When Jian Jing went to the backyard, she was still a little confused.
She hadn't expected Xie Wei to say such things, with no evidence at all, purely based on his own speculation. As long as he adamantly denied it, no one could do anything to him.
Yet he had told her where the evidence was.
Why? Had he suddenly had a crisis of conscience and sincerely repented?
As Jian Jing was thinking this over, she couldn't even convince herself.
Xie Wei's state was too strange. His words and actions were watertight, like a crafty criminal's, yet when he had the absolute advantage, he had voluntarily revealed clues.
This was not the smug toying of someone confident of victory, rather...it contained more complex emotions.
The source seemed to be her.
To call it love was too premature, and to describe it as affection was inadequate. It was like the remote calling of a valley, vague and elusive, its origins unclear.
With extremely complicated feelings, Jian Jing walked into the backyard.
Now that she thought about it, the figure she and Xue Zhe had seen when they were walking in the garden must have been Xie Wei. He was destroying evidence.
The camellia.
The camellia was right there.
She took a deep breath, exhaled, not giving herself any time to hesitate, and strode over quickly.
Relying on her memory, Jian Jing immediately found the place Xie Wei had been standing, but...where was the camellia? There had clearly been a potted camellia grafted here, where had it gone?
"What are you looking for, Miss Jian?" the proprietress asked, carrying a broom.
"Wasn't there a pot of camellia here?" she asked.
The proprietress smiled, "There was, but the day before yesterday at night, Mimi bumped into the flower pot, and all the soil and earth spilled everywhere, washed away by the rain. I repotted the camellia yesterday, it's over there now."
The day before yesterday night? Wasn't that the night of the power outage, when she and Xie Wei had run into the cat returning from the rain together?
Jian Jing's heart skipped a beat, and she asked urgently, "Did you see anything inside the flower pot?"
The proprietress looked completely bewildered. "There was nothing, the roots were washed completely clean."
Jian Jing was stunned.
The evidence...was gone?
The cat had knocked over the pot, and then the heavy rain had come, after a few days had passed, even if the container could be found, it certainly wouldn't be possible to test anything out of it.
What a coincidence?
Could it be he had deliberately tricked her, intentionally laughing at her? No.
Jian Jing silently shook her head. Xie Wei's accidental blurt just now was definitely not made in jest. He had looked completely astonished, seeming not to have expected those words to come out of his mouth at all.
With many things weighing on her mind, she returned to the restaurant.
Xie Wei was waiting for her.
Lost in thought, his brow furrowed with faint sadness. Seeing her return, he smiled at first, about to speak, but his gaze didn't catch what should have been there. He was abruptly stunned.
His look became extremely complex.
He had misunderstood. He thought she had given up.
"I didn't find it," Jian Jing said.
"Is that so?" Xie Wei's tone was very strange, unable to say whether it was relief or disappointment.
Jian Jing pursed her lips. "The cat smashed the flower pot, there was nothing left."
Xie Wei uttered an "ah", meeting her gaze directly. "I didn't lie to you."
"There was no...Tao Tao?" Jian Jing asked.
He became his watertight self again. "Shao Meng's death was beyond my expectations."
The subtext was that there hadn't been time.
Jian Jing understood his implied words and gave a bitter laugh. She seemed to somewhat understand what the system had meant. Things that were unreasonable logically could still happen theoretically, and so they did.
To put it more directly, it was good or bad luck.
Shao Meng wouldn't necessarily have gotten meningitis in the first place, or if he did get it, he might have been discovered quickly and had his life saved through emergency treatment. But he just so happened to contract the illness and die of fright, such a low probability, yet that's what happened to him.
And Xie Wei's luck was especially good.
The way he concealed evidence could be called clumsy, yet a cat and a rain shower came to his aid, destroying the key evidence, leaving no possibility of conviction.
At the same time, Zhang Xi's involvement threatened Tao Tao, making her feel guilty and causing her mental illness to relapse that very night. Without him needing to handle her, her life from then on was thoroughly ruined.
Such powerful luck was unimaginable.
