Chapter Thirty-Five: The Most Brilliant Hunter

  Qu Xiao Wan later had a simple phone call with Situ Xinyue. It was on the night of the day when "Negotiation" ended in an extremely dramatic way, or to be exact, the early morning of the next day. Situ Xinyue couldn't believe that she could still fall asleep soundly despite being anxious, uneasy, terrified and uncertain, perhaps at that time she hadn't fully recovered from this sudden change, always doubting whether it was real or not.

  The incoming call was an unfamiliar number and didn't introduce itself, but Qu Xiaojuan's voice was still recognizable to Situ Xuan.

  Qu Xiao Wan told Situ Xuan that if her attitude towards Tan Shao Cheng and Liu Zisu during the day would eventually lead to Situ Xuan being implicated, it was her fault. She felt sorry, but only for this matter, and did not ask Situ Xuan for forgiveness. She didn't need anyone's forgiveness. Those photos were taken by Zou Jin with her consent, no one forced anyone, at that time she loved him, willing to do anything, now there is no need to regret.

  Situ Xin didn't have the heart to say some magnanimous words, she really couldn't understand Qu Xiaowen's actions, nor did she know what kind of regret all the people involved in this matter would bear. At the same time, she couldn't even hate Qu Xiaowen, let alone forgive her. In fact, she could no longer distinguish who was right and who was wrong, even though she had always been a person who saw things in black and white. For the first time, she felt confused and bewildered about the boundaries between good and evil.

  Is Liu Zhensu, who humbled himself in front of his mentor for four years and then counterattacked in an extremely distorted way, a great villain?

  Is Tan Shaochen, whom she has always disliked, not defending what he deserves from the standpoint of a victim?

  Zou Jin... She was willing to use the most vicious and venomous words to curse his shamelessness and despicability, he had led her into a disaster that had nothing to do with her, yet his original intention was indeed out of selfishness and protection for her, truly pathetic and laughable.

  If she blamed Qu Xiaowen's indulgence and willfulness, was her own compromise really the right choice?

  "I'll ask you just one thing, what are you going to do about Wujiang?" was the only sentence that Si Tu Jue could think of to say to Qu Xiao Wan.

  "I won't leave him," Qu Xiaoyu said. "He just told me yesterday that he's decided to take me home to meet his parents, no matter what they think or what happens, he wants to be with me. I've said he's a fool, even if it's foolish talk, it's enough for me. He can reject me, but I won't leave him first."

  She also talked about some trivial matters when she was with Wu Jiang. For example, they went to see her favorite movie together, and Wu Jiang fell asleep, spilling popcorn all over the place, but he insisted that he was awake and the movie was good, and he wanted to come again next time; for example, after she returned home for a few days, when they met again, Wu Jiang asked if she had missed him, and she said yes, which scared Wu Jiang, and it wasn't until then that she realized that she would only miss him, whereas at first she thought she would love that seemingly unattainable man to death.

  Situ Xuan never understood why Qu Xiaowen would choose to say those things to someone she wasn't close to at 3 am. Did she really not have a better outlet for her emotions? Later, Situ Xuan suspected more than once that the phone call might not have existed at all, and everything was just her imagination or a chaotic dream. Just like how she later dreamed of Qu Xiaowen singing softly in her ear, an old song called "Return": "The sunset's afterglow is on the horizon, two or three wisps of white cloud float by... The shepherd boy is playing a tune to send me home..." The dream felt so real that when she woke up, she could even hum a few lines from the song. However, she knew it was absolutely impossible for it to be true.

