Evolution - Chapter 97
Chapter 97
This year, the people of the Alliance had more than their fill of drama from the Military Academy League.
First, the top contender for the championship, Ji Changqing, was embroiled in a bar brawl that resulted in a death.
Then came the rumor that there was a reason for it—a bloody incident sparked by a fit of rage for a beauty's sake, with two Alphas fighting over an Omega.
Immediately after, someone leaked that Ji Changqing and the beautiful Omega were old acquaintances, which was why she flew into a rage and accidentally killed someone when the Omega was being harassed.
Then, someone claimed that Ji Changqing and the beautiful Omega were not just old acquaintances, but lovers with a much more intimate relationship.
At this, the entire interstellar web erupted.
The human instinct for gossip is truly the same no matter the space, the level of technological civilization, or the type of social system.
Scandalous affairs were particularly eye-catching.
As everyone dug deeper, they were stunned to discover that this beautiful Omega lady was still in a marriage that had lasted for twenty years.
The backlash from the fallen idol was a thousand times more terrifying than expected.
The affection and admiration once held for Ji Changqing had now transformed into hatred and condemnation several times more intense.
The person who once seemed so pleasing to the eye, whose countless virtues could be listed off the cuff, had suddenly become a pariah everyone wanted to condemn. All her previous shining qualities were now seen as hypocritical, artificial, and disgusting.
There were calls not only for her to get out of the military academy and go back to Blue Star, and curses wishing for her death, but some even hoped her Physique would be crippled and she'd be exiled to a mining planet on the frontier…
Because Ji Changqing had betrayed their adoration, they desperately craved to see her reduced to nothing, forced to live out her days just barely surviving, groveling on her knees.
The military academy students who had previously spoken up for Ji Changqing all fell silent amidst the surging rumors and the massive online condemnation.
Even the fourth round of the Military Academy League finals, which decided the top ten, and the subsequent final rankings—events that were like grand celebrations in previous years—failed to completely divert their attention.
At least sixty to seventy percent of the comments in the live broadcast streams were about Ji Changqing.
It was a perfect illustration of the saying, “I may have left the scene, but my legend lives on.”
There was simply too much drama surrounding Ji Changqing, so much so that after the league champion was decided, the champion's popularity was nowhere near hers.
Even the perks for the champion and his alma mater—a month of promotion across all Alliance platforms and the usual seven to ten days of headline popularity—were ruthlessly snatched away by Ji Changqing.
A month after the league ended, the high-profile case of death by injury finally went to trial.
Countless media outlets flocked to the scene.
In the Alliance, all cases were tried publicly unless they involved classified information, but the level of attention this time was still rare.
At the very start, the prosecutor read the indictment, and the proposed charge made everyone in the room gasp.
The charge against Ji Changqing was death by injury, but the prosecution argued it was intentional, not accidental.
They presented evidence showing that Ji Changqing and Qiao Nansheng had concealed their prior connection and had not met by chance in the bar.
Furthermore, their investigation had uncovered solid proof that the two had indeed been romantically involved before.
Of course, this all pointed to Ji Changqing having a motive. The more hardcore evidence was that Ji Changqing was an extremely outstanding military academy student with countless combat experiences. Her opponent's strength was slightly inferior to hers, so even if he made a mistake during the fight, she should have had sufficient judgment to assess the situation.
The prosecution suspected she had deliberately pretended to be unable to pull back her attack, intentionally committing murder.
Was Ji Changqing truly unable to pull back?
They showed a simulation. Because Ji Changqing had consistently demonstrated combat power superior to her peers, they had run the simulation based on the standard of a level-nine Physique.
The simulation results showed it was possible.
Unexpectedly, even when presented with the evidence, both Ji Changqing and Qiao Nansheng denied any prior contact. At the same time, Ji Changqing affirmed that when she noticed her opponent's mistake, she was genuinely unable to pull back her attack, denying any intent to kill.
Ji Changqing's defense attorney objected in court, protesting the prosecution's use of simulation results to make unreasonable inferences about a real situation.
“Simulations and real-world operations are vastly different. The influence of the environment on a person's judgment is difficult to test, and whether my client's actual combat power meets the level-nine standard is still debatable. The prosecution's unreasonable inference has no practical value.”
The lawyers engaged in a war of words, but that wasn't important. The fatal blow came when Ji Changqing's defense attorney unhurriedly presented another piece of evidence, which clearly showed that the communication records were forged.
The prosecutor's expression turned grim.
The evidence presented by the defense attorney laid out the forgery path of the communication records in plain sight. They had even locked onto the terminal of the virtual communication, which had been routed through who knows how many twists and turns, and had extracted the surveillance footage from that time.
The entire forgery operation was taken down in one fell swoop.
At the same time, this infuriatingly competent lawyer also presented further evidence showing records of large transfers received by this forgery operation through countless virtual financial accounts during that period.
The change came too fast, like a tornado, and everyone present or watching the live broadcast couldn't help but slowly conjure a series of question marks.
This hard evidence was too solid. It hammered home the fact that someone had been behind the scenes, framing Ji Changqing.
