51: Chapter 51 Using Fake Accounts as Bait! A Screenshot of a Mass Message Causes Three Female CEOs to Explode.

Lin Yan pushed open the apartment door.

He tossed his suit jacket, which reeked of alcohol, onto the back of the sofa.

He loosened his tie and walked into the bathroom.

He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water onto his face.

Droplets of water trickled down his jawline and into the sink.

The man in the mirror had bloodshot eyes and messy hair, having completely lost the sophisticated demeanor of a Senior PR Manager at Shenghai Group.

Lin Yan grabbed a towel and dried his face.

He shuffled to the computer desk in his slippers and pulled out the gaming chair to sit down.

He picked up that old spare phone.

He connected the data cable to the black desktop tower, his fingers tapping out complex commands on the keyboard.

An eerie green light flickered on the screen.

Old K's face, complete with dark circles under his eyes, appeared in the video window.

"Old Lin, is this 'pulling the rug out' plan really reliable? I've mobilized every last zombie computer I have."

Old K's hands flew across the keyboard as code continuously refreshed on the screen.

Lin Yan picked up a bottle of mineral water from the desk, unscrewed it, and took a large gulp.

The cold liquid slid down into his stomach, suppressing the surging nausea.

"Reliable or not, we have to try. I don't want to be playing cat and mouse here in the middle of the night."

He threw the empty water bottle into the trash can, laced his fingers behind his head, and leaned back against the chair.

"Create a fake high-end ghostwriting account, inject thirty percent of the real Spark corpus into it, put it on the external network to muddy the waters, and draw their attention."

Old K stopped typing.

He leaned closer to the camera, his eyes wide as saucers.

"Thirty percent real corpus? You're crazy."

"If that 'Ghost' follows the trail back to us, we'll both have to jump into the Huangpu River tomorrow."

Lin Yan leaned forward, bracing his hands on the desk.

He stared at Old K's panicked face on the screen.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

"Since she wants to investigate, we'll show her something real."

His fingers tapped a rhythm on the desk as he quickly mentally reviewed the ghostwriting chat logs from back then.

"Pull up that folder numbered 007 from your hard drive and pick out a few of those cringeworthy love poems about Zhao Tianlin to put in there."

Old K gasped and hurriedly began operating the computer.

"You're going to leave nothing left of Zhao Tianlin."

"He was already stripped down to his underwear by you on the cruise ship tonight."

Lin Yan curled his lip and let out a cold snort.

"If he doesn't die, I will."

"Then, put up that virtual IP we used for fishing back then and disguise it as an active overseas server."

Old K muttered as he typed.

"Fine, whatever you say. I'll cast the bait now. I just hope that Ghost isn't too smart and gets led into the ditch by us."

Lin Yan watched the progress bar on the screen slowly move forward.

His tense nerves relaxed slightly.

As long as this fake target could stall Su Wanqing, he could buy himself some breathing room.

The stretched Rolls-Royce drove smoothly across the cross-sea bridge in Jianghai City.

Su Wanqing leaned against the leather seat, her fair calves peeking through the slit of her ink-wash patterned qipao.

She held her phone, the screen's glow illuminating the tear mole at the corner of her eye.

The three-person WeChat group, which had no name, remained dead silent.

She opened her photo album and found a screenshot from a long time ago.

It was a message sent to her by L back when she was severely depressed.

"The world itself is just a giant makeshift stage where everyone is just acting. Why bother making things difficult for yourself for the sake of someone else's script?"

Su Wanqing used her slender fingers to operate the screen, erasing the name and time from the screenshot, leaving only that passage of text.

She sent the edited image to the group.

Then she typed a line in the input box.

"The wind is strong tonight, and I suddenly remembered this quote."

"Have you ever met anyone who speaks in this kind of tone?"

The message was sent successfully. She locked her phone and turned to look at the night scenery racing past the window.

Beside her, Chen Ming let out a loud alcoholic burp, rolled over, and continued to sleep soundly.

Su Wanqing furrowed her brows in disgust and edged closer to the car window.

This stupid man didn't even know that he had long been wearing a giant green hat.

Her mind was now filled with the image of Lin Yan remaining calm in the face of crisis on the terrace.

Did he think that by putting on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and acting all refined and gentle, he could erase everything from the past?

Not a chance.

She was going to peel him back layer by layer and expose his true colors.

At the same time, Luo Qingcheng's Maybach had already parked in the underground garage of Shenghai Tower.

She wasn't in a hurry to get out. Instead, she sat in the back seat, looking at the screenshot Su Wanqing had sent in the group.

The sentence structure, phrasing habits, and even the use of punctuation in that quote carried an extremely strong personal touch.

She opened the memos on her phone and pulled up the first draft of a PR release Lin Yan had submitted a few days ago.

Comparing the two, Luo Qingcheng gripped her phone tightly.

In the PR draft, Lin Yan had also used a similar sentence structure.

He always liked to use a detached tone to analyze the core conflicts of interest.

This bastard.

Luo Qingcheng grit her teeth and threw her phone onto the empty seat beside her.

She pushed open the car door and walked into the elevator in her high heels, the sound of them clicking against the floor echoing in the empty garage.

She would never let Su Wanqing get to Lin Yan first.

This prey was hers.

Qin Muxue's black Bentley stopped at the main entrance of the Zhao Family Villa.

Ignoring the butler who came to greet her, she walked straight back to her room and locked the door.

She tossed her vintage handbag onto the bed, took out her phone, and glanced at the messages in the group.

The words on that screenshot were practically etched into the depths of her soul.

She could even imagine the nonchalant smile on Lin Yan's face as he typed those words.

Qin Muxue's fingers flew across the screen as she typed.

"Like an old acquaintance."

She clicked send, then threw her phone onto the bed and turned to walk toward the floor-to-ceiling window.

Outside, the night sky had no stars, only endless darkness.

She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling her heart beating violently.

Lin Yan.

You can't escape.