Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 101 - 98 Shadow Swapping Monster 2

Chapter 101: 98 Shadow Swapping Monster 2

Everyone was quietly listening to Changan’s narration, but when Changan got to this point, the room suddenly fell into a silence even quieter than before.

"...I’m sorry, I can’t understand," Zhu Shi said incredulously, "What does Jinyu joining the pleasure establishment her father frequents have to do with her wanting to frame her own father?"

Jinyu seemingly nonchalantly said, "It’s exactly what you’re thinking."

Changan cut to the chase, "Jinyu wanted to set up a scenario where her father specifically requested her and ’spent the night’ with her, ultimately leaving him disgraced."

Clearly, such sinister scheming was too much for Zhu Shi’s moral compass, she said in confusion, "Wait, setting aside why she would do such a thing... Wouldn’t her father recognize his own daughter? How could he possibly pick his own daughter in an establishment for leisure and play?"

"The customers of that nightclub all wear hoods, and the staff wear masks, which indeed creates conditions where they can’t recognize each other," I recalled the internal situation of the nightclub that I had previously investigated.

"Wait, Ah Cheng, how do you know what goes on inside there?" Changan was shocked.

"I’ve done some investigation," I said, "Never mind about me for now, you keep going."

"Alright..."

At that, he continued his story—

Upon learning of Jinyu’s outrageous plan, Changan was dumbfounded and immediately pressed her for her reasoning.

Perhaps carrying a defeatist attitude, or maybe because she saw Changan, a stranger just met, as a confidante for her pains, Jinyu spilled her guts like pouring beans, tearfully revealing her motives.

The reason she wanted to frame her father through such extreme measures was naturally due to the intense hatred she harbored towards him.

Jinyu’s parents were both from the countryside, neither having any notable education or family background to boast of, yet were deeply in love with each other. Her father used to be a sturdy and tanned youth, while her mother was a girl with an oval face, sporting a Jinyu hair clip, quite pretty. When he, fueled by aspirations and ambition for the outside world, ventured into Saltwater City, she, without any hesitation, followed him leaving her hometown behind.

At the close of the 20th century, Saltwater City was far from its current stability, with various types of gangs present. To rise quickly, her father joined one of the major gangs as a teen and later, during his youth, leveraged his bold and fierce nature and indispensable luck to accumulate substantial wealth. He married his childhood sweetheart, who had followed him into the city and stood by him from rags to riches.

As gang power waned with the changing times, he managed to avoid the crackdown by official forces through timely laundering and transformation. He even ascended into Saltwater City’s upper class in his middle age through the real estate industry, acquiring a shiny social status.

Yet, much like that wine tasting club, splendid on the surface but rotten on the inside, beneath his shining exterior lurked an unknown darkness.

Since her father was often busy with work and socializing, Jinyu grew up close only to her mother. She even made the amusing mistake in elementary school of mistaking her seldom-home father for the "kind uncle who occasionally visited." Generally speaking, her parents’ relationship remained relatively harmonious. However, the good times did not last, for after Jinyu graduated from primary school, her father changed.

Mysteriously transformed by some unknown ordeal, her father became mercurial, erupting in rage at the slightest provocation and verbally and physically abusing her mother. His demon-like demeanor terrified the onlooking Jinyu, creating deep psychological scars.

This horror continued until she entered university, with her father not easing up but instead intensifying his abuse. Every return home resulted in a vicious beating of his wife, and even his own daughter was not spared. On one occasion, he even caused her mother severe internal injuries and fractures, necessitating emergency hospital treatment and leaving long-lasting painful complications.

It was this incident that ignited the accumulated fear in Jinyu’s heart, transmuting it into outright hatred and rage. From Jinyu’s perspective, her mother was the only family who had been by her side throughout her life, while her father was nothing more than a villain who would intermittently invade her home to bring pain and torment.

Logically, when domestic violence reached such extents, it should have been reported to the official forces. After this incident, Jinyu finally resolved to see her biological father incarcerated. Yet, somehow her father managed to avoid inquiry and trial by exploiting his social connections, and worse still, retaliated by having Jinyu beaten so severely she ended up in the hospital.

However, the hatred in Jinyu’s heart was not extinguished by her father’s punishment but grew even more intense.

She pondered how to exact revenge on her father. As an isolated female college student, how could she bring due punishment to a man with powerful social ties? She investigated her father in secret while deep in meditation. She even considered killing him in his sleep, but unfortunately, her father hardly ever spent the night at home anymore, leaving her no opportunity for vengeance.

