Chapter 24

Qiao Yan stood behind the door and greeted him via video, "Hello."

The person standing outside was wearing a mask and hat, completely covering himself up. Upon hearing her voice, he said in a very familiar manner, "You must be Ms. Qiao Yan. When I came to deliver the goods to you just now, I saw a man instead, which was a bit strange."

"It's me. What kind of package is this?" Qiao Yan asked.

The deliveryman placed the package on the ground. Qiao Yan noticed it was a long, vertical object. "It's a confidential shipment. How can we know what's inside? We need you to sign for it in person. Can you come out?"

"Could it be something your family sent you?" Nan Yayin whispered from behind her.

Qiao Yan shook her head. She had little family ties with them, and they weren't even on Bailu Star.

"Please sign for this package. It won't take up much of your time," the deliveryman said, standing outside the door. "After delivering to your package, I have other deliveries to make."

Hiding won't help. Qiao Yan opened the door and signed for the package. Just as the deliveryman handed her a piece of paper, Qiao Yan saw the scar on her wrist, exactly the same as Nan Yayin had described.

The deliveryman pulled down his hat brim and said, "Thank you for your cooperation." Then he got on his bike and sped away.

Qiao Yan glanced at the delivery box on the ground and asked Xiao Lu to come out and scan it to see if there were any explosives. After confirming that there were no dangerous items inside, Qiao Yan put on gloves and cut it open with a knife himself.

Before even opening it, Qiao Yan could smell a foul, fishy odor. She closed her eyes and opened the box; the contents were thickly wrapped in several layers of plastic, but even so, she could see red liquid seeping out.

With a rustling sound of plastic wrapping, what was inside was revealed: a severed leg, the cut surface intact, covered from top to bottom with congealed blood.

Without the plastic wrapping and box, the pungent, nauseating smell immediately made Nan Ya Yin gag.

Qiao Yan said to Xiao Lu, "Message Shu Juan. I have something I need her to check. Then call the police for me."

"What is this?!" he shouted, pinching his nose. "Who would do something so disgusting?!"

The severed leg was almost identical to hers; the right leg, severed from the middle of the thigh, with a clean cut.

She touched the cut surface of the leg and realized that it wasn't a real leg, and probably not real human blood either.

There was a letter wrapped in waterproof material under the leg. Qiao Yan picked it up and read it. Sure enough, there was only one sentence inside.

Do you think you can escape?

Qiao Yan put the artificial human leg away and went inside to wash her hands, while Nan Ya Yin was still gagging.

"This is disgusting! Who did this?!" Nan Ya Yin saw her rinse her nose after she finished washing.

Then he remembered what Qiao Yan had just said, and rushed out of the bathroom, "That orphaned daughter, she did all of this?"

Qiao Yan nodded, "She knows where I live, and she will continue to send things here. I'm worried that it won't be safe for you to be home alone, so it would be best if you stayed with me from now on."

"Then what about your work?" Nan Yayin felt a chill run down her spine. She didn't really want to be alone either, but Qiao Yan still had work to do. "I can't possibly go to work with you, can I?"

“You can go to my dorm at school. It’s not far from where I have classes. I’ll take you to register, and then the three of you can come with me.” Qiao Yan sent a message to the dorm manager. “Let’s go, pack some things, we’ll leave in a bit.”

Nan Yayin wondered why they were in such a hurry, but she felt very uncomfortable when she saw the broken leg. Qiao Yan told her to pack it up quickly and he would go upstairs to get the things right away.

"What happened?" Shu Juan sent a message.

"I received a threatening letter."

"Again?"

This wasn't the first time Qiao Yan had encountered something like this; in fact, when she first settled into an ordinary life, people would send her these kinds of things all the time.

But back then, Qiao Yan only had herself; now it's different, there are two people in the house. When she saw the letter that said "You are so lucky," she could guess what these people were up to.

The school may not be safe, but it has the advantage of being crowded, making it harder to spot a target, and you're closer to her.

She wished she could tie Nan Yayin to her body.

What do you want me to test?

"Help me test what kind of blood it is." Qiao Yan had just collected a little blood that had begun to congeal in a sealed bag. "It's already been sent."

"Okay, but didn't you used to not care about these things?" Shu Juan asked her, "You didn't say or do anything, so why are you suddenly worried about them now?"

“Because Nan Yayin is here too.” Qiao Yan typed in, word by word, “I don’t want him to be implicated.”

Qiao Yan's squad consisted of twelve people, and she was the only survivor. According to her account, they were attacked by sand-walking beasts on a desert planet. However, judging from the marks on her wounds and the causes of death of the others, she ultimately died from being cut by a sharp blade.

The airship was destroyed, and all the remaining video and audio data was lost. The only thing that could be preserved was the oral account of the survivor, Qiao Yan.