In truth, there was no direct evidence of Ji Changqing's intent to kill. They had studied the surveillance footage of the incident countless times. The conflict was initiated by the deceased, who also struck the first blow. At the time, Qiao Nansheng was with those few people from Blue Star. The conflict escalated to pushing and shoving, at which point one of the people from Blue Star ran to the other side to call Ji Changqing over.
When Ji Changqing arrived and saw Qiao Nansheng, she was visibly stunned for a moment before quickly pulling the other woman behind her. Immediately after, the deceased attacked again, and Ji Changqing defended passively.
This continued until the people with the deceased also joined the fray.
Only then did Ji Changqing's attacks become noticeably sharp.
From the surveillance footage, Ji Changqing couldn't even be accused of a drunken brawl; one would have to say she was acting heroically. It was just that at the end, the other party inexplicably fell to his knees, and she was unable to pull back, killing him on the spot.
On the surface, she seemed utterly innocent.
However, the police shared the same suspicion as her lawyer: it was too much of a coincidence, which made it suspicious. This was especially true after they found clues pointing to her and Qiao Nansheng hiding something.
But now, the opposing lawyer had proven so resourceful as to uncover things they themselves hadn't found. The prosecution's hearts sank. Had the other side forged evidence, or had their own investigation not been thorough enough, leading them to be led by the nose by someone with ulterior motives?
This court session ended with the prosecution requesting a postponement for further investigation.
Having been detained for nearly a month and a half, Ji Changqing sat high in the defendant's dock, watching with a wooden expression as the two sides went back and forth, their verbal sparring intense, constantly presenting their own evidence, stopping just short of a physical fight.
She was like a prize being fought over by both sides. The war was about her, yet it was being waged by people completely unrelated to her. This was a new experience. It was as if she were just a tool, her only purpose to see which side would win, to determine whether she would get a minimum of seven years or rot in prison for life.
The second hearing was ten days later. The prosecution interrogated the forgery team on another planet and was ultimately forced to admit that the evidence submitted by the defense was authentic.
At the same time, they uncovered other things. The investigative team, their confidence severely shaken, even had the strange feeling that some of the hidden details they found during their supplementary investigation might have been things Ji Changqing's defense team had already discovered and then secretly guided them to find.
During those ten days, the matter of Ji Changqing's extramarital affair had become widely known across the interstellar web.
At the second hearing, the prosecution added another defendant.
During their supplementary investigation, they had reorganized their thinking and investigated from the angle that Ji Changqing had been framed.
The results were, naturally, fruitful.
Not only did they uncover new possibilities in the death-by-injury case, but they also found some other interesting things.
He Qingzhi was named as the second defendant. He had played a key role in the death: the reason the deceased failed to avoid Ji Changqing's attack was because He Qingzhi, who was with the deceased, had pinned his own opponent to the ground during the brawl, then kicked him away. As that person slid across the floor, he tripped the deceased.
It was just that he was in a surveillance blind spot at the time. In the dimly lit footage, all that could be seen was a dark shape sliding quickly across the floor, followed by the deceased being kicked down by Ji Changqing.
After the supplementary investigation, they actually felt He Qingzhi had a pretty strong motive for murder as well.
After all, the deceased was the marriage partner his family had chosen for him.
But the investigation revealed that He Qingzhi had barely spoken to his so-called marriage partner all night, nor was there any evidence of him provoking the man into harassing Qiao Nansheng to lure Ji Changqing over.
He had rushed over only after the fight broke out, stopping the deceased's lackeys from ganging up on Ji Changqing.
Looking at the entire sequence, aside from throwing the two people he took down, there was nothing suspicious about his actions. They couldn't possibly argue that he kicked someone with the precise calculation that they would trip the deceased just as Ji Changqing was about to deliver a fatal blow, could they?
Having learned their lesson from the last hearing where they were publicly slapped in the face—repeatedly, until their faces were swollen—the prosecution was at a loss without sufficient evidence.
Unless He Qingzhi had lost his mind and jumped out to claim that he possessed extraordinary perception and had deliberately kicked the person over, designing it so that Ji Changqing would be unable to pull back in time and would kill the man.
They could only prosecute for manslaughter due to excessive self-defense.
This time, the outcome was practically set in stone. He Qingzhi was negligent, and Ji Changqing bore greater responsibility. But since the incident was provoked by the deceased and both defendants had acted heroically, they were given lighter sentences. In the end, He Qingzhi was sentenced to three years, and Ji Changqing to nine.
After this case concluded, everyone thought the year's drama was finally over.
Unexpectedly, the very next day, new broke: Ji Changqing was suing a whole string of people.
From the media outlets that had published high-definition photos of her being handcuffed and led away from the bar that night, to the people on the interstellar web who had spread rumors and slandered her and Qiao Nansheng for having an affair.
Everyone was dumbfounded.
Was Ji Changqing joking? There was hard proof of their affair! Although both of them had changed quite a bit after their evolution, if you looked closely, you could still recognize them.
