Return of the Antagonistic Lady Boss

Chapter 939: Chapter 912: Huaoli vs. Qian

Qian was on the phone with the mysterious mastermind, while the man pinned down by Qiuqiu and Liumei was frantically shaking his head, still letting out muffled ”mm-mm” sounds through the rag stuffed in his mouth.

Boss! Don’t trust her! I haven’t said a thing yet! It’s this little girl stirring up trouble and sowing discord, don’t fall for it!

Qian’s little tactic of sowing discord was executed beautifully.

”Heh, I really underestimated you, little girl.” The voice on the other end let out a cold laugh.

”Back during the competition, you were also the one who instructed my homeroom teacher’s brother to screw me over, right? You’re pretty arrogant.”

In fact, this man hadn’t said anything, but Qian could already guess a thing or two.

The last case still hadn’t been solved, because the teacher’s brother had already fled abroad to hide. Qian had been racking her brains over where to find the bastard who’d set her up so she could tear him into pieces, and now this guy couldn’t wait to jump out and cause trouble.

”Didn’t you flip my guy to your side? Then you should go ask him. Heh. Little girl liar trying to use a counterintelligence trick on me? My people would never betray me. So what if you caught him? In the end he was just negotiating an acquisition with the Shi Family, what law did he break? Hitting him, that’s what’s illegal!”

”Acquisition? Heh, you really take me and Shi Yu for idiots? Given the state her family is in now, how could anyone possibly want to acquire them? There wasn’t a single piece of collateral for an extension in that suitcase you had that scumbag bring over. It was empty. You just wanted to trick Shi Tou into taking my laptop.”

”Heh! Little brat, you’re actually that smart! So what if you figured it out? With the so-called evidence you’ve got, you can’t possibly bring charges against me. His actions only represent himself, what do they have to do with me? And anyway, he was just buying a laptop, how is that a crime? Mr Chen, unless you’ve got something shady in that laptop? Self-righteous little girl, you’ll never find me, hahaha!”

The call was cut off. Qian narrowed her eyes.

The mastermind was right: she really couldn’t get anything out of him. This guy’s methods weren’t that high-level; he’d been played by her and Shi Tou working together, but his mouth was very tight. If he wasn’t a true die-hard loyalist, then there was only one possibility.

This man must have some kind of handle in the mastermind’s hands. Once he betrayed him, his family or something he cared about would be attacked.

If that was the case... Qian pondered briefly. She had plenty of ways to make people talk; a living person won’t hold it in till they burst.

The mastermind behind the scenes actually wasn’t as calm as he’d sounded on the phone. In reality, his show of nonchalance, just like Qian’s, was all an act.

As soon as he hung up, he flew into a rage and shoved the phone at Mu Hualili, who’d had enough of the show and was getting ready to leave.

”Doctor Mu!”

”Hi! How are you, my former customer?”

”Doctor Mu, it seems you’re all reputation and no substance. We paid you, and this is how you botched things?”

”Botched?” Mu Hualili chuckled lightly. ”My hypnosis was executed perfectly.”

”Perfect?!” Even through the phone, you could hear the fury in his raised voice.

”My man actually got caught! Your hypnosis was completely useless. Shi Yu was never successfully hypnotized by you—she still sided with Chen Xiaoqian!”

He’d thought he could finally get his hands on Qian’s fox tail this time, but who would have thought he’d get bitten back instead?

What the hell kind of hypnosis was that? It had absolutely no effect!

”Her siding with them has nothing to do with me. It’s your guy who’s stupid.”

”Sophistry! It’s obviously your hypnosis that failed. Now he’s been caught—what do you propose we do?”

”Once money gets into my pocket, there’s no such thing as a refund. But since you gave me such a big job, I’ll kindly provide some after-sales explanation. There’s nothing wrong with my hypnosis at all. Shi Yu was indeed successfully hypnotized by me.”

When Shi Yu fainted, he’d taken the opportunity at the hospital to perform a subconscious brainwashing-type hypnosis on her, implanting some thoughts that didn’t belong to her, which was why she’d had that series of abnormal psychological reactions.

Including feeling jealous of Da Yi and Qian, including constantly thinking about their fading friendship.

None of that was Shi Yu’s original consciousness; it had all been implanted.

Theoretically speaking, jealousy is common between women. As long as there was the slightest bit of jealousy toward Qian in Shi Yu’s subconscious, or the slightest possibility of disloyalty to their friendship—even just a tiny trace—it could be infinitely magnified and exploited.

But he’d had the bad luck to run into the almighty Qian.

When Qian was doing counseling treatment for Shi Yu, she hadn’t known Shi Yu had been hypnotized, but by instinct she’d accidentally used exactly the right method and dragged Shi Yu back out.

On top of that, Shi Yu was already a die-hard loyalist to Qian in the first place, so naturally the method failed.

”Under my hypnosis and brainwashing, the subconscious can have thirty thousand times the power to fight the conscious mind. But I seem to recall telling you that later-implanted subconscious content can’t beat her original subconscious. In Shi Yu’s subconscious, her friend’s status clearly outweighs everything. People like that are extremely rare; after all, jealousy and negative emotions are instincts everyone has, more or less. You’re just stupidly lucky in a bad way—you ran into a hardcore Qian-fan.”

Hualili was extremely satisfied with his own wording: ”hardcore Qian-fan.” Tsk-tsk, that phrase perfectly described the few people around Qian. Just look at the way they’d all jumped into a group fight for her—if that’s not a hardcore Qian-fan, what is?

It’s the same in every field: how can something man-made beat what forms naturally?

”Given the state the Shi Family is in, Shi Yu still has the mood to think about this kind of thing? How can the Shi family’s eldest miss be this childish?” In the mastermind’s mind, nothing outweighed family interests. He couldn’t even imagine a child raised in a powerful household still having something like friendship.

”Everyone’s internal trajectory is different. If everyone thought the same, what would people like us psychiatrists be needed for? Old man, go buy a lottery ticket. You managed to hit such a low-probability event—you’re about to strike it rich!”

Strike it rich, my ass; he was about to cough blood.

The mastermind still couldn’t accept that his meticulous plan had been shattered by the ”childish” friendship of a few young girls, but Mu Hualili didn’t give him any chance to speak. He directly hung up, then picked up his binoculars and glanced into the café. The hardcore Qian-fans were still interrogating that man, apparently trying to find a breakthrough point.

The show seemed pretty much over at this point, but Mu Hualili wasn’t satisfied with just bowing out like this. He was very curious about how exactly Qian had managed to wreck his ”foolproof” hypnosis.

So he took out his phone and dialed Qian’s number.

Qian was watching as Liumei grabbed the café’s feather duster to tickle the man. Qiuqiu had already stripped off his shoes and socks, and was using the feathers to tickle his soles. The man was laughing in sheer agony, bound and unable to move, forced to endure this torturous ”interrogation.”

”Gonna talk or not? If you don’t, we’ve got even better stuff!” Liumei interrogated him.

”Hello?” Qian answered the phone. It was an unfamiliar number.

”Hello.” A gentle male voice came from the other end.

”And you are?”

”I’m the Hypnotist. Here’s the thing—when your friend Miss Shi Yu was hospitalized, I performed a simple hypnosis on her.”