Chapter 76: Everyone Can Hear It
Gu Yang stared blankly at the scene in the swimming pool. The instant the water exploded upward, the surging waves looked like an enormous, razor-sharp blade, splashing down from an execution platform and scattering countless white foamy droplets like blood.
A long, droning buzz pierced through his mind.
He wiped the water from his face. For a moment, it felt as though he had been stranded alone on a deserted island.
When he came back to his senses again, he was already sitting beside a hospital bed.
Song Yinxing, who had woken up at some point, was leaning against the headboard. His expression was calm to the point of being eerie.
He slowly looked at Gu Yang. Seeing that the other still looked as if his soul had left his body, he reached out and took Gu Yang’s hand.
It was very cold.
But his own hand didn’t have much warmth either, so he simply tucked Gu Yang’s hand beneath the blanket covering him.
“You really gave me quite the surprise.” Gu Yang didn’t resist his movement, but there wasn’t the slightest smile left on his face. His pale complexion looked like transparent ice that could never melt.
“I just wanted to try…”
“Standing up there that day, how you felt, and what it was like when you jumped.”
Song Yinxing looked at him, his voice so soft it was almost a murmur.
“What exactly it felt like.”
“That place is really high. Just looking down already makes your heart panic. When you want to step forward, your feet feel like they’re locked in place.”
“So I could only close my eyes, relax my body, and fall straight down.”
That scene flashed before Gu Yang’s eyes again.
Sometimes Song Yinxing felt that he was like a patch of wild grass. No matter how brutally he was trampled, he could always squeeze out some life again.
He had hated this terrible world countless times. But when the thought of death truly appeared, he would struggle desperately to survive no matter what.
So when he stood up there, the rational part of his mind screamed at him to leave.
Gu Yang’s smiling voice echoed in his ears, hooking into him.
In that instant, all hesitation disappeared.
“My mother’s medical bills—I know you were the one who asked Uncle Huang to help pay them.” Song Yinxing held both of Gu Yang’s hands, lowering his head until it gently rested against them. “That’s been the most important responsibility weighing on me, and the one that made me feel the most powerless.”
Now the thing hanging above his head, ready to crush him at any moment, had temporarily vanished.
And this final layer of relief had also been given to him by Gu Yang.
“So now… I can do whatever I want.”
He rubbed his cheek against Gu Yang’s hand.
Gu Yang tried to pull his hand back. It felt as though it had been placed on a branding iron. But Song Yinxing held on tightly and refused to let go.
Even though the water from the swimming pool had already been wiped clean, Gu Yang couldn’t stop himself from feeling a dampness.
Wet.
Clinging to him from every direction.
Trying to erode the bright, sunny season inside his heart.
He didn’t know what he was feeling right now. An unprecedented sensory shock overwhelmed him, almost making him lose his balance.
But in the eyes of an onlooker, that face seemed to reveal a faint hint of being moved.
The vice principal was certain he hadn’t seen it wrong.
At this point he was already numb.
Someone had just jumped earlier, so he had locked up the swimming hall—but that still hadn’t stopped them from prying the lock open just to jump.
And the one who jumped turned out to be Song Yinxing, the special-admission student who had always ranked first in the entire school.
What exactly were young people these days thinking about?
Counting the previous incidents—Ding Ziyu who got expelled for extortion, Ye Chen who poisoned someone and ended up poisoning himself into the hospital, and so on…
This was simply the most dramatic class he had ever overseen.
The vice principal sharply sensed the strange atmosphere between the two of them, but that wasn’t the main issue anymore.
He strode over and broke up this pair of lovebirds whose thought processes were clearly abnormal.
The one who needed rest should rest.
The one who needed to attend class should go to class.
—
After being driven out, Gu Yang received several text messages on his way back.
They came from the temporary group chat they had created earlier.
Lu Ji had sent a message in the group. He had been collecting information about Zhou Qinqin and had discovered something today.
