Her words were astonishing.
Li Jianwei's expression remained unchanged, a fake smile plastered on his face. "What kind of nonsense are you talking about, Shen Yi?"
Despite his words, he reached back and locked the office door, turned around, and looked at Shen Yi expressionlessly.
"I do have the highest authority in the organization. If you want to leave today, you can go anytime," he warned. "Shen Yi, only for today."
"Don't change the subject," Shen Yi plopped down on the sofa, tilted her head back, and asked curiously, "Did I guess right, Li Jianwei?"
"..."
A long silence.
Li Jianwei found it amusing. "At your age, when you love to fantasize the most, haven't you outgrown your eighth-grader syndrome?"
He stood up and put his hands in his pockets. "Where would I get such great ability?"
Shen Yi said, "I'm curious about that too. How did you manage to take control of an organization?"
And how did you manage to deceive everyone and replace the leader?
Besides, is an organization's leader really that incompetent? To be so useless as to be killed by a child?
Did his other subordinates and senior figures have no reaction?
Everything was exceptionally unreasonable.
Shen Yi made a casual guess, wanting to see Li Jianwei's reaction.
Now, Li Jianwei's reaction actually confirmed her guess.
Li Jianwei narrowed his eyes. "Your imagination is quite good, Shen Yi."
"It's just average." Shen Yi's reaction was very calm.
Li Jianwei sat opposite her, crossed his legs, and seeing her face full of certainty that this was the truth, he didn't bother to deny it anymore.
After all, after tomorrow.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
"Do you know, Shen Yi? I know that the Archives highly values you, so I had a sudden whim before to come and see you."
When he first found out that his two employees went to arrest a killer, he was a bit dismissive.
It wasn't until he flipped through the archived files that he realized this killer, codenamed Kelsang Flower, had unusually frequent contact with the boss of the Archives.
A place like the Archives was just like Que, with a clear hierarchy. For a killer to frequently meet with the boss meant their relationship was absolutely not ordinary.
To ensure that their arrest mission was foolproof, Li Jianwei directly approached Chen Yu and Sasa.
Who would have thought that these two useless fools would actually protect a killer.
What happened later gradually developed into the current situation.
"You seem to really like catching killers from the Archives. Why? I heard from Sasa that it's because their teacher has a grudge against the Archives organization."
"If you are their real teacher... what is your reason for targeting the Archives?" Shen Yi fell into a brainstorming session. "I remember you telling me before that your parents worked at the Archives and unfortunately lost their lives while out on a mission..."
Shen Yi had believed his nonsense before.
She even tried to think if Li Jianwei's hatred for the Archives stemmed from his hatred of evil forces after his parents' deaths.
But thinking about it, it still didn't seem right.
When he chatted with her, he had no ill will towards her, and even when mentioning the Archives, he didn't show much hatred.
Instead, he showed extraordinary resentment towards the Que organization.
So, from this, it could be deduced.
It was highly likely that his parents died at the hands of the Que organization.
But Shen Yi still felt it was strange.
She always felt that Li Jianwei's words during their first meeting were just him fooling her.
"Your previous words were lying to me, right? Your parents never worked at the Archives, and you have no grudge against the Archives." Shen Yi looked at him steadily. "But you absolutely have a grudge against the Que organization."
When he mentioned Que, the hatred in his expression couldn't be hidden.
Or maybe in his eyes, she was just an idiot with a bad brain, so he didn't even bother to hide it.
Shen Yi tilted her head. "How exactly did you manage to take control of this organization?"
Li Jianwei, up to now, was at most less than thirty years old. Being so young, how did he do it?
Li Jianwei half-joked, "Because I was brought in here since I was a child and worked for the Que organization."
"I know this place very well. Being a teenager is not that young anymore. Carefully planning to usurp the throne and kill the leader is not impossible, right?"
"..." Shen Yi observed his expression.
Lying again.
Shen Yi suddenly said, "So your parents were killed by Que? You killed the leader here for revenge?"
Li Jianwei's expression was strange. "Hahaha, guess. Aren't you very smart?"
Seeing this expression, Shen Yi knew she had guessed wrong again.
Shen Yi's intuition was always exceptionally sharp at times like this. She slowly sorted out her thoughts. "You worked in the Que organization since you were a child, but you weren't brought in by someone."
"You originally belonged here. Your whole family were people of the Que organization, right?"
Li Jianwei was surprised by her sharpness. "So smart."
She really guessed it right.
