Chapter 139: Someone Came Staggering In, Wounded!

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Chapter 139: One Person Stumbles Away Injured, While More People Shout Nonsense Without Knowing the Truth!

“Men are all bastards; Hua Ming is South University’s number-one scumbag.”

The red banner was dazzlingly red, its black characters glaringly dark.

Tang Zhong looked up at it, and the world seemed to spin into darkness. He felt as though he might faint on the spot.

What on earth had happened?

It was one thing for them to curse Hua Ming. Calling him South University’s number-one scumbag was not entirely inappropriate either—but were they cursing Hua Ming, or him, the man pretending to be Hua Ming?

The most troubling part was that Building Nineteen was the women’s dormitory where Qiu Yihan lived. Could this have something to do with Qiu Yihan—or with the girls in her dormitory?

A man’s seventh sense told Tang Zhong that the name “Hua Ming” on the banner could just as easily be replaced with “Tang Zhong.” Hua Ming had been dragged into an entirely undeserved disaster.

After raising his head, Tang Zhong hurriedly lowered it again, avoiding letting anyone get a clear look at the foolish face that even he himself often failed to recognize in the mirror.

“‘Men are all bastards; Hua Ming is South University’s number-one scumbag’—that’s a brilliant couplet. Whoever wrote it is truly talented. Hua Ming is that guy who sang ‘I Am a Wolf from the North’ at the freshman welcome party, right? He isn’t even that good-looking. How did he become the number-one scumbag?”

“Heh, Hua Ming has really made a name for himself—not just made a name for himself, but become even more famous. South University’s number-one scumbag? What a distinction.”

“You didn’t hear? Qiu Yihan, the freshman beauty of the International Trade Department, confessed her love to him onstage, but he rejected her. They say she couldn’t take the blow and dropped out. Her family even came and took all her luggage away. Sigh… I heard she fell seriously ill, too. Honestly, she was such a beautiful flower. Why did she have to stick herself in a pile of cow dung? She should have stuck herself in my vase instead!”

Countless people stood beneath the banner, pointing and whispering. Many others took out their phones to snap pictures.

Some explained the whole story to those who knew nothing about it. Even more people cursed Hua Ming for being heartless, ungrateful, and cruel—for being a loser without the proper self-awareness, and cow dung that had failed to perform even the basic duties of cow dung.

From their scattered remarks, Tang Zhong pieced together what had happened. He stood rooted to the spot, stunned.

The story was this: ever since Qiu Yihan had confessed her love to Tang Zhong in front of everyone at the welcome party, she had become the focus of the entire university. Because of her beauty and charm, and because of the determination with which she had declared her feelings onstage, she had attracted a huge following and become South University’s most talked-about beauty after Su Shan.

Originally, everyone had assumed that Hua Ming would accept Qiu Yihan’s love—or, rather, that he already had. After all, they had seen Hua Ming wipe away her tears onstage, pick up her shoe, and help her put on a rose.

But then came the shocking news.

Qiu Yihan had withdrawn from school.

Her family had come and collected her luggage that very noon.

According to the relative who had come to pack her things, Tang Zhong had later rejected Qiu Yihan’s confession again, dealing her a devastating blow and causing her to fall seriously ill.

She refused to return to school, leaving her family no choice but to arrange her withdrawal.

A living, breathing beauty—and just like that… she had dropped out.

How many male students now hated Hua Ming to the bone? If he did not want her, he could at least have left her for them.

As it happened, a third-year girl from the International Trade Department had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years.

Thinking of her own situation, and then of Qiu Yihan, she decided that she would never believe in love again.

After discussing it with the girls in her dormitory, she went out and had this enormous banner made, then hung it from Building Nineteen.

As for why she had not put her former boyfriend’s name on it, but had used Hua Ming’s instead—perhaps she felt that Hua Ming was the embodiment of every faithless man in the world.

And so this sensational scene had come into being.

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“Qiu Yihan dropped out?” Tang Zhong asked in disbelief.

He took out his phone and called the new number Qiu Yihan had recently changed to. A mechanical voice came through the receiver: “We’re sorry, the subscriber you are calling is currently unavailable.”

He then called Luo Huan. The phone was answered almost immediately.

Before Tang Zhong could speak, Luo Huan’s tearful voice came through. “Tang Zhong, you bastard! How dare you call me? Do you know that Yihan has dropped out? Do you know that her family has taken all her luggage away? Do you know that she fell seriously ill after you rejected her and is still in the hospital? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“How could you be so heartless? How could you reject her? She’s so beautiful and so adorable—what is she lacking? What makes you so special?”

“Do you know what she’s been going through these past few days? When we went shopping, she was completely absent-minded. At night, she talked in her sleep, saying she was sorry… She said she felt terribly sorry to you. You saved her, yet her family came and took her away without her even calling you. She bought gifts for all of us to make it up to you, but forgot yours. On her birthday, after you left, she cried and said that her chest hurt so badly… She doesn’t understand anything. How could you treat her like this?”