Until one day, she learned that her father seemed to frequent a wine tasting club rumored to be a masquerade themed nightclub offering "special services."

Upon hearing this news, she suddenly had an epiphany, her wisdom whirring into overdrive—though she couldn’t bring the man to justice, she could still ruin him utterly.

Her plan was simple: infiltrate the nightclub, ensure her father designated her for an "overnight stay," and in the process, collect enough evidence. Then, by disseminating it online, her revenge would be complete. Even if she couldn’t stir public opinion, as long as those associated with her father were aware, it would suffice.

Who would continue dealing with a man who was involved with his own daughter in such a way? Her father’s downfall and disgrace were inevitable, and his career would be impossible to sustain thereafter.

As for her own reputation, she had not given it a second thought.

Driven by hatred, she acted immediately, and what followed was unbelievably smooth.

The nightclub’s secret owner, once the wife of a high-class elite bent on revenge against her unfaithful husband, she had spiraled into madness and thrown herself into this den of vice, and, by some twist of fate, became its operator. Upon hearing Jinyu’s story, far from obstructing her, whether out of a malevolent interest in chaos or some obscure motive, she actually recruited Jinyu.

But even the owner couldn’t simply pair customers and employees; the choice of companion was the customer’s prerogative. Declaring her aid to Jinyu as "beyond the call of duty" up to this point, the owner treated her as any regular employee thereafter, never again affording any convenience.

If things had continued so smoothly, Jinyu might have succeeded. But perhaps there is a cosmic balance to luck, and after a lucky streak comes misfortune. Or maybe for Jinyu, joining the club was misfortunate, and what happened next was truly the luck. Her very first client as a worker of pleasure was Changan.

Upon learning of Jinyu’s past, Changan felt compassion for her, wishing to prevent her from the path of self-destruction.

He started persuading Jinyu to abandon her vendetta.

Not that he thought Jinyu shouldn’t seek revenge, but he believed she shouldn’t demean herself or jeopardize her future for it.

Regrettably, he wasn’t a very effective persuader, and Jinyu didn’t take his words to heart at all. However, he was stubborn to a fault. The more Jinyu pushed him away, the more he felt he shouldn’t just leave things be.

So the next evening, Changan went to the nightclub as a guest once again, and again he chose Jinyu.

His second attempt at persuasion also ended in failure. But he did not give up. After the second failure, he tried a third time; after the third, a fourth... For nearly three months, he persisted, each time pulling Jinyu into a private room not for "business," but to endlessly discuss life, prospects, and ideals.

Even on nights when he didn’t visit the club, he’d outlay the money to reserve her in advance to prevent her from attending to other customers.

When Changan told us this, Jinyu suddenly interrupted.

"——Men who preach like that aren’t so unusual in pleasure houses," she said. "There are always a few middle-aged customers who act like they’re playing an adult game where the female lead must remain untouched. After choosing their woman, they do nothing but engage in dry conversation, boasting about ’how setting up a machine gun here will control the whole street’... Utterly boring."

Though she said this, maybe Changan’s past efforts hadn’t been in vain; her demeanor now seemed more like she was concealing uncertainty.

"So, the rumors around the school that you’re a frequent visitor to pleasure houses were because of this?" I turned to Changan.

Zhu Shi looked at his brother with newfound respect, "I never would have thought, brother, you were doing good... I had always misunderstood you."

"Heh, heh..." Changan laughed shyly as if bashful about being caught doing good deeds.

But honestly, no matter how stubborn, could he really go to such lengths simply upon hearing the absurd past of a strange nightclub lady, tirelessly persuading her for over two months? From what I knew of him, his motives to prevent her from ruining her future were genuine, but as the saying goes, men have historically had two hobbies, "forcing the good into prostitution" and "persuading the prostitute to quit." I couldn’t help but suspect that Changan’s emotions were tainted by the classic complex of "persuading the prostitute to quit."

Since Zhu Shi’s perspective of his brother had improved, I decided not to speak further on this topic.

"Then what happened next? Does the recent content relate to your abduction and beating by that strange creature?" I asked, "The story hasn’t ended here, has it?"

"No, it hasn’t ended," Changan said, his face darkening considerably, "At first, I went to the nightclub every day just to... I mean to convince Jinyu to abandon that absurd plan, but as time went on, I realized the club itself housed an evil and darkness that couldn’t be ignored."

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