Chapter 31: The Schemed School Beauty (1)

The balding man flew into a rage, cursing furiously. “You stinking bitch! What kind of crazy nonsense are you spouting, barging in here like this?”

He lurched to his feet, rearing back to slap Bai Qian across the face. But his fat, greasy hand froze mid-air as the woman calmly seized his arm and shoved it down hard against his back.

“Ah! That fucking hurts, you lunatic! Let me go right now!”

The commotion drew the waitress over in a panic. She had just opened her mouth—”Sir—”—when the exquisitely beautiful woman shoved the man back into his seat with crisp efficiency. Her left hand pinned him in place while her right snatched up the spoon beside his coffee cup. With a cold expression, she poised it to plunge into one of his vital spots.

“Shut your mouth, or I won’t mind giving you a little welcome gift.”

The balding man’s face drained of color. He went rigid, not daring to make another sound.

Bai Qian tossed the spoon aside and turned to the waitress—a young girl who stood speechless with shock. She offered her a faint smile.

Bai Qian’s presence evoked the image of a proud snow lotus blooming in isolation atop a frigid peak. Yet when her lips curved in that gentle smile, she exuded a warmth that drew people in.

“Sorry about that,” she said. She pulled a napkin from the dispenser and meticulously wiped each slender, well-defined finger. “Could I trouble you for a glass of plain water? My hand got dirty.”

The man, slumped limply in his chair, caught the implication in her words. His piggish face flushed alternately green and white, a hideous sight.

Bai Qian turned back to Li Lanzhao, who was equally stunned. Resuming her initial air of aloof detachment, she laid out her offer. “I’ll pay double what he’s offering, Ms. Li Lanzhao. With that, can you hand Siwan over to me?”

Li Lanzhao’s eyes lit up at the mention of money. “You’re… you’re serious? You can really give me two hundred thousand?”

Bai Qian pulled out her phone and opened her WeChat balance right in front of her. The figure was exactly two followed by five zeros.

“If you agree, I can transfer it to you right now.”

The woman’s eyes glazed over with greed. She nodded frantically and fumbled for her own phone to add Bai Qian on WeChat. “Of course—”

“Li Lanzhao, have you forgotten how you begged me to buy your daughter? You greedy, money-grubbing whore!”

The balding man roared in fury.

Li Lanzhao’s face stiffened for a moment, but before she could respond, the woman at the table beat her to it.

“Zhao Yinghao, the live-in son-in-law of Tong Corporation’s second miss, right?”

The man blinked in surprise. “How the hell do you know that?”

Bai Qian didn’t answer. Instead, she pressed on. “I wonder what Miss Tong would do if she found out about all the affairs you’ve been having behind her back. Think she’d kick you out of the house?”

The balding man refused to believe she had anything on him. He blustered on, his bravado masking his fear. “Don’t think you can scare me with a few empty words. Who the hell are you? Just wait until I—”

The rest of his tirade died in his throat as the woman leisurely opened her photo album and began scrolling through a series of uncensored, incriminating pictures.

Bai Qian pocketed her phone, her expression impassive. “Get out of here right now. If you ever come near Fu Siwan again, these photos might accidentally end up in Miss Tong’s inbox… anonymously, of course.”

The man fled in disgrace, every bit as pathetic and humiliated in his retreat as he had been arrogant upon arrival.

With the nuisance gone, Bai Qian quickly struck a deal for the evening with the female protagonist’s money-obsessed mother.

As Li Lanzhao pocketed the cash and prepared to leave, the woman called out to her. “Has she already been told about the arrangement you made with Zhao Yinghao?”

In front of her generous benefactor, the woman’s attitude was all servile compliance. She spilled everything, appropriate or not. “Of course Siwan knows. The ten thousand from Boss Zhao? She was the one who told me to hold out for that price. Oh, and Miss Bai, could you please not mention that you paid two hundred thousand? If she finds out about the extra ten thousand, she’ll demand half of it. She doesn’t even think about who found the guy for her in the first place, but there she was, opening her mouth like a lion for half the cut.”

