[GL] I'm Just A Side Character... So Why Is The Heroine Chasing Me?!-Chapter 75: The fall of Qin Wen

The remaining two investigators arrived on the fifth day, as scheduled. They were nothing like Inspector Luo.

Where Luo Zhiyan was a scalpel, Investigators Han and Pei were hammers. Han was a broad shouldered man with a voice that carried through walls and a reputation for making corrupt officials weep during depositions. Pei was a thin, quiet woman who smiled constantly and had once dismantled an entire provincial government’s embezzlement network in eleven days.

Together, the three of them turned the sect inside out.

The interviews began at dawn and ran until dark. Every elder connected to the tournament committee was called. Every disciple who had witnessed the Wen Hao incident was deposed. The dispensary staff were questioned individually, in separate rooms, with their statements cross referenced in real time by Investigator Pei, who had an almost supernatural ability to detect inconsistencies between accounts.

The dispensary clerk who had conveniently taken leave before the quarterfinal was located at a border inn three provinces east. Imperial soldiers escorted him back within two days. His testimony, given under oath and imperial seal, confirmed that Elder Zhao Chenguang had personally overseen the modification of the pills and that the alchemist who performed the work had been brought in from outside the sect.

From Qin territory.

On the second day of formal interviews, Zhao Ruoqing broke.

It happened exactly as Zhao Lingxi had predicted. Investigator Han presented her with the evidence against Elder Zhao Chenguang first. The dispensary records. The clerk’s testimony. The requisition forms bearing the elder’s seal. He laid each piece on the table in front of her with the patient thoroughness of a mason building a wall, and when the wall was complete, he asked a single question.

"Were you aware of your uncle’s activities?"

Zhao Ruoqing looked at the evidence. She looked at the imperial investigators. She calculated, the way she had always calculated, the fastest path to her own survival.

"I want terms," she said.

The terms were straightforward. Full testimony in exchange for reduced culpability. Zhao Ruoqing would be censured and stripped of her inner sect privileges, but she would not face criminal charges. It was more than she deserved. It was less than she wanted. She took it.

Her testimony ran for six hours.

She confirmed the meetings with Qin Wen. The information exchanges. The coordinated efforts to isolate Zhao Lingxi from family support. She described how Qin Wen had approached her two years ago, offering a partnership that would elevate her position within the Zhao family once Zhao Lingxi was permanently removed. She detailed the communication channels, the messenger network, the servant rotation system that Lan Yue had already mapped.

She confirmed the marriage scheme. The deliberate sabotage of the Shen Yiming engagement. The contract clause that the Qin clan had co authored specifically to create a legal pathway for replacement.

And she confirmed something no one had known.

"He has others," Zhao Ruoqing said. "In other sects. The same operation, running simultaneously. Identify a target with valuable spiritual bloodlines or rare cultivation traits. Isolate them. Destroy their support. Position the Qin clan to absorb the asset through marriage, partnership, or acquisition."

Investigator Pei leaned forward. "How many others?"

"Three that I know of. He mentioned them casually. A girl in the Southern Cloud Sect with a rare wood root mutation. A boy in the Iron Peak Sect whose family holds proprietary forging techniques. And someone in the Western Academy, though he never gave details."

The scope of it settled over the room like a shadow.

Qin Wen was not just scheming against Zhao Lingxi. He was running a systematic bloodline acquisition operation across multiple sects, using the same methodology, the same patterns of isolation and destruction, the same elegant architecture of kindness and cruelty.

Seven victims in Sun Meihua’s dossier. Three more in other sects. And those were only the ones they knew about.

On the third day, the investigators summoned Qin Wen.

Lan Yue was not permitted in the room. None of them were. But Mo Tian, exercising his imperial observer authority, stationed himself in the adjacent chamber where a listening formation had been installed, and he relayed the proceedings to the group that evening.

"He was magnificent," Mo Tian said, and the word carried no admiration. "He sat in that chair for four hours and answered every question with the calm, measured precision of a man discussing the weather. He denied nothing outright. He reframed everything. The pills were a dispensary error. The mentorship was genuine concern. The meetings with Zhao Ruoqing were family diplomacy. The messenger network was standard correspondence."

"And the seven victims?" Bai Xuelan asked.

"Coincidence. Misunderstanding. The natural turbulence of sect politics. He expressed deep sympathy for each of them individually and suggested that perhaps the real problem was a systemic failure of the sect’s support structures rather than any individual’s actions."

"He blamed the institution," Lan Yue said flatly.

"Beautifully. Eloquently. With just enough self deprecation to seem humble." Mo Tian set down his tea. "And then Inspector Luo did something extraordinary."

He paused for effect. Mo Tian always paused for effect.

"She presented the alchemical signature analysis. Tang Xiaoli’s work linking the pill modifications to a single alchemist. Then she presented the dispensary clerk’s testimony identifying the alchemist as a Qin clan contractor. Then she presented the financial records from Sun Meihua’s dossier showing payments from Qin Wen’s personal accounts to that same contractor over a two year period."

