What excuse would Xiao Yusheng try to find this time?
As if sensing his gaze, another line of text slowly appeared in the private message.
“If you’re worried about it, then you can choose the location.”
Xiao Yusheng seemed quite persistent about meeting him.
Gao Gusheng thought.
What did he want to do if they met outside? Continue having people secretly photograph him? Or was he planning to make a move on him directly? Or perhaps he intended to play the role of a caring older brother, standing up to protect him when he was despised by everyone, displaying an image of “even if I have to be enemies with the world, I’ll stand with you”?
Actually, up to this point, Xiao Yusheng hadn’t done anything excessive to him, but he just had an inexplicable resistance and disgust toward Xiao Yusheng.
Moreover, Gao Shi had previously told him to stay away from Xiao Yusheng.
What Gao Gusheng experienced in the dream was truly too despairing, so Gao Shi had never considered telling his foolish son the specific details of what happened in the dream from beginning to end.
He only told Gao Gusheng that Xiao Yusheng was no good and would threaten his life safety.
Gao Gusheng unconditionally trusted his father. Already finding Xiao Yusheng displeasing to the eye, after hearing Gao Shi’s words, he found him even more disagreeable.
Therefore, when he saw Xiao Yusheng’s private message, his first reaction wasn’t gratitude and guilt, but suspicion.
He suspected whether what he was experiencing now might be Xiao Yusheng causing trouble behind the scenes.
Gao Gusheng looked at the private message, took a screenshot, and sent it to Gao Shi.
At this moment, Gao Shi was listening to news about Li Mochen.
Since Li Mochen’s conduct was truly too egregious, and his danger level was very high, they didn’t even wait three days—the judgment results had come out today.
“Holy shit… I really didn’t expect it. Li Mochen, that bastard, looked so respectable on the surface, but actually had dozens of lives on his hands. Can you believe it??”
Ran Qiu, with one leg in a cast, excitedly waved his hands, looking very agitated.
Beside him, Chang Yang’s eyes were bloodshot as he poured coffee into his mouth.
These past few days, Chang Yang had been following the Spirit Police and Criminal Investigation Brigade to verify evidence and arrest people, only returning to the team this morning.
The police investigating evidence split into three groups: one went to collect evidence about contracts within Wanxing Entertainment.
Another went to search for evidence related to gambling, drugs, and prostitution.
The last group followed Gao Shi’s line of thinking to investigate Wanxing Entertainment’s rise to fortune.
The misconduct of problematic artists within Wanxing Entertainment and the irregular contract incidents had actually been anticipated by everyone early on. When they were exposed, people weren’t particularly surprised. What truly shocked and angered everyone was what was uncovered when investigating the Li family’s rise to fortune.
Ever since Li Mochen took over the Li family, they had shot up like a rocket, rapidly growing within just over ten years to become a corporate giant that dominated the entertainment industry.
However, after carefully examining the Li family’s history of getting rich, one could smell the bloody scent behind this success story.
Anyone who directly or indirectly blocked the Li family’s interests had more or less encountered some accidents. Minor ones involved artists in their companies breaking contracts and fleeing, while major ones involved company executives meeting with incidents—some died on the spot, others became vegetables.
In any case, they never regained their former glory.
Since the number of companies that met with accidents wasn’t very large—about seven or eight—it stayed within a boundary that made people sigh with regret without overthinking it. Plus, the reasons these companies encountered problems were bizarre and varied, and Li Mochen always had alibis each time, so no one would connect it to Li Mochen, allowing him to hide until now.
Relationships in the entertainment industry were complex and intertwined. A company might have more than one rival and opponent, and you couldn’t be sure that enemies would always be enemies or friends would always be friends—this was Li Mochen’s best camouflage.
Moreover, Li Mochen wouldn’t use overly simple and crude methods when making his moves. Sometimes when a certain company blocked his path, he wouldn’t directly deal with that company, but would instead handle companies that had direct or indirect connections with it. Finally, add the fact that the actual perpetrator was the evil god, who used non-yang realm methods—this made it even harder to catch Li Mochen.
If they hadn’t caught Li Mochen now and followed the thread of the Li family’s rise to fortune, Li Mochen would probably have continued to escape justice.
Chang Yang dripped some eye drops into his eyes, blinked his dry eyes forcefully, then pushed the files forward.