“Huh? Zhou Qinqin has been secretly acting as a pimp this whole time?” Xie Wu blurted out after seeing the things Lu Ji had dug up.
“This is only what I managed to find. There’s probably a lot more that can’t be uncovered.”
Xie Wu scrolled through the information with a complicated expression. “I can’t believe you managed to dig this up.”
That woman was truly a capable menace. He couldn’t even imagine what would’ve happened if his brother had actually gotten together with her.
“I only had a rough direction. The people involved all came from Jiayi’s side. Ever since Lu Ran left, Lu Zheng has been watching me closely. He probably thinks I’m a threat.”
“Well, Lu Ran never had much of a brain anyway. And you’re obviously much smarter than him,” Xie Wu said with a sigh. “You’ve really helped me a lot this time.”
With this evidence, even if his brother’s love-struck brain got overheated, there was no way he could still fall for her.
“But there’s another problem,” Lu Ji said. “They’ve recently set their sights on someone new.”
“They?” Xie Wu frowned.
“Yu Zhou. He’s involved too.” Lu Ji’s expression darkened noticeably. “That bastard.”
Xie Wu found it unbelievable. “Isn’t he the same age as us?”
“What’s so strange about that? He’s always been full of filthy intentions.” Ying Jiayi sneered. “Always preying on girls to get benefits.”
“Who’s the person he’s targeting?”
“A student from our school—Yang Siyuan from Class Seven,” Lu Ji said. “She’s not a special-admission student. She pays regular tuition, but her family’s business seems to have run into trouble recently.”
“Yu Zhou used to tutor her. They probably kept in contact afterward.”
Yang Siyuan.
Gu Yang’s voice sounded in their minds.
“Isn’t she the girl who accused Liu Feng of sexual harassment?”
What was this about?
Everyone stopped talking and listened.
“It seems Liu Feng accidentally saw her being overly intimate with a man who was obviously much older than her. He privately called her into his office to ask about it.”
“Yang Siyuan couldn’t bluff her way through it and was afraid her secret would be exposed. In a panic, she directly framed Liu Feng, which eventually forced the school to expel him.”
They had just been casually investigating something, yet somehow it involved their own teacher.
The world really was an inescapable circle.
Ying Jiayi’s impression of Liu Feng wasn’t bad. Aside from jokingly calling him “Little Feng” when he had first started teaching, she still regarded him as a teacher in her heart.
What kind of world was this?
Where good people received no reward, and bad people lived freely and comfortably.
She thought bitterly.
In the original story—whether it was Xie Wu who died early in an accident, Lu Ji who never truly got his things back, or herself who was forced to live under others—
None of them had done anything truly evil.
So why had they ended up with such endings?
Meanwhile people like Yu Zhou, Nie Ying, and Lu Ran all ended up living very well.
Maybe heaven had finally decided it couldn’t bear to watch anymore, and had given them a chance to change things.
“I’ll handle this matter,” she said calmly. “I’ve said before—my feud with Yu Zhou isn’t over yet.”
“Just thinking about how he hasn’t received any punishment yet… He’s still attending school normally, and with his grades he can get into a good university. He’ll just move on from this cleanly and keep harming other girls…”
Her teeth clenched.
“It makes me sick.”
Lu Ji said nothing and simply nodded slowly.
He believed that with Ying Jiayi’s ability, she could handle the matter perfectly.
“Jiayi…” Gu Yang spoke softly, looking puzzled. “What feud do you have with Yu Zhou?”
Ying Jiayi’s heart instantly became alert.
All the grudges that would have happened between her and Yu Zhou in the future had already been avoided after hearing Gu Yang’s inner voice.
Gu Yang knew about them—but from his perspective, she shouldn’t know.
So his confusion was natural.
In a sense, this was also a form of testing.
Ying Jiayi coughed lightly.
“Zhou Qinqin tried to destroy my family before. Of course I’m not going to treat her son nicely.”