  She began to doubt her own memories, not only because of the half-asleep and half-awake state she was in when she received the midnight call from Si Tu Jie, but also because of the illogical content of their conversation, which made her believe that the unfamiliar number on her call log was just a prank call that hung up after ringing once. The details that Qu Xiaojuan described were actually revealed to her by Wu Jiang, and she had imagined them onto Qu Xiaojuan's body. Perhaps in reality, she hadn't woken up at all that night? More importantly, from then on, for a period of time that was neither long nor short, Si Tu Jie went through an extremely special phase in her life. Many things that happened during this phase should have been etched into her memory like inscriptions on a tombstone, never to be erased until the day she died. However, the opposite was true. She couldn't piece together the complete outline of these memories, even many years later. Every time she tried her best to recreate them accurately, she felt a sense of futile powerlessness. People who have had dreams can understand this feeling - it's as if the scenery you see in your dreams is always hazy and yellowish, with a layer of fog in between. You know what's there, but you can never see it clearly. Is this a natural human defense mechanism, or did she recall too many times and have too many dreams about that period over the next seven years? These memories and dreams were too overwhelming, alternating between reality and fantasy, filling her up and becoming more intimate with her, while the actual details faded away into an increasingly distant past, no longer important.

  Not only did Qu Xiaowen's phone call go unanswered, but even the real "Dongchuang Shifa" couldn't remember how long after the collapse of the talks it was. She vaguely remembered that it was on the eve of graduation, when she had just seen a paper co-authored by Zou Jin and Liu Zisu in the June issue of the Journal of Pharmacy and another domestic medical authority journal. Then, the entire pharmacy college, no, the entire school or even the city's entire medical industry was shrouded in a scandal overnight. The scandal involved academic fraud, research corruption, university hidden rules, teacher-student grudges, and romantic secrets, making it a sensational topic that people talked about with relish for a long time after the shock had passed.

  It's hilarious that in this big show, the protagonist, Situ Xuan, is so slow to react. She only found out after receiving Wu Jiang's phone call and hastily opened the school BBS webpage. Only then did she remember why Wu Jiang didn't want to say a word on the phone, because if it were her, she would also lose all ability to speak.

  The BBS has been bustling with excitement, with all sorts of posts filled with exclamation marks filling the usually dull webpage. However, those posts were undoubtedly centered around two posts that had been topped and had countless replies.

  The first post was titled "My conscience and anger will no longer allow me to remain silent".

  Another one is even more shocking - "Can't I get what's rightfully mine just because I didn't sleep with my supervisor?"

  From the posting time, the latter is several hours later than the former, and it seems to be a response to the previous post. They echo each other, just in time for people to tell a sensational story basically formed. In this story, there is a young doctoral student who has been silently enduring a tyrannical and unscrupulous mentor for four years, with his conscience still intact and his last bit of passion remaining. He recounts his true experience in a heavy and rational tone, including how he was once an ordinary student who had taken the entrance exam to become a student under the guidance of a respected mentor, but was later disillusioned by the harsh reality over the next few years, and how he naively believed that the academic world was a pure land, only to find it full of dark corners. His mentor, as a well-known scholar with numerous research achievements and monographs, has been exploiting students' cheap labor, even plagiarizing his disciples' work, and many of his achievements are actually undeserved. Not only that, but his greed and harsh treatment of students are also outrageous.

  This post, while revealing the truth, also attempts to show objectivity and self-reflection. The author acknowledges that their supervisor has excellent professional ethics and analyzes why they endured so much unfair treatment without speaking out, attributing it to a "one day as a teacher, lifelong as a father" mentality, and "there are no parents who are not wrong", so one can only endure. This endurance is actually a manifestation of cowardice and weakness. It wasn't until another innocent girl was drawn in that the author's sympathy for her and indignation towards reality made them unable to remain silent. The girl had repeatedly suffered setbacks, not only in scholarship applications but also nearly lost her graduate school quota, all because she refused to compromise with the professor's implicit rules. A basic sense of justice prompted him to inform the girl of the truth, but he was ruthlessly retaliated against by his supervisor, making a smooth graduation a luxury, finally forcing him to speak out and hint at his supervisor's private life being in disarray, with improper relationships with more than one female student. He didn't reveal the supervisor's real identity or name, but many details hinted at, leaving people wondering and the truth on the verge of being revealed.

