“As long as we’re both descendants of the same dragon, we can become descendants ourselves by stealing the other’s dragon pearl. So I stayed up all night with my parents to devise a plan: we’d brainwash that country bumpkin, force her to commit suicide, and take her dragon pearl for myself.

“But Long Jin really caught us off guard—she was so damn smart that brainwashing her was hopeless. So I had no choice but to resort to other means. Zhou Qian from the Zhou family fell for me thanks to my scheme, allowing me to infiltrate the school’s Atavist circle and discover that fool Tang Qiaqiao’s love-struck nature.

“Tang Qiaqiao sees nothing but Wen Yuxian; she’s so naive and self-centered that as long as you say what she wants to hear, she’ll happily treat you as a friend. But she’s also very selfish. Without Wen Yuxian, she wouldn’t even acknowledge me. That’s why I’ve been following Wen Yuxian—to see if I can find some leverage to control him and Tang Qiaqiao, and thereby obtain the Tang family’s weapon capable of killing Long Jin.

“I must get the Dragon Pearl. Why should others be able to undergo Atavism and I not? I want to be an Atavist. I don’t want to be an ordinary person—I want to be above everyone else!”

When Long Ling spoke about the dragon pearl, a fierce, obvious hunger burst out in her eyes. Anyone could see the malice, the madness, and the burning ambition in them. Even the muscles in her face twitched a little under the force of that emotion.

Her ambition looked as though it could swallow anyone.

Long Ling was that kind of person. She was like ambition made flesh. To get what she wanted, she could sacrifice anyone, whether friend or husband. She loved no one but herself.

That cold, inhuman cruelty sent a chill through everyone watching the video. Deep down, they felt real fear.

Everything she said, and the way she looked now, was completely different from the noble, calm image she had built for herself.

And during her confession, Tang Qiaoqiao had even called her. The whole process of Long Ling answering in an anxious voice and tricking Tang Qiaoqiao into hurrying over to save Teacher Wen had also been recorded. After the call ended, she switched her face and tone back in front of the camera with shocking ease.

For a moment, every hand on every keyboard stopped.

All her fans were stunned.

Was this acting? Was she saying all this on purpose just to fool criminals so she could survive?

That thought disappeared the moment they saw Long Ling trick Tang Qiaoqiao. Even if they still didn’t know the full story, they could all guess enough: Long Ling had run into bad people, and to save herself, she tried to lure her friend over in her place.

Whether that friend was strong or not didn’t matter. That kind of thing was too shameless. It was just hurting someone else. It was disgusting. No wonder Tang Qiaoqiao rushed over early in the morning to beat her up. If it were them, they would want to hit someone like that too. So Long Ling’s life was worth something, but everyone else’s was not? Other people were supposed to die in her place?

And the more people thought about it, the more obvious it became. Long Ling had always only moved her lips and spent what might not even be one percent of her allowance handing out bread and water. No one had ever heard of her truly helping with a case. A few times, it only looked like she happened to line up with something the Tribunal Division was already doing, yet everyone treated it as her help. She herself had always only smiled and said nothing, as if quietly accepting the credit.

Just as she said herself, she was only an ordinary person. How could she possibly order Atavists around and make them break school rules for her? She had even entered the school’s Atavist circle by luring other men in.

The people who had been grateful to her, who were willing to rush around for her, and who had even given up a day’s wages to help her follow Wen Yuxian, felt as if their hearts had been stabbed through when they saw that video. Their eyes went red.

【……Damn it!】

【The difference is too extreme. Is this really the same person?】

【Is she really not acting? Is she really not acting? Oh my god……】

【Acting my ass. You could tell what kind of person she was the moment she tricked Tang Qiaoqiao over there. A truly good person would never do something like that, even if it cost them their life!】

【“Why did your family members die instead of someone else? It’s just because you have thin luck.” Is that even human speech?】

【You look down on ordinary people, yet you still put on a show to curry favor with them. Are you a piece of trash or what?!】

【No wonder that Tang family member wanted to hit her—she deserves it! The one helping her is probably that Zhou family young master she manipulated into falling for her. Wake up, man! Falling for a venomous woman like that, you’ll lose your life sooner or later.】

【So she’s actually been trying to murder Long Jin all along?!! And she’s even teaming up with her parents to brainwash her, forcing her to commit suicide?!】

After that brief silence, the internet exploded.

