My sister, whom I raised, has turned evil after faking her death for three years.

Cui Jiayi suddenly raised her head and looked into the rearview mirror from the shadow of the back seat.

In the mirror, Liu Liya was just managing to pull back an expression she hadn't had time to hide, an expression that Cui Jiayi knew all too well: disgust, loathing, something she wanted to avoid at all costs.

She used to look at those of lower status than her with the same expression, at those poor wretches who couldn't even squeeze into the circle.

Now Liu Liya looked at her with this expression, and after that expression, she quickly lowered her head, pretending to look at the navigation.

Cui Jiayi's gaze slowly swept across the road outside the car window. It was a remote road with old factory buildings that had been partially demolished on both sides. There were only a few streetlights, and it was in the middle of nowhere.

She asked why they chose this route.

Liu Liya didn't even lift her eyelids, her tone casual and undisguised, saying that she still wanted to take the main road in her current condition? What if someone found out?

Then she added that she should leave as soon as she got there, otherwise the Jiang family would catch her sooner or later.

Cui Jiayi looked at her coldly and asked her where she was going after she left.

Liu Liya was laughing so hard she almost dropped the steering wheel. Where to? To jail, of course.

But she just casually brushed it off, saying that I could go wherever I wanted, and that was all the help she could offer.

  

Cui Jiayi sat in the shadows in the back row, watching the faint light from Liu Liya's phone screen shining through the fabric of her pocket, and the inconspicuous Bluetooth earphone she wore on her ear. Anyone who had been to nightclubs knew that those earphones had good noise cancellation and clear sound pickup, making them ideal for keeping in touch when it was inconvenient to take out your phone.

Silently, she reached into her pocket and touched the only thing she had taken with her when she escaped: a thin, pure gold chain that she had bought for a hefty sum at an auction many years ago.

The chain itself is not thick, but it is extremely resilient, with a small metal clasp at each end, which is just right to wrap around the wrist.

She slowly pulled the chain out of her pocket, wrapped it around her fingers, tightened it, and tightened it again.

Then, in the next second, she suddenly sprang up from behind the seat, her arms reaching over the back of the seat, and the gold chain in her hands precisely looped over Liu Liya's head, tightly strangling her neck.

The carriage instantly erupted in chaos.

Liu Liya instinctively released her grip on the steering wheel and reached for the chain around her neck, her fingernails digging deep into the flesh of Cui Jiayi's hands, leaving long, deep, and bloody scratches.

But Cui Jiayi seemed completely oblivious to the pain, and instead of decreasing her strength, she increased it, causing the gold chain to dig deep into Liu Liya's flesh, creating a dark purple groove.

After losing control, the car veered violently toward the roadside, its front bumper slamming into a thick sycamore tree with a loud bang. All the airbags deployed, their white bags completely enveloping the driver's seat.

Liu Liya's Bluetooth headset flew out during the impact and landed under the passenger seat. Her phone slid out of her pocket, the screen still lit up with a call in progress, and the police's anxious call came through the speakerphone—"Ms. Liu? Ms. Liu! What happened on your end?"

But Liu Liya could no longer hear.

Her face turned bluish-purple from suffocation, her lips turned black, the whites of her eyes rolled back, and her fingers were still in the position of scratching Cui Jiayi's hand, with Cui Jiayi's flesh and blood embedded in her fingernails. Those once shrewd and greedy eyes were losing focus at an extremely fast speed.

Cui Jiayi sat on the back seat, her entire weight pressing down on the gold chain. Her fingers were deeply cut by the chain, and blood dripped from her wrists onto Liu Liya's hair, onto the white fabric of the airbag, and onto the screen of her cell phone, which was still constantly broadcasting police calls.

She watched as Liu Liya's struggles grew weaker and weaker, as her body went from violent convulsions to minor spasms, and then to complete stillness. Yet, the expression on her face was terrifyingly calm, as if she were doing a mundane daily task that she had done countless times before.

In the end, Liu Liya stopped moving completely.

Her face was buried in the folds of the airbag, her eyes were still open, the whites of her eyes were covered with dense blood vessels, and the last bit of saliva that had not been drooled out hung at the corner of her mouth, mixed with the blood seeping from the wound on her neck, leaving a small dark red stain on the airbag.

Cui Jiayi waited another ten seconds or so before slowly loosening the gold chain. Her fingers were still trembling slightly from the excessive force, and blood was seeping from the wound on the back of her hand caused by Liu Liya's fingernails. However, she simply wiped it casually on her pants, then put the gold chain back in her pocket, bent down to pick up Liu Liya's phone that had fallen under the seat, removed the SIM card, threw it out the window, and turned off the phone.

She stuffed her phone and earphones into her pocket, then rummaged through the car's storage compartments and Liu Liya's belongings, taking all the cash, a few bank cards, and a not-so-valuable watch.

After doing all this, she pushed open the back door of the car, staggered onto the uneven dirt road, and disappeared into the dense woods by the roadside without looking back.

Behind them, the gray sedan that had crashed into the tree still had its hazard lights on, flashing a pale yellow light in the sunlight, illuminating the slowly expanding dark red bloodstain on the airbag, and also illuminating the unseeing face of the woman in the driver's seat who had once only wanted a better life.

Meanwhile, the sound of sirens in the distance was growing louder and more urgent as it approached.

The Jiang family received news of Cui Jiayi's murder at nightfall.

At that moment, Jiang Mingyuan was sitting in his study looking through the paternity test report that he had read countless times. Cui Ying was leaning against the soft couch by the window, with a thin blanket draped over her body, her gaze fixed on the sycamore tree outside the window, whose leaves had mostly fallen.

Jiang Ren answered the phone, and after listening to only two sentences, his face darkened.

Liu Liya's body was found on a secluded side road. The car had crashed into a tree, all the airbags had deployed, and she died in the driver's seat. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation, and there was a dark purple ligature mark left on her neck by a thin thread of some unknown material.

The car's dashcam had its memory card removed, but police recovered the last recorded call from the dropped Bluetooth headset.

Liu Liya had been in contact with the police before the incident. She claimed to know Cui Jiayi's whereabouts and was preparing to take her to a designated location for handover.

The call was abruptly cut off by a loud crash, and when it resumed, only a hoarse, eerily calm female voice spoke to the unconscious Liu Liya: "You think I don't know what you're thinking?"