Chen Xue was stunned by his sudden action and subconsciously looked down.
The phone screen was still lit, but it wasn't the dialing interface; it was a photo!
The background of the photo was precisely this messy bed, and the subject of the photo was herself! Disheveled, with hazy eyes and an unnatural flush on her face.
This was clearly a candid shot taken while she was unconscious earlier!
"You!" Chen Xue trembled with anger, her finger uncontrollably wanting to tap the delete button.
"Save it," Lu Xuan's chilling voice came, carrying a playful, cat-and-mouse mockery.
"I have at least eighty, if not a hundred, backups of this level of photo on my phone. You want to delete it? Or throw the phone? Be my guest. If you break it, it's on me. I have plenty of spare phones and plenty of backups."
Chen Xue's finger froze mid-air. That seemingly thin and light phone now felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, suffocating her.
She slowly raised her head, looking at the man on the sofa who was completely at ease.
That face which she once found sunny, handsome, and even a little captivating.
Now, in her eyes, his features were hard, his gaze sinister, and the faint smile on his lips was more terrifying than a demon from hell!
This man was a devil! A devil through and through!
"What? Speechless already?" Lu Xuan looked at her distraught, ashen face, feeling the moment wasn't quite ripe yet.
He stood up and leisurely strolled to the bedside, looking down at the girl huddled under the covers, his eyes filled with undisguised amusement and malice.
"Weren't you quite spirited just now? Talking about calling the police and getting your brother to back you up. Why stop now? The phone's right by your hand, dial it."
Chen Xue bit her lower lip so hard her pearly teeth almost drew blood from her tender lips.
She looked up, glaring fiercely at Lu Xuan, her eyes filled with deep-seated hatred, and even deeper fear and despair.
She knew that with this photo, she dared not call the police.
Once the matter was exposed, she, the beauty of the finance department, the pure goddess in countless people's eyes, would immediately become a discarded wretch scorned by everyone, her reputation utterly ruined!
"Feeling wronged? Feeling angry? Feeling betrayed by the whole world?"
Lu Xuan seemed to have seen through her thoughts. He leaned down again, his face almost touching hers, his warm breath fanning her cold skin.
His voice, however, was very low, carrying a cold, chilling malice.
"Don't rush, little sister, I have something even more fun here… want to broaden your horizons?"
He picked up the phone Chen Xue had thrown aside, his slender fingers quickly swiping across the screen a few times, bringing up another file, then turning the screen back towards Chen Xue.
This time, the screen no longer showed that shameful photo, but a well-made PPT file.
The title of the file was written in prominent bold letters—
【Chen Xue's Dirt】
Chen Xue's heart pounded, an extremely ominous premonition almost suffocating her!
Her gaze was fixed on the screen. When she saw another familiar and terrifying girl's name appear prominently in the PPT—Shen Ruxue.
Followed closely by "summer camp," "lakeside," "slipped and fell into water," "drowned," "eyewitness," "false testimony," "Wang Long," "intentional harm," "fifteen years imprisonment"…
These words, buried deep in her memory, often waking her up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, were like red-hot branding irons, searing themselves onto her retina, scalding her soul until it trembled!
"No… impossible… This… this is fake! Absolutely fake! Where did you get these things?! You forged them!"
Chen Xue shrieked, her face instantly turning ashen, the last trace of color draining completely.
She seemed to go mad, suddenly lunging from the bed, extending her trembling hand, wanting to snatch the phone and utterly destroy that incriminating evidence!
However, her wrist was easily gripped by Lu Xuan's iron-like fingers, rendering her immobile.
"Fake?"
Lu Xuan raised an eyebrow, the smile on his face growing colder, his eyes sharp as knives, as if they could pierce through all her disguises.
"Shen Ruxue, your classmate in your first year of high school. She was prettier than you, better at academics than you, from a better family than you, always outshining you. So you bore a grudge and pushed her into the lake when no one was around during the summer camp, right?"
"Wang Long, that unlucky fellow who secretly admired Shen Ruxue and had written you love letters, just happened to be in the vicinity at the time."
"He was directly labeled as the murderer who killed out of love-turned-hate and passion, taking the fall for you, the real culprit, for fifteen years, all because of a few 'accidental' slips of the tongue in your testimony as the 'sole' eyewitness, plus the 'evidence' you 'unintentionally' provided afterward."
"He's still eating coarse steamed buns in prison to this day. Little sister Chen Xue, you're really good at 'killing with a borrowed knife' and 'framing others'! Even I have to say I'm impressed!"
Lu Xuan's voice wasn't loud, even carrying a hint of casualness, but it utterly shattered her last psychological defense!
She looked at the phone screen: that blurry photo, but still vaguely recognizable as her side profile pushing Shen Ruxue into the water; that black-and-white printout, a screenshot of the court transcript documenting her twisting of facts and venomous words in court that year…
Her brain buzzed, a blank, all her strength seemingly drained in an instant.
It's over…
Everything is over…
This secret, which she had hidden for three whole years, spent countless efforts to cover up, believing no one would ever know, a secret enough to send her to the eighteenth level of hell, was actually… actually known by Lu Xuan! How did he know?!
Chen Xue collapsed onto the bed, her eyes vacant. All her struggles, anger, and unwillingness vanished into nothingness before this cruel truth, leaving only boundless coldness and despair, like the darkest tide, completely submerging her.
Lu Xuan contentedly admired her distraught, utterly collapsed appearance, slowly retrieving his phone.
"Now," he looked down at her, as if looking at an ant whose vital spot had been pinched, leaving her at his mercy.
"Still want to call the police? Still want to find your 'good brother' who would sell you out for his future?"
He reached out and again pinched her smooth chin, forcing her to look up into his bottomless eyes, filled with cold calculation, and then, word by word, as if pronouncing a sentence, he said:
"Remember, from now on, your life, your body, your reputation, everything you cherish, and even your murderer's secret, are all in my hands."
"I let you live, only then can you live. I let you die, then you must die. I let you go east, you cannot go west. I let you kneel, you cannot stand."
"Do, you, un, der, stand? My… mur, der, er, sis, ter?"