“Too tragic. Li Mochen simply isn’t human.”
“This Zhao family was quite renowned in the entertainment industry before, but when Chairman Zhao was out with his wife and daughter, they had a car accident.”
“His wife died on the spot protecting their daughter, her head was smashed to pieces… sigh.”
“And him? He became a cripple too, completely paralyzed from the waist down.”
“The Zhao family’s little girl was pretty. Several young masters in the industry had wanted to make moves on her before, but because of the Zhao family’s status, no one really dared to touch her. Now that the Zhao family had fallen, those wastrels actually came to the door and told the Zhao family’s little girl that they could keep her and let her earn medical fees for her father—that little girl was only sixteen!”
Chang Yang didn’t say anything else, but everyone present could imagine how angry and humiliated the Zhao father and daughter must have felt at that time.
A generation’s precious young lady would one day have such unreasonable demands made of her by several wastrels who had once been beneath her.
“After Chairman Zhao’s accident, there was no one to take charge of the Zhao family company. Somehow, spies from other companies had infiltrated the Zhao family. If Chairman Zhao hadn’t been alert, the Zhao family would have been quietly hollowed out.”
“Chairman Zhao had courage and decisively cut off an arm, selling off the Zhao family’s assets. Unfortunately, he didn’t have control, and the other party severely undercut the price. To prevent his daughter from being harassed by those wastrel young masters, Chairman Zhao moved to another city with his daughter—guess what? That spy from the other company, after investigating and investigating, was finally traced back to Li Mochen!”
“That day’s accident was never found to have any problems in the end. Even Chairman Zhao himself felt that he had gotten drowsy while driving, his whole person became dazed, so the car crashed!”
“After this incident, Chairman Zhao developed severe PTSD. He couldn’t even look at cars outside the window—one glance would make his whole body tremble. Later, when he gradually got better, he would spend all day regretting and blaming himself for why he had gotten drowsy that day.”
“Up to this point, no problems were found. Whether looking at the dashcam footage or roadside cameras, everything showed it was Chairman Zhao’s own fault.”
“But Chairman Zhao wasn’t driving while fatigued at all that day. They left in the morning and the accident happened in the morning. The night before, Chairman Zhao hadn’t stayed up late but had gone to sleep early to maintain his energy. How could he suddenly get drowsy?”
“Later, the technical department forced it out of the evil god through interrogation. The evil god said that day he cast a small spell on Chairman Zhao, making him drowsy for just that one moment—just that one moment changed the lives of the Zhao family of three forever.”
When Chang Yang finished speaking, no one else in the entire department said another word.
This was the reason why the Yin realm and Yang realm absolutely could not interfere with each other.
Ordinary people had no power to fight back against supernatural spirits and demons—they were like lambs awaiting slaughter.
That Zhao family CEO had felt guilty about this incident for a full eight years, wasting away from a middle-aged man with a beer belly to skin and bones.
Although he had made some money from selling Zhao Corporation back then, his injuries were too severe. Whether for treatment, recovery, or medication, it was all a huge expense that they could hardly afford now.
He would get out of breath from even slightly larger movements now. Their daughter was still of school age, and the family had no source of income—they were completely living off their savings.
The entire family’s expenses depended on that money from selling the company.
Fortunately, the Zhao family’s daughter was smart and strong. She not only worked part-time during her spare time but also managed to maintain her grades, successfully getting into a good university.
The working daughter always appeared sunny and lively in front of him, coming home happily and cheerfully, crouching in front of him to say how much money she had earned that day. Her eyes would always be bright when she spoke, telling her father: “Dad, don’t worry, I can support you now.”
Anyone would say this daughter was admirable.
But Chairman Zhao only felt heartbroken.
His daughter, who had been treasured like the apple of his eye since childhood, never allowed to suffer even a little—he had thought that with him there, he would always protect his wife and daughter well.
Who would have thought that in the blink of an eye, he had become a cripple.
He often thought it would be better if he just died, went underground to accompany his deceased wife, and save a large sum of money for his daughter.
But his daughter was still so young. She had grown up being cherished and treasured, so obedient, so kind—what if she was deceived by someone?
So he gritted his teeth and persevered, holding on until his daughter graduated from university. He felt he could die then.
