Shangguan Ning hated Jing Yiran for being cruel. She could tolerate him bullying her, but not her son.
She just felt a bit uncomfortable that a life ended in this way because of her.
Jing Yichen took hold of Shangguan Ning’s waist and said in a cold voice, “Maybe you are not yet aware of the fact that Anan was taken away by Jing Yiran and imprisoned by him all this time!”
“What?!”
Shangguan Ning got so startled that she almost burst out.
She threw a look at her son who was thankfully still in slumber. Seeing that he had not woken up, she asked anxiously, tugging at Jing Yichen’s arm. “What on earth is it going on? How did Jing Yiran imprison Anan? He was so cruel. Anan never offended him.”
This act of his took away the last remaining sense of guilt from Shangguan Ning’s heart.
Jing Yiran was way too sinister for anyone to feel sympathetic towards him!
They spent so much time, resources and energy searching for Anan, and had been to almost every corner of A City and the UK. Zheng Jing even took advantage of his position and asked the police in the entire country to search for Anan. Right now, every policeman in the country had a picture of Zhao Anan and was busy searching for her whereabouts.
And it turned out that Zhao Anan had been imprisoned by Jing Yiran!
Shangguan Ning felt her chest ache.
He had done nothing in his lifetime that could make anyone like him or mourn his loss.
Jing Yichen knew that Shangguan Ning would get very annoyed by this news, so before he killed Jing Yiran, he did not tell Shangguan Ning about Zhao Anan being imprisoned.
Of course, he had not known that it was Jing Yiran who imprisoned Zhao Anan before today either!
Jing Yichen patted Shangguan Ning’s back and consoled her in a soft voice. “It is okay, Anan is not physically injured. She was starved for several days in a row and passed out because of hunger. Jing Yiran might have been cruel, but luckily torturing Anan gave him no advantage. So even if Anan was imprisoned and had nowhere to go, she was not injured or harmed in any manner.”
“But that doesn’t help!” Shangguan Ning was still furious. “Anyone would get mental after being imprisoned for six months. And, Anan might have been starved many times before this as well. Anan is not particularly healthy, and needs to visit hospital at periodic intervals. Good that you killed Jing Yiran and found out where Zhao Anan was, otherwise she would have been imprisoned for a lifetime!”
Shangguan Ning felt scared after she thought over the entire matter. Anan had cancer which might return anytime. Normally, she visited the hospital for a checkup every third month. Now, six months had passed and she could have been killed if the cancer had returned during the past six months!
“It is fine, even if Jing Yiran said nothing, Anan would have been rescued by Mu Qing anyway.”
Seeing Shangguan Ning still being angry, Jing Yichen kissed her smooth forehead and said in a low voice, “Three days ago, Mu Qing surrounded the building where Anan was imprisoned. Maybe he sensed Anan’s presence in some way. He kept saying that Anan was close by. So he begged Lee Duo to research that area again.”
The place where Zhao Anan was imprisoned had been searched by Lee Duo at least twice before. But nothing suspicious had been noticed but Mu Qing’s instinct kept telling him otherwise. So he asked Lee Duo to do the search once again and that was when they finally found traces of Zhao Anan and that muscular man.
What made Mu Qing become sure about Zhao Anan’s presence was that he accidentally noticed the bottom of an instant noodle box, where a simple sketch of a pig was drawn by someone’s nails.
The trace left by the fingernails was not clear in the darkness, but it stood out against the sunlight.
And Mu Qing realised at the first glance itself that it had been Zhao Anan who did it!
No one else would have painted such an ugly pig apart from her.
Also, she painted the sketch with fingernails under the bottom side of an instant noodle box, which meant that she had no pen or paper and even if she did, she was not able to deliver any message, leading them to believe that she was imprisoned.
The person who trapped her was very discreet and had cut off all possibilities of her sending out any signal. Zhao Anan might have come up with the idea of painting under the bottom of the instant noodle box.
Mu Qing felt very, very gratified that he had given up everything to come and search for Zhao Anan in the UK. If he had not, Lee Duo and his men might never have found her, ever.
No one would have that insitictive feeling about Zhao Anan as he did, and no one would have recognized that drawing of the ugly pig. No one would even have been bothered to notice the foam box in the dustbin.
But even if the instant noodle box was found there, it was still not certain where Zhao Anan was living. So Mu Qing and Lee Duo started the search from one household then to another with his men.
Two days later, they eventually knew where Zhao Anan was kept.
Jing Yichen waited a few days to kill Jing Yiran, because Mu Qing had told him about Zhao Anan’s location, but they had not made a move, fearing that Zhao Anan would be killed by the kidnappers.
It was not until Mu Qing and Lee Duo were sure that there was only one kidnapper who imprisoned Zhao Anan that they started the rescue.
Jing Yichen had not known that Jing Yiran was the person who imprisoned Zhao Anan. But he just wanted to wait until Zhao Anan was safe.
It was good that Mu Qing found Zhao Anan ahead of time, otherwise Jing Yiran might have escaped death. Jing Yichen would have let him escape had he truly used Zhao Anan as the hostage.
He had purposefully held back the news of Zhao Anan’s rescue and shown indifference about her well-being because he wanted Jing Yiran to die in despair.
“I made all of this happen. Anan was imprisoned because of me. Otherwise she would not have suffered this much. Jing Yiran imprisoned her only because he treated her as a safeguard. But she should take some blame too. If she had stayed with Mu Qing, she would not have suffered this much.”
Shangguan Ning could not help but feel concerned for her best friend.
But her concern did not last that long until she got confused and asked Jing Yichen in an unfriendly tone, “Master Jing, so you knew that Anan had been imprisoned ages ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jing Yichen couldn’t help but show a sheepish smile. In order to console her, he didn’t realise that he unwittingly leaked the fact that he had known about Zhao Anan being imprisoned from much before.
Fearing that his wife would grill him further, Jing Yichen got off the bed and walked out as if nothing major happened. “I will call my aunt and tell her that Anan has been found…”
