Rain poured across Xia Liu Yi’s face. He lay on top of Xie Ying Jie and struggled upright, only to see the man lying beneath him with his head tilted to one side, completely motionless. Xia Liu Yi seized his collar and hauled him up. A large wound had split open across Xie Ying Jie’s head, dark blood pouring from it and dissolving into the rainwater.
Xia Liu Yi shook the corpse wildly and screamed until his voice tore apart. “Where is He Chu San?! Tell me!! TELL ME!!”
Xie Ying Jie suddenly opened his eyes. Both pupils and whites had turned blood-black. His stiff, dead flesh stretched into a strange and horrifying smile while kekekekeke! laughter came from his throat. The blood across the ground suddenly rose like a wave and swallowed his corpse whole.
Xia Liu Yi looked around in terror and found himself abruptly standing in a black sea of blood. Xie Ying Jie’s horrible, piercing laughter echoed across heaven and earth. Human heads floated up and down across the waves, pairs of blood-black eyes staring wide at Xia Liu Yi. He saw Inspector Hua, Fat Seven, Golden Maitreya, Uncle Yuan… every person he had ever killed. He also saw Azure Dragon and Xiao Man, their eyes tightly shut and their faces covered in blood.
Then one final head rolled over with the waves. He saw He Chu San’s pale face. He Chu San smiled at him with that shy, innocent smile, while black blood poured from all seven openings of his face.
…
A cold drop of rain struck the top of Xia Liu Yi’s head and jolted him awake. His entire body was rigid. It was as though someone had released sealed acupoints and dragged him free of the hallucination, but the despair and fear continued battering his chest like waves of black blood.
The two patrolling guards had already walked past the alley without noticing anything. Xia Liu Yi stood alone in the shadows and lowered his eyes to his trembling hands.
—If you kill me, you’ll never find him.
—If you want to save one person, you can only trade yourself for him. Can you do that? Can you bear to do it?
…
The night grew colder and darker, and the rain fell harder. Water rushed along the streets, washing away every trace of filth. A small roadside tree snapped in the wind and fell across the pavement.
The doorbell rang inside the villa living room. One of the guards signaled to the maid, and she hurried over to open the door. Standing outside in a raincoat was Xie Jia Hua. He pulled back the hood and greeted her. “Auntie Liang.”
“Young Master? Come in quickly! Why are you coming over so late? Look how hard it’s raining!” Auntie Liang hurried to help him remove the raincoat and hand him a towel, but two security guards stepped forward to search him. She protested anxiously, “Hey! What are you doing? This is our Young Master!”
“They know,” Xie Jia Hua said. “I heard them report it outside. Daddy told them to search me.”
Auntie Liang stared in surprise and no longer dared say anything. Xie Jia Hua, on the other hand, cooperated with the search while asking, “Why are you still awake so late? Where’s Uncle Liang?”
“I’m packing things. Uncle Liang is packing in the room too,” Auntie Liang said hesitantly. “Master suddenly told us to go back to the countryside tomorrow…” One glance from a security guard silenced her.
The guard also wanted to search the briefcase Xie Jia Hua was carrying, but Xie Jia Hua pulled it away. He opened the zipper himself and showed them every compartment. There were only documents inside. The guard nodded and made a gesture inviting him to proceed.
Xie Jia Hua went straight upstairs and entered his father’s study on the second floor. Xie Ying Jie was waiting there, wearing a robe and a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of his nose as he quietly studied a framed photograph. He looked calm, almost peaceful.
Xie Jia Hua closed the door and approached the desk. “Father.”
Xie Ying Jie continued looking at the photograph and sighed mildly. “From the time you were little, you always called me Daddy. I know you came here behind my back once not long ago. Even when you spoke to Auntie Liang and Uncle Liang, you still called me Daddy. But now that I’m standing in front of you, you won’t.”
“When I don’t see you, I can still remember some of the good things from the past. When I’m looking directly at you, I truly can’t bring myself to say it.”
“Look at that sharp tongue. You’ve been like this since you were little.” Xie Ying Jie sighed and set down the frame. It held a black-and-white photograph of a young married couple holding their little son. All three were smiling brilliantly and happily.
He removed his reading glasses and looked up at Xie Jia Hua. Without styling product shaping his freshly washed hair into sharp lines, new white hairs showed at his temples where the dye had grown out. The flesh around the corners of his eyes and mouth sagged loosely. He really was old. Yet the sharpness and coldness in his eyes had only grown deeper, even beneath the kindly mask he wore now.
Xie Jia Hua looked at him with sorrow. He did not know when his father had become this sort of person—or whether he had always been this way and Xie Jia Hua had simply never seen it before. “I didn’t come here to reminisce with you. Time is short. I came to confirm several things. The two vehicle explosions today, the arson at the ICAC office, and the deliberate killings at the hospital—were they all connected to you?”
Xie Ying Jie laughed in disbelief. “You came here in the middle of the night just to tell me these jokes?”
Xie Jia Hua pulled a stack of documents from his briefcase and slapped them onto the desk. Along with the financial records connected to Master Qiao and the company registered under the proxy’s name were several boxes of recording tapes.
“Are these jokes too, Father?”
