It’s Him – Ch41

Rationality

Li Xun had been hit with a series of setbacks recently, and her mood was not good. Attending this funeral could only be described as adding insult to injury.

She returned to the house she shared with her mother and opened her wardrobe.

Inside a soft blanket, a urn sat quietly.

She placed the urn she was holding beside it. The two urns stood side by side.

Perhaps this was how they arrived in this world together, but in the end, neither of them grew up.

Li Xun found it hard to describe her emotions at this moment. The soft blanket covered the two sisters, and they had to wait for everything to settle before she could finally bury them in peace.

Li Xun had met He He in that organization. He He, the smarter of the two sisters, one who had died was the one with the mental issues.

But the remaining, smarter child witnessed her twin sister being killed by her own family, which broke her.

Perhaps the Tao family originally thought they would take care of the surviving child, but later, when they saw she had become mentally slow as well, they realized their mistake. By that time, the place where they buried the body had turned into a children’s playground. The surviving child would often dig at the plastic flooring, saying her sister was below and that she was going to dig her up.

Fortunately, no one else heard her. The Tao family quickly took her back home.

She was like a ticking time bomb.

The Tao family was really scared.

What could they do?

They had already done it once; they didn’t dare kill again—it would be too obvious.

So, while returning to their hometown, they abandoned the child at the station, a place known for human traffickers.

This time, they got what they wanted. The child was lost and never found.

When Li Xun met her, the child had lost one of her eyes, and though she was no longer as mentally slow, she spent her days begging for money and was often beaten for not bringing in enough.

As they became familiar, she would secretly tell Li Xun, “My grandfather stepped on my sister and killed her. My sister wanted to cry, but then my grandfather stepped on her again. Grandma said, ‘Why isn’t she dead yet?’ And then my sister died.”

“They buried my sister. I wanted to dig her up, but then they threw me away.”

At that time, He He was a bit older than Li Xun, and Li Xun needed someone slightly larger than her to help her with things.

She casually said, “When we grow up, we’ll get revenge on them.”

At that time, she didn’t really mean it. She didn’t think about what kind of person she would become. All she wanted was for the other person to listen to her. With her small frame and fear of the world, she couldn’t wait to recruit more people.

So, when He He spoke about her sister’s death, Li Xun would accurately comfort her. When He He was upset about her eye, Li Xun told her, “This is better. No one will dare to mess with you anymore.”

She noticed when He He began to treat her like a sister. Li Xun would secretly save her own dinner for He He and call her “sister.”

It was like she instinctively knew how to capture someone’s heart.

When they were chased by Li Yuguang for money, Li Xun saw the things in He He’s eyes and said, “If we were her daughters, she would treat us so well.”

The world was very strange. The lies she casually told as a child eventually came true.

She did end up becoming Li Yuguang’s daughter, and she truly was avenging the two sisters.

Li Xun felt that she wasn’t as amazing as Guo Ying thought. She just knew enough to pull everyone in. She just brought everyone into the situation.

But there would be many accidents.

Her mother didn’t want to carry out the next phase of the plan. Without consulting her, she kidnapped the homeroom teacher.

Li Xun knew when her mother kidnapped the homeroom teacher. She tried to pull things back, but she had already become a part of the whole situation. She tasted the bitter fruit of losing control of her emotions.

She tried to control her emotions and avoid being influenced. She stood outside the situation, watching everyone.

Some people knew they were already in the situation and struggled desperately.

Some people didn’t know they were already in the situation and kept digging deeper.

At Pingcheng University, the counselor Li Ping encountered a problem.

The problem’s name was Tao Feng.

“What’s going on with Tao Feng in your department? During the recent class checks, he hasn’t attended once.”

The counselor found Tao Feng to ask what was going on.

Tao Feng’s plan to become the reincarnation of the Qian family’s child had failed, and the money he had invested in the early stages had all gone to waste.

Now, because of skipping classes, the school’s pressure had also arrived.

At this moment, he dared not offend the counselor.

Tao Feng took a very active attitude in admitting his mistakes and said he would definitely study seriously from now on and make up for the classes he had missed.

“I know your family situation. Getting into university isn’t easy. I understand that you want to earn money, but neglecting your studies is putting the cart before the horse.”

“I understand, teacher. I won’t skip classes anymore,” Tao Feng promised again.

Li Ping saw his sincere attitude and let him go. She wasn’t very strict with her students and just gave him a reminder, planning to observe how things went in the future.

Tao Feng was now in a mess. He had borrowed over six thousand yuan from an online lender, and now he couldn’t repay it. The lender had already threatened to come to the school to find him. He could only repeatedly promise that he would pay the money back as soon as possible.

The account he managed had quite a few followers, but the traffic from the ads he posted was very low, only earning two or three hundred yuan at a time.

If he posted too much, people immediately started cursing him and unfollowing.

There was nothing he could do. He had to find a way to secretly take photos of Zhao Xin, the legendary perverted killer, to maintain the heat.

But soon, people lost interest in the photos, saying the content was the same over and over again, with no new ideas.