  However, what caused even greater shockwaves was yet to come. In the follow-up posts, someone anonymously posted a large number of photos that could only be described with one word: "obscene". Any person from the school with normal eyesight could easily make out the striking resemblance between the man in the photos and the deputy dean of the pharmacy department from the somewhat clear scanned images. The only difference was that he had abandoned his usual elegant demeanor, exposing his no-longer-young body to the public eye. The female lead, with her beautiful face and youthful physique, was not Vice Dean Zou's proud student Qu Xiaowen, but who else? How many people in the school had witnessed her elegance at various large-scale evening parties, only knowing that she was a noble and extraordinary person, yet in the photos, only her seductive and charming side was revealed.

  It seems to prove the authenticity of the photos, in addition to those taken with the bedroom as the background, there are also many taken on the periphery of Zou Jin's private residence. Some of these photos are blurry, some are clear, and the people in them do not notice the camera, seemingly unaware that they have been captured. Qu Xiaowen is at ease in her middle-aged male mentor's home, and the accompanying text emphasizes that she is not the only one with this privilege. Because there is another beautiful face in some of the photos, the owner of this face sits intimately with Zou Jin in a small courtyard under the night sky, Zou Jin's hand covering hers, his expression warm. Then, Qu Xiaowen appears tearfully in the next photo, forming a richly narrative scene with two others. Further down is another girl walking on the path at the entrance of the Zou residence, the streetlights making her clothes appear very transparent. This photo also has an annotation: Leaving late at night.

  That faintly swaying grass, those fine sounds, this long-standing puzzlement finally found an answer. It turned out to be like this. The mantis catches the cicada, but unexpectedly a silly spider crashes in and gets a double harvest with one arrow!

  Situ Xuan gazed at the photo of herself, feeling extremely eerie. How could she expect others to be blind, just one glance and it was ironclad evidence. There were many smart people who could identify her, this wasn't anything special, but behind them were even smarter people connecting the dots between the previous indecent photos where the woman's face wasn't exposed - who dared say that could only be Qu Xiaojuan?

  Having read this far, Situ Xuan suddenly felt calm, as if nothing could make her more afraid. Therefore, when she browsed the next post, she was much calmer, and her hand holding the mouse no longer shook violently. Unlike the previous post, this one began to introduce the author's situation in detail. Situ Xuan once again saw Tan Shaochen's poverty and difficult academic journey in those simple words. She read very carefully, not missing a single word or sentence of complaint, as well as pictures of evidence about the scholarship incident and the graduate school incident. Finally, there was an audio recording, which included Zou Jin's admission of guilt and promise to compensate the other party, and, unsurprisingly, her apology. When she heard this, she actually laughed briefly.

  Those who have read this post should all understand the passion and impulsiveness of the previous poster, anyone would feel indignant, such a weak but strong girl, in the most desperate situation, still adhering to herself, hoping to change her fate through her own efforts. She didn't know that being penniless but having a clean soul is always a disadvantage in life, so she resisted the professor's lustful power and was treated unfairly again and again in the dark. If she hadn't met that righteous senior brother and another kind-hearted teacher, I'm afraid she would still be in the dark, thinking that her efforts were not enough to bring good fortune, without realizing that there was a shameless black hand behind it all. What's even more admirable is that she refused the professor's compensation in terms of future prospects and money after the incident. She said that her father, who had just passed away, often told her when he was alive that no matter how poor they were, they couldn't lose their dignity. She didn't want anything, only justice, even if it meant facing revenge again.

  After reading the post, Situ Xuan began to understand a little. It's not just her who is foolish, even Qu Xiaojuan is too naive, and she still thinks that this situation is caused by her own decisiveness. In fact, this is a well-laid trap with no flaws, and they are all trapped in it without realizing it. The most cunning hunter will not rush to take action or show mercy, they always know when to trigger the mechanism at the right time, and no prey has a chance to escape. No matter how many times you apologize, no matter what compensation is given, even if the cup is not broken, the result is still the same, all the struggles are just step by step deeper into this trap.