A Star Reborn: The Queen’s Return

Xia Yu shut her mouth and refused to say anything.

Li Lei signaled for someone to pull Xia Yu up and hang her using handcuffs from the ceiling. He took out a syringe and pointed it at her fingernails. “There’s acid in this.” Li Lei said calmly, his voice low and menacing, like someone speaking from the depths of hell. “We can start at your fingers, and watch how it corrodes your hands. Not to worry… the night is long.” Li Lei was not a soft person given the influence in his family since he was young. He could be extremely cruel when dealing with enemies.

Xia Yu lowered her head and remained quiet.

Li Lei pressed on the syringe to release the acid into her fingernails. Xia Yu screamed out in pain.

The burning smell of acid corroding her body spread in the room, and very soon her finger was completely corroded. Xia Yu screamed out as she squirmed from the pain, sweat trickling down her brows.

Li Lei’s voice was still steady. “Tell me… tell me the truth of Wang Jingwan’s death, then I’ll make sure you suffer less. Perhaps if I’m happy I’ll find a doctor to help treat your injuries and arrange for you to stay in the presidential suite.”

A contorted smile appeared on Xia Yu’s face. Suffer less? Presidential suite?

If he knew the truth on who murdered Wang Jingwan, he would chop her into a thousand pieces!

She wasn’t stupid!

“I… I won’t tell you…” Xia Yu’s voice was weak. “Just kill me…” She was confident that Li Lei wouldn’t kill her as she was the only person with all the clues to the events in the past. As for his methods of torture? Xia Yu believed that she could withstand them all. After all, hadn’t she been through all the horrible secret experiments Wei Lingnan did on her in his lab?

Li Lei’s methods of torture might scare others, but they were nothing compared to what she had seen in Wei Lingnan’s lab. He could forget about trying to get a word from her using torture!

Li Lei’s gaze hardened, and he signaled for his subordinates to continue with the torture.

At the break of dawn, he emerged from the dungeon reeking of blood.

Ah Nuo came forward. “Young Master, Miss Ling is waiting for you outside.”

“Didn’t I tell you to get her to go to bed first?” Li Lei asked. Even though he had rashly pulled Xia Ling to this place where Xia Yu was being imprisoned, he knew that the torture process to try to get Xia Yu to speak would be bloody. He didn’t want Xia Ling to have to witness that. Hence, he had managed to convince her with difficulty to wait outside the dungeon, but she refused to head to bed first.

Ah Nuo gave a bitter smile. “You couldn’t get her to go the bed… how could I possibly be able to do so?”

“Get her to wait a few minutes more.” Li Lei said as he changed his course. “I’ll go take a shower. Bring me a clean set of clothes.” He didn’t want his beloved wife to see him in this bloody state. He had a quick shower to wash away the blood on his body, changed into a clean set of clothes, and sprayed on some cologne before he went out to meet Xia Ling.

Xia Ling was hugging a panda cushion as she slept on the sofa in the waiting room. A blanket that Ah Nuo had found was draped over her body, and she was snuggled under the soft wool, her hair messy.

Li Lei’s expression softened as he walked over and gave her a peck on the forehead. His light kiss made her snap awake immediately. She rubbed her eyes in a daze and called out, “Li Lei?”

Li Lei said, “Mmhmm, it’s me.” He sat down on the sofa and hugged her lightly.

“How did the interrogation go?” She asked while yawning.

Li Lei replied, “We tortured her, but Xia Yu is really keeping mum about things. Why are you sleeping here? You’ll catch a cold… why didn’t you go to the room around the corner to sleep?”

She shook her head sleepily. “Waiting for you.”

She yawned again and asked despondently, “So you didn’t manage to get anything out of her?” Wang Jingwan’s death was a mystery that plagued her. There was no way that she could wash herself clean, and it was this incident that had soured her relationship with Pei Ziheng then. In the past, the line between happiness and hell was this Wang Jingwan incident.

Even though it was a long time ago, and she no longer cared what Pei Ziheng thought of her, this matter still nagged her. If only she could find out who the real culprit was!

Li Lei knew what she was thinking. “Don’t worry… we’ve already sent people to search Xia Yu’s home to see if there are any clues there. If she had a partner-in-crime to be able to frame you as a drug user, there will likely be some clues in her place. We just need to wait patiently.”

This was really the only thing they could do now.

Xia Ling nodded. Her arms encircled Li Lei’s neck as she said, “I’m sleepy. Carry me to bed.”

Li Lei smiled as he carried his beloved to the huge bed in the room next door.

The results of the investigations shocked everyone. They found poison, formaldehyde, murder weapons, as well as some items that seemed to have been left behind by a victim, like blood stains and hair. They also found a threatening letter. “Xia Yu, if you don’t give me the money, I’ll reveal everything that you did in the past.”

Li Lei sent his men off to investigate who had written the letter, as well as who was the victim.

After he got the investigation report, he couldn’t help but shudder at how scary Xia Yu was.

Xia Ling came to look for him. “What did the report show?”

Li Lei didn’t show her the report immediately, asking instead, “Xiao Ling, do you remember who Bao Renjiu is?”

“Bao Renjiu?” Xia Ling thought for a long time before she recalled who he was. “Is it an old man? He used to work as the props manager for Jin Yifei’s filming team. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

Li Lei said, “He’s dead.”

Xia Ling was shocked. “What?”

Li Lei continued, “Bao Renjiu tried to get close to you at some point. I realized his intentions and sought him out to give him a warning. He told me something… he said that he was the Head of the Wang Family—Wang Jingwan’s biological father.”

“What?! He’s Wang Jingwan’s biological father?!” Xia Ling was completely taken aback. She recalled that she had seen the Head of the Wang Family in social events before. He was charismatic and confident, a far cry from the dirty and scrawny old man caring for the props in the film site. “How is that possible?!”

“There’s nothing impossible in this world.” Li Lei replied. “After Wang Jingwan died, the Wang Family was convinced that you had killed her. Her brother, in particular, went around telling everyone that he was going to kill you. So when you were murdered at your tenth-anniversary concert, Pei Ziheng was sure that the Wang Family was the culprit behind your death. The police also found evidence and witnesses pointing to Young Master Wang as the prime suspect. Hence, he was sentenced to death.

“Having lost both his son and daughter in a short span of time, and with Pei Ziheng still so furious that he was using all methods possible to drive the Wang Family to bankruptcy, Wang Family Head was forced to live in the streets, with nothing left to his name.

“However, Wang Family Head believed that you weren’t killed by his son, and was determined to clear his son’s name. So, he changed his name to Bao Renjiu, which also means revenge if you put the words together.

“He had been investigating this case since several years ago.

“Then, I was already suspected that there was some special relationship between you and the Diva Xia Ling, so I sponsored his investigations. However, I suddenly lost contact with him completely one day. My subordinates told me that he died in a car accident. At the same time, I found out about your true identity and was too preoccupied to find out what happened to Bao Renjiu. The investigation this time around suggests that he didn’t die in a car accident, but was likely murdered by Xia Yu.”