Tao Feng wanted something new. He even wanted to find the victim’s body from that year, but that wasn’t something he could just do.

Sometimes, Tao Feng would pass by the Qian family’s properties and still feel resentful. After all, they had no heirs, and inheriting such a large fortune would be a good thing for him.

In the evening, he opened his account again. Today’s earnings were even less, only a little over a hundred.

Actually, this wasn’t too bad, considering that he had just started and others in his stage didn’t have any income at all.

If given more time, he was sure he could make this account successful, but right now, he didn’t have much time, with debt collectors hounding him.

He opened WeChat again.

Recently, he had joined a group with other video creators. One of them posted videos of cats and dogs and earned 500,000 a month.

That was 500,000, enough to easily pay off his debts with just a small portion of it.

Whenever someone in the group landed a big ad deal, they would send out red envelopes, and he had joined the group just to grab red envelopes.

Today, someone sent out another red envelope. He managed to grab 66 yuan.

He checked; the total amount was 200 yuan, divided into 20 red envelopes. He got 66 yuan from one of them.

His luck had always been pretty good, but it was still lacking something.

He was happy about his luck for a moment, then saw someone in the group post—

“This time, it’s a big client. They paid 200,000 for a single deal.”

A jolt went through Tao Feng’s heart, jealousy tightening his chest.

Everyone in the group knew each other well.

This person hadn’t even managed to get into high school, originally worked in a shoe factory, but later seized the opportunity in the video website boom. Now, any ad deal he took was at this price.

And him? He had studied hard, got into Pingcheng University, a top student, and his videos were no worse than theirs, yet he only earned a little over a hundred.

He had studied this person’s account and found there was no technical skill involved. In fact, it wasn’t even as interesting as his own account, but they were still making money so quickly.

His rational side told him it was because the other person posted cat and dog videos, which had a lot of different types of ads—cat food, dog food, cat litter, even vacuum cleaners and air purifiers.

But his own account focused on murder cases.

What kind of ads could he take? Disinfectant? Laundry detergent? Or bleach?

Yet he still wasn’t willing to accept it. He opened his secondary account and went to the person’s video comment section. Unable to control himself, he wrote, “You post ads every day. Am I here to watch cats or ads? Unfollowed.”

Several people in the comments followed suit, and he felt a little better.

He returned to the group.

At that moment, someone else sent out a red envelope.

Another person in the group, who was similar to him, sent out a red envelope.

And it was also a big red envelope.

“What’s going on?” He immediately messaged the person.

Before the person could reply, he asked again, “Did you get an ad?”

The other person quickly replied, “Go check my homepage.”

Tao Feng opened their homepage and immediately saw two videos at the top. Both had high view counts.

And these were ad videos.

“How did you promote them?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Bro, help me out. I really need money. Just tell me.”

“I’ve been studying their operation model lately. Guess what? I found a bug!”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell anyone about this.”

“Why would I tell anyone?”

“There’s a bug in the platform’s and sponsors’ deal structure. I have a software that can boost view counts. Want to try it? You could make tens of thousands from it.”

Tao Feng was tempted. Tens of thousands of yuan.

“Won’t we get caught?”

“No, not just me, but others in the group are using it too. No one’s been caught. Think about it, those are big companies. They don’t care about our little ad money.”

Tao Feng was itching to try, but his rational side still held him back.

The person continued, “If you use it, I’ll take 10% of the profits as a fee.”

If he used it, he wasn’t particularly bothered by the 10% share; he still had a sense of the bigger picture.

But he was still afraid of using such a dishonest method. If they got caught, it would be a big problem.

Tao Feng gritted his teeth and turned the offer down.

The next day, Tao Feng received a call from his mother. She cautiously asked about his school situation, then asked if he needed any money.

“I don’t need any,” he replied, feeling uncomfortable. How was he supposed to answer? If she truly cared about him, she should just send him the money directly, not ask. Now she was asking just to get some favor without giving him any money.

He was holding in his frustration.

The woman on the other end of the line said, “Your counselor called me. They said you’ve been a bit off lately and suggested we pay more attention to you.”

It was always the counselor. Those wealthy students at the university often skipped classes without reason. Had the counselor said anything to them?

No, they just took advantage of the fact that he had no money or influence. These people, when they met someone wealthy or powerful, they would grovel, but when it came to people like him, they used their little power to put on a show.

Tao Feng hung up the phone, then saw more screenshots from others in the group showing their earnings. He looked at that cat and dog blogger again. Now, when he looked at it, he felt something was off about the video’s view counts.

He had thought before that the other person might be able to get more ad deals, but it didn’t make sense for them to be making that much money.

Now, it made sense.

He sent the person a message.

“How do you do this?”

Tao Feng thought he could make 10,000 yuan, pay off his debts, and then figure out another way to make money.

He knew this fake way of making money wouldn’t last long, and something bad would eventually happen.

As long as he could make enough money to pay off the debts, he wouldn’t use this method again in the future.

At that moment, he still had some rationality.