When the Dolphin Sinks | Chapter 35 | The Dolphin House | Novela.app

Wei Zhi did not recall Wei Lai being a dolphin lover; he wasn't even interested in aquariums. She opened the QQ app where the notification had appeared. The first page displayed Wei Lai’s recent chat history, and the most prominent one was a group chat titled "Dolphin House." The administrator had kicked Wei Lai out of the group exactly one day after he fell into the well. Such a coincidence? Suspicious, Wei Zhi clicked into the group chat and scrolled through the previous records. She didn't see any messages from Wei Lai himself, but the conversations within the group were chilling. "Brothers, I sent her a message last night saying 'You don't love me enough at all,' and she actually cried all night trying to prove it. This trick never fails!" "I told her if she keeps getting fat, I’m going to find someone else. She actually started a crash diet. Hahaha! You really can't be too nice to women." "Women are just cheap! You can't treat them too well. Listen to me—hit them when you need to, then coax them afterward! Women are stupid; they don't remember the bad stuff!" "You guys are amazing. You have to teach me more of your experience [Fist Palm Salute]." "@SoulDominator, Brother S, I told my girlfriend yesterday that someone at work is pursuing me. She’s really feeling the pressure now. She got up early this morning to cook for me and insisted I take it to the office!" "I told you, you can't go wrong if you trust Brother S. He’s the professor of our group!" "Exactly, exactly!" "When is Brother S releasing a new tutorial?" As Wei Zhi slowly scrolled back through the chat history, she discovered that these people weren't just sharing experiences on how to suppress and control women; they were also posting photos and videos of their girlfriends or wives in states of submission. Wei Zhi’s heart grew colder as she watched. Did those women, covering their faces in tears or kneeling to beg for forgiveness, know there was a camera pointed at them? What disgusted her even more was that Wei Lai was part of this two-thousand-person group. The small amount of leniency the living usually afford the dead vanished instantly because of this group’s existence. She almost wanted to hurl the filthy phone out the window, but she restrained herself. Swallowing the physical urge to vomit, she continued to scroll. The "Brother S" whom the group members revered as a "professor" was the owner of the group. *SoulDominator.* Even looking at the ID made Wei Zhi feel sick. However, a private chat window with him appeared on the first page of Wei Lai’s message history. The previous messages had clearly been deleted, leaving only the final message Wei Lai had sent him: "I know how to handle her now." Wei Zhi had an intuition: she had to recover the entire chat history between Wei Lai and SoulDominator. She put Wei Lai’s old phone into her bag, stood up, and walked out of the house. Standing before the grocery store, she took one last look at the ruins she called home, then turned and walked out of the alley. Wei Zhi called the curly-haired youth from Eagle Eye Security and asked him to recommend an expert who could recover mobile chat logs. "Huh? I do surveillance. Do you think I’m Doraemon?" the curly-haired youth blustered over the phone, though the sound of rapid clicking on a keyboard could be heard in the background. "You must know someone in the field," Wei Zhi said. "Please." "Seriously... fine, I'll ask around for you." Half an hour later, the curly-haired youth gave her a phone number. When Wei Zhi called, it was another young man’s voice. After she explained her request, the other party said he could give it a try. Returning home, she immediately summoned a courier to her door and handed over the phone in a small cardboard box. She waited for two hours before receiving a text reply. "It’s possible. I’ll send it back to you around 8:00 PM." Ji Qikun might be home by then. Wei Zhi proactively requested a delay, asking him to have the courier return the phone after 8:00 AM the following morning. The next day, Wei Zhi received the old phone with the recovered chat history. The logs between Wei Lai and SoulDominator were even more horrific than she had imagined. That triumphant "I know how to handle her now" had been sent right after he found the savings book. Although SoulDominator pressed him for details on what he planned to do, Wei Lai had intentionally remained mysterious and stopped replying. Wei Lai trusted this SoulDominator implicitly, telling him everything about his life. Even the ideas to secretly film her in the shower and use Wang Lin’s illness to blackmail her had come from the other man. They called this behavior of controlling hearts through suppression and rewards "PUA." Dolphin House was the exchange hub and headquarters for these people. As for why it was called "Dolphin," Wei Zhi guessed it was because dolphins are among the few animals in the kingdom