Chapter 12: Drawing the Hacker Mastery! Proving Innocence!
Lin Qiongqiong had long prepared an excuse, telling everyone that her family was being relocated, assuming that no one would bother to verify such a distant matter.
Yet, she never expected Gu Xizhu to step forward, standing before her and defending her with a clear, cold voice:
“Professor Zhao, you are questioning my student's integrity—do you have any evidence?”
“I...”
Zhao Hanyang naturally had no proof; these were all his suspicions. He thought it was obvious how a beautiful female college student suddenly came into wealth.
Gu Xizhu fixed him with a steely gaze. “If you have no evidence, then your accusations amount to slander against my student. I request an apology.”
Zhao Hanyang was startled by her intense look, inwardly amazed that this young, newly appointed professor wielded such authority. Even the powerful figures he encountered at banquets in Jiangcheng did not exude such an imposing aura.
“Apologize.”
Gu Xizhu’s gaze was icy and unwavering.
Zhao Hanyang was both ashamed and angry. “These are just my guesses! But the fact remains that she plagiarized Xu Ruyin’s paper, right? Gu Xizhu, are you accepting students who commit academic dishonesty just for money? Or is it that you were expelled from Qing University because of your own misconduct?”
Gu Xizhu’s eyes grew even colder. “On what grounds do you claim Lin Qiongqiong plagiarized Xu Ruyin’s paper?”
Zhao Hanyang sneered and called over his students. “Come here! Tell Professor Gu how you discovered Lin Qiongqiong plagiarized the paper!”
Cheng Ziyu spoke first: “Whenever Ruyin did experiments, I was present, recording the original data. I was there from the start of writing to the paper’s publication.”
Lin Qiongqiong snorted. Cheng Ziyu was blatantly lying! When she conducted experiments, he was there, and no one knew better than him how wronged she was!
Other senior students also spoke up in defense of Xu Ruyin.
“Every time we come to the lab, we see Sister Ruyin working on experiments. Lin Qiongqiong is always nowhere to be found. It’s impossible she just happens to be absent whenever we arrive.”
“Since she shares a dorm with Sister Ruyin, she must have sneakily looked at her computer when Ruyin wasn’t around.”
Zhao Hanyang looked at Gu Xizhu triumphantly. “Did you hear that? Lin Qiongqiong is a lazy plagiarist!”
Gu Xizhu’s expression remained calm. “Who’s been consistently doing experiments and who’s lazy and stealing results can be confirmed by checking the lab’s surveillance footage.”
Hearing this, Xu Ruyin remained unshaken. “Professor Gu, the lab’s surveillance cycles only cover seven days. I finished my experiments last month. You won’t be able to access the footage from that time, right?”
Lin Qiongqiong had also considered relying on surveillance to prove her innocence, but as Xu Ruyin said, she couldn’t obtain footage from a month ago.
Xu Ruyin had planned everything meticulously!
“There are always traces left behind if something actually happened.”
Gu Xizhu glanced down at her phone, which had just received a message.
[Professor, the person you requested will arrive shortly.]
At that moment, Manager Wang returned, followed by a group carrying boxes filled with various experimental reagents, test tubes, and consumables.
“Uh, excuse me, Miss Lin, where should we put these?”
The teachers, who had been spectators until then, were surprised.
“So many? Aren’t those reagents more than Professor Gu could ever use before they expire?”
“These consumables aren’t just for my advisor but for all the teachers here. It’s a small token—please accept it.”
After successfully spending her last few hundred thousand on a transfer to Manager Wang, Lin Qiongqiong instructed, “Just put them in the medicine storage room. All teachers and senior students can take whatever they need.”
Her gaze swept over Cheng Ziyu and the others meaningfully. “Of course, except for the people in Professor Zhao’s lab.”
She was not one to repay kindness with ingratitude!
Meanwhile, a voice echoed in her mind, the system’s settlement notification:
[Task completed, rating: A (Excellent)]
[Host gains three lottery chances. Do you wish to use them? (Lottery chances A:B:C = 3:2:1. Can save chances; a ten-draw guarantees a premium prize.)]
[Current prizes include: Lie Detector, Heart-Throbbing Filter, Martial Arts Mastery, Facial Reshaping, Hacking Mastery, Eat Without Gaining Weight, Instant Cure, Danger Prediction, Guaranteed Win (Premium), Thank You for Participating.]
Hearing the rewards, Lin Qiongqiong sighed in relief—no ridiculous nonsense like “One Birth Seven Treasures.”
She silently vowed, “Draw them all!”
They all sounded quite valuable; any would be a gain.
[Congratulations, you have drawn “Thank You for Participating”!]
Lin Qiongqiong: “...”
She retracted her previous enthusiasm.
[Congratulations, you have drawn “Guaranteed Win”!]
[Guaranteed Win: A one-time item. Your next draw allows you to select any prize from the refreshed list.]
[You have one more draw remaining. Do you want to use the “Guaranteed Win” item?]
Lin Qiongqiong hesitated.
She urgently needed “Hacking Mastery” now!
But she wasn’t sure if better prizes would appear later.
Still, she knew it was unlikely “Hacking Mastery” would appear again soon, as the prize list changed completely each time.
Silently, she said, “Use it! I want Hacking Mastery!”
[Hacking Mastery: Permanent item. The host acquires hacking skills without instruction.]
As the system’s electronic voice sounded in her mind, Lin Qiongqiong suddenly felt a flood of knowledge about hacking fill her brain!
She felt terrifyingly powerful.
“Lin Qiongqiong, don’t think that by gifting consumables to the entire faculty, you can bribe everyone into ignoring your paper plagiarism!”
Zhao Hanyang finally tore his gaze away from the boxes and accused her.
The other teachers coughed lightly.
They were actually quite easy to sway.
After all, not everyone had the resources that a professor did. If Lin Qiongqiong treated them as well as she did Gu Xizhu, they’d gladly write the papers for her and put her name on them!
“As my advisor said earlier, if something existed, there will be traces.”
Lin Qiongqiong took out her newly bought computer, opened it, and cast a meaningful glance at Xu Ruyin. “Do you really think that after so long, I wouldn’t be able to retrieve the surveillance footage to prove my innocence?”
Xu Ruyin, feeling the weight of that look, was momentarily unsettled but then relaxed, thinking Lin Qiongqiong wasn’t really a hacker.
Cheng Ziyu sneered, “What, you think you can recover footage from a month ago?”
Suddenly, the lab’s multimedia equipment turned on.
Lin Qiongqiong connected her computer and played the surveillance footage.
The dense surveillance clips were all from Zhao Hanyang’s lab, spanning different times, but without exception, every day, Lin Qiongqiong was in the lab, busy, bustling about, conducting experiments!