Chapter 38
After the kidnapping incident, Jiang Shi'an was indeed secretly pleased for a while, but who would have thought that it would later become rumored that he was the one who orchestrated it behind the scenes.
Various versions of the rumors were told in great detail and became increasingly exaggerated.
Even the head of the Lianjiang family was alarmed. With a dark expression, he summoned him and interrogated him, almost resorting to family discipline.
Jiang Shi'an was shocked when he saw this. He hurriedly sought help to investigate the mastermind behind the kidnapping, and the final investigation results made him horrified.
What surprised and puzzled Jiang Shi'an even more was that when he handed over all the information he had gathered to the Jiang family head, the latter, after reviewing it, actually pinched his brow and sighed heavily, telling him not to mention this matter again.
Jiang Shi'an knew that Xie Xubai had come for Jiang Kaile, and indignantly criticized the Jiang family head for his inaction.
"He didn't seem surprised at all, as if he already knew someone was going to harm Kelvin. But not only did he not stop it, he even protected the murderer who intended to kill his own son. There must be something fishy going on here!"
After finishing his accusations, Jiang Shi'an still felt unsatisfied and continued to embellish the situation: "He's really too cruel. Even tigers don't eat their cubs. He's worse than an animal!"
"If you suspect I'm lying, the backup is in the bedroom drawer. Here's the key; go see for yourself."
Jiang Shi'an handed over the key.
He raised his eyes, his shifty gaze darting back and forth between Xie Xubai and Chan Sheng, a murderous intent lurking beneath the surface. He was waiting for one of them to leave before striking the other.
Xie Xubai glanced at him quietly and then told Chansheng to wake up the unconscious maid.
Jiang Shi'an's smile vanished, and he hurriedly said, "How can such important information be handed over to a servant? I'll go get it myself."
"It's alright." Xie Xubai handed the key to the bewildered maid. "Did you hear that? Your master said it's of great importance. If there are similar documents or materials in the bedroom, bring them over as well. It's better to take the wrong one than to miss one."
Bring them over together? There are still several quarters of unprocessed company financial reports in the bedroom!
Jiang Shi'an frantically tried to signal to the servant with his eyes, but when the servant turned around and saw his extremely ugly face, he thought to himself that this matter might really be serious, and his expression turned serious.
As for whether Jiang Shi'an might be unwilling to be taken hostage? That's definitely not the case. Who could threaten Jiang Shi'an on Jiang's territory?
Moreover, if it were truly a threat, how could Jiang Shi'an calmly sit down and talk to Xie Xubai face to face?
The servant replied solemnly, "I understand, I will bring it all."
You don't understand a damn thing!
Jiang Shi'an's eyes rolled back, and he almost fainted.
The servants took care of Jiang Shi'an's daily life, and even if he didn't know everything about the things in his bedroom, he could still find most of them.
He returned shortly afterward to report back.
Jiang Shi'an's large lips trembled with excitement as he saw the huge stack of things he was holding.
Seeing this, the maid assured him again, "Don't worry, Mr. Jiang, I've even searched under your mattress. I guarantee I haven't missed anything."
"You—" Jiang Shi'an was so angry that he suddenly sprang to his feet, trembling for a long time before finally collapsing, his face ashen, his heart dead.
Xie Xubai patiently rummaged through a pile of things and pulled out the investigation document that recorded the truth of what happened back then.
Jiang Kaile was abducted when he was about five years old, which is now eleven years ago.
Xie Xubai touched the yellowed, old paper and thought to himself that this information should be genuine, otherwise Jiang Shi'an would not have kept it for so long to ensure his "innocence".
After quickly flipping through the pages, he couldn't help but frown and lower his eyelashes in deep thought.
Seeing this, Jiang Shi'an straightened up slightly, waiting for the other party to ask who Jiang Shiming, the mastermind mentioned at the end of the document, was.
But he didn't know that Xie Xubai had an extra memory in his mind, and had already figured out the Jiang family's genealogy.
Xie Xubai raised his eyes and said, "I personally cannot verify the authenticity of this information, so I will have to trouble Master Jiang to come with me now."
Jiang Shi'an had a bad feeling: "Where to?"
Xie Xubai stood up: "Let's go confront Master Jiang."
Jiang Shi'an could hardly believe what he had just heard: "Are you out of your mind? You just openly ask my fourth brother about this. How could he possibly admit it? Besides, even my second brother turns a blind eye. Even if we lay it all out, who can decide his guilt?"
Xie Xubai didn't say much. He placed his hand on the large stack of documents that had been looted and asked calmly, "Master Jiang, you only need to answer whether you're going or not?"
Jiang Shi'an stared at his hand, his face twitching. After a long while, he gritted his teeth and squeezed out a single word: "Go."