known to kill for pleasure. These men prided themselves on being as clever and cunning as dolphins. In the cloud drive on Wei Lai’s phone, Wei Zhi also discovered a folder over 4,000 GB in size titled "The Bible of Pao-xue." To evade the attention of network monitors and public opinion, they also referred to PUA as *Pao-xue*—the study of "picking up" or "bubbling." This method of emotional manipulation had even formed an industrial chain. Wei Lai had thanked SoulDominator for giving him free resources, saying it "saved him tens of thousands of yuan in tutorial fees." A group of two thousand people, each one learning these emotional manipulation methods to suppress and control their partners. Wei Zhi couldn't imagine how many similar groups existed across the country, or how many people were currently being subjected to emotional manipulation. What she was seeing was merely a drop in the ocean. "Are you still in a meeting? The fitness streamer I follow is about to start. I’m going to do my exercises now." After sending the message, Wei Zhi placed her phone on the kitchen island and walked out of the house with Wei Lai’s old phone. She went to the water station in the neighboring street and knocked on the closed rolling shutter. After a long while, a sleepy-eyed Tan Mengyan lifted the shutter from inside. He opened it halfway, holding it up with his right hand as he looked at Wei Zhi through his messy black hair, then stepped aside to let her in. Once Wei Zhi ducked inside, he immediately lowered the shutter again. The small water station was lit only by the light streaming through the window, with tiny dust motes dancing in the beam. Tan Mengyan turned and headed for the second floor; Wei Zhi followed naturally. On the second floor, he casually pulled a chair over for Wei Zhi and sat down on the wooden plank bed himself. "What did you find?" He was fully awake now, though his voice still carried a hint of sleepiness. Wei Zhi handed him Wei Lai’s old phone and told him about the "Dolphin House" she had discovered. "Is there any way you can find SoulDominator’s IP?" Wei Zhi asked. She had asked the curly-haired guy from Eagle Eye Security the same question, but tracking an IP privately was illegal, and he had firmly refused her request. "Why do you want to check his IP?" Tan Mengyan asked. "Can you help me find it?" Tan Mengyan thought for a moment. "I can only try." That was the only reason Wei Zhi had come here. Having received an affirmative answer, she was in no hurry to leave. Her gaze fell upon the dialysis equipment around them. She asked, "Did you make all of these yourself?" Tan Mengyan gave a low grunt from deep in his throat, like the deep tail-end of a drumbeat. "Is it safe?" "End-stage uremia." He looked up, his gaze indifferent. "Safe or not doesn't make much of a difference anymore." "Is that why you fainted that time?" Tan Mengyan lowered his eyes again. His messy fringe hid his sharp, dark eyes. Wei Zhi could only see his muscular hands twirling Wei Lai’s old phone over his knees. "How do you know Sister Tianxin?" Without looking up, he said nonchalantly, "By chance. She asked if I wanted to make money. So I came." Wei Zhi stared at his reaction. "Who is Chen Jingyan to you?" He snapped his head up. She knew she had hit the bullseye. "How do you know about Chen Jingyan?" Tan Mengyan stood up abruptly and closed the distance, standing before her in an instant. His tall frame cast a shadow like a small mountain. Those eyes, which usually seemed indifferent to everything, were wide open now, staring at Wei Zhi with overwhelming intensity. "I saw the letters Chen Jingyan sent to Ji Qikun in the safe in his study." Wei Zhi spoke honestly about what she had seen in the safe. "I took photos of the evidence, but my phone is at home. I couldn't bring it out to show you," she explained. "Ji Qikun installed GPS monitoring on my phone." Tan Mengyan was silent for a moment before walking back to the bed and sitting down. "Why do you think Chen Jingyan is related to me?" "Because of the name," Wei Zhi said. "When I saw the name Chen Jingyan, I suspected your name was a pseudonym. However, I wasn't sure, so I wanted to test you." She smiled. "Your expression is too easy to read." Tan Mengyan bit his lip. He didn't refute her teasing, but a flash of defiance crossed his eyes. "What you really wanted to say was 'Mengyan,' wasn't it?" Wei Zhi said. "Who is she to you?" He kept his head down in silence for a long time, his sturdy latissimus dorsi muscles visible under his white tank top as he faced away from her. "My sister." Finally, he spoke, his eyes meeting Wei Zhi’s gaze directly. "My biological sister," he said. Wei Zhi listened as he told his story. He and Chen Jingyan were full siblings. Their parents were honest, simple farmers. When he was five years old, both parents died in a motorcycle accident. "...In our village, people mostly got around on motorcycles. Very few wore helmets; they thought accidents only