Shen Yi cursed inwardly.
This damn sneaky bastard, fooling her during their first meeting with something like "parents were personnel of the Archives."
Shen Yi actually foolishly believed it at first.
If she hadn't stayed here for a long time, harassing him every day, and noticed that the operation of this organization almost always required consulting Li Jianwei, Shen Yi really wouldn't have noticed anything strange.
"I still don't quite understand. How could an organization's leader be stupid enough to be killed by a child? Didn't he guard against you?" Shen Yi tried to find the unreasonable parts.
Li Jianwei said glibly, "Maybe he thought I looked cute."
Shen Yi ignored his clowning around. "Sasa said you've been by the leader's side since you were a child."
Since childhood.
There was no one who had followed Shen Sigui since childhood.
Her uncle, just like her father, would not even allow any long-term people or things to exist by his side.
For a leader, this was an exceptionally dangerous uncertain factor.
How did Li Jianwei manage to stay by a leader's side since he was a child?
Ruling out the unreasonable options, Shen Yi could only think of the most basic point:
"The true former leader of the Que organization," Shen Yi said word by word, "was your biological father, right?"
Silence filled the air.
Li Jianwei smiled and admitted, "Yeah."
She really guessed right.
"Let me tell you another secret." Since Shen Yi had guessed this much, Li Jianwei didn't mind telling her a bit more about himself. Anyway, after tomorrow, nothing would matter much anymore.
"My father was killed by me, when I was fourteen, hahaha."
Shen Yi: "..."
Damn.
Another psycho.
Her back tensed up, staring at him, as vigilant as a cat ready to run away at any moment.
Li Jianwei said, "What? You seem to be very afraid of me?"
Shen Yi relaxed her body a bit, biting her lip in disbelief. "...Why is everyone I meet a psycho. Is there not a single normal human being around me?"
Li Jianwei: "Are there a lot of psychos in your family?"
Shen Yi said seriously, "A lot."
Li Jianwei chuckled a few times. "Don't worry, I'm not some homicidal maniac."
"He killed my mother, so I killed him."
It's that simple.
"..." Shen Yi felt like putting on a mask of pain just hearing this.
She always thought that only villains were supposed to have tragic childhoods. She didn't expect there to be such a character in the protagonist's group.
She took a soft breath. "But you don't seem to miss your parents?"
When his parents were mentioned, what he felt was more disgust than nostalgia.
Li Jianwei's smile faded slightly. "My mother was a good person. Because of love, she tried without hesitation to save a hopelessly incurable man like my father."
"In the end, she died a miserable death. I really can't figure out why good people always want to associate with bad people."
Shen Yi looked up. "No wonder you kept emphasizing to me that good kids shouldn't associate with bad people."
So it was a lesson learned from his parents.
She earnestly pointed out the loophole in his story. "You were only fourteen when you killed your father. After you killed him, why would those old fogeys who had followed your father for decades choose to listen to you? How could a child like you keep them in line?"
Li Jianwei tasted a bite of the pudding on his plate and his eyes curved into a smile.
"My father was a very suspicious man who never trusted anyone. All the important intelligence of the Que organization, client profiles, transaction records, and blackmail material on various factions were all stored in one place."
He smiled and pointed to his own temple.
"Here."
Shen Yi was stunned.
"He didn't store them in a computer because he didn't trust any medium, but he trusted me." Li Jianwei said this with a hint of sarcasm at the corner of his mouth. "Because I am his son, and I have a great memory. I could recite all the intelligence word for word just by scanning it once."
So after his father died, those old fogeys in the Que organization didn't kill him.
Instead, they made use of him.
In his teens, Li Jianwei had planned for a long time to kill his damn father.
He thought he could finally run toward the light.
But he didn't expect...
That the light at the end of the tunnel was just another darkness.
"They locked me up and treated me as a breathing server," Li Jianwei said with a grin. "Every day people came to make queries. I was a very obedient and useful tool for the organization."
Dizzy and muddled, without any sense of self.
Li Jianwei twitched the corner of his mouth. "Later, I started giving the data a little slower, leaking a little bit here and there, making sure they couldn't notice."
He began to slowly filter which intelligence could be given and which people could be used.
"I spent nearly ten years replacing the people around me one by one," Li Jianwei said. "I propped up a puppet to be the visible leader while I hid in the dark. By the time they reacted, the authority over the entire organization was already in my hands."
Having talked so much, the man was currently in high spirits. He clapped his hands. "Alright, little assassin, this game of exploring my secrets ends here."