At that time, Qiao Yan had just come of age. Initially, everyone was shocked by the tragedy and felt sympathy for her. A child, at that age, became the leader of a squad to face alien creatures. Although she was lucky enough to survive, her life would forever be overshadowed by this event.

After recovering from her broken leg, she returned to her post shortly afterward, still leading teams and venturing to alien planets. In just a few years, Qiao Yan amassed far more honors than before. During those same few years, public opinion shifted dramatically, turning from sympathy and praise to condemnation and suspicion.

The sharp weapon cuts and the lack of video footage became the biggest points of suspicion, with the victim's family members demanding photos of the monster that appeared on the alien planet back then.

"You haven't gone back even once in all these years? Don't you have any sympathy for your teammates?"

"Don't you feel guilty that they died so mysteriously? Of the twelve, you were the only one who survived!"

"The airship was destroyed, and all the footage was lost? You didn't bring your own filming equipment? You left everything on the airship?"

Once the first voice of doubt is raised, the seed is planted and will grow stronger with time.

Since Qiao Yan retired from the military and returned to a normal life, the accusations and insults against her have intensified.

"You should have died on that planet!"

In fact, that was what she thought too. Through numerous journeys, she had indeed come closer and closer to death. Driven by her will to live and by the pleas of others, Qiao Yan began to ponder the true value of life, and why being born was considered good, and dying bad.

Threats and intimidation were like fine threads, binding and enveloping her completely. It wasn't until Shu Juan was followed and attacked for standing up for her that Qiao Yan realized doing nothing would not quell her anger. She began to clear her name of the smears against her, agreed to become a part-time professor at Bailu Interstellar University, publicly mourned her former teammates, and made the compensation for their families public.

Things started to get better. The voices didn't disappear, they just decreased significantly, but that was enough for her to live on.

Now, the situation is like this again. Qiao Yan doesn't care if anyone wants to kill her, but if others are dragged into this, especially Nan Yayin...

"I want to see who's doing this."

Nan Yayin packed her things and carried Shuyin down with her. After the little girl's leg touched solid ground and no longer hurt, she kept wanting to walk. Her brother scolded her several times, and Qiao Yan was always the one mediating between them. Now, whenever she sees Qiao Yan, she wants to go up to him.

"Where are we going? Brother said we're going to play." Nan Shuyin hopped on one foot as Qiao Yan picked her up. "Where are we going to play?"

"You can go anywhere you want to play." Qiao Yan patted the little girl's clothes. "But we have to wait a bit. Shall we play hide-and-seek with some other people first?"

Nan Shuyin had never played hide-and-seek before. When her leg was healthy, no one played with her. Now that her leg was broken, even less of her would play with her. She hugged Qiao Yan and said, "Okay!"

"Let's go," Qiao Yan said to Nan Yayin.

The three people and a robot boarded the car with their luggage. Nan Yayin asked, "Will it be safe once we get to school? Didn't you receive your first letter at school?"

“She didn’t deliver it herself. There are security cameras near the mailbox, so she probably had someone put it there for her and then paid them,” Qiao Yan analyzed. “There’s no address on the envelope, so maybe she even had the contents printed out. I think she might not even be on this planet.”

“Isn’t she afraid that what she did will be discovered?” Nan Ya’s desire for revenge or the murder of Qiao Yan is something few people would be willing to get involved with. “Besides, you know the people in that group, she will probably be exposed soon.”

“It’s not just one person,” Qiao Yan said. “There’s more than one orphaned daughter who harbors such malice towards me. And I don’t remember anyone having a daughter; I should have met all their families.”

This is the strangest part of the whole thing. She had visited all the people who claimed to be family members online, but it was a mix of truth and falsehood. Many of them were just trying to gain attention by using this incident.

However, the online opinions about Qiao Yan are not the same as before, so Qi Haiwei's claim of being an orphan seems much more credible.

Dad, there were only five men in her group, three young and unmarried, and two older men, only one of whom had a child, who was probably not even ten years old yet.

Where did this orphaned daughter come from who could come up with the idea of ​​sending threatening letters and using a dummy leg to simulate a severed limb?

Qiao Yan had a gut feeling that this was different from the past, that something was wrong.

Nan Shuyin couldn't understand what they were saying, but she felt a thrill of being on the run. She clung to the car window, watching the scenery rushing past. Before, when she was with her brother, it was always about escaping disasters and fleeing from danger. When Nan Ze came back, they would hide in a secret base. But now it was different; now she had her sister Qiao Yan.

"Don't worry, this won't last long." Qiao Yan wanted to grab Nan Ya Yin's hand, but after thinking about it, he just moved a little closer.

Nan Yayin felt the approaching breath, and his ears burned uncontrollably again. His mind was filled with all sorts of random thoughts. He suppressed one thought, only to have another pop up. Was this the time to be thinking about such things?

“I’m not worried,” he argued. “I am, I’m just a little scared because I haven’t been to school in so long.”