The room was silent.

"She laid them on the table one at a time. Slowly. She did not explain them. She did not ask questions. She simply placed each document in front of him and waited."

"What did he do?" Tang Xiaoli asked.

"He smiled. He looked at the documents. He looked at Inspector Luo. And for the first time, he did not have a reframe. Because the documents did not contain allegations or interpretations or patterns that could be dismissed as coincidence. They contained numbers. Dates. Signatures. His signature, on payment records, to the person who modified the pills that destroyed Wen Hao’s meridians."

Mo Tian leaned back.

"He asked for legal counsel. Inspector Luo informed him that imperial inquiries do not provide counsel during preliminary interviews. He asked for a recess. She denied it. He asked to make a statement for the record."

"What did he say?"

"He said, ’I acted in the interests of my family and my sect. Everything I did was in service of strengthening the cultivation world. If the methods were imperfect, the intention was pure.’"

The room absorbed this.

"He admitted it," Lan Yue said.

"Not in those words. But close enough. Inspector Luo noted for the record that the subject had acknowledged performing actions he described as imperfect, which constituted a partial admission. The full formal charges will be filed when the inquiry concludes."

Zhao Lingxi, who had been listening from the desk with her hands folded and her expression unreadable, spoke for the first time.

"What happens to him now?"

"Formal charges will include conspiracy to cause bodily harm, evidence fabrication, coercion of sect personnel, manipulation of academic and tournament proceedings, and abuse of clan authority. If convicted, the minimum sentence is complete cultivation sealing and permanent exile from all major sects."

"And the operations in other sects?"

"Inspector Luo has already dispatched communications to the Southern Cloud Sect, Iron Peak Sect, and Western Academy. Parallel investigations will be opened." Mo Tian paused. "She also commended the quality of the evidence package. She said, and I quote, ’Whoever assembled this has a career in imperial investigation if they want it.’"

Bai Xuelan adjusted her glasses. The faintest trace of color appeared on her cheeks. "I am happy in research."

"She also asked about the person who conducted the initial surveillance. The messenger mapping. The servant recruitment. The field intelligence that provided the operational foundation for the entire case."

Everyone looked at Lan Yue.

"I told her your name," Mo Tian said. "She asked if you had formal training in investigation. I said no. She asked what your background was. I said you survived a zombie apocalypse."

"What did she say?"

"She said that explained a great deal."

That night, after the others had gone, Lan Yue and Zhao Lingxi sat together on the stone bench in the east garden. The carp circled in the dark water. The plum trees rustled in a wind that smelled like rain.

"It is over," Lan Yue said.

"The inquiry is over. The consequences are just beginning." Zhao Lingxi looked at the pond. "My uncle will be stripped of his elder status. My sister has already been censured. The Zhao family’s reputation will take years to recover."

"Does that bother you?"

Zhao Lingxi considered this. "They chose their actions. The consequences are theirs to carry. I will not mourn the loss of loyalty that never existed."

She said it simply. Without bitterness. Without the cold, clinical detachment of the war room. Just a woman stating a truth she had accepted a long time ago.

"What will you do now?" Lan Yue asked.

Zhao Lingxi turned to look at her. The moonlight caught her face, illuminating the sharp line of her jaw, the pale clarity of her eyes, the faint curve at the corner of her mouth that meant she was about to say something that would make Lan Yue’s heart do something structurally inadvisable.

"I thought I might stay," she said. "Here. At the sect. With the people who built a fortress around me without being asked."

"That sounds reasonable."

"With one person in particular."

Lan Yue’s breath caught. "Also reasonable."

Zhao Lingxi’s hand found hers on the bench between them. Their fingers interlaced. The red thread hummed, warm and bright, connecting one pulse to the other like a bridge between two countries that had finally decided to open their borders.

"Lan Yue," Zhao Lingxi said.

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For not leaving. For every terrible decision you made at two in the morning. For the umbrella and the floor sitting and the absolute inability to follow a single instruction I give you."

"You are welcome. I am also sorry about the cedar pillar."

"You are not sorry about the cedar pillar."

"I am sorry about the consequences of the cedar pillar."

Zhao Lingxi’s grip tightened on her hand. Not painfully. Possessively. The kind of hold that said mine with the quiet, absolute certainty of someone who did not make claims lightly.

"Next time I tell you to stay," Zhao Lingxi said softly, "stay."

"And if I do not?"

The look she received in response made Lan Yue’s entire body go warm from her scalp to her toes.

"Then I will be creative," Zhao Lingxi said.

The red thread blazed. The carp circled. The plum blossoms fell like small, pale witnesses onto the dark surface of the water.

And Lan Yue decided, with the absolute certainty of someone who had survived apocalypses and tournaments and six days of silence and a woman whose punishments felt more like invitations, that whatever came next, she was exactly where she was supposed to be.