Chapter 133: Locking Him Within Her Own Little World

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“That means they must have seen through you.”

Tang Yu slipped out of his arms and retreated two steps, putting some distance between them. She licked the corner of her lips, her expression solemn.

“You come here every day. Your intentions are so obvious that only an idiot wouldn’t notice.”

“So it must be you.”

She laid out the facts and made her case. “And didn’t you also tell Grandpa something like, ‘Wherever she goes, I’ll go too’? It would be stranger if Grandpa didn’t read anything into that!”

Bian Yang pressed his tongue against his cheek and gave a soft click of his tongue. “The old man really isn’t honorable. He promised to keep it a secret, so how did he end up telling you everything?”

Tang Yu snorted, then couldn’t help laughing. Her voice was sweet. “Because I’m Grandpa’s real granddaughter! Of course he’s going to take my side!”

Looking at the girl’s lively expression, who could imagine that those bright, limpid eyes had once concealed so many grievances and so much helplessness? Even now, she was still healing, little by little.

He reached out, pulled her into his arms, and buried his face deep in the crook of her neck, rubbing against her.

His voice was unbearably lazy. “Sleepy.”

Tang Yu still wanted to ask him about his grades. She had only just pushed at his arm when he suddenly let out a muffled groan.

Only then did she notice the bruise on the inside of his arm.

Tang Yu grew nervous. “Is your arm hurt?”

“It’s nothing.” That old bastard hit me with his cane.

They had agreed that he would finish his doctorate, but Bian Yang had stood him up halfway through.

So when the old professor saw him again, he was furious and swung his cane at him twice without another word.

The professor was elderly, and Bian Yang couldn’t hit back. He simply took the two blows and let the old man vent his anger.

“How did you get this injury? Was it those friends of yours?”

Bian Yang rubbed his face against the crook of her neck, his hair tickling her.

He said indifferently, “I just bumped into something by accident.”

He had traveled from Cool City to the Imperial Capital, then from the Imperial Capital back to Cool City. The moment he got off the plane, he had come straight to see her, without stopping during all the transfers. He hadn’t slept well on the plane either.

The moment he saw her, all the exhaustion in his body surged up. He simply wanted to hold her.

“I’m a little sleepy.”

“Then go sleep in my room for a while.” She no longer felt like asking about anything else.

Bian Yang lifted his eyelids slightly. “Wouldn’t that be inappropriate? After all, it’s your bedroom.”

And he would be sleeping in her bed, too.

“...Aren’t you sleepy?”

Tang Yu dragged him into the room.

With a smile curling his lips, Bian Yang allowed her to lead him inside at an unhurried pace.

The room was small. There was a single bed, and a desk stood by the window, covered with books and stacks of exam papers.

Tang Yu pressed Bian Yang down onto the bed and opened the fan.

“There’s no air conditioning here, so it might be a little hot.”

Bian Yang lay on her pink bedding, the girl’s soft, sweet fragrance filling his senses. The feeling was indescribably strange.

A cool sensation seeped into his heart. How could he possibly feel hot?

Tang Yu opened the window, allowing the breeze to flow inside.

By the time she turned around, his head was resting on his arm, his eyes already closed. He seemed to have fallen asleep.

The fan turned gently, making a faint humming sound.

Tang Yu lightened her steps and found a bottle of medicated oil. She warmed it between her palms, then pressed it against his bruise and began rubbing it gently.

The shadows of Bian Yang’s lashes fell across his face. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept well for several days.

He slept deeply and did not wake even once while she applied the oil.

Tang Yu propped her arm on the bed and rested her chin on her hand, simply watching him sleep.

Then she couldn’t resist reaching out. With her fingertip hovering just above his skin, she slowly traced the handsome contours of the young man’s features.

His lashes were long, his nose straight and prominent, and his lips a pale shade of pink. When he wasn’t smiling, he possessed an air of noble, aloof refinement.

But when he smiled, only Tang Yu knew how irresistibly beautiful he could be.

Realizing that she was smiling, she quickly withdrew her finger and patted her own face, which was trying so hard not to grin.

Tang Yu, you see him every day. How can you still act like a lovestruck fool around him?

What a hopeless girl!

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And yet she couldn’t help propping up her chin again, her brows and eyes curved as she gazed at him. With her other hand, she waved a palm fan back and forth, gently fanning him so he wouldn’t get too hot.

It was only when the phone in her pocket began to vibrate that Tang Yu tiptoed out of the room, afraid of waking him, and quietly closed the door behind her.

As though she had locked him inside her own small world.

—

These past few days, the internet had been in an uproar.

The home addresses of Meng Shirui, Liu Yaojie, and Fan Yuebin had all been exposed.

Many outraged people carried buckets of paint to their homes and splashed the gates red.

They wrote words such as “Retribution” and “Justice may be delayed, but it will never be absent” in huge letters.

People online spontaneously sent funeral wreaths and paper offerings to all three addresses.

The Meng family’s villa had already been transformed beyond recognition. The entire family trembled inside, afraid to go out.

The housekeepers and cooks all resigned.

Meng Shirui’s father had assumed that the matter would gradually fade with time. He never imagined that it would ignite public fury.

The entire internet was demanding that Meng Shirui be held criminally responsible. The situation had reached the point of becoming uncontrollable.

The company’s partners openly or discreetly proposed ending their cooperation. When Meng’s father went out to negotiate, his car was blocked right outside the house.

Some elderly men and women who seemed to have appeared from nowhere threw eggs at his car, forcing him to retreat back into the villa.

Meng’s mother could no longer go out for her usual beauty treatments or social gatherings. Faced with Meng Shirui’s indulgence and pampering, she couldn’t help voicing some resentment now.

When Meng Shirui called Zhou Xunwen, she discovered that her phone number had been blocked.

