Chapter 417: The Person Behind the Scenes
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Xie Shi’an had taken a lot of photos, but most of them were taken casually.
Sang Qianqian couldn’t find the paintings that Fang Lan had sent to Shen Hanyu.
However, the drawing style of these pictures gave off an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Without hesitation, she called Xie Shi’an.
She would not be able to rest easy for a moment until she could confirm this matter.
*
Xie Shi’an was in a bad situation because of the old butler.
The butler had followed Ruan Xiaodie’s aunt for many years and was considered a loyal and reliable person. However, as he got older, his temper became stubborn.
No matter how Xie Shi’an explained it to him, he still believed in his judgment. He thought the house was haunted.
He insisted on leaving, and persuading him proved to be ineffective, so Xie Shi’an had to find a suitable housekeeper.
However, it wouldn’t be easy to find a reliable person to look after the house in such a short time.
Xie Shi’an had no time to stay abroad for long, so after getting Ruan Xiaoshuang’s consent, he decided to take all of the house’s valuable items and send them back to the country for the time being. He handed them over to the Ruan family to keep in case those things disappeared in the future.
In this case, it wouldn’t matter anymore if no one was looking after the house for the time being.
When there was sufficient time in the future, it wouldn’t be too late to return and settle this issue.
It was also because of this that Xie Shi’an found the picture alb.u.m in Ruan Xiaodie’s room.
When Sang Qianqian sent the message, he was busy checking the items in the house, so he could not reply in time.
At this moment, he received a video call from her and found out that she wanted to look at the alb.u.m again. Although he was surprised, he was still very cooperative. “I’ll go get the alb.u.m now.”
A few minutes later, Sang Qianqian saw the thick picture alb.u.m in the video call.
She had him flip through the first few pages quickly, but she looked at the last one carefully.
As Shen Hanyu had said, the artist’s drawing ability improved year by year. At first, the drawings were not organized and looked like children’s doodles. As time went on, the drawings became more and more skilled, but the content and words still looked childish.
“I knew that Xiaodie could draw, but I didn’t know she could do it so well.”
Xie Shi’an had only roughly flipped through the alb.u.m before. Now that he had thoroughly gone through the alb.u.m, he couldn’t help but sigh.
At this moment, he had already flipped to the last few pages of the alb.u.m in his hand. He suddenly stopped and looked puzzled.
“This painting doesn’t seem to be painted by Xiaodie?”
As he spoke, he raised the painting a little higher so that Sang Qianqian could see it more clearly. It was the painting of feeding pigeons in the square.
She stared at the painting without blinking. Her voice was a little hurried as she said, “Shi’an, flip to the next page.”
After that, there were only two paintings.
One was a young girl smiling as she looked back at a young man in a garden.
The other was the creepy black drawing!
Xie Shi’an’s expression changed when he saw the doodle. “W-what is this?”
He was once a medical student at a well-known university and a doctor. Although he specialized in certain fields, he also dabbled in psychology.
Looking at this picture, he felt a little uncomfortable.
The message conveyed here was too dark, and it was indescribably violent and b.l.o.o.d.y. What kind of cruel and perverted person could make such a drawing?!
Sang Qianqian’s throat was a little dry.
Even though she was already prepared for this, she still felt chills as if she had fallen into an ice cave. It spread from her heart to her limbs, entering deep within her bones.
“This couldn’t have been drawn by Xiaodie. Someone must have left it here.”
Xie Shi’an muttered.
However, he knew that something was wrong.
If this drawing was made by someone else, then how could the other two paintings, which were exquisitely drawn, brightly colored, and had extremely clear words, be explained?
Moreover, the handwriting on the two drawings was clearly the same as the previous ones. Even the signature used was a small b.u.t.terfly!
He looked up and saw Sang Qianqian, who had a strange expression on the other end of the video call. He suddenly realized something. “Qianqian, are you hiding something from me?”
Sang Qianqian took a deep breath. She couldn’t decide if she should tell him the truth.
“I’ll tell you in detail when you come back.”
The most important thing now was to tell Shen Hanyu that his speculation was right. Ruan Xiaodie was not as simple as she looked.
Moreover, the girl probably already knows that the house abroad had been ■griefed’ and the secret in her alb.u.m might have been discovered.
If Ruan Xiaodie was really the person who stirred up trouble behind the scenes, then she was likely to cause some trouble.
It took a lot of time to look at the few alb.u.ms through the video.
Sang Qianqian dialed Shen Hanyu’s number and was about to call him when she realized that it was one o’clock in the morning in Northern Europe.
At this time, she was afraid that he would already be asleep.
After a moment of hesitation, she decided not to make the call. Instead, she sent him a message telling him what she knew.
On the other end, the message was immediately replied with a call, and Sang Qianqian picked it up immediately.
Shen Hanyu did not seem surprised by her answer because he had already made his judgment.
He looked at her calmly and gently. “Do you still remember what you promised me before I left?”
Of course, Sang Qianqian remembered.
However, she still had one last doubt in her heart. She wanted to ask him,
“Hanyu, is Ruan Xiaodie really the mastermind?”
Shen Hanyu nodded slowly.
The photos that were first sent to the Zhen family and all the investigation results eventually point to the same suspects.
Xie Shi’an was one of the suspects, but he was the first to be rejected by Shen Hanyu.
Cui Yi was originally the main suspect, but what happened next surprised Shen Hanyu. Someone had planned a fire to save Cui Yi. After failing, they instead kidnapped Xu Meixi’s family and killed him with Xu Meixi’s help.
Jian Zheng was fast enough to find the location of the main culprit in the kidnapping case almost by that night.
However, the person behind the scenes also reacted quickly. When Jian Zheng arrived, they had already silenced the people involved in advance.
The scene was tragic and messy. Despite the seemingly fruitless effort, Jian Zheng found a virtual phone number in a phone that wasn’t destroyed in time.
Shen Hanyu did everything he could to trace the source of the call.
He never thought that the call originated from the Xie family.
In the Xie family, besides Xie Shi’an, there was only Ruan Xiaodie.
That was the first time Shen Hanyu had focused on this girl.
Although the expensive high-tech bracelet on her wrist did not prove anything, it still further deepened his suspicions.
However, due to the lack of evidence and Sang Qianqian’s diagnosis of her ‘illness’, Shen Hanyu could not make a final conclusion. That was why he asked Fang Lan to investigate Ruan Xiaodie’s past.
Unexpectedly, he managed to discover the girl’s hidden secret in that picture alb.u.m.
“I originally thought that half a year would be enough to solve everything in Beijing.”
Shen Hanyu’s tone was calm. “But now, it seems that it won’t take me that long..”