"Tomorrow, various factions will enter the fray. If you don't want to die, I advise you to leave immediately. While I haven't locked this place down yet. After tonight, it will be too late for regrets."
"Then what about my friends?"
Shen Yi looked at him.
"Sasa and Chen Yu?" Li Jianwei's voice was cold. "Do you think I would just let them go?"
He had no feelings for anyone in the Que organization.
Previously, Li Jianwei had been sending people everywhere to provoke the Guidang people.
It wasn't out of hatred.
He just wanted to borrow this faction's hands to clean up Que.
There was no helping it; in a place with such chaotic order, assassins were the most useful.
If Guidang didn't refuse orders from underground factions, he would have passionately placed an order with them himself.
There was no trouble that couldn't be solved by placing an order with an assassin.
If there was,
Then he could just place a few more orders.
What Li Jianwei hadn't quite expected was that Guidang actually sent nearly half of their people in this time.
Why?
Did his place wipe out Guidang's entire clan? Or did they hijack their business?
But that was fine too.
There probably was no one who understood how to wipe out a clan better than assassins.
"What exactly do you want to do? Drag everyone down to die with you?"
Li Jianwei shrugged. "Yeah. Can't you tell?"
"I hate this place. I hate everyone here."
"I've waited a long time, Shen Yi."
Shen Yi didn't really want to listen to his revenge plan. She tried to negotiate with him, "Li Jianwei, if you don't end up dying, when you survive, could you not expose the things regarding my family?"
"..."
"You really don't have a shred of sympathy, do you." Li Jianwei's originally terrible mood was once again broken by her blunt words. "I'm about to die, can't you feel a little sorry for me?"
"Then do you want to die?" Shen Yi rested her chin on her hand, her eyes wide open.
"No one wants to die," Li Jianwei said.
"Then why aren't you running away."
"Can I run away?" Li Jianwei reached out and still couldn't resist messing up her Broccoli hairstyle, chuckling. "Shen Yi, do you think this world belongs to me? That I can run whenever I want to?"
Shen Yi raised her eyebrows high. "So do you know which organizations will be showing up tomorrow?"
"What is certain right now is that the government will send some people to destroy some data. Among them, Guidang has the most people. I haven't counted the other organizations carefully, but it's more than enough to wipe out our stronghold."
"If you don't want to die from a stray bullet, hurry up and run." Li Jianwei reached out and pinched her cheek. "I will send someone to escort you out. Follow the route and you can avoid most of the crossfire zones. Thank me, Broccoli."
As soon as the words fell.
He was mercilessly kicked to the ground by Shen Yi.
Li Jianwei: "..."
"Hiss." He groaned in pain. "You really have no respect for the old or care for the young."
Shen Yi: "Pinch me again and I'll kill you."
Li Jianwei let out two low chuckles.
Shen Yi didn't plan on bothering with him.
At best, the two of them just got along reasonably well, but she could get along well with anyone.
Wanting to drag the Que organization down to die with him was Li Jianwei's decision.
She couldn't control that.
With Guidang making up the majority, even if the sky fell for everyone else tomorrow, her sky wouldn't fall.
Shen Yi left decisively, with no intention of looking back.
The door was left wide open, and the office fell quiet once again.
"So unappreciative?" Li Jianwei muttered in a low voice, feeling a bit dissatisfied.
He obviously really liked her quite a bit.
This affection had nothing to do with romance.
It was the first time Li Jianwei had met someone so headstrong and memorable.
After leaving Li Jianwei's office, Shen Yi unlocked her phone and saw several missed video calls from her eldest brother.
She answered.
Shen Yi immediately apologized profusely, "I didn't ignore your video calls on purpose, I was busy with something."
"I should be able to go home tomorrow. Don't tell Mom and Dad, I'm begging you."
She pressed her hands together in a pleading gesture.
Shen Zhizhao's lips curved up slightly. He stared at her hairstyle for a long time and said calmly, "Shen Yi, when do you plan to dye your hair back?"
"I just dyed it." Shen Yi didn't like talking to him about this. "I haven't even given Mom and Dad a surprise yet, why should I dye it back?"
She was even planning to stroll around the Shen family home to show it off to her grandpa.
"Surprise..." Shen Zhizhao repeated the word. "Do you like giving people surprises that much, little sister?"
He sighed softly. "Then I'll give you a surprise tomorrow too, Xiaoyi."