Not only that, but the entire Meng family had been blocked by the Zhou family.

The Zhou family’s meaning was clear: the two families were never to associate again.

Meng’s father smashed several water glasses in fury, cursing that all their friendship of more than a decade meant nothing in the face of profit.

The Zhou family was afraid that its supermarket would be implicated, so it had cut ties with the Mengs early on.

Some people felt that such behavior was too extreme.

Others believed that Meng Shirui and the others had brought it upon themselves.

After all, when they had bullied and beaten their classmates, they had never shown the slightest mercy.

The internet erupted into a furious war of words, and the situation grew increasingly uncontrollable.

The police called on the public to remain rational and not engage in extreme behavior.

As for Meng Shirui, she was nearly driven mad over the next few days.

In addition to the abuse online, the police came to question her repeatedly—not only because of Tang Yu’s recording, but also because of accusations from other informants.

There had been so many incidents. How could she remember every single one clearly?

Whenever she lost control and shouted that she had forgotten, the police would regard her coldly.

“Do you understand that the acts of violence you’ve forgotten may leave your victims with lifelong psychological trauma? You can’t simply dismiss everything with one sentence saying you’ve forgotten.”

The case had drawn enormous public attention, and even the county magistrate was following its progress.

The officers responsible for the investigation had all been transferred from the city.

Meng’s father could no longer pull strings. At a time like this, no one dared interfere with the case.

So Meng Shirui could only obediently cooperate with the investigation.

However, half a month later, the situation changed.

News spread that Meng Shirui had attempted suicide after being cyberbullied.

A video appeared online showing her being carried into an ambulance, her wrist cut and her face pale.

For a time, public opinion across the internet inexplicably reversed itself.

People claimed that Tang Yu had led the cyberbullying against Meng Shirui and driven her to suicide.

Although some members of the public remained clear-headed, several accounts that had appeared out of nowhere began accusing Tang Yu. By inciting extreme emotions, stirring up conflict, and attacking her by comparison, they successfully directed part of the public’s anger toward Tang Yu.

The original victim suddenly became the target of attack.

When Wang Qing saw the shift in public opinion, she was furious and immediately told Tang Yu about it.

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Tang Yu clicked on the social-media accounts of those people. They were all minor accounts with no trace of any real life behind them.

She remembered what Xu Xinyan had told her. The Meng family had been entrenched in Cool City for many years; they naturally possessed a few methods of their own.

But Tang Yu didn’t believe that someone like Meng Shirui would really commit suicide. Those minor accounts were probably the work of the Meng family as well.

She took screenshots of all of them, informed her grandparents, and went to the county police station to file a report.

As long as the police followed the trail of those accounts, they would surely uncover something.

Who could have known that public opinion online would reverse itself again while she was on her way there?

The police received a report from someone who submitted detailed evidence of the Meng family’s tax evasion and the use of substandard building materials.

Meng’s father had been arrested by the police.

At the same time, a hospital employee revealed that Meng Shirui’s suicide had been staged. The wound on her wrist had only broken the outermost layer of skin.

The marketing accounts that had been bribed stepped forward and admitted that they had taken money to manipulate public opinion.

The internet exploded.

No one had expected that, even under such circumstances, Meng Shirui and the Meng family would remain utterly unrepentant and stage a suicide drama to win sympathy.

The netizens who had been deceived earlier realized that they had been used as pawns. They became even more furious, and the Meng family’s scheme successfully sent them trending once again.

Tang Yu sat on the bus, utterly bewildered.

She hadn’t even reached the police station yet...

How had those marketing accounts stirring up public opinion suddenly turned against the Meng family within the span of an hour?

While she was still dazed, someone far away in the Imperial Capital was watching the trending topics with smug satisfaction.

“How many lives does this Meng family have? They actually dared bully my future daughter-in-law!”

He had only recently started using the social-media platform. He never expected that the first thing he would see after opening it would be news that his future daughter-in-law had been bullied at school and then harassed online.

He was so furious that his heart, liver, spleen, and stomach all ached.

He immediately mobilized every connection he had to investigate the Meng family.

How many companies—especially small companies in county towns—were truly clean?

With only a little digging, they found the hidden wrongdoing.

Bian Cheng handed all the evidence to the police. It would be more than enough to send Meng’s father to prison for decades.

“Xiaozhou, you handled this too? Your efficiency is impressive.”

Assistant Xiaozhou lowered his head to look at the place the president was pointing toward.

“President Bian, the news exposed by the hospital nurse—that Meng Shirui’s suicide was fake—wasn’t my doing. I hadn’t even had time to contact the hospital...”

“Not you?” Bian Cheng leaned back, stroking his chin. After a moment, he gave a soft snort. “Then it must have been that brat.”

The assistant smiled. “It seems you and the young master divided the work clearly and happened to think of the same thing.”

Bian Cheng made no comment.

The phone on the desk began to ring. The assistant picked it up and handed it to him. “It’s the young master.”

Bian Cheng glanced at the caller ID, took the phone, and swiped to answer, still putting on an authoritative front.

“What are you calling me for, you brat?”

There was a brief silence on the other end. Then a voice answered without the slightest change in tone.

“Thanks.”

Just two short words—perfunctory and infuriating.

Then the call ended.

When Bian Cheng heard the repeated beeps, his eyes widened in disbelief. He was so angry that his hair seemed to stand on end.

“That brat!”

He had said two words and actually hung up!

The assistant smiled helplessly. “...At least the young master appreciated what you did.”

Bian Cheng snorted, unwilling to admit it.

“Who cares whether he appreciates it? I simply admire that girl! I was merely upholding justice!”

The assistant fell silent.

The two of them really were determined to keep pretending they didn’t care.