hide, she hung her head, nervously fidgeting with the two SD cards in her palm, and mumbled: “No, nothing else.”
Li Jinyu stopped talking and turned to look out the window. The atmosphere in the car was eerily silent. Ye Meng looked at the two siblings locked in this standoff and secretly sighed in her heart. “Seatbelt.”
Li Jinyu didn’t even need to look back. He casually pulled it and buckled himself in without saying a word to her.
Hey! Ye Meng could only turn around to ask Qiao Maimei: “Where do you live?”
Qiao Maimei’s parents were doing business in Guangdong. She and Yang Tianwei were both essentially left to raise themselves. Now Yang Tianwei had gone to Beijing to participate in some youth training selection, leaving only Qiao Maimei at home.
“She can stay at my place for now,” Li Jinyu said.
“Oh, just the two of you living together?” Ye Meng was somewhat surprised.
Li Jinyu propped his elbow on the car window edge, both amused and exasperated by her wandering imagination. He turned to glance at her, curling his lips in cold mockery: “What, if you’re worried, you can move in too, you know?”
“…”
You probably don’t know how popular German orthopedics is these days.
Ye Meng stepped on the gas and drove them to the community gate. As soon as Qiao Maimei got out of the car, she rushed out and vomited violently, shaking as she held onto the rusty iron railings of the old community gate, retching so hard she could barely stand.
The two sat in the car with perfect tacit understanding, quietly watching her vomit. Their postures were almost identical—one propping their left hand on the window edge, the other their right hand, both with their heads jutting out, looking at Qiao Maimei outside the window.
“Is your sister okay?”
Li Jinyu: “She’ll be fine. She’ll get used to it over time.”
“…I should still go check on her.”
Ye Meng made to get out of the car, but Li Jinyu stopped her with a sigh. “Go park the car. I’ll take her inside first.”
Ye Meng hadn’t expected to return here tonight, but given Qiao Maimei’s condition, although Li Jinyu was her brother, he was still a man and might find it awkward to ask certain questions. Ye Meng had to temporarily act as a caring sister-in-law.
But she wasn’t particularly patient either. As they talked, she felt this young girl was too reckless. Once Qiao Maimei had finished trembling, Ye Meng’s tone grew impatient: “All for twenty thousand yuan?”
Qiao Maimei looked at Ye Meng. She was beautiful, with exceptional temperament, gentle yet full of confidence. But for some reason, a sense of fear welled up in her heart. This woman was even more terrifying than her brother. Her voice became increasingly faint, her throat feeling knotted as she stammered: “I… I… just wanted to buy… a better guitar.”
Ye Meng was not understanding big sister. Right now, she just wanted to grab this girl and give her a good beating. All for twenty thousand yuan, they now had to go to such lengths to resolve this troublesome matter.
Li Jinyu didn’t have any dark web information. The so-called dark web page was just a fake webpage he had quickly programmed into the car. Thankfully, those two weren’t very educated. If either had known anything about computers, they would have immediately spotted the deception. Of course, Li Jinyu had a backup plan—even if they had noticed something suspicious, he had an excuse to get away.
As for why they went to such elaborate lengths to put on that show, it was simply to reinforce the impression of Li Jinyu as a “scumbag” in their minds. What scumbags fear most is negotiating with other scumbags. This kind of contest is essentially about who has fewer boundaries. Once they couldn’t gauge Li Jinyu’s bottom line, they easily yielded to immediate benefit.
Li Jinyu had said that while this negotiation technique didn’t apply to everyone, it was perfectly suited for those two men.
The two women were close in Li Jinyu’s room. Ye Meng looked at the two bookshelves packed full of books and suddenly became curious about what Li Jinyu usually read. Her gaze wandered back and forth along the shelves, finally settling on “Memory Palace,” beneath which was pressed another book titled “Confessions of a Depression Patient: The World Means Me Harm.”
Her heart felt as if it had been stabbed with a knife.
She looked at Qiao Maimei and said, “He just returned from Beijing today. Do you know what he went there for? To be a blood bag for someone. I don’t even know if his body can handle it anymore. He’s already very tired, and he still has to take care of your grandmother. If you don’t care about him, I do. So I don’t want him to be involved in this matter anymore—”
“Let’s call the police, sister.” Qiao Maimei stared at the floor with empty eyes, like a bloodless marionette, suddenly speaking up.
“Leave this matter to me, okay?” Ye Meng said.
Qiao Maimei looked up at her, still insisting: “Let’s just call the police. I know where they rent their house. There are many such videos inside. The police can find them easily with one search.”
Ye Meng no longer insisted, compromising as she looked at her, “Alright.”
However, no one expected that the case would be quickly resolved two days later. Before Ye Meng could take Qiao Maimei to report to the police, the two men had already been arrested. Local police found a large number of pornographic videos in their rental house, in various formats, even preserving the earliest videotapes.
It was said that the case was transferred from Beijing police to local public security before the arrests were made.
Beijing police had received numerous reports about pornographic videos, immediately traced the IP address used to upload them, and quickly issued arrest warrants.
After Qiao Maimei finished giving her statement at the public security bureau, she told Ye Meng: “It was my brother who reported them.”
Ye Meng had guessed as much. Li Jinyu wasn’t present, as he was at the hospital accompanying his grandmother. Leaning against the car door, she asked: “How did it get reported to Beijing?”
Qiao Maimei said: “It was my brother in Beijing, Yang Tianwei, who reported it.”
Li Jinyu did indeed have a real dark web address, but he had encrypted it. When he gave it to them, he lied, saying that dark web channels were very cautious now and could only be accessed using this Morse code encryption method. The decoded password would be the address. They would need to find someone who understood this code and computers.
So naturally, they needed to search for similar information online, and the system would recommend related information to them. Li Jinyu simply had Yang Tianwei find a hacker to break into their computer and push a piece of information related to hackers to them.
Thus, they naturally approached Yang Tianwei, the fake hacker. After finding Yang Tianwei, during the decryption process, Yang Tianwei had the hacker plant a Trojan program on their computer. Subsequently, those hundreds of pornographic videos were actually uploaded using their IP address by Yang Tianwei.
“They probably don’t even know who reported them,” Qiao Maimei sent Li Jinyu a message and then got into Ye Meng’s car with a sense of relief.
At that moment, Li Jinyu was in the hospital. His phone dinged twice, and he simultaneously received a message from the hacker’s wife: “Innocent sweetie, when are you coming back to Beijing?”
Li Jinyu: Not coming back. Thank your husband for me.
Xiang Yuan: No need. Remember to keep it confidential. He’s at the research institute now and fears being scolded by his professor.
Li Jinyu: .
Li Jinyu: Got it.
Xiang Yuan: If you’re not coming back, in a few days it’s your brother’s death anniversary. I’ll send a bouquet of baby daisies on your behalf. Don’t be sad, innocent sweetie. No matter how others change, Jia Mian and I still love you.
Li Jinyu wanted to reply, “I already have someone who loves me.” But he felt these words were too presumptuous—Ye Meng hadn’t said she loved him. He shook his head and deleted the message.
Li Jinyu: Mm, my grandma’s awake. Gotta go.
Qiao Maimei had been emotionally unstable lately, often having nightmares at night.