Chapter 84: N. A Turn for the Better

It was only then that Ning Yixiao realized that everything Xu Zhi had said to him, and all the events that had transpired, aligned perfectly with the diary entries about “Guan Cheng.”

So, the man wasn’t Xu Zhi; he was Guan Cheng.

The reason he had shared those stories—ostensibly showing care and reminiscing—was actually a calculated probe.

Ning Yixiao flipped further back in his mother’s diary and found more content regarding Guan Cheng.

[This morning, while helping clean the fishing nets, I saw a child walking straight into the sea. It scared me to death, so I rushed up and pulled him back. He said his name was Guan Cheng, that he’d dropped out of school and been swindled into coming here. He didn’t have a penny to his name, the weather was so cold, and he had a high fever. Poor child, I could only bring him home for a couple of days and hope his parents would find him soon.]

This was the first time his mother met Guan Cheng; the date was February 15th. Xu Zhi had claimed he stayed at their house for half a year, which meant he should have left between August and September.

[Xiao Guan borrowed some money today, saying he wanted to go out, but the bus driver in the village had a family emergency, so he didn’t go. I heard him say he wanted to find a classmate; that child had excellent grades but had lost all his family, just like him—both are pitiful children. Xiao Guan talked about the past, saying he once ranked first in the whole school, but his family fell on hard times, and he couldn’t continue his education. That’s why he almost went down the wrong path. He said he really wanted to get ahead, to change everything, and didn’t want to live his whole life like a dog.

Seeing him always makes me think of Xiao Xiao. I hope my child grows up well; whether he’s brilliant or not doesn’t matter, as long as he’s safe.]

Ning Yixiao frowned and kept flipping, but there wasn’t much more related to him after that; it was mostly daily routines.

Later, on July 12th, they had dinner with the real Xu Zhi, and on August 5th, Guan Cheng had bid his mother goodbye, saying he was going away to work.

[Xiao Guan asked me to take Xiao Xiao and go with him. He said he would work hard to earn money so we could have a good life, but I wanted to stay here and wait a while longer. He had already guessed I wouldn’t leave, so he stopped trying to persuade me. Even if I had gone with him, I fear Xiao Xiao and I would only have been a burden.]

Guan Cheng left in early August, and they lost contact after that.

Could it be that after he left, he stole his friend’s identity and transformed into “Xu Zhi”?

“Su Hui, did Xu Zhi ever mention his family?”

Hearing Ning Yixiao’s question, Su Hui recalled, “I remember my mother saying that Xu Zhi’s parents passed away when he was very young due to illness, so they even did a very detailed pre-marital health check, fearing any hereditary diseases.”

“And no siblings?” Ning Yixiao asked.

“He never mentioned any.” Su Hui picked up the photo once more.

The Guan Cheng in the photo had single eyelids and delicate features, but the Xu Zhi he knew had double eyelids, and the bridge of his nose and chin were different. But with plastic surgery, those changes were easily achieved.

“Are you suspecting that his true identity is actually the Guan Cheng in the photo?”

Ning Yixiao told Su Hui everything Xu Zhi had said before, then analyzed, “Combining what you said with what my mother wrote in her diary, neither Guan Cheng nor Xu Zhi had family. That is the primary prerequisite for an identity swap—people with no relatives are the easiest to target.”

“Moreover, in that era, there were no advanced online student record systems. Information was likely incomplete, and it’s highly probable there were no photos. Guan Cheng might have exploited that loophole to attend college in Xu Zhi’s place.”

Su Hui had long known how treacherous Xu Zhi was, but the man’s malice still far exceeded his imagination.

“So, the real Xu Zhi has likely been gone for a long time.”

To Ning Yixiao, this was a startling discovery, but he didn’t have enough evidence to alert the enemy. “I will send people to investigate this. I’ll tell you the moment there’s a result.”

Su Hui, however, remained fixated on one detail.

“Yixiao, why do you think he offered to take your mother and you with him back then?”

Ning Yixiao paused and looked at him.

Su Hui raised his eyes. “Since he was planning to leave and had already decided to steal the identity, making that offer was likely a test of Auntie’s resolve to stay in the village. It wasn’t sincere. If she had agreed, she might have met a tragic end even sooner.”

Exactly.

Ning Yixiao felt a shiver run down his spine.