The woman prattled on as she shuffled away, leaving Bai Qian alone. She stood there for a moment before taking a seat at another table and summoning the waitress for a cup of coffee.

Bai Qian removed her glasses and rubbed her temples, a headache brewing.

This world’s guardian mission seemed far more challenging than she had anticipated.

In the original plot, on the night of her eighteenth birthday, the female protagonist’s biological mother sold her first time to Zhao Yinghao for ten thousand yuan.

That marked the beginning of the protagonist’s downward spiral, her loss of self-respect.

After her birthday, Zhao Yinghao officially took the girl as his mistress. Their illicit relationship dragged on until her sophomore year in college, when she crossed paths with the pretty-boy vampire male lead.

The female protagonist had been completely fooled by the scumbag’s hypocritical white lotus facade. She handed over every penny she’d scraped together over the years by selling her body.

Later, when her relationship with the scumbag came to light, Zhao Yinghao locked her up and subjected her to three days and nights of brutal rape, only releasing her when she was covered in wounds.

Some of those scars were permanent; the girl couldn’t hide them no matter how hard she tried. One day, the male lead caught sight of them by accident.

When he pressed her for answers and learned the truth, he held the sobbing girl close, his heart aching with pity as he assured her he didn’t mind. Through gritted teeth, he swore he would never let anyone hurt her again.

The naive female protagonist believed every word. Their sweet days lasted less than a fortnight before the scumbag showed his true colors.

He started subjecting her to cold violence. After their arguments, he would lash out in disgust, berating her for her lack of self-respect—willingly letting some filthy, repulsive old man have his way with her. In the end, he even staged an elaborate act with his friends, faking a kidnapping.

It was a plot riddled with holes, but her desperation to save him blinded her to the flaws. The final scene of the original plot showed the girl dragged before the youth by the “kidnappers,” forced to endure gang rape right in front of her beloved.

Unaware that she was pregnant, she and her unborn child met a tragic end in that decrepit warehouse under the inhuman torment.

As for the scumbag, who had worn a mask of agony while “watching” his girlfriend suffer at the hands of several men—he took a fat stack of “prostitution money” from the actors he’d hired, without a shred of guilt.

The original plot made no mention of the underhanded “deal” between the female protagonist and Li Lanzhao, so Bai Qian had assumed it was all down to Li Lanzhao’s greed that the girl got tangled up with Zhao Yinghao.

But judging from Li Lanzhao’s response just now, the female protagonist’s entire worldview had been warped by years of the woman’s insidious, misguided influence.

Clearly, before steering the girl toward an academic career path, Bai Qian would have to straighten out her twisted values first.

Fu Siwan was eighteen this year.

The original host was precisely twenty-eight—a mere ten-year gap. It shouldn’t be too much to ask her to call Bai Qian “big sister,” right?

Bai Qian drained the last of her coffee and glanced at her phone screen. It was 5:23.

The hotel Li Lanzhao had booked was no more than a five-minute walk from here.

The thought drew a cold laugh from Bai Qian. As far as she could tell, Li Lanzhao had only ever brainwashed the girl ideologically—no other abuse. That made her easy to handle with money.

Bai Qian stepped out of the coffee shop and approached a sleek, understated luxury car parked at the curb. Before she even reached it, the young man in the driver’s seat lowered the window. “President Bai, heading home now?”

“No need. Take the car back for me. Oh, and have someone clean that Orchid Plum Pavilion place tonight. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be staying there.”

Her personal assistant and driver, Xie Chao, blurted out the question on instinct. “Orchid Plum Pavilion’s a hike from the office. You’ve always lived at Superior Fragrance Garden—why the sudden change?”

Bai Qian smiled. “I’ve got a little rabbit who might bite to look after. It’ll be more convenient for her if I move there.”