But perhaps due to the father-daughter bond, when he harbored thoughts of death, his daughter suddenly became very uneasy.
She would often wake up in the middle of the night, then feel her way to his room to check if he was still there. Sometimes she would anxiously ask her father over and over again—”Dad, you’ll always stay with me, right?”
She would thrust her bankbook in front of her father and say very seriously, “Dad, look, I can make money now. We have money. I can support you now.”
Her gaze was so panicked and uneasy.
What she said was that they didn’t need to worry about money anymore, that her father didn’t need to worry about his legs being a burden. But in her heart, she was crying and pleading like a child, begging her father not to leave her alone in this world.
The little girl was really too tired. She was fearful, uneasy, and exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes as she knelt by her father’s bed and fell asleep just like that.
When Chairman Zhao woke up, his rough large hand gently stroked his daughter’s hair, tears flowing silently down his face.
He had to live.
Even if it meant living on in this world like a wretched existence.
If he died, that breath of air that had been supporting his daughter all along would dissipate.
Who knows—if Chairman Zhao knew that the entire incident was because Li Mochen had the evil god cast a spell back then, would he hate enough to smash Li Mochen’s bones piece by piece?
—Even more terrifying was that the Zhao family’s incident wasn’t an isolated case.
Over these years, Li Mochen had the evil god secretly handle seven or eight companies alone, with over ten lives on his hands, and over thirty others who were severely injured, unconscious, or became vegetables.
No wonder Li Mochen wanted to run when they came to arrest him.
Being caught meant certain death for him.
No wonder the light around Li Mochen was dark gold mixed with threads of blood.
That dark golden light was the evil god’s spiritual power, while the threads of blood were his murderous karma.
Zhuang Pixiu pressed further, “What about the end? How did it turn out in the end? Li Mochen… when does he die?”
The usually gentle and shy girl asked through tears, as if wanting to curse him with the most vicious words, but unfortunately she couldn’t think of what kind of vicious curse could match the sins on Li Mochen’s body.
Finally, she could only ask again, “When does Li Mochen die?”
Chang Yang took a deep breath, “Sister Zhuang, don’t worry, he will die, but not now.”
“Li Mochen was sent to the research department.”
“Because the evil god isn’t really an evil god, but just a ghost that has lived for a very, very long time.”
Zhuang Pixiu was stunned, “What?”
“Ghosts and demons that don’t absorb the yang energy of living people have only appeared in recent months. The evil god has been by Li Mochen’s side for almost ten years. If the evil god were really a ghost or demon, Li Mochen should have been drained dry long ago.”
Ran Qiu nodded, “That’s right, so this is what the research department needs to study.”
Ran Qiu casually grabbed a mint candy from Chang Yang’s desk to refresh himself. The mint made his whole body shiver from the spiciness as he picked up the conversation, “I thought this evil god was something amazing, turns out it’s just a ghost that’s existed in the world for a very, very long time. And it calls itself an evil god—it probably wouldn’t even be worthy of washing the feet of a real evil god.”
After the evil god’s deeds for Li Mochen were exposed, it readily confessed to its own affairs as well. Whether it had given up completely or was truly afraid of the research department’s methods was unclear.
This evil god was an old ghost that had survived for over a thousand years.
A thousand years ago, spiritual energy had already begun to weaken, so this old ghost didn’t have much cultivation either, but it managed to survive that era’s disasters.
Sensing the danger of having its soul scattered, it fled desperately into the forest, thinking the forest would have more spiritual energy and allow it to struggle on a bit longer. By chance, it stumbled into a jade mine with very abundant spiritual energy.
It fell into slumber in this jade mine, and when it awakened, it found that the jade stone it had inhabited had been carved into a jade pendant and sold, coincidentally falling into Li Mochen’s hands.
During those thousand years, it had absorbed the spiritual power of the entire jade mine, leaving only that small piece of jade, so its spiritual nature hadn’t been worn away into becoming a ghost that only knew how to absorb spiritual yang energy.
When it discovered that there were no longer any powerful figures with great magical abilities in this world, while its own magical methods were completely beyond what mortals could handle, its heart began to swell with unprecedented arrogance.
It claimed to Li Mochen that it was an evil god and had Li Mochen help it recover its spiritual power.