With this confession alone, she managed to step on both sides of the world at once. She was an ordinary person scheming against Atavists, trying to take Jing Pei’s dragon pearl, and tricking Tang Qiaoqiao into going there to die. At the same time, she also looked down on ordinary people, used them from above, betrayed them, and treated them like tools.

The only conscience among the Atavist families? More like a conscience rotten all the way through. It was the biggest joke of the year. It made people sick.

The Long family had still been angry that the Tang family dared treat them with so little respect. But after seeing this video, they no longer had the energy to be angry at the Tang family. They were only worried about what would happen if the Tang family came to settle accounts with them. They felt ashamed, and also angry in a way they could not easily describe.

She actually wants to kill her own young master—has she lost her mind?! She doesn’t care one bit about the family’s honor, does she?!

“Big Sister Long Ling! Big Sister Long Ling!” Long Peici’s unlucky son hadn’t understood a single word Long Ling had said. Seeing Long Ling appear on his mother’s phone screen, he shouted happily.

“Shut up! Try calling her that one more time!” Long Peici’s face turned ugly as she slapped him. This time it was a solid slap. What was he still thinking about her for? Thinking about how she might one day scheme him to death?! It was terrifying. The more Long Peici thought about it, the more frightened she felt. Long Ling was actually this kind of person. No, if she thought carefully, the fact that Long Ling never tried to stop her parents from carrying out their PUA plan against Jing Pei should already have shown that she was fake inside and out. But because she was right under their noses, they never noticed it at all.

The little boy, caught off guard by that slap, was just about to start crying. But when he saw his mother’s face, he didn’t dare. He swallowed it down, wronged and miserable, and didn’t dare call out “Big Sister Long Ling” again.

……

At that moment, inside the hospital, Long Ling had no idea about the show playing out online around her.

Because of her heavy injuries, her whole body was unable to move. She lay in a VIP ward on the VIP floor while Zhou Qian took care of her with great care, his eyes full of pity and affection. He thought that once she got better, he would definitely confess to her and ask her to date him. She was kind, strong, and had her own mind instead of just following the crowd. She was exactly the kind of woman he liked.

Atavist families usually did not marry each other, but if younger people insisted on marriage, it was still possible. There would be a lot of resistance on his side because he was an Atavist, but he wasn’t afraid. The only problem was that it would be hard for them to have children. He didn’t know whether she could accept that.

The more he liked Long Ling, the angrier he became when he thought about Tang Qiaoqiao’s actions that morning. If he hadn’t arrived in time, how badly would Long Ling have been beaten? What if her broken ribs had been dragged and smashed around hard enough to pierce an organ? And Chen Mo—he had actually just stood at the door watching! Had they really spoiled Tang Qiaoqiao that much?

To stand up for the girl he liked, and relying a little on the fact that he was older and they usually gave him face, Zhou Qian opened their group chat and spoke up.

【Long Ling is badly hurt and can’t even hold her phone, so I’m explaining for her: the messages and calls to Qiaoqiao last night were not from Long Ling. Long Ling was also a victim.】

【Qiaoqiao’s birthday is only two months away. She’ll soon be an eighteen-year-old adult. I think everyone should stop indulging her. She can’t stay with us forever, and if we keep spoiling her, we’re only hurting her.】

【@俏俏小兔兔 I hope you’ll apologize to Long Ling】

He sent three messages in a row. The group stayed completely silent.

Two minutes later, Chen Mo replied with an exasperated ellipsis, then sent a social media link.

Zhou Qian frowned in confusion. He didn’t understand why Chen Mo was answering with something unrelated, but he still opened the link.

#ThisIsTheOnlyConscienceAmongTheAtavistFamilies

Long Ling had been lying there with her eyes closed, thinking about what to do next. Without Tang Qiaoqiao, how was she supposed to get the weapon that could kill Jing Pei? How was she supposed to get the dragon pearl?