Nestled in the heart of the city, Orchid Plum Pavilion boasted top-notch transit links. As a school district property, nothing in A City could touch it.

A ten-minute walk to the east led to the city’s finest private high school.

And the nation’s elite universities were just two kilometers away.

Bai Qian already had her next moves mapped out.

—Switching houses came first.

Xie Chao had been at her side ever since graduation, assigned by her father as her personal secretary. His boss was a total workaholic—nothing mattered to her except the job.

So when she suddenly announced plans to keep someone, Xie Chao marveled that she was finally discovering the simple joys of life. At the same time, he couldn’t help but grow intensely curious about this “biting little white rabbit.”

Bai Qian caught the spark of gossip in his eyes and didn’t keep it entirely from him. “If the chance comes up, I’ll introduce you.”

Xie Chao nodded vigorously. “Don’t worry about it—my girlfriend’s out of town on business anyway. Home’s boring without her. I’ll head over to Orchid Plum Pavilion right now and fix up a new home for you myself.”

Bai Qian frowned at the words “new home.” Had the guy gotten the wrong idea?

He didn’t give her time to set him straight. With a quick snap of his seatbelt, he tossed out, “I’ll get going then, President Bai,” and sped off.

Bai Qian let the slip slide and took a couple of steps forward before pulling out her phone to send the young man a voice message.

Zhao Yinghao might not have laid a hand on the female protagonist in reality yet, but before this, he had already ruined plenty of naive girls—the youngest not even of age.

Scum like that, along with all the information she had gathered, could be handed straight over to the police.

After giving instructions on how to deal with Zhao Yinghao, Bai Qian headed to the hotel Li Lanzhao had booked.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to take the girl back home tonight. The school where Fu Siwan was studying didn’t allow students to carry phones, and there weren’t even any public telephones on campus.

If parents or students needed to get in touch, they had to go through the homeroom teacher.

Li Lanzhao had messaged Fu Siwan at noon, and asking her to make a special call just to change plans would be too much hassle. They would simply make do at the hotel for the night.

The moment Bai Qian stepped into the room, she was stunned by the array of blatantly erotic toys scattered around.

Without daring a second glance, she slammed the door shut and hurried downstairs to demand a double room from the front desk.

Bai Qian didn’t go back up. The female protagonist had no idea about the room change yet, and with the time about right, she simply waited in the lobby.

Before long, a stunning girl in a matching school uniform walked in from outside.

The young woman wore no makeup at all, yet her features were so exquisitely refined that she seemed almost like a fairy descended from heaven.

The sliver of wrist peeking out from her autumn uniform was as pale and tender as fresh snow, her skin flawlessly smooth, as if she soaked in milk baths every day.

It was a pity her listless, world-weary expression lent her pristine aura a touch of gloomy standoffishness that made her hard to approach.

As the girl moved to brush past her with a blank face, Bai Qian called out, “Fu Siwan.”

The girl stopped in her tracks, her gaze flickering briefly at the sight of the woman before settling back into cool indifference. “And you are?”

“Zhao Yinghao’s the one who told you to come, right? We’ve switched rooms—419. Follow me.”

Bai Qian had only meant to find a quieter, more private spot to get acquainted with the female protagonist. But the moment she spoke, something in the girl’s eyes shifted from admiration to scorn. Without a word, she silently trailed the woman upstairs.

This room was worlds apart from that risqué love hotel suite—utterly normal, in every way.

Bai Qian closed the door behind them, her expression softening as she pondered the best way to start a conversation with the young girl.

Fu Siwan scanned the room, confirming no one else was there. She turned, fixing her gaze on the striking woman by the door, whose face betrayed a hint of inner conflict, and curved her lips in a smirk.

Those almond-shaped eyes, which ought to have sparkled with innocent charm, now brimmed with malice. “You look a fair bit older than me. You’re not seriously going to make me call you ‘sister,’ are you, Auntie?”