After breaking up with my girlfriend, I became a Great Sage of the Demon Clan.

"This is the Black Line assassin who came to kill me. I captured them alive! I tortured them and found out who their superior and the employer were."

Zhou Yan took a step toward Zhang Ye's grandfather.

"Old sir, would you like to hear what we found out through interrogation?"

Everyone looked at Grandpa Zhang Ye.

Grandpa Zhang Ye's face remained unchanged.

"If you want to find fault, you can always find a pretext."

Zhou Yan smiled.

“You’re not the one who hired the hitman, so of course you think it’s easy to find a pretext to accuse someone.”

Zhou Yan's words made Grandpa Zhang Ye's heart sink; there was something very wrong with what Zhou Yan said.

Zhou Yan then turned to Su Bijun, who seemed otherworldly and ethereal.

"According to the clues we found, it was you who hired the assassin to kill me!"

Su Bijun's otherworldly expression changed slightly, and everyone looked at her again.

"why?"

Su Bijun asked.

Why would I kill you?

Zhou Yan crossed his arms and said.

"Maybe you think the students from the four schools are too strong, and you can't beat them, so you're planning to assassinate a few of them, after all, you're all trash..."

Zhou Yan scanned the Indiana youths around Su Bijun who admired her.

One of the young men, who had a fiery temper, stepped forward and shouted.

"I think you're the ones who can't beat our Sister Bijun, so you resort to this kind of deception!"

Chapter Twenty-Two: Centrifugal Forces and Disloyalty

One young man stepped forward, and many hot-tempered young men from Indiana followed suit.

"Nonsense! I always thought the four schools were so powerful, but I never expected that you would resort to such slander because you can't beat Sister Bijun!"

"Don't you feel ashamed to do this kind of thing?"

"Are all the students from the four schools like you, lacking even the courage to face the enemy?"

After the hot-tempered young man stepped forward, a calm-looking young man from Indiana also stepped forward and shouted.

"Alright, quiet!"

The hot-tempered young man looked at the young man who had told him to be quiet, and immediately shut up.

This calmer young man, whose status in Indianapolis's youth circles is second only to Su Bijun, is named Dongfang Shuo, has demigod blood, and is one of the four school competition contestants in Indianapolis.

The calmer young man asked Zhou Yan.

"Are you sure this was done by our Holy Maiden?"

Zhou Yan countered with a question.

"If I hadn't investigated thoroughly, would I dare come here to demand an explanation?"

Dongfang Shuo glanced at Su Bijun out of the corner of his eye, and Su Bijun made a denial gesture that only he could understand.

Dongfang Shuo said to Zhou Yan.

"Fine, then call the police now, and we'll confront them in court. If you can give a clear and conclusive account and provide solid evidence, I'll be the first to arrest the murderer. If you're just talking big..."

When Dongfang Shuo talked about "talking nonsense," his tone became sinister.

The hot-tempered young people in Indiana couldn't hold back any longer.

"You'd better kowtow three times at Sister Su's feet! While you're kowtowing, you'll say you're a piece of stinking dog shit!"

"Three years of slander! Not a single day less!"

"Your requests are all acceptable!"

Zhou Yan casually took out his phone, but his head turned towards Zhang Ye's family.

Zhang Ye's father and grandfather remained expressionless.

They were both confident that they had left no evidence in their homes.

Zhou Yan read aloud while pressing the phone screen.

"134842..."

"Old man..."

Upon hearing this, Zhang Ye's father and grandfather felt as if they had fallen into an abyss, a chill rising from their tailbone and countless goosebumps along the way.

Zhou Yan read out a string of numbers, which was the phone number of the hitman agency that Zhang Ye's father had found. The agency's name was Old Man Head.

To maintain secrecy, Zhang Ye's father bought the SIM card on the black market. After completing the business, he lost the card. As for the old man and his associates, fewer than five people in the entire family knew about it.

Zhou Yan is...

Could it be that the old man has already been arrested?

To be honest, the old man didn't actually know the customer's identity, but as long as the old man was found, the Zhang family would eventually be found through phone messages and payment methods.

Despite his advanced age and the fact that Zhang Ye's grandfather was covered in goosebumps as if he had fallen into an abyss, his face remained calm. However, Zhang Ye's father had a fine layer of white sweat on his forehead.

Zhou Yan asked Zhang Ye's father with a grin.

"I'm making the call... Thirty-two million, Donghai dollars..."

Thirty-two million was the money to hire a hitman. As for the Donghai currency, it's because the Dongxia United Kingdom recently suffered a disaster, and its currency began to depreciate. The Donghai currency appreciated a lot, and the old man liked to collect Donghai currency.

This matter should be confidential, known only to myself and the old man.

This child...

Why... is it so clear?

Zhang Ye's father's face turned pale, and his body visibly trembled.

Because of Zhou Yan's words, the people around gradually turned their attention to the faces of this family member. Those present were all shrewd and calculating, and seeing Zhang Ye's father's expression, they all had their own plans.

One of the congressmen turned his head toward Lu Wanqing and whispered.

"Are the people in Indiana stupid? They actually hired someone to kill a student from Suzaku Academy."

Lu Wanqing said with great enthusiasm.

"Even if he's an idiot, he still couldn't cover it up and someone caught him red-handed."

The congressman nodded to himself. Murder wasn't scary; what was scary was getting caught. The charlatans in Indiana were so unreliable; their future was worrying.

Two more capitalists huddled together, and one of them whispered something.

