Ultimate Goddess System

1.3.23: Clues

"Ah I'm bored." Xiao Yunhua whispered to Zhou Ming. "Why do I have to be here again?" The clanks of the silverware and the soft murmur among the people at the dinner table helped her case of keeping her question between them. "Seriously, it's like I'm painted with a target sign. Your grandpa is eyeing me like I'm the personification of Satan." She chuckled but quickly coughed to cover her laugh.

"Because you're my girlfriend and this came with the package." He teased back.

"But I'm your—"

"Yunhua, are you alright?" Kang Yiyi's voice interrupted, dripping with concern. "Housekeeper, pour her some more water. Can't have our darling celebrity choke to death." Hearing her words, Xiao Yunhua felt like she wanted to roll her eyes. Such caring concern, if it were anybody else, she would've believed it. Unfortunately, this girl had tried to murder her with a hit-and-run.

Hearing the word celebrity, Zhou Elder eyed her angrily again. "Riding on the fame of us requires an entire new level of shamelessness... I think you qualify!"

In her defense, she didn't want this fame that somehow came with the title of the Zhou heir's girlfriend. In her defense, always being the subject of pictures was super annoying. As an entertainer in Riverside, she hadn't suffered so much publicity. She also felt like this 'fame' was completely unnecessary and exposed her face more than she felt comfortable with.

"And once again, I ask why I have to be here." She grumbled quietly for Zhou Ming to hear. Her gripes were ignored by him as a brief conversation overtook the table. Xiao Yunhua tuned out their words and zoned out, thinking about random things.

She suddenly snapped back into attention when Zhou Ming was pulling her away. Her dinner plate looked untouched.

"She thinks we planned on poisoning her..." Zhou Elder grumbled, "Is she even worth the effort?"

"I just ate before coming here." She fired back, "I'm sure you guys wouldn't be that obvious, right?" Xiao Yunhua continued without giving them a chance to refute. "Nonetheless, thank you for your hospitality. We'll get going now."

They immediately left and drove to his penthouse in silence. To make their fabricated relationship more believable, Zhou Ming suggested that she stay at his penthouse for a while beginning last week. She objected originally, but her eyes were too clouded by her desire to get revenge. They did however, live in different rooms of the penthouse. According to the indecisive man, he had an endless strings of mansions, houses, and other things he did not need, the penthouse was his favorite because it was the last thing his grandmother gifted him when he was really young. The man even had an island, but recently, he opened it up to the public, but still preferred to be the anonymous owner. If she hadn't found out that Carte Blanche belonged to him, she would've never guessed.

As he parked the car, she sighed, crossing her arms. "You, sir, lied to me."

"What do you mean?" Zhou Ming paused his action of buckling his seatbelt.

"You said you would help me get revenge! All this month, I've been nothing but a pretty vase... I'm beginning to think that's all you wanted me for." Sarcastically, she added, "How classy."

"I've been gathering evidence..." Zhou Ming uttered after being quiet to absorb her words. Even though he didn't want to let her in on the plans yet, it was only fair that she knew. "From what you told me at our last 'date'—"

"You mean one of the events that showed off our 'lovely relationship' for the tabloids to eat up?" She interrupted, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, yes. Whatever you prefer to call it. As I was saying before interrupted by your 'lovely' attitude, you told me that Han Mi had an attempted murder by Qiang Luo and Ling Xiu and they had a hand in manipulating hospitals to stop the old woman from getting treated..." he stopped, his black eyes looking into her honey-colored ones. "Never had a chance to know, but how do you know that?"

"Han Mi told me!" She blurted out without thinking. How could she tell him that she had seen the scene thanks to the system? It sounded ridiculous to her, nonetheless someone who didn't even know about the system. Besides, Han Mi was dead. There wasn't a way for the heir to prove her words wrong.

"Hmm, I see. And why did you think that they had a hand in stopping the hospitals?" His interrogation made her nervous, but she showed no indication of her anxiety on her face.

"Because a little while back, I had managed to get scalded by black coffee and Han Mi had taken me to the hospital. There, we saw your brother, Zhou Lang, being escorted by Qiang Luo for getting an injury. When he saw Han Mi... it was like he had seen a ghost—"

"And that goes back to Han Mi being proclaimed dead for a little while... This is interesting."

"Interesting? Your grandmother's conspiracy is interesting?" She huffed and suddenly, he grabbed her chin and pulled her face extremely close to his.

"Your attitude has skyrocketed today, Flower." He whispered. Simultaneously, the atmosphere turned ambiguous and their lips were merely inches away from each other. One move and they would meet.

Feeling a blush appear on her face, she pushed in away and shyly averted her eyes. "Ahem, let's continue."

Zhou Ming nodded and pulled back. He pushed a small, inconspicuous button in the car and a small box was pushed forward. Inside, there seemed to have been files. From the outside perspective, it seemed like the files were just random papers in folders. But in reality, once Zhou Ming pulled them out, the black-inked words were taken in by Xiao Yunhua's eyes.

"This..." Her sentence faltered and she felt shock.

"You guessed it. This was the man that had been hired to cause Han Mi's accident all those years ago. In fact, he was meant to be dead by the accident, but he survived, changed his identity, and moved far away." Zhou Ming clenched his fists, "All these years, he has been living in shameless leisure thanks to the money given to him."

"They didn't kill him to keep him silent?" Knowing their characters, Xiao Yunhua was shocked. They fabricated evidence and even took meticulous steps to stage an accident, it seemed silly for them to forget this important part of their plan.

"No, and by my assumptions, most likely because he has hidden evidence against them."

"Wait... All these years, he was sustained with the money?" Xiao Yunhua pointed to a circled word on the documents: gambler. "With such a hobby, are you sure?"

Zhou Ming smiled and patted her head. "Flower, you're too smart for your own good. This leads us to our next piece of information as well as what exposed his identity despite being changed... This man had wasted his money away a few years ago. He had visited Qiang Luo for another paycheck, which the Butler was forced to oblige with."

"And it's an endless cycle..." She murmured. "He wasted it away as well, right?"

"Bingo! My sources have linked his latest rendezvous to the Zhou mansion last week. Had he not appeared, we would've never known who had committed the heinous crime. I was not here a couple of years ago, so I had not known about such an ordeal."

"Your sources used this incident from last week to track his previous returns?"

"Yes." He didn't explain further, but she didn't try to press for more information in regards to that matter.

"Instead of Qiang Luo, he had gone to see Ling Xiu?" She asked, changing the topic.

"And that hits the bullseye." Zhou Ming's words made her blush again. She felt like a child that was praised for doing something productive and properly.

"So why don't you go arrest that old lady already! Seeing her makes me sick."

"Can't. He is not enough for the authorities to believe that the famous 'Zhou' Eldress is malicious. She is known as an angelic philanthropist and popular with high society. With such a backbone, would they believe the old driver? Even with the evidence, it could always be proven to be fabricated."

Xiao Yunhua grimaced. "You know, it's ironic how they would check to see if it's fabricated while in Han Mi's case..."

Zhou Ming sighed. "I know and I understand. But we can only deem it as her unfortunate fate." They got out of the car and he wrapped his arms around her. "Don't worry... I believe our relationship will cause that woman to do something reckless and expose her façade forever..."