If she didn't have the system, Jian Jing was afraid she wouldn't have been able to crack the puzzle even if she racked her brains.
Although it was useless now anyway.
"You've won," she said, massaging her cheeks helplessly. "Your luck...is indeed very good."
Xie Wei didn't say anything.
Jian Jing endured it for a moment, but in the end couldn't hold back the surge of emotions, blurting out, "Since you believe in destiny, have you ever thought that even if you didn't make a move, Shao Meng might have met with an accident anyway, so what was the point?!"
If he had just endured it, things would have been different.
Now his hands were stained with blood, which he could never wash clean in his lifetime.
What a waste.
Unexpectedly, when Xie Wei heard this, he actually laughed. Leaning forward, he grasped her hand and closed his five fingers around hers. "Thank you."
Jian Jing knitted her brows, her face taut.
"I've thought about everything you said. But I don't regret it," he said slowly. "My teacher went to great lengths to call in favors for my acting opportunities, delaying treatment for his stomach condition, which led to his early death. Yet on his deathbed he was still comforting me, telling me not to worry, that I would have my day in the sun.
"My mother sold our family home for me, so that I could finally get the role I wanted. But the movie kept getting held up from release, the capital lost with no return. Yet she told me it was fine, that since I loved acting I should keep at it, that she was proud of me.
"And my friends, my senior brothers and sisters, the directors, they had all helped me before, they were all good people. But because of me, either their investments failed, or their films bombed at the box office, each suffering losses.
"Even if..." He gave a soft laugh. "Even if I had met you, it wouldn't have been like this."
In the vagueness of talks of destiny, who could prove anything?
He hadn't believed it from the start either.
But what if.
What if his life really had been stolen from him? This long decade of pain, those whose fates had changed because of him, how could they have had these endings for no reason?
Just thinking about it made hatred seep into his bones, gave him sleepless nights.
Xie Wei slowly let go of her hand.
"I didn't want to believe it either, but Miss Jian, I'm just an ordinary person," he said, leaning back against his chair, gazing at his own hands as he mocked himself. "I'm sorry, I've offended you. Being held by these hands must have felt disgusting."
Jian Jing unconsciously curled her fingers. The warmth of his hands seemed to still linger on her skin.
Like a pot of tea left standing too long, no longer hot, only growing colder.
Dark clouds swept in, blocking the winter sun.
Xie Wei was shrouded once more in the ubiquitous shadows.
An oppressive silence filled the space.
Xie Wei no longer looked at her, his gaze fixed perpetually on the distant horizon, not knowing what he was thinking.
It wasn't until Xu Scriptwriter dragged his heavy footsteps over that the stillness was broken. "Jingjing, Xie Wei? What are you two doing just sitting there?"
His tone lifted, and he eyed them with great interest, joking, "Oh, not a bad breakfast, the proprietress even makes Western food?"
Xie Wei politely bowed his head. "I made it."
"Any left?" Xu Scriptwriter asked.
He spread his hands, indicating the lack of leftovers.
Xu Scriptwriter gave a laugh, meaningful, "Looks like only Jingjing got some, not me."
Jian Jing managed a slight upturn of her lips, smiling as she said, "When are you leaving?"
Xu Scriptwriter said, "If there's nothing else, this afternoon."
"Can I catch a ride with you?" she asked.
"No problem," Xu Scriptwriter readily agreed.
And so Jian Jing spent the entire morning packing her things in her room. Of course, there wasn't much to pack, she was tidying up her state of mind.
She kept thinking about whether or not to tell Liang Yi about this.
If she did, it seemed useless, since the evidence was gone and there was no way to prosecute. Not saying anything felt like a betrayal of her principles, keeping silent about a crime, her conscience uneasy.
What to do?
As Xie Wei had said, the law existed to uphold justice, but sometimes, there were corners the law couldn't reach.
Jian Jing fell into an extremely conflicting struggle.
From an emotional perspective, she did sympathize with Xie Wei. Having been through reincarnation herself, she could hardly say categorically that borrowing luck was nonsense. Even if she only believed it a little, just three percent, it was still enough to evoke compassion.