“I used to hire a professional manager to manage my business. He was great in every way, except he was too enthusiastic. He did things that I didn’t ask him to do, and as a result, he lost my business.”

Another capitalist nodded secretly.

The people in the surrounding Indiana also sensed that something was wrong. Coupled with the miserable expressions of the Zhang family, they gradually understood what was going on. The hot-tempered young man who had previously mocked Zhou Yan for slandering Su Bijun changed his expression, wanting to say something but too embarrassed to speak.

Dongfang Shuo, in particular, figured it out. The assassins were real, but the real killers weren't Su Bijun, but the Zhang family. As for why they sent assassins to kill Zhou Yan, the capitalists nearby thought it was because the Zhang family was trying to undermine Su Bijun without even informing her, just to reduce her rivals.

But Zhou Yan wasn't a participant in the Four Schools Competition, so why would the Zhang family want to kill him?

Dongfang Shuo felt that the assassination case was very complicated, but now was not the time to dwell on the complexity. Zhou Yan had come with such a menacing aura, clearly possessing a large amount of evidence. When the police arrived...

The Zhang family is a bunch of good-for-nothings!

Why kill at any other time? It has to be at this moment, and the person killed is insignificant.

They're more trouble than they're worth!

Zhou Yan pressed the emergency call button.

The phone rang, and Zhou Yan turned the volume up to the maximum, letting the ringtone reverberate throughout the entire square.

Under the ringing of the bell, sweat beaded on Zhang Ye's grandfather's forehead. He felt as if the bell was a blade, scraping his flesh inch by inch, making him feel uncomfortable all over.

With so many people watching, what if Zhou Yan, with the help of the police, really finds evidence that he hired someone to commit murder...?

Putting aside the anger of Suzaku, the mere fact that the Indiana contestant hired someone to commit murder would cause their missionary work to fail by 80%.

Damn it, isn't the very existence of assassins because they're afraid of getting involved with them?

Black lines! You bunch of bastards, didn't you claim to have an assassination success rate of over 95% and that your employer never suffers even if you fail?

If this black line refers to an online shopping company, Grandpa Zhang Ye would probably hire 100,000 online trolls to leave 10 million negative reviews.

"Wait a moment……"

Sensing something was wrong, Su Bijun suddenly spoke up.

Zhou Yan, holding his phone which was still dialing, looked up at Su Bijun with his chin raised.

Su Bijun smiled faintly, a smile as beautiful as a hundred flowers in bloom.

"I think there might be some misunderstanding."

Zhou Yan countered with a question.

"So shouldn't we clear up the misunderstanding?"

Zhou Yan's ferocious smile (from the Zhang family's perspective).

“Miss Su, someone as important as you, someone blessed by the gods, someone born to be a superior person, I don’t believe you’re the one who hired someone to commit murder. There must be something I haven’t investigated clearly, so!”

Zhou Yan took a breath and spoke in a tone of utter hatred.

"I will cooperate with the police to investigate this assassination thoroughly and clear your name. If I am wrong, I will definitely come to you, kneel down and kowtow!"

The phone connected, followed by a sweet voice.

"The Zhongzhou City Police Department is at your service. How can we help you?"

Zhou Yan slowly, bit by bit, raised his phone, his face beaming with smugness. In stark contrast to Zhou Yan's smug expression, the Zhang family father and son's faces grew increasingly grim.

"Whoosh..."

The phone suddenly shook. Zhou Yan picked it up and saw that it had lost signal and the call had automatically disconnected.

"Hey, my phone..."

"What's going on? We're near the city center, why is there no signal?"

"Mine is gone too..."

One by one, Zhou Yan's wealthy and high-ranking officials took out their mobile phones, but like Zhou Yan, their phones had also lost signal.

Zhou Yan looked up at Su Bijun, who was elegant and peerless, sitting opposite him.

Zhou Yan had heard before that some people would unplug the internet cable if they couldn't win a game, but was Su Bijun so guilty that she directly cut off the cell phone signal?

When Zhou Yan came to Zhangjia Community to collect intelligence before, he did see that there were devices blocking cell phone signals in Zhangjia Community.

"Mr. Zhou."

Su Bijun said sincerely.

"This matter should be a misunderstanding. If the police come and find out something, it will not be good for you. Someone as talented as you shouldn't have to kowtow to me. Why don't you call Lord Zhuque over and we can discuss it and let this matter go?"

Su Bijun just spoke with Grandpa Zhang Ye through divine thought. Grandpa Zhang Ye admitted to hiring someone to kill, but denied killing Zhou Yan, saying he killed Lin Anru instead.

However, in the current situation, you can't say that I didn't want to kill you at all, and that I hired someone to kill the woman behind you.

Moreover, at this point, it would be impossible to directly abandon the Zhang family in exchange for Zhou Yan, or rather, the forgiveness of Zhuque behind Zhou Yan.

It's a very simple logic: if you, as a leader, abandon your subordinates when problems arise, who will follow you in the future?

If you want to succeed in the underworld, your underlings must be obedient and loyal. You must take responsibility for anything that happens to them.

So now, whether the Zhang family wants to kill Zhou Yan or Lin Anru, or even both of them, Su Bijun has to protect the Zhang family. Otherwise, the day after abandoning the Zhang family, other divine caste families will all become alienated from the Su family.

Lin Anru, standing behind Zhou Yan, showed no mercy and mocked him.

"Feeling guilty, huh? Why are you being so cowardly? Go for it! If you can't win, that's okay. Come over here and kowtow. If you do, I won't hold it against you."