Soon, the three arrived at the residence of Jiang Shiming, the fourth master of the Jiang family.
As a direct descendant of the same generation as the family head, Jiang Shiming was also qualified to inherit another subsidiary company after reaching adulthood, free from constraints and restrictions.
However, he chose to stay in the Jiang Group and serve the head of the family.
Jiang Shi'an initially targeted the Jiang family head because Jiang Shiming was his right-hand man. No matter what his subordinates did, they couldn't bypass the person above them.
If it is ultimately proven that Jiang Shiming was responsible, the Jiang family head will not be able to clear his name of suspicion.
The doorbell rang, and the maid came to open the door.
Seeing that Jiang Shi'an was alone outside, without anyone else, she couldn't hide her surprise: "Why did you come here alone, Master Jiang?"
Jiang Shi'an: "I have something urgent to discuss with my fourth brother. Tell him to come out."
Jiang Shiming sided with the family head and was at odds with Jiang Shi'an, who intended to seize power, thus secretly harboring many grudges.
The maid sensed that the visitor was up to no good, but she couldn't turn Jiang Shi'an away, so she obediently said, "Then please wait a moment, Master Jiang, I'll go and call Fourth Master."
Perhaps due to the cyclical rules, Jiang Shiming, who should have been working at the company, was at home instead.
When he heard that Jiang Shi'an had come to find him, he frowned with suspicion and looked down through the second-floor glass. Sure enough, he only saw a lonely figure.
Previously, when Jiang Shi'an needed to contact him, he would always call or instruct his servants to deliver the message. When had he ever "condescended" to come in person?
Jiang Shiming thought to himself that something important might really be happening, and quickly went downstairs.
As soon as he stepped out of the room, he was punched and sent flying!
The maid following behind had no time to react. She opened her mouth to scream, but in a flash, Chan Sheng darted into the room and swiftly finished her off.
Two minutes later, Jiang Shiming, who was in soreness all over his body from the fall, slowly woke up in the chair.
Facing the gloating Jiang Shi'an, he gritted his teeth and said, "What do you mean by this?"
Jiang Shi'an pointed to Xie Xubai beside him: "It's nothing. This Mr. Yu is very interested in an old case you committed and wants to talk to you about what happened."
Jiang Shiming then looked at Xie Xubai and the other person beside him.
He hadn't failed to see them, but he assumed they were Jiang Shi'an's henchmen and didn't take them seriously.
Upon hearing that Xie Xubai was the one who had offended him, he immediately sneered and said to Jiang Shi'an in a sarcastic tone, "I think you're really getting senile."
Let alone answering Xie Xubai's question, if he were to be punched for no reason, he would be merciful if he didn't break Xie Xubai's arm.
Jiang Shiming had no intention of continuing the conversation. He stood up menacingly, his gloomy expression seeming to say, "This is not over."
Until Xie Xubai spoke up: "Fourth Master Jiang, do you think the Jiang family head knows that you had a brief affair with Madam Jiang and that you still can't forget her?"
The person who was called out was struck dumb, and their face changed drastically.
Jiang Shi'an loved watching his brothers get the short end of the stick and secretly chuckled to himself: This feeling of déjà vu... wait a minute?
He stared wide-eyed at Jiang Shiming: "You actually... with my second brother's wife—"
"Shut up!" Jiang Shiming looked around in a panic, then coldly interrupted him, feeling guilty.
But Jiang Shi'an could not suppress the shock in his heart.
The Jiang family head is a man who cannot tolerate any injustice. If he knew that Jiang Shiming coveted his wife, he would never have kept her alive until now. It is conceivable how well Jiang Shiming has hidden this relationship.
So the question is, how did this tutor named Yu You find out about this?!
Xie Xubai, seemingly unaware that his image in Jiang Shi'an's mind had become unpredictable, looked at Jiang Shiming with an ordinary, indifferent expression: "Now, can we sit down and have a proper chat, Fourth Master Jiang?"
Jiang Shiming stood frozen in place for a long while, then pulled out a chair with a creak and sat back down in his original seat with a somber expression.
Xie Xubai didn't waste any words and directly placed the investigation materials of the kidnapping case in front of Jiang Shiming.
The latter glanced through it briefly, then gave Xie Xubai a sinister look, and openly admitted, "That's right, I did it, so what?"
His tone was so self-righteous, as if he were doing something trivial.
Jiang Shi'an slammed his fist on the table, appearing even more furious than Xie Xubai: "How can you be human if you kill your own nephew?"
Jiang Shiming frowned, as if he didn't understand what he was saying: "What assassin? That's a training that every direct descendant has to go through. Weren't you and I kidnapped by our fathers when we were kids?"
