They contacted three people.

The first was "Li Aimin Are You Even Human." The other party added them on WeChat, and they all tacitly agreed not to ask for each other's names.

The person on the other side just said they had some more miscellaneous material on hand and was willing to coordinate with their timing, staggering the releases to maintain the hype.

The second was through a Weibo private message. The person sent them censored emails.

After all, they were emails, not as direct as the WeChat records, and they still retained a bit of the old bastard's facade. Reading them, alongside the WeChat records and the audio recording, made it doubly disgusting and exponentially more vivid.

The third, that Senior Sister, sent all the chat logs compiled into images. She also sent a statement she had signed.

Cheng Shuo and Chen Ziheng repeatedly advised her to reconsider, that it wasn't necessary to reveal her real name.

The words she typed back were simple and clear: “Now, even uninvolved students are being called out. I've been silent for long enough. I don't want more people to get hurt.”

They couldn't persuade her.

By the time they had set up two scheduled Weibo posts, it was already midnight.

Zhang Yijie yawned by the sofa and asked, “All done?”

“For now.” Chen Ziheng glanced at the university's Weibo account one last time before leaving; there were no new updates.

“There's a tough battle ahead tomorrow.”

The next day, what came even before the trending topics was a call from the university.

The department head called Cheng Shuo's phone, asking if he wanted to come to the university for a chat.

Cheng Shuo didn't beat around the bush with him and said there was no need.

The person on the other end sighed, saying it was a difficult situation for the university as well.

In his words, he was still asking what Cheng Shuo's relationship with Cen Zeng was, given that he had collected the belongings on behalf of Cen Zeng's mother.

What relationship? No relationship. It was just one time facing death, one time facing a suicide note.

Now, the person was gone.

His tone was calm as he replied, “Teacher, Cen Zeng and I were just roommates. Is there a problem?”

Seeing that he was unyielding to both soft and hard tactics, the person on the other end said, “Then I might have to talk to your parents.”

Cheng Shuo said, “My parents are probably busy. I can't even get in touch with them myself. You can try calling at night; they definitely won't be able to answer during the day.”

He was so composed that the department head on the other end had nothing more to say.

In the morning, the anonymous email records were posted.

By noon, Chen Ziheng sent him a message: “The university probably can't hold out much longer.”

Wave after wave, the comments under the university's Weibo were filled with report links and indignant words.

The backend of the Student Council's official public account was also crammed with insults and questions.

The Affiliated Hospital's Weibo had also been overrun. Under Wu Yin's so-called statement, the uproar was even greater.

They finally came forward, stating that they had received reports concerning Li Aimin, that the hospital and the university were taking the matter very seriously, and that a special task force had been established to investigate.

Cheng Shuo looked at this extremely brief announcement and let out a long sigh of relief.

Finally feeling a bit sleepy, he took a nap.

In his dream, Cen Zeng was still expressionless, calmly asking, “Why are you so strange?”

He finally shook the man's hand, saying, “Because you died in my home, did you know that? You died in my home, I can't pretend it never happened.”

“Didn't I die in the school dorm this time?” He didn't buy it.

“What's the difference?” Cheng Shuo felt like he was about to explode. “You can't just leave behind a ‘thank you,’ a ‘be careful on your way,’ and then leave the evidence and die.”

Cen Zeng stared straight at him, silent for a long time.

“You…” He wanted to say ‘don't die,’ wanted to say ‘you can't do this,’ wanted to ask ‘are you a little happier now,’ but surprisingly, he couldn't make a sound.

There was only silence, an ultimate, quiet silence.

When he woke up, he found the corners of his eyes were wet.

It wasn't over yet.

The online public opinion hadn't stopped.

In the evening, the Senior Sister told them that she didn't want them to bear the pressure and had decided to reveal her identity and expose him herself.

“Thank you,” she sent. “Protect yourselves.”

In the video and chat log she posted on Weibo, her ID was her real name. She calmly recounted on camera how she was PUA-ed, verbally abused, and harassed by Li Aimin.