Because hotels on Blue Star back then were notoriously insecure, riddled with pinhole cameras, a short video of the two of them getting a room had been secretly circulating on certain websites without their knowledge.
Yes, she was also suing the people who had circulated that video.
But the person drawing even more attention was not her.
It was Qiao Nansheng.
Qiao Nansheng had hired the same lawyer who had defended Ji Changqing and was filing a lawsuit to have her marriage declared invalid.
The baffled gossip-mongers didn't understand. They just found it laughable. How did these two main characters still have the nerve to sue?
Could they really whitewash an extramarital affair?
Only the people who had wanted to use this affair to frame Ji Changqing understood.
Ji Changqing's counterattack had begun.
The goal of the lawsuits initiated by Ji Changqing and Qiao Nansheng was not necessarily to win, but to openly expose the machinations of certain people and eliminate the negative impact on Ji Changqing.
This extremely expensive lawyer had exceptional professional ethics. He organized the information he had dug up with perfect clarity.
How the people from Blue Star had been gathered, how they were persuaded to come watch the competition in person, how they were convinced to book rooms at the same hot spring hotel where Ji Changqing was staying…
Why Qiao Nansheng had shown up so coincidentally, becoming the fuse for the whole affair, successfully detonating the situation and blowing the ascending Ji Changqing to smithereens.
It was like pulling melons from a vine; once you found the right spot to dig, you could pull out a whole string of them.
However, the person who wanted to use a sex scandal to plot against Ji Changqing was quite skilled. He had meticulously designed the scheme and fanned the flames, mostly using suggestion to get people to act. He had also cleaned up his tracks exceptionally well. Even if the people who carried out the tasks were caught due to financial transactions or other resource exchanges, the trail wouldn't lead back to him.
But as Ji Changqing's lawyer methodically presented the evidence in court, those who had left traces were made to talk, and many people suddenly realized they had been used.
The sensational lawsuits dragged on for two months. In the end, only the person who released the hotel room video was convicted.
As for the bar waiter who had been bribed to put a mild aphrodisiac in Qiao Nansheng's drink, he never got the chance to administer it before the two groups started fighting. His role became useless, and he luckily escaped prison, receiving only a notice banning him from the profession.
The others, being just one thread in the entire scheme, received only damaged reputations as their punishment.
The most hardcore move was the lawsuit initiated by Qiao Nansheng.
She requested technical assistance to recover and extract chat logs from when she discussed divorce with her husband, which predated her meeting Ji Changqing. There were even records of them modifying and confirming the divorce agreement on a messaging app, as well as the signed divorce agreement itself, which was from after she met Ji Changqing but dated four months before the hotel room video.
At the same time, there were also chat logs showing her repeatedly asking him to finalize the divorce proceedings, only for him to make all sorts of excuses.
Of course, this information couldn't completely absolve her of the affair.
However, in the indictment, Qiao Nansheng stated the following:
“On Blue Star, even with a confirmed divorce agreement and a mutual consensus to end the marriage, as long as the divorce procedures are not finalized, one is still considered married. This was indeed my mistake. Even though we were separated at the time, I was considering filing for a court-ordered divorce. However, according to the relevant laws of the Alliance, the signing of a divorce agreement is considered mutual consent, and either party can finalize the divorce unilaterally with the agreement. Taking a step back, if that is not applicable, then according to the relevant laws of the Alliance, a marriage built on major concealment or even fraud is inherently invalid and can be annulled.”
She presented two documents: one was her marriage certificate from back then, and the other was a gene bank match file established by the Alliance globally after the evolution.
On it, two individuals were shown to have a father-son relationship with her husband: one was their legitimate son, and the other was her husband's nominal nephew.
This nephew's date of birth was three years earlier than the date on the marriage certificate.
Clearly, this gentleman had concealed the existence of a child born out of wedlock when he married Qiao Nansheng.
This reversal was too powerful.
But it put the judges of the Alliance's civil court in a difficult position.
The gossip-mongers and media who had come for the show were also in a bind.
Those who had furiously condemned the two for their affair now felt extremely uncertain. They were in the wrong no matter how you looked at it. Regardless of the verdict, they couldn't escape a charge of slander.
If they went by Blue Star's old laws, the marriage couldn't be annulled. But if you considered Blue Star's laws, a divorce agreement had been signed, and though the procedures weren't finalized due to the other party's non-cooperation, they were already separated and planning a court-ordered divorce…
Who knew getting a divorce on Blue Star was so troublesome! A court-ordered divorce could drag on for two years!
If they went by Alliance law, it was even simpler. A signed divorce agreement was equivalent to the dissolution of the marriage. And in the case of major premarital concealment, the other party could apply to have the marriage declared invalid and annulled, while also demanding punitive damages.
“I need to protect my rights.” The beautiful Omega smiled. She appeared gentle, soft, and graceful, with no hint of aggression, yet her presence was suffocating.
“If my marriage cannot be treated under the current laws of the Alliance, then please do not use the Alliance's definition of an extramarital affair to punish us. You cannot abuse the power to punish when you have never granted the corresponding rights.”
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