But there were so many avengers in the world, each with their own helplessness, yet not every one of them chose to commit murder. The law was the bottom line of being human. If you crossed it, you should be punished.
Jian Jing was restless as she opened the system panel again.
During the previous confrontation, the system had declared the mission accomplished, decoding all the content on the panel.
[Mission Name: The Mystery of Stealing Luck for a Second Chance (Completed)]
[Mission Description: The mysterious death of a popular male star, with strange shadows left at the scene. When will the stolen luck be returned? What kind of human tragedy lies behind the stolen life? Please uncover the truth.]
[Mission Reward and Punishment: To be determined according to completion]
"Sigh." Jian Jing heaved a long sigh, still unable to make up her mind.
What was justice? Was the truth necessary to be revealed to the world? What was she pursuing - justice, fairness, or...neither actually?
*
That night after returning to He Ping City, the news of Shao Meng's death spread like wildfire.
With the hype around The Demon Doctor still strong, people were highly concerned and eagerly awaited the police statement. After investigating the scene, the police found no other clues and closed the case as an accident.
[Breaking: Famous Actor Dies of Meningitis, Heaven Envies Genius!]
[Mourning Shao Meng, Recapping His Roles Over the Years]
[You'll Always Be Our Dashing Youth, Rest in Peace]
Whether familiar or not, most celebrities posted eulogies on Weibo, with only Jian Jing keeping silent. Some fans prompted her, but she remained quiet.
Fortunately, people did not pay her too much attention, because right after Shao Meng's death came the news that Tao Tao had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
The internet never forgets. People immediately recalled the scandal from half a year ago. Some criticized that she deserved it, but many women felt it wasn't her fault yet she bore the consequences.
Before they knew it, the topic shifted from "Tao Tao" to the grand themes of "privacy" and "gender," sparking a wave of quarrels.
Soon, no one cared about Tao Tao anymore. Her hype was taken over by other issues, and fans who had stuck with her could no longer stan a psychiatric patient, leaving one by one.
When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter.
The red luck painstakingly stolen seemed like a pipe dream, vanished without a trace.
At the same time, Xie Wei's rise was unstoppable.
Almost simultaneously, an edited video occupied people's homepages.
[What Godly Visuals! Drunk on this Handsome Boy's Eyes]
A UP main compiled Xie Wei's roles together - ancient, republican, modern eras - with catchy background music and lines, condensing his decade-long career into a minutes-long video that impacted viewers explosively.
From an unknown 18-tier actor fallen to the bottom, back to a trending male star at the top - all within three days.
Even for the magical internet, such a meteoric rise was shocking.
Everything Xie Wei had acted in - movies, TV shows, roles - got unearthed by gossiping netizens.
It was as if people suddenly noticed him and expressed incredulity.
"He's the male lead in The Song Dynasty Mystery, his acting is much better than Shao Meng's. How is he not popular?"
"Pure passerby here, but Xie Wei's acting is indeed superior to Shao Meng's."
"I heard Xie Wei offended the company execs, that's why he got blacklisted. Otherwise he'd have made it big long ago."
"Discovered a hidden gem! Such low-key actors are rare now. I'm a fan!"
Xie Wei went viral.
His fanbase exploded with countless new fans and appearance chasers.
Some specifically compiled his best acting moments from different works and juxtaposed them against similar scenes of other actors.
[No Contrast, No Harm. Ultimate Acting Showdown]
With many currently trending actors having poor skills, such a comparison was a car crash - distressing and tragic.
Xie Wei's acting was highly acclaimed.
Suddenly it seemed everyone knew Xie Wei, everyone became his fan.
After ten years of obscurity, he finally embarked on the throne he deserved.
Jian Jing was filled with melancholy, thinking this was the ending.
But that was not the case.
A few days later, Daoist He called her excitedly: "I know where I've seen that tattoo before. The Seven Stars Coffin Sealing Jar also has similar patterns."
Jian Jing was stunned. "What?!"
"Who was the one who borrowed the luck?"
