"Lin Qianyan, you don't need to compare yourself to Mu Mian. She was carefully raised by me and Xiyin. You'll never measure up to her. Don't you dare harm her," Jiang Yinian warned.
"But your Xiyin doesn't want you anymore. And the excellent Mu Mian doesn't like you either. How pitiful you are," Lin Qianyan smiled coldly at Jiang Yinian. "Cousin Yinian, we're the same kind of person. You have no right to look down on me."
"Lin Qianyan, if you still want me to take you home, shut your mouth!"
"The truth is always hard to hear. If you want me to say nice things, don't provoke me! I don't want you to take me. I want Captain Fang and Mu Mian to take me home."
Jiang Yinian gritted his teeth and said, "Lin Qianyan, don't cause trouble for me."
"Cousin Yinian, whether you like me or not, you'll have to put up with me in the future to get the Lin Family's property. You'll get used to it."
Lin Qianyan turned to the prison guard, "Hurry up and contact Fang Rui and Mu Mian to come here. They must arrive within an hour, otherwise I won't leave. I'll also sue you for illegally detaining a minor with autism."
The prison guard was dumbfounded. Was this really someone with autism?
Fang Rui received a call from the prison guard, first listening to his complaints, "Captain Fang, you're so inconsiderate, leaving this troublemaker with us. You and Mu Mian need to come pick him up quickly, or he's threatening to sue us for illegal detention."
"Didn't his family come to pick him up?"
"He says it must be you and Mu Mian, or he won't leave."
Fang Rui drove over with Mu Mian to the detention center entrance.
Lin Qianyan was already waiting there. Seeing Fang Rui park the car, he said to Jiang Yinian, "Cousin Yinian, you can go now. I have something to say to Captain Fang and Mu Mian."
"Suit yourself," Jiang Yinian glanced at Mu Mian, then looked away and drove off.
Fang Rui was shocked. He had guessed Lin Qianyan wasn't simple, but he didn't expect him to speak so fluently, unlike someone with autism.
Without waiting for their agreement, Lin Qianyan opened the car door and sat in the back seat.
Before Fang Rui could ask anything, Lin Qianyan spoke first, "Drive. Take me back to that villa from before."
"Won't you have nightmares if you go back there?" Fang Rui mocked.
"Of course not. You must be very curious why I can speak normally, right? I don't have language problems. When I was little, to make that nasty woman Jiang Yun and that beast Lin Ye talk to me, I pretended I couldn't speak. That way they would spend more time with me, teaching me to talk. As a result, the therapist assessed me as having delayed language development. They probably thought I was an idiot and stopped talking to me. Later, I just couldn't be bothered to talk to them, so I stopped speaking."
Lin Qianyan's tone was flat, but Mu Mian could still hear the sadness in it.
Mu Mian looked at Lin Qianyan with sympathy in her eyes. So Jiang Yun didn't love Yanyan that much either. Yanyan had it even worse than her; she had foster parents and a sister, her upbringing wasn't lacking in love. But Lin Qianyan only had himself; he could only pretend to be sick to get a little attention.
The former Lin Qianyan must have been very eager for love.
"I don't have autism. I just developed much slower than other children, but those useless therapists diagnosed me with autism. But it doesn't matter, I don't like the outside world anyway. So I continued to pretend to be autistic. At first, it was to get their attention, later it was because I didn't want to go out. Now I find that the identity of an autistic person is quite useful."
"Why are you telling us all this?" Fang Rui asked, puzzled.
"I want to prove that I'm more normal than Mu Mian," Lin Qianyan looked at Mu Mian, his eyes full of jealousy.
"She doesn't love me either," Mu Mian sighed.
"No, she loves you. I saw the photo. She was holding a baby, that was you. She was smiling, her eyes full of love. But she never smiled at me. She only had perfunctory love for me."
Lin Qianyan had always thought Jiang Yun was just cold by nature, but after finding this photo in her room, he completely broke down. It turned out his mother loved another child.
