Content warning: Mentions of bullying, domestic abuse, suicide, murder and parental death.

"Of course…" Gan Qing stopped at the intersection, waiting for the lights to change. "I grew to dislike her even more."

"Young people usually look up to people who are strong," Yu Lanchuan said calmly. "If a person is neither beautiful nor cool, people in their teens usually won't like them. It's normal."

"Is this your own experience from raising a teenage younger brother?" Gan Qing asked.

Yu Lanchuan shrugged, affecting nonchalance. "Yeap. As long as you make him feel that you're stronger and cooler than he is, he will imitate you on his own volition and work hard to meet your expectations. It's a lot more effective than reasoning with him. These little brats all have no conscience, there's no use being nice to them."

As this Little Master Yu was so cool he was practically ice, for a moment Gan Qing couldn't tell if he was very secretly an expert in problematic youth or if he was the problematic youth himself. She could only say drily, "Yeah, in the future, you can apply the same method on me."

Yu Lanchuan, "..."

Gan Qing said, "Especially when it's time to 'carry out the law.'"

"I thought that…" Yu Lanchuan glanced at her from above. He wanted to unleash his usually rather domineering gaze but coincidentally, a gust of northwest wind suddenly lifted Gan Qing's mid length hair. The numerous intersecting strands disrupted Director Yu's line of sight and also seemed to slip into his throat. He was forced to cough to clear his throat before finishing his mocking remark that had gone off-track. "...you are already a gremlin child over the age limit."

"Even someone over the age limit doesn't have a conscience." The lights changed. Gan Qing moved her legs to cross the zebra crossing. "Look, everyone says that you should study hard so that you can get into a good university; work hard so that you can get promoted and increase your salary. Some foolish people might think that as long as they put in some effort, they will definitely be rewarded. In reality, perhaps there are other areas where there will definitely be a reward if you work hard but there's no certainty if you 'work hard to be nice to others.' Sometimes, the more you work hard, the more other people will take advantage of you and the more they will feel that you are below them… No matter where she went, she was the type to be bullied. In comparison, even though I didn't like to pay her any attention, I was still considered one of the few who were nicer to her. That's why I was her roommate for a period of time.

"That was when I found out that she was two completely different people in the day and at night. In the day, she couldn't tell who liked her and who disliked her. If someone said a few mean words to her, she seemed unable to understand their meaning. She was so foolish she seemed heartless. But at night, she didn't even dare to fall into a deep sleep because every dream she had was a nightmare. The first time I saw her having a nightmare and the way she shouted and struggled, I even thought she had gone crazy. It was like there was a demon sawing away at her neck with a blunt knife. When she startled awake, she would hug her blanket and tremble, her mind unclear. She would curl up in her bed for an entire night, counting every passing second and waiting for daylight. Then, she would wipe her tears and continue being a foolish and sweet girl.

"I had never met someone like that. From purely finding her annoying, I started suspecting that her mental state was abnormal and was a little curious about her.

"She studied every day without fail. Even if she didn't understand it, she would force herself to study, force herself to continue reading. But it's not easy to learn something you only half understand. She had to read out loud to focus her attention. Her voice was like a large mosquito buzzing, it was quite irritating. She had even been beaten up before because of this but she still did not change her ways."

"Usually when other people bullied her… things like shoving her a bit or slapping her, it was none of my business. Even if I saw it, I pretended that I had not. But there was one time when things got out of hand. A few people grabbed her by her hair and smashed her against the wall. I saw that they weren't controlling their strength and was afraid that there would be trouble, so I meddled a little.

"She should have a bit of a concussion that time. It was a long while before she could stand up. She wiped the blood from her nose and at the same time, smiled foolishly at me and asked me how to pronounce a word. I didn't know whether she really loved studying or whether she had a thing for getting beaten up, so I just said 'You must be mad.' She said… that she actually also didn't know what was the use of studying but she had heard other people say that her life was unlucky. The reason why she had been abused by her husband was because she was uneducated. That was why she believed in studying. It was rather like praying to the gods."

Prostrating on the ground, crawling, climbing. Her heart had been so sincere, her appearance so unsightly, her hard work so fruitless.

"I told her that it had nothing to do with being educated or uneducated. If a person gets beaten up, it is either because they are someone despicable or because the person beating them up is despicable. Or maybe both sides are despicable. There is no other reason. But she didn't believe me."

Yu Lanchuan said, "A person who has completely lost control of their life sometimes needs to have a simple and crude logic to hold on to, and will do something that other people might see as arcane."

Because she was uneducated, she didn't have the ability to go out and earn lots of money and support herself and her mother. She could only depend on a man's every breath, endure a man's every fist. And, when all the complicated factors that the person involved wasn't willing to examine were discarded, this matter could be simplified as "she was beaten up because she was uneducated." In that case, as long as she was educated, things would be better, wouldn't they? If she forcibly swallowed down everything in these books that she did not understand, surely she would be able to break free from this nightmare, wouldn't she?