Unfortunately, Li Mochen was no pushover either. This evil god had only been a flower thief before death, and after sleeping for a thousand years, it didn’t understand modern things.
But Li Mochen had received elite education since childhood and was the Li family head with a belly full of schemes. Li Mochen feared that the evil god’s power would grow too quickly and become disadvantageous to him, so he deliberately suppressed the degree to which the evil god could recover its strength.
In the later stages of the dream, Li Mochen even completely devoured the evil god, turning it into his own power.
Simply put, this evil god was Li Mochen’s experience pack, delivering newbie benefits to Li Mochen.
Since the crimes of both the evil god and Li Mochen had been completely clarified, they were immediately tried.
Because their behavior was truly too egregious, even the death penalty couldn’t make them atone for their crimes, so they were simply sentenced to the research department.
The technical department and research department were two groups of lunatics that even the fearless Yin Ling generally wouldn’t provoke.
If the technical department members were a group of tech otakus who often came up with dangerous and chuunibyou ideas and had the ability to turn these ideas into reality, then the research department was a group of mad scientists.
The research department’s main research projects were spiritual power, spiritual energy, and ghost-related matters, but experimental materials were extremely scarce, so they had all become miserly like Grandet, plucking feathers from passing geese.
They had plucked Fei Yu’s feathers, touched Yin Ling’s horns, tricked Xuan Yu out of his talismans, and even tried to take Gui Yan’s hands for research, scaring Gui Yan into opening three void tunnels to escape.
It sounds terrifying, but actually in the research department, unless experimental accidents occurred, inhumane things wouldn’t happen. After all, experimental equipment was precious—they were too busy protecting it to overconsume it.
But when this group of scientific madmen entered research mode, they saw no people in their eyes, only research materials.
One could imagine how the always high and mighty, self-centered Li Mochen would have his self-esteem and spirit tortured by such treatment when regarded as experimental material.
After completing his experimental service period, he would be executed, just like disposing of frogs after experiments.
The wheel of karma turns—Li Mochen, whose desire for control was terrifyingly strong, would be tightly controlled in this research institute, unable to escape to heaven or earth.
And the people in the research institute would look at him no differently than they looked at sliced pork, unconscious ghosts, or formed resentments.
His arrogance, his self-respect, his backbone would suffer unbearable painful torment through experiment after experiment, day after day of emptiness, in long and meaningless time, in cages he could never break free from. Just like Chairman Zhao who could only sit in a wheelchair and watch the world through windows; just like Chairman Qian who had become a vegetable; just like Mrs. Qian who numbly watched over Chairman Qian while washing her face with tears daily; just like all those people he had harmed—just like Gao Gusheng in the dream.
In the dream, he had broken the bird’s wings, turning the beautiful bird into his exclusive canary.
In reality, he became that canary.
As for the evil god, this ghost that had survived for over a thousand years was sent to the technical department after being thoroughly researched by the research department.
The technical department would use the evil god as a standard to create more weapons, though obviously, for the evil god, the technical department was even more terrifying than the research department.
The technical department head patted his chest and guaranteed to Yin Ling that they would try to keep the evil god alive a bit longer, at least for a month, since there were still many weapons that hadn’t been created yet. Yin Ling was skeptical about this.
He felt that given these tech otakus’ craziness, the evil god might not last half a month in their hands before its soul scattered.
But scattered soul or not—this was the punishment the evil god deserved. Being sent to the technical department was just making use of waste.
Besides this, during the investigation of the Li family’s development process, they also uncovered something interesting.
The Li family rose to fortune during Grandfather Li’s generation, maintained it during Father Li’s generation, and reached its peak during Li Mochen’s generation.
However, Grandfather Li’s hands weren’t actually clean either.
When the Li family suddenly rose under Grandfather Li, everyone thought he had built it from nothing, but actually no one knew that Grandfather Li had received word early on that the country was going to crack down hard, so he decisively began to go legitimate1Grandfather Li was previously involved in some form of criminal activity (the text mentions his hands “weren’t actually clean”), but when he learned that authorities were going to intensify their efforts to crack down on such activities, he proactively changed his business model to operate within the law. This allowed him to avoid getting caught in the crackdown while preserving his wealth and status..
