Chapter 141 Case Closed

Having decided to finish her work ahead of schedule and wrap up her studies so she could go on a seaside vacation, Chen Xin told Zhou Hao that she would come over the next day to help them prepare some meals and store them in the refrigerator, making them easy to heat up and eat later.

The dishes Chen Xin made were all home-style cooking—generous in portions and delicious in flavor. She packed them in airtight containers and put them in the fridge, but as a result, the two growing teenage boys devoured half of them by that very evening. This so infuriated Zhou Hao, who returned home late, that he almost pinned the two of them to the floor to rub their faces in it.

Fortunately, aside from those dishes, Chen Xin had also specially made some minced meat chili paste.

The chili peppers were locally produced, but the method of making the paste was something she had learned over at the Zhang family's place. There were savory-spicy, numbing-spicy, sour-spicy, dual-pepper beef, and spicy chicken variations, filling five large jars to the brim.

Aside from leaving some for Zhou Hao, she had also prepared a little for herself. Having a spoonful of the chili paste with plain porridge and steamed buns in the morning was a flavor fit for immortals.

Since they were currently rushing to meet their project deadlines, everyone was eating breakfast right there in the study room. Two of them would go out and pick up the food for everyone, and they had set up a large square table by the door to serve as a dining table. Along with steamed buns, plain porridge, and soy milk, there were also some local side dishes, such as cold-dressed vegetables. Chen Xin had brought a small jar of her paste over that morning. Initially worried that it might be too spicy for the others to handle, she soon discovered that everyone had a high tolerance for spice. Moreover, Chen Xin's culinary skills were so exceptional that the chili paste she stir-fried tasted even better than anything sold in restaurants.

The male students, in particular, already had big appetites. Reluctant to spend their money on meat-filled steamed buns in the morning, they would buy several plain steamed buns instead, usually pairing them with fermented bean curd to go with their porridge, or occasionally buying a cold-dressed side dish to stuff inside the buns. But after trying the steamed buns with the chili paste, a whole new world opened up to them, and that entire jar of chili paste was completely wiped out in a single morning.

Only two girls from the coastal region could not handle spicy food at all; after trying just a little bit, tears almost welled up in their eyes.

"How about I bring you some mushroom and chicken paste tomorrow morning instead? What else do you like to eat? While I'm still here during this time, hurry up and tell me. I'll stir-fry a larger batch, and you can keep it in Senior Sister Wei's mini-fridge. It should last you until you finish this project last night—uh, until you wrap up this project."

"Anything is fine! I love stir-fried pickled mustard greens with minced meat. Can you make some of that?"

Fresh pickled mustard greens were unavailable locally; they could only buy the packaged kind from the supermarket. Minced meat was cheap enough—two pounds only cost a few yuan—and combined with dried chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and seasonings, a whole wok of it cost around twenty yuan. Yet, buying the exact same amount of canned pickled mustard greens with minced meat from the supermarket would easily set you back fifty or sixty yuan.

Others liked it even spicier and wanted it without meat, substituting those hard, seasoned dried tofu curds into the stir-fry instead. It was even more chewy than minced meat, and not only went well with steamed buns and porridge, but could also make someone devour half a basin of plain steamed rice.

Chen Xin had not expected these senior students to crave chili paste so intensely; the mere mention of food made their eyes light up.

At noon, Gou Xiangru returned. She looked rather exhausted, but there was a smile on her face.

"Qin Qing has already left with her parents. Professor Jin told her to take a rest and return when the semester starts. That matter has been resolved; that junior section chief doesn't intend to pursue the matter further, and the deceased had absolutely nothing to do with Qin Qing. The police gave the female teaching assistant's parents a stern warning, telling them that if they continued to make a fuss and harass Qin Qing, they would have Qin Qing call the police."

After briefly brushing off the curious students, Gou Xiangru glanced at Chen Xin and gave her a subtle cue. The two didn't talk much longer; each took their respective documents to proofread, then revised and translated them based on the feedback.

After lunch, the students who disliked taking a nap continued working, while Chen Xin followed Gou Xiangru back to her dorm room.

"Qin Qing asked me to thank you on her behalf." Gou Xiangru pulled out an envelope. "This is a letter Qin Qing wrote for you. She said that by the time she comes back, you will surely have already left, but she had a lot of things she wanted to thank you for, so she entrusted me to bring this letter to you."

With that, Gou Xiangru returned to her own room, leaving Chen Xin alone to face the envelope in her hands.

Inside the envelope were two sheets of pristine white paper, and Qin Qing's handwriting was quite neat.

She wrote in the letter that her father and Chen Xin's friend had gone together to find the college and graduate school classmates of the female teaching assistant and Xing Kai. After interviewing many people, they finally obtained concrete evidence proving that Xing Kai and the female teaching assistant had already gotten together back in their junior year.

However, during their inquiries, they learned that while dating Xing Kai, the female teaching assistant was also secretly seeing other people, though none of those men matched Xing Kai's background. This was presumably the reason why the female teaching assistant kept stringing Xing Kai along without letting go.

Xing Kai might not have been completely unaware, but he truly loved the woman. Therefore, when she asked him to deceive Qin Qing, although he nominally complied, he didn't follow his girlfriend's exact plan—which was also one of the reasons the woman intended to break up with him once she latched onto that junior section chief.

Finally, Qin Qing mentioned that she had also spoken with Xing Kai's parents, who finally accepted reality and apologized to Qin Qing. As for the female teaching assistant's parents, with Qin's father and mother around, it was impossible for them to harm their precious daughter. The only reason those parents had acted so unhinged was because their daughter was dead and they could no longer latch onto a wealthy person, leaving them terrified of losing their livelihood, which made them want to extort the Qin family.

To put it bluntly, it was all stirred up by money. But the Qin family earned their money honorably—why should they be targeted by such petty villains? Qin's father directly issued a warning to the female teaching assistant's parents: if they continued to make trouble, he would rather spend money to hire people to stake out their hometown and workplace, exposing all the shameful schemes of their family. The Qin family certainly had that much money to spare; spending a hundred thousand or so to hire local hoodlums and unemployed old men and women to broadcast their secrets to everyone they met was a task carrying zero pressure.

Wicked people needed to be dealt with by even more wicked people. Threatened like this by Qin's father, the couple—who had still wanted to howl and wail—realized after howling for a bit that absolutely no one was paying attention to them, and in the end, they had no choice but to back down.

As for that junior section chief who originally wanted to hold Xing Kai accountable, upon discovering that he was merely one of who-knows-how-many boyfriends the woman had, he cursed a few times about his bad luck, took a phone call, and stated that he would no longer pursue the matter, though Xing Kai's parents still had to cover the medical expenses.

After being enlightened by her mother, Qin Qing was no longer worried or frightened. It was just that because this incident had blown up so massively and she was right in the eye of the storm, going home to lay low for a while was simply the best choice.

The university director had indeed genuinely wanted to give Qin Qing a disciplinary warning, but Professor Jin went straight to the university president, recounted the whole context from beginning to end, cherry-picked the parts of Chen Xin's advice that could be shared, and rephrased them in her own words, thereby securing the president's support. Without the president's approval, the director could not arbitrarily impose a disciplinary record on Qin Qing, so the matter was settled just like that.

"I plan to apply for a doctoral program at another university after this project ends. Professor Jin also said I could change my environment; who knows, by then I might even go to C University and become your classmate! When that happens, I'll treat you to the delicacies of my hometown."

At the very bottom, Qin Qing had drawn a big, smiling face.