"Huh?" Jiang Shi'an was a little dumbfounded. "Really?"
"Are you an idiot?" Jiang Shiming genuinely despised his stupid and wicked older brother.
He emphasized sternly: "If I really wanted to kill Kelley, why would I wait until he was old enough to remember things before I did it? No matter how careless I was, I could not have let a 5-year-old child escape from my grasp!"
"You're definitely making excuses. How could there be such an experience? I have no recollection of it at all."
"The Jiang family is a big tree that attracts the wind; this is called cultivating a sense of crisis in children from a young age. You don't remember because you have dementia!"
Xie Xubai listened to their argument, feeling no relief at all from learning the truth, as the outcome was largely as he had expected.
Although he didn't fully understand Jiang Shiming's character, he knew that apart from his infatuation with Madam Jiang, which was a point of contention, the latter was absolutely loyal to the Jiang family head and would not have killed his only son for no reason.
According to the information, Jiang Kaile got lost in the amusement park he built at home.
To ensure the young master had a good time, the amusement park was closed that day and not open to the public.
Therefore, the predicament Jiang Kaile faces is quite obvious.
Xie Xubai suppressed the chill that rose up his spine and pressed his temples.
He flipped through the documents, pointed to one of them, and asked Jiang Shiming, who was arguing fiercely, "When you were planning to kidnap Jiang Kaile, did you bribe the servant of this attendant beforehand to let her leave on her own at the appointed time?"
Jiang Shiming was taken aback and looked at the maid mentioned in the information.
The woman, surnamed Li, was in her forties and had pockmarks on her face; she was not particularly attractive.
Jiang Shiming had no recollection of it, and said with a furrowed brow, "There shouldn't be any, there's no need for that."
His men were all burly and strong, and dealing with such a frail woman was no problem for them.
Xie Xubai then pointed to the next point: "So you didn't bribe the workers who regularly maintain the gardens to keep quiet and not shout when they see the kidnappers?"
Jiang Shiming suddenly sensed something was wrong: "This arrangement makes no sense."
This is a mental test, not an actual kidnapping. The presence of onlookers making a scene helps to create a more tense atmosphere, as if the child were being kidnapped.
Xie Xubai continued to move his fingertips downwards: "So, you didn't arrange for a costumed employee to deliver the balloons, so that you could just turn around and brush past the kidnappers."
Jiang Shiming said in a deep voice, "No."
"There were no vendors selling chilled drinks on the roadside, and I happened to have diarrhea and was in the toilet, so I wasn't there."
Jiang Shiming's lips were pressed into a sharp, straight line, and his face was terrifyingly dark.
"There was no operator assigned to this amusement park ride, and it just so happened that the kidnappers were so sleepy that they closed their eyes and took a nap when they passed by?"
Jiang Shiming couldn't listen any longer. He suddenly looked up, his eyes filled with malice: "Who did this—"
"Who arranged for the Jiang family's staff to take advantage of the situation when the eldest young master of the Jiang family was kidnapped?!"
Jiang Shi'an, who had been listening and watching in stunned silence, grabbed Jiang Shiming and asked, "It really wasn't you who arranged this?"
Jiang Shiming felt a chill run down his spine, a mixture of anger and lingering fear: "No!"
If Xie Xubai hadn't pointed it out, he wouldn't have imagined that the Jiang family, which was supposedly as impregnable as an iron barrel, had actually been infiltrated by an unknown external force and turned into a sieve.
But to everyone's surprise, Xie Xubai shook his head: "No one. If we really have to say, the only one behind it all is you. They are just watching coldly."
"What a joke!" Jiang Shiming denied without hesitation. "No one arranged this. From the middle of the amusement park to the entrance, it's at least two kilometers long. How could such a coincidence happen if everyone just stood by and watched?"
Looking at Jiang Shiming's exasperated appearance, Xie Xubai guessed that he probably didn't take the staff seriously anymore.
That makes sense when you think about it.
Before he dropped the bombshell, Jiang Shiming didn't even take the two living people standing in front of him seriously, automatically ignoring their questioning of Jiang Shi'an. How could he possibly care about such insignificant people who are everywhere?
Xie Xubai lowered his eyelashes.
Getting ordinary people to agree is not easy.
Is there a ringleader? No, that would be too obvious and would attract the attention of the Jiang family.
If the two parties agree on something, they must have a common goal to achieve.
Xie Xubai pinched his throbbing temples.
To confirm his hypothesis, he needed to find a few more people, and he had to act quickly.
Time flew by and it was evening.
Jiang Kaile heard that Xie Xubai was visiting the Jiang family members one by one. He originally wanted to wait for him to come back so they could have dinner together, but for some reason, he suddenly became extremely hungry.
