The act broke the law, of course, yet Zhong Yongliang felt not a flicker of compunction. To his mind, the fouler the deed, the sweeter it was to do; causing a little havoc at school was just what he wanted to see.

Now that his uncle was no longer a shareholder in the school, the more trouble it fell into, the better. His feelings for Gu Mengyao had turned from love to hatred — and Wei Zhao was no different.

With a rival as ruthless as An Jianwen in the picture, Zhong Yongliang no longer dared to cherish any hopes about Gu Mengyao — but ceasing to court her was not the same as ceasing to hate her. This time he would ruin Gu Pengzhan to his last penny, and let Gu Mengyao taste what it meant to fall from imperious little princess to penniless Cinderella.

Only through great upheaval could a man be brought to complete enlightenment. Zhong Yongliang saw it all clearly now: Gu Mengyao had been toying with him from the very beginning and had never cared for him at all. Even if she had not done it with her own hands, she had tacitly sanctioned Shen Yushu doing it.

Those two girls, and Wei Zhao — he would never let them off. And An Jianwen: the day Zhang Naipao comes down from the mountain will be the day you die!

Zhong Yongliang's wounds had healed. Through the Medicine King, Zhong Fabai had procured some of Divine Physician Kang's Golden Wound Salve, so that apart from being one kidney short, he suffered no further ill effects.

But though he had returned to school, Zhong Yongliang found that his classmates looked at him oddly. Whether he was simply oversensitive or they were all mocking him for his missing kidney, he could not say — either way, he was in a towering bad mood.

Before long, every one of these humiliations would be washed away.

The Zhong Yongliang of this moment was no longer the Zhong Yongliang of before. This ordeal had matured him, steadied him, and taught him a single truth: revenge demanded absolute strength, and until that strength was his, he must never again collide head-on with Wei Zhao and the rest.

That did not mean letting Wei Zhao off. It simply meant he could play the underhanded game — and he did not doubt that if he kept it up, Wei Zhao and Gu Pengzhan, who did not know how to play, would suffer a mental collapse in the end.

Before the last class of the morning had even begun, Zhong Yongliang and Gao Xiaofu skipped out. He had concealed nothing of this from Gao Xiaofu; as his other trusted hand, Gao Xiaofu had already helped him commit no small number of dirty deeds and would never sell him out.

"Brother Liang, when the time comes, we just split up and scatter this stuff into the dishes in the cafeteria, right?" Gao Xiaofu looked down at the small bottles in his hand and asked.

"Right. I'll take four and you take three, and we scatter them separately — that way nobody will notice." Zhong Yongliang nodded.

"But does this stuff really work, Brother Liang?" Gao Xiaofu could hardly believe that these little bottles, harmless one and all, turned into a deadly poison once their contents were combined.

"Naturally. What you don't know is that this poison was compounded by a legendary hermit master. It is called the Seven-Grass Soul-Severing Powder, made from seven different herbs. Colorless and odorless: any single herb on its own is entirely harmless, and only when all seven are eaten together do they turn into a lethal poison. Its concealment is perfect — the indispensable agent for murder and plunder." Zhong Yongliang spoke with immense smugness.

"Good heavens, that's fearsome! Then any student who eats all seven dishes at once is done for, isn't he?" Gao Xiaofu marveled.

"That's right. Even when the forensic doctors arrive, they'll find nothing suspicious: take any single dish to be tested and there is no poison in it. And even if the students are rushed to the hospital, there is no antidote — all they can do is lie there and wait to die." Zhong Yongliang nodded.

"But if even the forensic doctors can't detect anything, we won't have achieved our aim of ruining Gu Pengzhan, will we? By then the hospital will have tested everything and found every last food item clean — so the students' poisoning would have nothing to do with the school." Something struck Gao Xiaofu as not quite right, and so he asked.

"Fool! Don't you know what the most terrifying thing in the world is? The unknown. Only the unknown is truly terrifying. Why do people fear ghosts? Because a ghost is something unknown — no one has seen what it looks like, and so everyone is afraid. It is the same here. Suppose the hospital did establish that the students were poisoned by tainted food — what harm would that do Gu Pengzhan? He would be a victim too, the one who got poisoned. At worst he pays out some compensation, and the public opinion out there might even call him a good man, a victim as well! But what if there is no poison in the food?"

"Exactly!" Gao Xiaofu's face lit up in sudden understanding. "The food isn't poisoned, yet the students are — that's even more terrifying!"

"So until this riddle is solved, which parent would dare send his child back to school? What if it happened again? Once all the parents band together and make a scene, pulling their children out to transfer elsewhere, Gu Pengzhan will have his hands full. And those students who died of the poisoning — the hospital never even determined the cause — that leaves Gu Pengzhan with a responsibility he cannot shirk. The children were poisoned inside the school; if not Gu Pengzhan, who else would the parents look to? He'll have plenty to pay for. Heh heh!"

"That's true. It seems my thinking still doesn't measure up to yours, Brother Liang." Gao Xiaofu sighed in reluctant admiration.

"Enough — let's hurry and get to the poisoning. The cafeteria should have the food ready by now." Zhong Yongliang replied with a swell of pride at Gao Xiaofu's words.

Before Jin Gubang's quiet departure, Zhong Yongliang had been a regular at the cafeteria, and he often came in early to eat.

He cut classes often enough that he had no need to wait for the final bell before heading down to the cafeteria. Besides being the nephew of a school director, he was someone the cafeteria manager dared not offend — after all, Zhong Yongliang spent his money like anyone else; opening up a little earlier for him cost nothing and lost nothing.

As always, Zhong Yongliang led Gao Xiaofu to the cafeteria's door. The place had not opened for business yet. He knocked on the door, and soon a worker came running out; seeing it was Zhong Yongliang, he hurriedly unlocked the main doors and let him in.

Though Jin Gubang had already left his post, that was knowledge held only by a handful of senior figures — the cafeteria manager might not even have heard the news yet, let alone the staff. They still assumed Zhong Yongliang had the school director standing behind him, and naturally dared not cross him.

"Young Master Zhong, you're here! It's been a while since you've eaten in the cafeteria!" the worker said, his tone fawning. Men like him, laboring at the very bottom of the school's pecking order, naturally hoped to curry favor with a second-generation heir like Zhong Yongliang, in the hope that he might deign to give them a leg up.

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