The explanation clearly didn’t hold up. Her hostility had always been directed mainly at Yu Zhou rather than Zhou Qinqin.
Gu Yang nodded, but he still looked like he was thinking about something.
“I saw people discussing it on the school forum,” Lu Ji said, changing the subject to help her out. “They said Song Yinxing jumped off the diving platform in the swimming hall.”
He looked at Gu Yang.
“Didn’t you say he called you? How did it end up like this?”
Gu Yang stopped pursuing the earlier topic. He glanced at the forum on Lu Ji’s phone.
“There are even photos?”
The headline read: Top student suspected of jumping due to pressure.
Below were several blurry photos taken through the glass.
“Isn’t the swimming hall next to the gym? Of course students going to class might see it,” Ying Jiayi said after calming herself.
Gu Yang rested his chin on his hand. Rarely feeling the urge to confide in someone, he spoke softly.
“He said he wanted to experience how I felt standing up there back then.”
Ying Jiayi: “……”
The words Is he sick? nearly slipped out of her mouth.
But seeing Gu Yang’s soft, slightly dazed expression, she swallowed them back.
Then a terrifying realization hit her.
Gu Yang actually fell for this kind of thing.
Xie Wu’s expression was extremely strange, like something was stuck in his throat. He wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say.
The atmosphere froze for a moment.
It was the first time Ying Jiayi had seen that kind of expression on Gu Yang’s face. She didn’t know whether it was good or bad.
Sighing helplessly, she rested her chin on her hand and tried to sort through her thoughts.
Then she suddenly saw a fleeting figure passing by.
“Did I just see Lu Ran…?”
At the mention of that long-unspoken name, Lu Ji’s expression turned cold.
But when he looked over, the figure was already gone.
“Which direction did he go?”
Ying Jiayi pointed it out.
“I’m not even sure it was him. Stay calm. Don’t confront him directly. He has nothing left now—there’s no telling what he might do if he gets desperate.”
Lu Ji nodded.
Lu Ran couldn’t cause much trouble anymore. But since he didn’t understand why the other had come, he still decided to take control of the situation.
However, after searching around, he couldn’t find Lu Ran.
He could only suppress the uneasy feeling and return to class, though he had a nagging sense that something was going to happen.
—
That afternoon, a sudden trending topic shot straight to the top and exploded across public opinion.
“Famous influencer with millions of followers turns out to be a man cross-dressing as a woman.”
“Huh? Isn’t that Xia Chun from Class Ten?” Xu Qingfeng said after seeing the report. Looking at the cover image, he glanced at Yu Bai. “Your former goddess.”
The word former carried a subtle meaning.
After all, they had already heard from Gu Yang’s inner thoughts that Xia Chun was actually a cross-dressing man.
They hadn’t expected the truth to explode publicly like this.
Xie Wu’s expression became complicated.
He was one of the few classmates who had privately interacted with Xia Chun before—though not very pleasantly.
But it was obvious he didn’t really want to see something like this happen.
After all, it clearly wasn’t a good thing.
He had already seen people arguing viciously in the comments.
Later he had secretly paid attention to Xia Chun. The person rarely interacted deeply with anyone else, probably because he was afraid his identity would be exposed, so he always kept to himself.
So how had it been exposed?
Come to think of it, quite a few people knew about it.
At least their entire class did.
He looked across the classroom desks, silently going through each person in his mind.
“Have you seen the trending topic?”
A hoarse voice came from behind.
After washing his hands, Gu Yang slowly wiped the back of his hands with a paper towel.
Without turning around, he saw the person standing behind him through the mirror.
After not seeing him for a while, Lu Ran looked so haggard that Gu Yang almost didn’t recognize him.
Maybe he should be called Huo Ran now.
But Gu Yang didn’t bother changing the name.
It seemed life hadn’t been easy after leaving the Lu family.
“Are you satisfied now, seeing me like this?”