“Do you know how much courage it took for her to go onstage because of you? Do you know that she was trembling uncontrollably before she went up? I held her for ages, and she still kept saying she was so cold, so cold… Do you know what it means for a girl to confess her love to a boy in front of the entire university? It means she is rejecting every other boy who might pursue her! Tang Zhong, how could you do this to her?”

Luo Huan was so agitated that she poured out all those words in a single breath.

Tang Zhong’s own mind was in turmoil. He could not even find a single word with which to defend himself.

He had thought Qiu Yihan would grow stronger.

He had never imagined that she would choose to run away altogether.

He had thought they could still remain friends.

He had never imagined that she would choose never to see him again.

“Where did she go?” Tang Zhong asked.

“How would I know where she went?” Luo Huan replied angrily. “I can’t get through to her phone, and we’re all nearly frantic. If you have even the slightest bit of conscience, go find her and bring her back. Right now, you’re the only person whose words she’ll listen to—she has always listened to you. She’s constantly talking about you in front of us. Don’t tell me you had no idea?”

Indeed. Getting a proud little princess to obey a boy in everything had never been easy.

He remembered their first meeting outside the university gate. Sunlight had illuminated her porcelain-like, delicate face. She had looked around with the curiosity of a child leaving home for the first time. When she noticed him smiling at her, the little wings of her nose had wrinkled, and she had fiercely waved at him with the white doll in a princess dress clutched in her hand.

Back then, how much she had resembled that doll.

How had things become like this?

He knew that an unseen hand had been pushing her toward maturity. But had he not been an accomplice as well?

He had believed he was doing it for her own good. Better to spare her from developing the strength to resist later, only to find herself trapped in a cage, suffering and unable to escape.

But why could she not remain as beautiful and innocent as she had been when they first met?

Should she walk step by step toward maturity and become a formidable woman of extraordinary intelligence and cunning—or preserve her childish innocence and carefree nature as a sweet, uncomplicated girl?

Which was right? Which was wrong?

Tang Zhong understood now.

For Qiu Yihan, the cruelest thing in the world was not hearing someone say “I’m sorry,” nor hearing someone say “I hate you.”

It was being unable to go back.

Unable to go back.

“I’ll go see her,” Tang Zhong said.

He hung up and immediately ran toward the university gate.

He hailed a taxi and went straight to Red Pine Gardens, where he had met Qiu Hongtu the previous time.

At the entrance to the complex, he was stopped. He asked the security guard to call inside, only to be told that the owner was not there and that only a servant was staying behind to look after the house.

Tang Zhong had known from the beginning that this was merely one of Qiu Hongtu’s temporary residences. Qiu Hongtu would never truly meet him at home. In his eyes, Tang Zhong was not even qualified to cross the threshold.

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Unwilling to give up, he called Qiu Yihan again, but her phone was still switched off.

He remembered that, outside Thunderclap Club, Qiu Hongtu’s secretary had once given him a business card bearing nothing but a mobile number.

He searched through his wallet, found the card, and dialed the number printed on it.

After a while, someone finally answered.

“Who is this?” Qiu Hongtu’s stern, wary voice came through. Clearly, Tang Zhong’s number was completely unfamiliar to him.

“Tang Zhong,” Tang Zhong said. “I want to see Qiu Yihan.”

There was silence on the other end.

After a moment, Qiu Hongtu asked, “What do you want to say to her?”

“I heard she was ill. I came to see her,” Tang Zhong replied.

“She caught a cold after getting drenched in the rain and exposed to the wind. It’s nothing serious.” Qiu Hongtu patiently explained a little more. “I can ask her.”

With that, he hung up.

A while later, Tang Zhong’s phone rang.

He answered and asked, “What did she say?”

“She said she doesn’t want to see you,” Qiu Hongtu replied.

Then he hung up again.

Tang Zhong listened to the dull beeps of the disconnected call and stood there in silence for a long time.

She did not want to see him.

He knew that this was indeed Qiu Yihan’s own decision.

Qiu Hongtu had no reason to lie. If he had wanted to deceive Tang Zhong, he could simply have refused him during the first call. There would have been no need to call back specially to deliver those four words.

The little girl must have had countless questions to think through now.

When Tang Zhong returned to the university, he discovered that even more students had gathered around Building Nineteen than before he left.

There was a sea of people.

Some were discussing the matter, some were laughing, some were angrily shouting abuse, and others were taking pictures.

One person stumbled away injured, while even more people shouted nonsense without knowing the truth.

Author’s Note: Friends who have an account on Zongheng, please help me add this book to your collection. Let’s see whether we can break through the fifty-thousand-collection mark today.

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