His father also favored his useless brother. Even though Lin Qianjie argued with his father every day and was always causing trouble outside, his father still loved him. The nanny who took care of him only treated him well for money. Even Cousin Yinian liked Mu Mian more, even though he knew Lin Qianyan was normal while Mu Mian was autistic.
No one was willing to favor him.
That huge villa was like a tomb where he was buried in loneliness, with no one caring about him.
When he learned of Mu Mian's existence from Cousin Yinian, seeds of jealousy took root in his heart. For a while, he desperately wanted to kill Mu Mian. But he soon realized that the one he should kill was that nasty woman Jiang Yun; she was the source of all misfortune.
Mu Mian comforted him, "That's just an illusion. She said I was her nightmare; she didn't want to see me. She hated me very much."
Fang Rui felt that this woman Jiang Yun was truly sinful. She had never given love to either child, deeply hurting both of them.
"She also said I was her nightmare," Lin Qianyan mumbled. "She needed a son, that's why she had me."
"You weren't actually induced by Li Min. You deliberately killed your mother, didn't you?" Mu Mian asked.
Lin Qianyan's face showed a smug smile: "Shouldn't you thank me? If I hadn't helped you preserve the evidence, you wouldn't have been able to prove Li Min's crime, right?"
Fang Rui had already guessed that Lin Qianyan deliberately hid all the fragments of the paintings under the bed, waiting for the police to find them and ultimately prove that Li Min was the mastermind, which even Li Min herself believed.
"That woman Li Min thought she was so clever. She thought I was autistic, so she tried to deceive me with those fake words. But autistic people aren't idiots; even Yuanyuan wouldn't fall for her lies. But Yuanyuan believed me. I made Yuanyuan believe that the knife was a magic wand that could save people. Yuanyuan said his orphanage mother loved him very much. I didn't have such a mother, so Yuanyuan couldn't have one either. His mother had to die."
"Yes, I deliberately killed Jiang Yun. That woman was too annoying; she appeared once a week. I hated that woman very much. I had wanted to kill her for a long time. Li Min's appearance made me feel I could kill her in a cruel way openly. Li Min thought she was manipulating me to kill, little did she know I was the one manipulating everything. Autistic children don't actively commit crimes, so there must be an adult behind it. This way, even evil children can become innocent."
Fang Rui remembered Shen Xiyin saying that Yanyan had antisocial personality disorder. Now it seemed her judgment was very accurate. Yanyan had strong aggression, extreme self-centeredness, and no empathy. Who knows what negative impact such a child would have on society when he grows up.
But he was still a minor, and the law couldn't judge him.
Lin Qianyan glanced at Fang Rui's face-down phone. He took out a device from his pocket and boasted, "This is an audio interference device. All the sound you just recorded has turned into noise. Did you think I said those things to leave evidence for you to catch me? I'm not that stupid. Besides, even if you had evidence, so what? The law can't judge an underage autistic person."
Fang Rui felt helpless; they really couldn't do anything about him.
"Mu Mian, I'm smarter than you. I designed a perfect crime, and you've all been fooled by me," Lin Qianyan said proudly. "Mu Mian, you're so pitiful. You don't have a mother anymore."
"Lin Qianyan, that was your mother. The one who lost a mother is you," Mu Mian said softly. "You also made Yuanyuan lose the orphanage mother who loved him. Yuanyuan was your only friend, and you hurt him. You've also lost Yuanyuan as a friend."
The smug smile on Lin Qianyan's face froze. He glared at Mu Mian fiercely, "I don't need a mother, I don't need friends. I'm doing very well on my own."
"Then why are you jealous of me?"
Lin Qianyan didn't answer this question.
Fang Rui stopped the car, and Lin Qianyan got out angrily.
"Lin Qianyan," Mu Mian called out to him, handing him a thick notebook. "This is my social guide. It's for you."
Lin Qianyan glanced at the notebook, then shifted his gaze away and said to Mu Mian, "I don't need it. Mu Mian, goodbye."
Lin Qianyan slowly walked into the villa.
