On May 4, the popular Chinese actress Yao Chen posted the following message to her 45 million followers on the microblogging site Sina Weibo: “Nineteen years ago, the young Zhu Ling was poisoned. Nineteen years later, this name has again been poisoned.”

Yao Chen is referring to a nearly two-decades old attempted murder mystery. The case has again become so blazing hot on Chinese social media that as of Saturday, the name of the victim, Zhu Ling, was censored in Weibo search results. But it's too late: The case has now been brought to the attention of tens of millions of Chinese people.

The saga goes back to 1994, when Zhu Ling, a pretty and able chemistry student at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, was poisoned by thallium. Zhu Ling survived, but remains paralyzed and dependent on her parents for care. Nobody knows for sure why she was poisoned, and nobody has been convicted of the crime. Of course, Chinese netizens have formed their own opinions. Many have long believed that Sun Wei, Zhu Ling’s roommate and only major suspect in the case got off scot free because her uncle and grandfather were powerful communist officials. For many Chinese, this just confirms a widespread belief that officials are above the law.

Interest in Zhu Ling’s case was reignited by an unrelated story at Shanghai’s Fudan University, where a postgraduate was poisoned, also possibly by his roommate. But over the years, online interest in Zhu Ling’s case has never quite vanished. In fact, from the very beginning Zhu Ling’s story has illustrated the power of the Internet to transform Chinese lives. Zhu Ling is in bad shape today. But if it weren’t for the Internet, she likely would have died.

In 1995, Bei Zhicheng was a 21-year-old student at Peking University, where he studied mechanics. He heard that his former high school classmate, Zhu Ling, had been struck by a mysterious illness. She had been feeling sick and her hair had fallen out. Eventually she became completely bald. Zhu was being treated at the prestigious Peking Union Medical College Hospital, but local doctors were mystified. They couldn’t determine the cause of her symptoms.