Chapter 141: Taking the High Ground Part 4

After Bai Ran left, Xu Yinian finally gave up the rented apartment that had once felt like home. Before leaving, she finished the dumplings Bai Ran had left in the freezer, feeling as though she might never be late for a meal again.

She didn’t have many belongings. She found a quiet time to secretly move everything back to the dorm, hiding her things inside Bai Ran’s empty closet. Memories and traces were vanishing rapidly, leaving only a message thread that would never receive a reply.

Xu Yinian began to secretly follow news about the Bai family and Xinyu Medical.

She actually saw news reports of Bai Ran in her role as the successor of Xinyu. The reports showed her personally visiting and subsidizing patients with infectious diseases at the family’s hospitals, working day and night to swiftly turn around the family’s scandalous reputation.

In the photos, she wore a simple white lab coat, radiating a gentle, divine aura of compassion for all living things. Yet, there was a touch of human brilliance in her expression—a look of heartbroken guilt over her perceived helplessness when facing impoverished children who couldn’t afford treatment.

Sometimes, Xu Yinian felt that her meeting and becoming friends with someone as high above as Sister Ran was like a dream. Now, things had simply returned to the way they should be. Bai Ran was a shining star in news reports she couldn’t touch, while Niannian was just one insignificant person among the many looking up at her with admiration.

But she couldn’t help herself. She would look through those public photos just to see if Bai Ran’s face was still so pale, or if her figure was still so thin.

The only good news that managed to pull Xu Yinian out of her slump was that after a week of tension, Jiang Ke finally came to find her.

“Sister! You’re spacing out again!” Jiang Ke waved a hand in front of her eyes, bringing her back to reality. “Thinking while eating will ruin your appetite. No wonder you’re so thin.”

To Xu Yinian’s relief, Jiang Ke hadn’t broken down over the situation with Shen Ruoshuang and Shen Yi. Both sisters tacitly avoided the subject. Jiang Ke had returned to her old self—the carefree, dependent younger sister who seemingly couldn’t grow up.

The time Niannian used to spend eating with Bai Ran was naturally taken over by Jiang Ke. Xu Yinian knew that, subconsciously, she was using Jiang Ke as a substitute for Sister Ran’s companionship. But compared to the people she truly needed to stay away from—like Shen Ruoshuang and Ji Yan—her cousin Ke-ke was her only solace.

Like true friendship, family was a relationship without burdens.

“By the way, Sis… do you know Qin Jiashu?” Jiang Ke asked as she tucked into her food. She sounded perfectly normal, as if she were just mentioning it in passing.

However, her chewing—so tense she had lost all sense of taste—betrayed her true state.

Jiang Ke had never imagined her sister would know Qin Jiashu! This started last night when Bai Ran suddenly asked her to investigate Qin Jiashu, saying the relationship between the two had become very strange lately.

Qin Jiashu had been shamelessly posting on her Moments, calling Niannian “baby” and sharing photos of her back or specific parts of her body. Bai Ran had only noticed it by chance and realized the subject was Xu Yinian; there was no telling how long Qin Jiashu had been doing this secretly.

Clearly, seeing her most feared rival, Bai Ran, leave the country, Qin Jiashu had completely cut loose to show off her “affection.” While the Mad Dog was terrifyingly volatile, she preferred to vent her rage in person; she disdained stabbing people in the back.

Bai Ran had almost ruined Qin Jiashu’s future once…

The moment she heard that name, Jiang Ke’s expression changed. It stemmed from a nightmare associated with a similar name:

Qin Jiayan.

Qin Jiayan was Jiang Ke’s junior at the international high school. The first time they met was when Jiayan arrived for orientation with her older sister, Qin Jiashu. Their appearances and temperaments were polar opposites. Furthermore, Qin Jiashu, who had already graduated from that high school, had a legendary reputation as a “playgirl.”

Because of her height, Qin Jiayan had been mistaken for Qin Jiashu’s new girlfriend. In response, the high schooler—who usually ignored everyone while wearing her headphones—had pinned the smooth-talking jokester against a wall and beaten them senseless.

That was how everyone found out they were sisters. Qin Jiayan was extremely taboo about her sister; anyone who dared mention her would be met with an immediate explosion of profanity.

Most people thought the sisters just had a terrible relationship. Only Jiang Ke noticed that while Jiayan indeed loathed Qin Jiashu, she hated every one of her sister’s girlfriends even more. She would even vomit upon witnessing them in close contact.

Having long known about her own deviant, “immoral” thoughts—and being constantly tortured by the sense of morality Xu Yinian instilled in her—Jiang Ke felt a sharp intuition that she had found a kindred spirit.

And they were biological sisters! It felt as though her own feelings for a cousin with no blood relation were nothing compared to Qin Jiayan’s situation.

Thus, with impure motives, she began to approach this ill-tempered, reclusive junior. Jiang Ke was a “madwoman” who hid her true self, possessing a high-and-mighty contempt for everyone; she always felt she was the one playing others.

However, that slight arrogance caused her to stumble before Qin Jiayan. She never expected that her “chance” encounters would be so easily seen through. Even worse, she never expected Qin Jiayan to stay quiet and play along for a month, just to figure out why Jiang Ke was approaching her.

When she stumbled upon Qin Jiayan vomiting once again, Jiang Ke felt a sense of superiority. Intending to feign concern for a friend, she nearly lost herself in her triumph and mentioned Qin Jiashu. “Your sister is practically insane.”

Qin Jiayan looked up from the stream of water as she rinsed her mouth. She spoke as if to herself, “It is because of Qin Jiashu.”

“But it’s not because I like her.”

“No… it’s because of me.”

…

“So, the reason you approached me was because you thought I liked Qin Jiashu.”

Terrified by those self-mutterings, Jiang Ke forced herself to stay calm. “What are you talking about? Don’t I know better than anyone how much you hate your sister?”

She would never forget the look of sickening loathing that suddenly appeared on Qin Jiayan’s face—a face that usually remained expressionless even in a rage.

It was the exact same reaction she’d had when watching her own sister being intimate with another woman.

Qin Jiayan had retreated into a stall, the sounds of her retching echoing through the space. After she emerged, she never spoke another word to Jiang Ke.

A suffocating sense of unease had enveloped Jiang Ke. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that expression—she heard that vomiting.

After a week of agonizing torment, she finally found the courage to ask her why.

“Liking your own sister… don’t you find it disgusting?”

Even now, whenever Jiang Ke recalled those words, her ears would ring with a momentary, piercing deafness.

More than once, she had felt the urge to kill Qin Jiayan. It wasn’t just because the girl knew her secret; it was because of that ruthless “disgusting”—a word that had crushed her self-esteem and ground her sense of morality into the dirt.

But Qin Jiayan was far more terrifying than she appeared. That high schooler, who seemed to live in her own little world, was capable of capturing and profiling every movement around her.