He was old enough, had made enough money, and now just wanted to enjoy family happiness—he had no interest in more fighting and killing.
By doing this, he inadvertently managed to extricate the Li family from that era’s crackdown.
And Father Li, who was rumored by outsiders to only be capable of maintaining the status quo, wasn’t as incompetent as the legends claimed.
During his tenure as Li family head, he had been using Wanxing Entertainment as cover to frantically launder money, gradually whitewashing the Li family bit by bit.
Finally, what was passed down to Li Mochen was a clean Li family.
But who could have imagined that three generations of effort would ultimately be destroyed in Li Mochen’s hands?
Li Mochen had murderous brutality in his very bones, with more blood on his hands than his father.
In the end, the blood of these innocent people also sent the entire Li family back to prison.
Previously, some people online had said that even if Li Mochen did such things, the Li family was still like a skinny camel bigger than a horse—it wouldn’t affect his family’s wealth and status at all.
Now it was over—the Li family had completely fallen, and the entire Li family could experience lifetime prison residency rights together.
All Li family assets were confiscated, and a portion of this wealth would be allocated as compensation for those victims from back then.
The Li family no longer existed.
Li Mochen’s traces in this world were being wiped clean bit by bit.
Who knows what expression Li Mochen would have when he learned this news in the research department?
…
Just as everyone in the department had adjusted their mindset and prepared to return to work mode, Gao Shi received a message from Gao Gusheng.
“Dad, he’s asking me out again.”
Gao Shi keenly sensed something was wrong.
Looking at Xiao Yusheng’s tone in the screenshot, had something else happened?
Following his intuition, he opened Weibo and Gao Gusheng’s college forum. In the less than an hour that he hadn’t been paying attention to Weibo, so many things had actually happened.
Gao Shi watched with rising anger. He took several deep breaths but couldn’t suppress his fury, so he simply grabbed a strong mint candy from Chang Yang’s side and, under Chang Yang’s admiring gaze, put it in his mouth.
He temporarily ignored the Weibo situation and focused his attention on Gao Gusheng’s college forum—ultimately, the attacks on Gao Gusheng on Weibo were still focused on riding on popularity, which was easy to clarify.
But on Gao Gusheng’s college forum, they were attacking him based on his character.
The malice directed at Gao Gusheng was almost undisguised.
College was where Gao Gusheng would spend the next few years. Starting from his most familiar environment, making the people around him reject and despise him.
Then appearing before him in the guise of a savior.
This method seemed somewhat familiar.
Gao Shi thought of someone.
Wen Liang.
In the dream, Wen Liang had been the one suppressing Gao Gusheng in various ways. He used himself as bait to drive a wedge between Gao Gusheng and his classmates; made his grades plummet, cutting off his connections with teachers; left him isolated and helpless at school, ultimately only able to depend on himself.
At this moment, Ran Qiu poked his head out from behind his computer, “Boss, what’s wrong? Did something happen to Lele?”
Gao Shi acknowledged, “Mm, there are people maliciously spreading rumors online and on forums.”
Ran Qiu patted his chest, “Boss, give me the web address.”
Due to Gao Gusheng’s special nature, any matters concerning him had clearance from the Anomaly Management Bureau.
Gao Shi found a screenshot that was being spread everywhere and sent it to Ran Qiu, along with the college’s internal website address.
Ran Qiu frowned as soon as he saw the screenshot.
“Boss, this is hard to investigate. This forum is anonymous—changing your name on the forum is equivalent to becoming a different person. If that previous thread was still there, it would be convenient to investigate, but now that thread has been deleted, and I don’t know if it’s due to the forum’s system or if there’s an expert behind it, but that thread was deleted too cleanly—the data is almost impossible to find.”
The screen in front of him turned blue, with white numbers flowing across the screen like a galaxy streaming through the night.
“Boss, I’ll try my best.”
Gao Shi had a sudden thought, “Qiu, can you find the IP address of the administrator who deleted the post?”
Ran Qiu made an OK gesture, “That’s easy.”
However, after saying this, Ran Qiu didn’t immediately respond. He frowned, then slowly relaxed.
“Didn’t expect there to be several firewalls, but they’re no match for me.”
“Found it. The IP address is in room 303 of dormitory building 6 at Jing University.”
“Wen Liang” lived in room 303.
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152