"She said that people cannot resent fate. The more they resented, the worse their fate would be. So, if they do not want to die yet, they have to risk everything and work hard to survive. Other than this, there is no other way."

Chicken soup stories were an anaesthetic. When she could endure no longer, she would take the book out and read out a few passages, just like the slaves back in the days of the old society praying for salvation from hardship. Through the "teachings" that she had come up with herself, she prayed for her future and in it, she found a tiny bit of comfort.

"Unfortunately, she didn't have the time to finish reading even one textbook. I had stayed with her for just a few months when she was admitted to hospital for a serious illness. Before she left, she probably sensed something herself and left all her books and notes to me, and asked me to help her keep an eye on her mother if I had the chance to," Gan Qing said. "Not long after that, I heard that she died. On the other hand, that mother of hers has a very long life. She may look like a sickly lonely widow, but so many years have passed and it still doesn't look like she'll be dying anytime soon.

"When she was alive, she was very diligent in taking care of me. I also received an 'inheritance' from her, so I had no choice but to hold my nose and occasionally go to visit that old lady. Those few years, I had nothing better to do so I took the things she left behind and made up a little for the classes I had not paid attention to in school… Perhaps madness is infectious."

Without thinking, Yu Lanchuan asked, "Why did she…"

At that point, he suddenly realised that he had misspoke and abruptly cut himself off. He froze.

Gan Qing turned her head around. From a few steps away, she looked at him. "Hmm?"

She was wearing a down jacket with feathers coming loose that could be bought in the supermarket for less than a hundred yuan each. It had the smell of chicken feathers and had been stuffed until it was bulging. It was like carrying a tortoise shell. But for some reason, it didn't look oversized on her. When she looked back, Yu Lanchuan even had the feeling that the edges of her clothes were floating in the wind.

He saw her smile like she was completely unbothered and picked up the conversation for him. "Why did you stop? Did you want to ask why she 'went in'?"

Yu Lanchuan's throat strained to move and then got stuck. His mind was completely blank. He was like a murderer who had been exposed on the spot by Detective Conan and had no idea how to smooth things over.

"Murder," Gan Qing said briefly. "She took the chance when the man who beat her was drunk and stabbed him to death. She was sentenced to life imprisonment."

Yu Lanchuan could not say anything.

Gan Qing lowered her head and laughed. She continued walking ahead, and waved at him with her back to him. "It's not a taboo that can't be talked about. Didn't Yu Yan tell you? I also killed someone. The person I killed is called Wei Huan. But when I killed him, I was just a little short of eighteen years old. At that time, my shifu did not acknowledge me. I ruined my own arm and broke ties with my sect. I felt that the world was wide but there was nowhere I could go. For a moment, my chuuni tendencies took over and in a fit of anger, I went to turn myself in. That's why my sentence was light."

It was a while before Yu Lanchuan found his voice again. His words stilted, he asked, "Who was Wei Huan?"

Gan Qing didn't say a word. After a while, she finally said, "It's a family scandal… Based on family hierarchy, he was my shixiong, and also the target of my revenge."

Yu Lanchuan asked, "What? I thought your Wan Mu Chun-"

"Only has a single descendant in every generation," Gan Qing said. "That's right, but Wei Huan had been expelled early on, before I was even born. I heard that in his later years, my grand master was already regretting passing on Wan Mu Chun's martial art techniques. He said that Wan Mu Chun's skills are demonic skills that ruin a person's nature and make it easy for them to go astray in their cultivation… He was a great expert of his generation and was very perceptive, perhaps what he said was true."

"Wei Huan… Someone told me that he was my former shifu's son. I don't know if I should believe them. In any case, ever since I could remember, that old man was a bachelor and I've never heard him bring up Shiniang… Maybe he was extraordinarily gifted and had given birth himself?" Gan Qing let out a rather bitter laugh. "Otherwise, why was he willing to bear the blame for Wei Huan, no matter how filthy Wei Huan's reputation was? Wei Huan felt that after all the efforts he put in and all the suffering he endured to polish his knife techniques to perfection, it was too ridiculous to use them to cut tofu strips. He had always been wildly ambitious and wanted to return to the days before my grand master washed his hands clean of his past. That's why he was expelled later on."

"Return?" Yu Lanchuan asked. "To being a killer?"

"With Wan Mu Chun's martial arts skills, what is impossible?" Gan Qing smiled. "What other people can't handle, the dirty things they can't do, they can all be settled with a cut measuring three cun and two fen. If he wanted any amount of money, could he not get it? Why must he spend every day covered in the smell of grease and smoke, making food for other people, and earning just enough for a pot of vinegar a month? By right, someone who has been expelled should have their skills destroyed by their own shifu but he took his eyes off for a second and Wei Huan escaped… Thinking about it now, someone must have helped him. It may be someone from that group Xu Shaowen belong to that Sect Leader Yang mentioned."