His sleep-deprived eyes were bloodshot as Lu Ran stared fiercely at Gu Yang’s back.
Gu Yang vaguely remembered Nie Ying saying something similar before. He didn’t understand why these people all acted as if everything was his fault.
He tossed the paper towel into the trash and walked out without even glancing at Lu Ran.
Lu Ran quickly stepped forward and grabbed him.
He had risked being discovered and mocked just to return to school today.
These past days had nearly driven him insane.
He had never lived in such a small, filthy room before. The yellowed bedsheets always carried a lingering dusty smell, and the idiot at home often jumped on his bed with his shoes on.
When he angrily pushed the idiot down, his biological mother would stand on that idiot’s side and scold him for being inconsiderate, telling him to give in to his older brother.
If he’s the older brother, why should I give in?
When he was in the Lu family, it had always been Lu Zheng who gave in to him!
He felt the favoritism was outrageous. Everything had to prioritize that idiot.
If that was the case, why hadn’t they just sent the idiot to the Lu family to enjoy that life?
The sudden drop in living conditions had already been unbearable.
But the constant favoritism at home drove him even closer to collapse.
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
His gambling addict father demanded money from him the very first day he entered the house.
He did have some savings from his years in the Lu family. The Lu couple hadn’t taken his money when they kicked him out—it was his only support now.
Of course he wouldn’t hand over a single cent.
But when he refused, that gambler father chased him and beat him.
He ran away to stay in hotels, yet the man still managed to track him down.
No matter which hotel he moved to, he would be found within days.
Driven to the brink of a breakdown, he ran home and demanded that the woman who gave birth to him control the man.
But all he received was her shrinking, evasive gaze.
The idiot brother didn’t understand anything and just clapped and laughed.
Then the door opened.
He slowly turned his head.
That nightmare of a face appeared.
His mother lowered her head, dragged the idiot away into another room, and left him alone.
Was this the hell Lu Ji had lived in all along?
As his hair was yanked and his head slammed against the wall until his vision went black, he suddenly thought of the confrontation he once had with Lu Ji.
When he first saw all of this, he had indeed felt a moment of sympathy.
But now that he was the one experiencing it, he began to hate again.
Hate like madness.
He imagined that it was Lu Ji suffering all of this instead of him.
But when he came back to reality, the pain was happening to him.
Why should he experience this?
Why should he be reduced to such a miserable state?
This was never supposed to be his fate.
He should have lived his entire life as the young master of the Lu family.
If it weren’t for Gu Yang.
But he couldn’t do anything to Gu Yang anymore—though he had never really been able to.
“Looks like you haven’t checked your phone yet. Then I’ll tell you.”
Lu Ran gripped Gu Yang’s wrist tightly, squeezing as if this alone could release some of his hatred.
“That influencer from Class Ten—you know, the one who’s pretty famous online? He has over a million followers.”
“I sent a tip to a marketing account saying he’s actually a cross-dressing man. Just a disgusting pervert trying to attract attention.”
“Guess how I knew about it?”
Lu Ran didn’t miss the surprise on Gu Yang’s face.
He sneered and spoke slowly, word by word.
“You told me.”
“You seem to know a lot of things—about me and about everyone else.”
“And every time you say those things…”
“We can hear them too.”
“Everyone can hear them.”
At this point Lu Ran’s expression was twisted with hatred, as if he wanted to devour Gu Yang alive.
Because this was the root of everything.
“Guess what kind of feelings they had when they heard those words?”
“And what they thought about you when they heard them?”
Gu Yang listened expressionlessly.
Those words slowly circled through his mind before finally being processed.
The vague sense of discord he had felt all this time seemed to finally find its answer.
“Gu Yang—!”
An anxious shout came from behind.
The noise Lu Ran was making could be heard from the classroom, and everyone rushed out. After hearing Lu Ran’s words, Xie Wu realized things were bad and shouted.
Gu Yang turned around.
And calmly looked at them.