Xie Ying Jie glanced at the evidence and calmly asked, “Where did you find these?”
“Does it matter where I found them?! Tell me—are these jokes too?! Father!”
Xie Ying Jie looked up at Xie Jia Hua, a cold ruthlessness appearing in his eyes. He put one hand on the documents and swept them all aside. “Accounts and recordings can all be fabricated. You bring this kind of garbage here to accuse your own biological father, and you ask me whether it’s a joke?!”
Xie Jia Hua slapped two reproduced black-and-white photographs onto the desk. “Then can this photograph be fabricated too?!”
It was a reproduction of the front and back of a photograph showing three people. In the black-and-white image were the young Xie Ying Jie, Hao Wei, and Golden Maitreya. Written on the back were the words:
K, Wei, Jie
Sworn brothers; may our loyalty endure forever.
18.12.1973
Xie Jia Hua immediately pulled from his briefcase copies from the case file for the March 7, 1974 bank robbery. A photograph of Lu Guang Ming’s father, Lu Yong, appeared among the police officers killed in the line of duty. Then came case files from Hao Wei’s car accident, Azure Dragon’s murder, the murders of Fat Seven and Inspector Hua… One after another, Xie Jia Hua placed them before Xie Ying Jie. Finally, he slammed down the file from Tang Jia Qi’s murder. Across its cover was stamped a bright red word: “UNSOLVED.”
“In the 1974 bank robbery, Hao Wei and Golden Maitreya were the robbers, and you were their inside man. You were the one who killed Lu Yong. Later, because of conflicts of interest, you had Hao Wei and Azure Dragon killed one after another, while your subordinate Inspector Hua followed your orders and covered up the truth of those cases. Tang Jia Qi found that photograph in your study. He handed it to his superior—but that superior was your insider. He tipped you off, so you murdered Jia Qi to silence him! And that isn’t all. You are the infamous Old Shopkeeper himself. You hid behind Inspector Hua and your proxy while controlling the entire Hong Kong underworld, forcing every society in the city to funnel tribute upward to you and collecting enormous bribes. The ICAC secretly opened an investigation into you and obtained crucial evidence and witnesses capable of bringing you down, but you were brazen enough to kill every one of them and use your insider in the ICAC to destroy all the evidence. Xia Liu Yi was not the murderer in the hospital. You were trying to kill him and Wang Kevin to silence them—because every case that happened today leads back to you. Those dozens of lives were taken because of you! The blood on your hands cannot even be counted. You are the giant rat hiding in the dark! A monster without a shred of humanity!!”
“Shut your mouth!” Xie Ying Jie abruptly shot to his feet and roared. “What do you understand?! What right do you have to judge me?! Only power and money can buy everything! Your mother died because she became seriously ill and we had no money to treat her! The three of us were thrown into the street because we couldn’t pay the rent or her medical bills. She couldn’t even get a mouthful of water before she died. Do you still remember what she looked like then?! What do you think got you where you are today?! Money! Power! Me! You became an Inspector while you were still young because I cleared the way for you among the senior ranks! I handed those gangsters to you! You offended so many people and arrested so many gang bosses. If I hadn’t protected you from the shadows, you could have died hundreds of times over!”
“You used me to eliminate your enemies! Those who obeyed you prospered and those who opposed you died! I was nothing but a tool in your hands, no different from Inspector Hua! I got where I am today through my own efforts and because Jia Qi’s spirit protected me! And everything that has happened to you is the consequence of your own actions!” Xie Jia Hua shouted. “The DNA from the bodies in the vehicle explosions will eventually match the missing ICAC officers. Accounts that were frozen by the ICAC will leave traces too. You know perfectly well you can’t keep covering all of this up forever! You’re still in Hong Kong now because you haven’t gotten your money back. The moment you do, you’ll take it and run! But the ICAC Commissioner’s plane lands tomorrow morning. I’ve already sent him copies of all this evidence. First thing tomorrow, all your accounts will be investigated and you’ll be barred from leaving Hong Kong. You have nowhere left to escape!”
Xie Ying Jie collapsed back into his chair, his face bewildered. “I’m your biological father, and you would do this to me?”
Xie Jia Hua said sorrowfully, “It’s precisely because you’re my father that I came here myself. The crimes you’ve committed are beyond forgiveness. Only by surrendering voluntarily do you have any chance of receiving leniency from the law. Hong Kong has no death penalty. Come with me and turn yourself in, Father.”
Xie Ying Jie lowered his head and sighed. “Even now, you still refuse to call me Daddy.”
Xie Jia Hua clenched his teeth. Looking at that guilty face, he truly could not force the word from his mouth. After waiting a long time without hearing any response, Xie Ying Jie sighed. “If that’s how it is… then there’s nothing left for us to say.”
Suddenly, he pulled a handgun from beneath his chair and aimed it at Xie Jia Hua. Bang—!
2 responses to “CD – Chapter 108: Come with Me and Turn Yourself In, Father (Part II)”
im confused liuyi killed everyone at the mansion with his blades and then tackled xie Ying jie and almost killed him then what suddenly happened in the middle of the chapter jia hua coming to confront his father?????
It was like a dream. The first scene didn’t happen at all.