Amidst tens of millions of reposts, comments, and likes, her tone was flat, calm, and rational.

Her comment was her statement: I urge everyone to focus on Li Aimin and not to harm uninvolved individuals.

“She's very brave,” Chen Ziheng said.

Cheng Shuo said nothing, just reposted it with his account.

Almost at the same time, a video of Li Aimin himself finally surfaced.

The man sat on a sofa, behind him were the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows with the curtains drawn. The dim yellow light of the spring evening made him look all the more haggard. His expression was complex—angry, resentful, and yet helpless.

He actually looked more like a victim than the calm Cen Zeng and Senior Sister.

“I am an educator and a doctor. For so many years of teaching and shaping minds, healing the dying and rescuing the injured, I have never done anything to harm a student.”

His voice trembled slightly, his expression stiff, as if he were deliberately suppressing certain emotions.

“I don't know why someone would slander me like this.”

He paused, looking down at the floor as if trying his best to restrain himself. Then he took a deep breath, looked straight into the camera, and his voice became a little deeper, as if he had some unspoken difficulties.

“Now, it's not just me; even my family has been greatly harmed.” As he said this, the camera shook and panned to his wife and daughter beside him.

His wife's eyes were red-rimmed, her hands twisted tightly together, her head lowered in silence. And his daughter, who looked to be of high school age, was curled up in a corner of the sofa hugging her knees, her head buried in her arms, her face hidden, her shoulders trembling slightly.

“My daughter is only sixteen,” Li Aimin continued, his voice laced with a sob of questionable sincerity. “She's been constantly receiving private messages from strangers, cursing her, ‘It's a disgrace to have a father like you,’ saying she ‘doesn't deserve to live in this world.’ She doesn't dare go to school anymore, and her friends have stopped talking to her. What did she do wrong?”

In the frame, the girl's fingers tightened on her sleeve cuffs, and a suppressed whimper escaped her throat.

“I know that you all might not be able to listen to anything right now…” His eyes were slightly red, his tone heavy. “But I beg everyone, please do not harm innocent people because of this matter. I am willing to cooperate with the investigation, but please give my family and me some space… We really can't hold on much longer.”

As he spoke, he raised a hand to cover his face, as if trying his best to hold back from losing control of his emotions.

The camera shook for a moment, as if the person filming had adjusted the angle. His wife's face appeared in the frame; she was still trembling, looking as if she could burst into tears at any moment:

“I'm really begging everyone, please stop cursing my daughter. She's only sixteen, she doesn't know anything. If you have something to say, direct it at us. This has nothing to do with her…”

The video froze on the family of three's sorrow, ending abruptly.

Of course, the comment section wasn't buying it.

It seemed the video was recorded before the Senior Sister posted her real-name exposé. The contrast between the two made it all the more ironic.

[LMAO, after all these years of PUA-ing students as an advisor, he only knows pain when his own daughter gets cyberbullied?]

[Is his daughter innocent? Please see the great SCI paper Li Aimin's genius daughter published in her first year of high school, as the third author, no less (link)]

[Excuse me, didn't the student who jumped before also have a family? How did their parents hold on?]

[You're begging everyone to let your family go, but back then, when your students begged you to let them go, did you listen?]

[His wife really didn't know he was keeping a harem outside for all these years? Don't tell me she helped him pick his concubines?]

Close his eyes, and he'd see the calm, numb face of Cen Zeng's mother. Open them, and he'd see a sanctimonious beast begging them not to harm his family.

Public sentiment was furious.

He stopped looking at the comment section and turned to Wu Yin's Weibo instead.

The account had already been deleted, perhaps unable to withstand the abuse.

He was no longer surprised, nor did he feel much hatred. He just inexplicably recalled Wu Yin, wiping his tears, trembling, saying, “If only I had gone back earlier… two hours earlier…”

Was he sincere?

But what is real?

What a pity. He hadn't taken the "Quite unnecessary." Now Wu Yin's Weibo was also deleted, and he would never see those words again.

And he could no longer ask Cen Zeng: what exactly were you thinking? How desperate were you?