“The reason he didn’t do it in the end was probably, on one hand, the higher risk of eliminating two more people. My mother was very conspicuous in that place; everyone who saw her remembered her. If she vanished for no reason, it would cause an uproar. On the other hand, he might have been slightly shaken; after all, my mother had saved him.”

This reminded Ning Yixiao of something else, and he frowned.

Su Hui noticed. “What is it?”

“I just thought that because I couldn’t accept my mother’s death, I never opened that box of mementos.”

Ning Yixiao said in a low voice, “If I had looked back then, combined with his probing, I would have discovered all of this. Plus, at that time, he was already using your mother to cling to the Ji family. If I had known everything then, I might have lost my temper.”

Su Hui felt a wave of lingering fear.

If it had been the Ning Yixiao of six years ago, with absolutely nothing to his name, would he have been silently eliminated by Guan Cheng just like the real Xu Zhi?

His heart skipped a beat.

“Your car accident…” Su Hui suddenly grabbed Ning Yixiao’s arm. “It probably wasn’t an accident either.”

“It definitely wasn’t an accident, to begin with.”

Ning Yixiao said in a deep voice, “I didn’t see the driver’s face clearly at the time. After I woke up, the traffic police came to the hospital and showed me the footage. The driver had a personal grudge against my family—specifically, he had bullied my mother. The police thought it was an act of revenge. But during the pursuit, he died.”

Su Hui held his hand. “So at the time, you thought it was just a personal vendetta? Could it have been related to Xu Zhi? Do you know the driver’s name?”

Ning Yixiao looked at him. “Feng Zhiguo.”

The blood in Su Hui’s veins almost froze for a moment.

“Feng Zhiguo…”

“What’s wrong?” Ning Yixiao saw his reaction. “Do you know him?”

Everything was starting to connect.

Su Hui looked at Ning Yixiao, his shock yet to fade. “Feng Zhiguo was our family’s driver later on. Xu Zhi recommended him to us. He had a scar on his face, near his eye, right?”

Ning Yixiao froze.

“Yes.”

He had always known Su Hui had a private driver, but he had never met the man. Even when he stayed at Su Hui’s house, it was the fake Xu Zhi who personally drove him away the next day.

It turned out the Ji family’s driver was Feng Zhiguo, and he had been introduced by the fake Xu Zhi. He hadn’t expected that this man had been so close to him, that they had brushed against the truth several times.

“It must have been Xu Zhi who ordered him to do it.” Su Hui frowned. “You said he died later; how did he die?”

He had known nothing of these events because he had been forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital at the time.

“He was on the run for nearly a year. The police eventually received a report from a forest ranger that a vehicle had gone over a cliff. When they went to look, Feng Zhiguo had been blocked by a tree after the fall. He wasn’t fully dead and managed to crawl out, but he was severely injured. He likely fainted from blood loss and was later mauled by wild dogs in the mountains.”

Ning Yixiao’s expression was cold; he could still recall those photos. “He was torn into pieces, just barely identifiable. The DNA was tested—it was definitely him.”

Hearing this, Su Hui felt a chill seep into his bones.

“Feng Zhiguo knew Guan Cheng, and after working under him for a few years, he might have known something. Once he died, there was one less person in the world who knew Guan Cheng’s secret.”

“Perhaps.” Ning Yixiao pondered for a moment. “He might have also wanted to kill with a borrowed knife, using Feng Zhiguo to get rid of me, but he failed. Feng Zhiguo wasn’t as decisive as him; in fact, he was a bit cowardly and incompetent. He panicked when he saw me get hit and ran away. Because of that, the fake Xu Zhi missed the best opportunity to get rid of me. If he had tried again, it would have been too suspicious. Plus, since you were pressuring your grandfather to ensure I could go abroad, he had no way to act.”

These conjectures were reasonable and fit together perfectly.

Su Hui nodded. “He probably truly thought you knew nothing, after all that probing.”

Ning Yixiao let out a cold laugh.

The fake Xu Zhi surely had no idea that not only did Ning Yixiao know, but he was also planning to take him down.

“No one knows about this yet.” He cautioned Su Hui. “You must act as if today never happened. I need to follow this thread deep underground to get the most solid evidence.”

Su Hui understood, of course.

Yet, as the truth was peeled away bit by bit, the trembling in his heart wouldn’t fade; instead, it grew more terrifying.

Ji Tailü considered his own grandson a “mentally ill” person, someone unreliable, and his own daughter someone incapable of shouldering responsibility. Meanwhile, the successor he trusted was a demon in human skin.

How ridiculous.