"Wei Xiao had always regretted not listening to his own shifu's words and that the disciple he taught ended up so unworthy, so he had always tried to find out where Wei Huan was. Whenever he heard of some fishy murder case somewhere, he would rush there." At that point, Gan Qing paused a while. "That was when he took me in. My dad was killed by Wei Huan. At that time, Wei Xiao reached in time and called the police. Wei Huan was injured and ran away, and didn't have the time to do anything else. Due to the fright, my mum's mental state was unstable from then on. Wei Xiao felt very apologetic. He moved next door and took care of us for two years… One day, he was out of the house and when he got back, he found that my mum had killed herself. I was three years old, she locked me in a small room…"

Yu Lanchuan didn't expect that their casual conversation would go from subject to subject in such a way, each more shocking than the last. He was almost afraid to say anything now.

"Ai, why are you looking at me like that? I don't even remember this matter clearly," Gan Qing said. "I was too young. What would I know at three years old? My hometown was a very small town and there wasn't even a welfare centre. Back then, things like adoptions weren't very strict. I didn't have anyone to look after me at that time and didn't have any other relatives. Wei Xiao stepped in and took me away just like that. When I was older, by chance, I found out about these matters and I had always hated him. Wei Xiao had never told me… I even felt that the reason why he didn't teach me martial arts properly was because he was protecting that person and was afraid that I would take revenge on him."

After a while, Yu Lanchuan finally said carefully, "Actually, you don't have to…"

"Since you guys want me to stay here, I feel that I should be more frank." Gan Qing thrusted her hands into the pockets of her down jacket. "It is something I have done, the path I have taken. There's no need to keep it so secret."

Yu Lanchuan couldn't help furrowing his brows. When being honest about the past, shouldn't a person be sincere and honest, digging deep into themselves to reveal everything? This was the first time he was seeing someone confessing in such a cold and impartial manner. "You don't like owing a debt of kindness to others."

"I don't," Gan Qing said. Before Yu Lanchuan could comment, she smiled craftily. "I once read an article that said that if you want to make someone like you, you should ask them for help. They will help you because they want to keep up appearances but can't think of any reason why they are doing that, so they will have a misperception that they like you. After that, they will really have feelings for you. I'm a young and unmarried woman, I'm just afraid of starting a whole bunch of romantic problems."

Yu Lanchuan's breathing hitched. For some reason, his face was swiftly turning red. Gan Qing was actually shooting her mouth off but after saying that, she keenly sensed that the person next to her had his breathing and steps thrown into disarray, and was rather surprised. Her lashes quivered. Then, she continued to speak as though nothing had happened, "Just joking. Little Master Yu, don't call the police, okay? It's the Lunar New Year, it'll be too embarrassing if I have to pay a second visit to the cell for the crime of immoral behaviour."

Yu Lanchuan forced a change in the topic. "According to Yu Yan, Wei Huan's fingerprints and DNA shows that he was the suspect in many unsolved cases. He was an extremely vicious and dangerous person while you were still an underage girl at that time. You also turned yourself in. If your defence lawyer was reliable, it could be presented as legitimate self-defense and you wouldn't need to-"

"It was not legitimate self-defence. I went after him and killed him. But my martial arts were not up to par so I was also in a very bad state at that time. If I put on a pitiful act, no one would suspect anything… Like I said, I was chuuni." Gan Qing smiled very good-naturedly. "I didn't like the sound of the phrase 'legitimate self-defense' because I felt that what it implied was that that piece of shit found me and wanted to do something to me, while I was just a pitiful little thing who screamed in terror and accidentally killed him. So I told the police that if I didn't want to kill him, I could cut his throat twenty to thirty times and he would still be breathing. 'Accidentally' my ass."

Yu Lanchuan, "..."

"Ai, talking about these unfortunate matters is enough to make me blush. Don't mind me," Gan Qing said carelessly. "Take responsibility for what you have done yourself, there's no need to hold on to great anger and deep grudges. However, I am truly indebted to everyone for not looking at me with biased eyes, I am deeply grateful for that. In the future, I can only be more diligent in cooking. Little Master Yu, stop being so careful and gentle and protective, it gives me goosebumps."

Yu Lanchuan had a vague feeling that he had accidentally stumbled into a forbidden area and was full of fear and trepidation, not daring even to breathe too deeply. In the end, not only had the owner of the area herself strode in openly and turned on all the lights, she even acted as though nothing had happened and greeted him in a "Hey bro, we're one person short, come join us for a round of mahjong" manner.

What a waste of his feelings!

"You're just thinking too much!" Yu Lanchuan said stiffly. "Who's being careful? Who's being gentle… and whatever! People like you are the very reason why society is not peaceful. After being reformed once, you still did not turn over a new leaf and spend every day either conning people or wandering around the edges of the law!"

Gan Qing sighed. "A very good day to our audience, this is Little Master Yu's Hour. Once again, we have come to the Today's Teachings segment…"