happened to a tiny minority. My parents thought the same. So when they hit a car, one had their neck snapped on the spot, and the other died in the hospital after failed resuscitation." "The grandparents on both sides were already gone, and our maternal grandmother had passed too. There was only a maternal grandfather living in someone else's house. None of the relatives wanted to take us in. Yanzi and I were pushed back and forth. Finally, under the mediation of the village committee, I was adopted by an uncle. As for Yanzi—none of them wanted to adopt a girl—three-year-old Yanzi was given to a childless couple in the city, both university professors." He paused for a long time before continuing. "Yanzi had a good life afterward." "And you?" Wei Zhi asked. He avoided the question. "After we were separated, I was determined to find my sister when I grew up. But later... as you can see, I dropped out before finishing high school. Yanzi, on the other hand, got into a top-tier university," he said. "I found all this out by asking around. Knowing she was doing well was enough for me. Whether I found her or not didn't matter anymore." "Knowing she had a brother like me wouldn't make her life any better," he said softly. "It was better to let her be a happy only child." Except, later, she met Ji Qikun. "They started dating in their second year of high school," he said, head bowed. "In the first half of her freshman year of college, she suddenly drove over two thousand kilometers through the night. She drove for twenty-three consecutive hours. Just as she was about to arrive in the city where Ji Qikun was, she had an accident." "She crashed into a truck driving normally and died instantly." "Just six months before that, she had a record of a miscarriage at a hospital." Tan Mengyan covered his face with both hands, hiding his expression from Wei Zhi. "I must make Ji Qikun pay the price," a raspy voice emerged from between his fingers. "I will do anything for that." Wei Zhi took his hand. Tan Mengyan lifted his face at her unexpected action. She saw tear tracks on that cold, hard face. "So you joined Zheng Tianxin’s operation to avenge your sister." Wei Zhi looked into his eyes. He looked down at her hand holding his—a slender hand devoid of any jewelry. "How did Sister Tianxin meet you?" Wei Zhi asked. "...Six years ago," he said, "Zheng Tianxin found me. She told me she had investigated my situation and said she could help me avenge my sister. So I came. She helped me get fake identification because I wasn't sure if Yanzi still remembered me or if she had told Ji Qikun about me." "I just wanted to find Ji Qikun and avenge my sister in my own way." A bleak, bitter smile appeared on his face. "I won't live much longer anyway. A life for a life—I don't lose out." "But Zheng Tianxin told me that doing it that way wouldn't let the whole world know Ji Qikun’s true face, and it wouldn't truly bring justice for my sister. So I waited... until you appeared." "Before me, did you look for anyone else?" Wei Zhi asked. "You are the only one Zheng Tianxin was satisfied with." So, Zheng Tianxin had vetted others. Perhaps Xiao Cai and the others in the gallery had also been vetted. But what were the criteria for this vetting? "...I can't say." Tan Mengyan pulled his hand away and turned his back to her. When he turned around again, Wei Zhi saw that his cold, indifferent expression had returned. "Is there anything else?" "One more thing—" Wei Zhi stood up and said to him with a smile: "Take care of your health. Don't do any more intense exercise. Gentle cardio is fine. You still have an unfinished mission, don't you?" Wei Zhi had already looked up the precautions for uremia online. She struggled to pick up a pair of dumbbells from the floor, cradling them in her arms as she smiled at Tan Mengyan. "I'll be taking these with me, okay?" Tan Mengyan froze. Something was stuck in his throat, leaving him to watch helplessly as Wei Zhi carried his dumbbells down from the water station. He almost couldn't stop himself from calling out to her, from laying everything bare. But he bit his lip hard, letting guilt drown him. *** **Glossary** Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation ---|---|--- 海豚之家 | Dolphin House | The name of the PUA group chat. SoulDominator | SoulDominator | The ID of the PUA group leader (Brother S). S哥 | Brother S | Short for SoulDominator. 泡学 | Pao-xue | Literally "Study of Bubbles/Pick-up," a Chinese term for PUA (Pick-Up Artist) techniques. 泡学宝典 | The Bible of Pao-xue | The title of the PUA resource folder. 鹰眼安防 | Eagle Eye Security | The security company Wei Zhi contacted. 谭孟彦 | Tan Mengyan | The water station worker; his name is a pseudonym related to his sister. 陈靖雁 | Chen Jingyan | Tan Mengyan's biological sister. 燕子 | Yanzi | A nickname for Chen Jingyan (meaning "Swallow"). 郑田心 | Zheng Tianxin | Likely the mastermind behind the revenge plot. 尿毒症 | Uremia | The medical condition Tan Mengyan suffers from.