Su Hui had nightmares that night, dreaming of things he had already forgotten. Thinking of the smiling face Xu Zhi showed him the first time they met, he felt nauseous enough to vomit.

The side effects of his lithium carbonate tablets were much worse than before. When he took Ning Yixiao’s car to school, he felt incredibly lethargic, but he used the techniques his therapist had taught him to force himself to focus on his work.

Ning Yixiao informed Charles of the new leads. They were highly efficient, trying to locate historical records through the lawyer who was assisting them in China, but they found no death files related to Guan Cheng or Xu Zhi.

They speculated that because Guan Cheng’s social ties were nearly non-existent—no relatives, no other friends—he could have “vanished” from the world without anyone reporting him missing at the police station.

This was the most likely theory, but it increased the difficulty of their investigation. If Guan Cheng had indeed seized this opportunity to kill the real Xu Zhi and impersonate him, the real Xu Zhi would have become a forgotten “Guan Cheng,” making it nearly impossible to trace his final steps in the vast sea of people.

“I checked; fingerprint sampling for national IDs only started in the last decade or so. The original Xu Zhi shouldn’t have had his data entered into the current system, so Guan Cheng could easily settle into the identity. If he did swap identities, all the documents would have been re-applied for. Everything we can find now is under his name, including the fingerprints. The real Xu Zhi might have been imprisoned or died—died under the name of Guan Cheng.”

They currently lacked the evidence to prove the two were not the same person.

Until the next day, while working, Su Hui accidentally cut his finger with a utility knife. Looking at the blood on his fingertip, he suddenly realized something and immediately went to find Ning Yixiao.

“Blood type?” Ning Yixiao asked. “Do you know Xu Zhi’s blood type?”

“Yes.” Su Hui remembered suddenly. “My mother had a habit of donating blood. Once, when I was there, she mentioned that Xu Zhi was stingy. Even though Type O blood is the most useful, he refused to donate. That stuck in my memory. He should be Type O, but I don’t know what blood type the real Xu Zhi was.”

Ning Yixiao pondered for a moment and called Charles.

“Birth certificates are too far back; they might not be around, and it’s too obvious. With Guan Cheng’s personality, he would have likely destroyed them. But there is another file he would have overlooked because he never participated in it.”

“What?”

“Before the college entrance exam, schools organize physical check-ups. The exams back then were simple, but they would still check blood type. Student files from that time should still exist. If their blood types don’t match, we have a chance to prove that the Xu Zhi who took the exam and the Xu Zhi who exists now are not the same person.”

“Right, that’s a breakthrough.”

Despite this, Ning Yixiao was worried the results might be the same—after all, there were only so many blood types, and the probability of a match wasn’t low. If this path was blocked, it would be even harder to investigate.

Charles immediately managed to find the real Xu Zhi’s high school. The person who had managed the archives had retired, but after some effort, they found that person and finally retrieved the old physical exam report.

“Shaw, found it. The real Xu Zhi is Type AB.”

Upon hearing this, a stone fell from Ning Yixiao’s heart.

“Do we call the police now?”

“Wait a little longer.”

Ning Yixiao didn’t want to submit this evidence immediately. Xu Zhi’s status and influence were vastly different now; it was unknown how many of his people were still in the system. If they just walked that path, they might face roadblocks.

The evidence of embezzlement, bribery, money laundering, and other crimes they had collected would have to be put to good use.

Ning Yixiao set the matter aside for two days; he was overwhelmed with the business matters of the New York campus.

On the third day, after finishing a business meeting and returning to his car, Carl told him, “Shaw, someone just looked for you. He said he has what you want.”

Ning Yixiao frowned, connecting it to his recent investigation into Xu Zhi. He intuited that there would be new progress, but he was also worried his own people might have been exposed during the investigation. He remained guarded.

“Who?”

“He didn’t tell me, but he gave me this number and said to call it at 11:00 AM.”

Ning Yixiao took a look. It looked like a landline number. A public phone? Or a payphone at a newsstand?

It was only a few minutes away from 11:00 AM. Ning Yixiao didn’t hesitate; he used Carl’s phone with a virtual number software to dial the line.

The other party picked up immediately, as if waiting for his call.

He didn’t speak, waiting for the person on the other end to talk.

“Ning Yixiao, is that you?”

The moment the person spoke, Ning Yixiao found the voice extremely familiar.

“Yes.” He offered nothing more.

“I’m Feng Cheng.”