He then asked the servants to serve him some snacks.
The maid brought over small cakes with rich cream. Normally, Jiang Kaile would get tired of these after just one bite, but today he ate them one after another, and he still didn't feel full even after finishing them.
He couldn't resist having the servants bring out fruit, and before anyone else could cut it, he took it and ate it.
Sharp teeth crunched the apple, juice spilling out. Jiang Kaile, starving, didn't even notice the apple juice running down his palm lines onto his clothes, nor did he realize that he had swallowed the core whole.
The servants didn't dare let him go hungry, and seeing him licking his lips with lingering enjoyment, they scurried back and forth to fetch more fruit.
Jiang Kaile ate almost everything that was served.
He kept eating and eating until the servants present couldn't help but show fear in their eyes, and he finally stopped.
Touching her unchanged belly, Jiang Kaile was also puzzled as to why she had such a big appetite today.
Suddenly, he felt an overwhelming and irresistible drowsiness, and his eyelids drooped little by little.
Not wanting to sleep in the living room, Jiang Kaile got up despite her sleepiness and said to the maid at the door, "If the teacher comes back, tell him I'm sleeping in my room and come wake me up directly."
The maid replied, "Yes."
Jiang Kaile barely lasted half a minute after returning to her room before collapsing onto the bed and falling asleep.
The boy's consciousness wavered, sinking into a hazy dream.
He's been having a lot of dreams lately, not really nightmares or pleasant dreams, but just constant recollections of things that happened in the past.
Distant memories can become extremely blurry, but in this dream, his consciousness was very clear.
He vividly dreamt that he had become a short, four-headed figure, with his arms raised high but unable to reach the shoulders of his maid.
The cheerful tunes of an amusement park filled the air, and the roller coaster roared as it traversed the tracks.
The carousel on the ground whirred and turned, and the fairytale-themed background paintings were colorful, making it a favorite spot for children everywhere.
He had a lot of fun.
The maid suddenly stopped and leaned down to him gently, saying that she had something to take care of and asked him and the bodyguard to wait where they were.
Five-year-old Jiang Kaile was reluctant to part, but in the end she softly agreed, emphasizing, "I still have a lot of things I want to play with, I'll wait for you for a little while, you have to come back soon!"
The maid patted his head and left.
Not long after, the kidnappers suddenly appeared, shot and killed the bodyguard, and took Jiang Kaile hostage.
Jiang Kaile was terrified and cried loudly. She kicked and struggled desperately in the hands of the kidnappers.
He saw the old man repairing the garden and opened his mouth to call out to him, but the old man dropped the large scissors in his hand, kept his head down, and ran away quickly.
He saw the giant teddy bear delivering balloons, which turned its back to him at his heart-wrenching cries and, with its usual endearing gait, swayed and staggered toward another street.
His gaze swept over the deserted beverage stand, then turned to the operators resting with their eyes closed in the server room. His voice was hoarse from shouting, but no one paid him any attention.
Why can't you see or hear anything?
Just as the kidnappers were about to lead him out the door, Jiang Kaile looked up at the amusement park again in a panic.
He saw the vendors from before return, and the operator opened his eyes.
A glint of fanaticism seemed to flicker in their numb eyes as they watched him being taken away without moving.
They kept watching.
...
"Jiang Kaile? Jiang Kaile!"
An anxious voice pierced through the dreamlike haze, and Jiang Kaile opened her eyes with a start.
Cold sweat poured from his pores, his breathing became rapid, he felt a strange sense of dread, and his mind was in complete chaos.
Only when he saw Xie Xubai, whose worry was not hidden, did his tense muscles slowly relax: "Teacher."
"Are you alright?" Xie Xubai frowned, meticulously examining the boy's body. "The maid said your appetite is very abnormal today. Is there something wrong with your health?"
Seeing Xie Xubai about to touch her heartless chest, Jiang Kaile was startled and quickly grabbed his hand.
To put the other person at ease, he said casually, "Teacher, you're too easily nervous. I'm still sixteen and growing, so it's normal to have a big appetite."
Xie Xubai suddenly focused his gaze and pressed down on Jiang Kaile's chin: "Wait a minute, open your mouth."
Jiang Kaile was stunned, then belatedly felt the itch in her mouth and subconsciously stuck out her tongue to lick it.
I don't know when it started, but his gums suddenly became wider. With a gentle sweep of his tongue, he licked a row of small, round protrusions.
—These are newly grown teeth.
Author's Note:
I managed to update before midnight! The posting time will be changed during revisions, but clicking the little red flower will show the word count proof that this update was posted on the 15th! 0w0
I saw your encouragement, love you all! *kissing emojis*
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