Then she thought of the one-eyed boy she had hidden away, the one with the bandage over one eye. She didn’t know whether his awakening period had ended yet, what kind of Atavist he was, whether he was strong enough, or whether he could steal that thing from the Tang family and then help her assassinate Jing Pei.

If he could do it, then she already had a plan. She could sacrifice Zhou Qian. She already knew his weakness—he got drunk easily. As long as she handed him a drink herself, he would definitely take it.

Then she could make sure the Zhou family found out who did it, turning that one-eyed boy into a wanted criminal who could never show his face again. Then he would have no one else to rely on except her, and she could control him completely.

Of course she knew she could also fully control Zhou Qian and even marry him someday if she wanted. But she didn’t care. What she wanted was to become an Atavist herself, not to marry an Atavist. What did his strength have to do with her? It couldn’t give her his healthy, strong body or his power.

“Come on, if you want to join our organization, then introduce yourself… Hello, Boss. My name is Long Ling. I’m the daughter of the eldest branch of the Long family…”

Suddenly, the voice of that terrifying woman from last night—and her own voice—rang in her ears.

It felt like lightning splitting her skull open. Long Ling abruptly opened her eyes wide in disbelief and, ignoring the pain in her neck, snapped her head toward Zhou Qian by the bedside.

Zhou Qian was looking down at his phone. Long Ling saw herself on his screen. That video… that video! Why? That couldn’t be right! Was this a hallucination? It had to be a hallucination!

No… don’t look! Don’t look! Throw the phone away!

She screamed in her mind, but her throat felt stuffed with cotton and not a single word came out. Because she had already seen the social media logo in the top corner of the video.

The video had been posted…

It was over…

Her vision went black.

Long Ling had never felt this hopeless in her whole life except last night—and no, this was even worse than last night. Last night, she could still sacrifice Tang Qiaoqiao. She could still fight for a chance to be accepted into that organization. But now?

If Tang Qiaoqiao had not called in the middle of it all, Long Ling might still have been able to argue that she was acting, that she had only said those things to survive and deal with those people. But trying to sacrifice Tang Qiaoqiao ended up turning back on her. The very Tang Qiaoqiao she had always looked down on had dealt her a killing blow in exactly this way.

The image she had carefully built over so many years, the popularity she had gained, the goodwill she had gathered—gone. All of it gone. And not just gone. It was all going to turn on her.

Long Ling’s whole body shook, but trapped in that bed, she had nowhere to run. All she could do was lie there and watch Zhou Qian finish the video.

The veins on Zhou Qian’s forehead had already bulged out. The fingertips gripping his phone had gone white. When he saw the part where she later answered Tang Qiaoqiao’s call and told her to hurry over, his neck turned red, and the phone screen cracked under the force of his grip.

No one in the group chat had said anything else. Everyone stayed silent.

He had never been this humiliated in his life.

Zhou Qian slowly raised his head and looked at Long Ling. His eyes had turned a terrifying red. “Long Ling… very good. Thank you for teaching me a lesson.”

Long Ling was terrified. She was afraid he would hit her too.

But in the end, Zhou Qian still didn’t. At least he had that much character. He just turned away and left, full of anger and disappointment.

An Yao had gone to buy necessities for Long Ling’s hospital stay. When she saw Zhou Qian at the hospital entrance, she immediately smiled brightly. “Zhou Qian, I—”

Zhou Qian walked past her without even looking.

An Yao’s smile froze. She felt awkward, confused, and angry all at once. So rude, and he still wanted to chase her daughter? Dream on.

She stormed forward, only to notice that some patients and nurses along the way were looking at her strangely. Even the nurse fan who had just recently been standing up for Long Ling now looked at her with open disgust and avoided her.

A sense of panic started to rise in her. Had something happened?

When she returned to the ward and told Long Ling what she had noticed, Long Ling only stared expressionlessly at the ceiling and told her to go online and look for herself.

An Yao checked the video. Then she saw the terrifying number of comments and what those comments said—and the shock hit her so hard that her vision went black and she fainted on the spot.