The bodies recovered from Qingshui Bay were only proof of Yao Chen's crime. They could not prove his guilt - there was no evidence.

It didn't make much of a difference for Yao Chen, no more than finding a new place to dispose of bodies for the future. The police installed a good many cameras in the Qingshui Bay area, and brought the bay into the scope of city monitoring.

Jiang Ye buried his friend's body and swore at his grave to bring Yao Chen to justice.

He once again gave that mysterious man a call, but the phone was turned off. He knew that if the man didn't reach out to him, he wouldn't be able to contact them. All he could do was hope for another phone call that would give him more information so that he could unearth evidence that would stick.

Unfortunately, it never happened. The number lay quietly in his address book and never rang again.

Han Yanyan's life with Yao Chen was very peaceful.

She studied both at school and after school. Most of the students were now out looking for jobs, while a few like her were studying hard for the graduate entrance examination. The other students vaguely knew that Han Yanyan had gotten a rich boyfriend this year who would pick her up and send her off to school, sometimes in a sports car, sometimes in a luxury limo. Sometimes, if the person couldn't make it, she would be picked up by a driver.

The way Han Yanyan dressed and the way she carried herself was very different than before. Once a plain and thrifty girl, she now seemed noble, cold and elegant, and was promoted to campus goddess.

The boys all lamented that girls changed a lot as they approached graduation - they had all fucking abandoned simplicity and began worshiping money.

Han Yanyan was never able to integrate into the Sanhu group, but there was another sort of occasion where she was very much at ease.

Whenever Yao Chen had a formal business occasion, he would bring her along as his companion. Originally, she was there just to look pretty and act as his foil. She was beautiful and elegant, and it gave him a lot of face to have her on his arm. Who knew that Han Yanyan seemed to be born for these kinds of occasions? In Jinhao's private rooms, she was a quiet mouse who only lowered her eyes and said nothing, but here she listened attentively and interrupted occasionally, always cutting in skillfully and speaking with words that people couldn't help but agree with.

She didn't seem at all like a student who had never really entered society, but like a veteran with many years of business experience.

After all, Eldest Miss Han had received an elite education since childhood. At the age of 14 or 15, her father had brought her to sit in on business meetings. At the age of 18, she had already worked in all the lower-level departments of the group.

Yao Chen was quite amazed and pleasantly surprised.

He had arrived at a stage in which he was in urgent need of washing his hands clean and transforming himself into a regular man. Having met Han Yanyan, he felt like the heavens were truly looking out for him. "Do you want to come work for me?" he asked her.

Han Yanyan's heart leapt a little, but she refused with a heavy heart. "I've still got to review right now, so I don't have the time. Maybe after the graduate entrance examination."

If this had been the first world, she would have been impatient to go to his side and get the task done. But after having experienced two worlds, Han Yanyan felt like those worlds had tempered her.

Her heart was no longer so rash and impetuous, and her emotions no longer so intense.

Sometimes, she even felt like her being with Yao Chen was like publishing a very slow-moving serial. The plot wasn't making much progress, but the author was unscrupulously milking it for all it was worth.

In her daily life, she studied and Yao Chen earned money. She made time to go to the gym every day, and there she often watched the movements in the sparring areas, following the path of their fists, knocking them down again and again in her mind.

But she never once walked in. In this world, 'Student Han Yanyan' could not be physically strong.

At most, she played with throwing knives. There was a target in Yao Chen's basement, and each of his knives were sharper than the next. In his spare time, he often spent hours sharpening and polishing their blades.

Throwing knives are much more powerful than most people think.

When Han Yanyan threw, her knife would stick into the target without falling. Yao Chen was even better at throwing, his knife keen and without a handle. It always landed in the bullseye.

He taught her how to throw personally. Because she had used throwing knives during the apocalypse, Han Yanyan picked it up quickly.

Yao Chen often felt like she was a woman custom made for him. Every time he polished her a little, he found a new brilliance in her over and over again.

At the end of the year, Han Yanyan took an intense exam.

"Now you can relax," Yao Chen said.

"Only temporarily," Han Yanyan replied with a smile. "It's very easy to fall off the rankings, and even if you make it you have to prepare for the re-examination¹The Postgraduate Admission Test in China has two parts, a preliminary test and a re-examination. The first one is more general and the second is more specialized.."

Endorsements, examinations, these sorts of things never failed to make Yao Chen's balls hurt. It was rare to see such expressions on his face. Han Yanyan couldn't hold back her laughter.

"Well, the results will be announced after New Year's Day, and there will be at least three months before the second test. I can relax a little then," she said.

"That works," Yao Chen said.

He took her on a trip abroad. From the tops of the mountains to the bottoms of the seas, for all the world like a real couple.

But they didn't take any photos. Yao Chen never took photos of himself, and Han Yanyan never once thought of taking a photo of the two of them.

The only thing left of the laughter and love in the mountains and the seas was a shadow in Yao Chen's heart.

When they returned to China, New Year's Day had already passed. The results came out in January, and Han Yanyan passed. She would take the re-examination at the end of March.

"I'm going to have to study hard again," she lamented.

Very happy, Yao Chen wanted to open a bottle of wine to celebrate. Han Yanyan put a hand to her forehead and stopped him. "There's still the re-examination to go!"

"Alright, then we'll celebrate after the re-examination," Yao Chen said, and bought her expensive jewelry instead.

She placed the jewelry in her jewelry box and seldom wore it. When Yao Chen noticed, he felt like his lady was rather boring.

He often bought her clothes, bags, shoes and cosmetics. This was the established protocol for dealing with women. It might be a little conventional, but 99% of women couldn't resist the continuous barrage of gifts. At that moment, Yao Chen suddenly discovered that he didn't seem to know what Han Yanyan actually liked.

Every day when he came home, he saw Han Yanyan sitting at her desk, reviewing her studies, earbuds stuffed in her ears. He once picked up an earbud and listened to it. It was all in a foreign language that he couldn't understand, like birds twittering.

Head befuddled and brain swollen, Yao Chen went to take a shower. Han Yanyan pulled up a screen, cut the foreign language audio, and turned off the monitoring software.