Ling He looked at the young master who entered the room dressed formally in a shirt and suit trousers.
The man appeared to be around thirty-five, though his exact age was difficult to judge from his face. He was thin, pale, and exhausted-looking, and when he stood in front of Ling He his spine showed an obvious sideways curve that kept him from standing straight. That crooked angle gave him a permanently pale, twisted, unhealthy appearance, like a plant that had grown warped after years of mold, diseased from the inside out.
“You’re Zhao Huaifeng.” Ling He watched him calmly.
“Ling He.” The sickly-looking man met his gaze with dull eyes, lifted one deathly pale hand, and rubbed his nose, somehow looking even more restless and irritated. Zhao Huaifeng examined Ling He from head to foot, then casually pulled a handkerchief from inside his jacket and tried to wipe the sweat from Ling He’s forehead and neck.
Even the handkerchief carried an oppressively heavy fragrance, as though it had been soaked in layer after layer of perfume. Ling He’s nose began to itch from the irritation. Without speaking, he turned his head aside and avoided Young Master Zhao’s stiff, intrusive gesture of concern.
When Zhao Huaifeng glanced back, one of his attendants hurried forward with eager flattery and brought him a padded chair. Young Master Zhao was either so physically weak that he could not stand for long or so pampered that remaining on his feet while speaking was beneath his status.
“Ling He, it’s nothing serious. I only invited you here so we could talk.” Zhao Huaifeng sat down and wiped the sweat from his own damp neck.
“You stabbed a muscle-paralyzing drug into my chest and then tell me you ‘invited’ me here to talk.” Ling He looked coldly at the sickly man who seemed barely able to stand in a breeze.
The top three buttons of his shirt had been torn open, and a needle mark remained on his chest beneath a dark, dried scab.
Zhao Huaifeng, Zhao Shiyan’s precious son, had not appeared at his grandfather’s memorial as scheduled today and had instead abducted Ling He and come here. Apparently, even with the family’s reputation already burning around them, this unfilial descendant of the Zhao clan was determined to keep disgracing himself to the bitter end. Zhao Huaifeng kept breaking into cold sweat. “Ling He, I know Gu Yaoting is in the palm of your hand now. Let’s negotiate.”
Ling He rejected that immediately. “Wrong person. Gu Yaoting is in police custody, not mine. If you wanted leverage today, you should have kidnapped the bureau chiefs running the task force. Taking me isn’t very useful.”
“Ling He, I understand. It’s you. This is because of you!” The corner of Zhao Huaifeng’s mouth trembled like a spasm, pulling crooked whenever he spoke. “If Gu Yaoting offended you or wronged you in the past, let me apologize for him. I’ll drink three cups as punishment, bow to you, whatever you want. However much compensation you ask for, we can…”
“What a joke.” Ling He did not raise his voice. He remained deep and composed, sharp light flashing from his narrow eyes. “That crude piece of trash Gu Yaoting offended me? He isn’t even worthy of offending me.”
“Then why are you insisting on making trouble for him and forcing him into prison?” Zhao Huaifeng leaned forward anxiously.
“To disgust you, of course. Hehehe.” Ling He gave an easy, cold laugh. “To set your whole family’s backyard on fire, expose your crimes, and leave you clawing at your hearts, unable to eat or sleep. When your family suffers, I sleep better.”
“Ling He, you… you’re really like this? I thought you were at least a respectable man. How can you…” Zhao Huaifeng stared at him as though looking at some freak. No one in his life had dared speak to the Zhao family in this tone.
“What am I?!” A soft, rustling laugh escaped Ling He as he shot back, “Zhao Huaifeng, why are you pretending to be some innocent fool? Wasn’t it your Zhao family that wronged me? More than ten years ago, who harbored filthy intentions and used despicable means to abduct my father and me right off the street? Who tortured the people dearest to me to death with methods so inhuman they defied every moral boundary? Who stood high above everyone else, wrapped in righteousness, shamelessly accepting honors while feeling not the slightest remorse for what they had done? Young Master Zhao, do you dare go to your father’s tea gathering right now, stand before the memorial of your respected family elder, and ask yourself how much blood is on your family’s hands, how many innocent people you have bullied and destroyed? How does your family still have the face to remain alive? How dare you even breathe in front of me?!”
Zhao Huaifeng: “…”
It had indeed been a long time since Ling He found a suitable target on whom to concentrate all his fire. His tongue had grown almost rusty, and his appetite for battle had nearly been worn away by the ordinary, enduring happiness of life with one other person. Young Master Zhao’s sudden appearance, practically begging to be cursed at, struck him awake like a blow and rekindled the flame of revenge that had never truly gone out inside him.
Zhao Huaifeng shivered as though frightened, his cloudy, bewildered eyes fixed on Ling He. He looked as if he did not understand those events, though in truth he clearly did and knew the inside story. What seemed to astonish him was simply that after all these years, Young Master Ling still clung to vengeance for the deaths of his loved ones and still had the sharp tongue to say so.
Zhao Huaifeng forced his eyes wider, genuinely baffled. “Ling He, it’s been so many years. Your father is already gone. No matter what we say now, he’s still gone, but you’re young. The living still have to live! You came all this way back here and keep chasing us without letting go. What exactly do you want? What are you trying to accomplish? If we destroy each other and both sides lose, what good does that do any of us?”
“Hahahaha…” Ling He laughed openly. It truly was amusing. These were two completely different worlds, so far apart that even the air each side breathed could not be shared.
His eyes narrowed into the cruelest smile. “What do I want? Young Master Zhao, I want to see the day your Zhao family is stripped bare and exposed before the whole world. I want to see three generations of your clan destroyed so completely that you never rise again. I want to see that hypocrite father of yours dragging his ugly, filthy body across the floor, kneeling at my feet and tasting the blood and rot from every crime your family created with its own hands. And in the end, I want to hear every one of you describe in detail what it feels like when your whole family is thrown into the oil of hell and burned there. Is it pleasant? Heh. I would very much like to hear.”
I, Ling He, have tasted suffering for more than ten years. Heaven’s wheel turns, and today it finally reaches you.
How could aristocrats floating above the clouds understand the hardships and setbacks of ordinary human life? How could they know what it meant for a suffering orphan to spend half a lifetime cast into the eighteen levels of hell? Their lives existed in entirely different worlds, to the point that they might as well have been speaking different languages, each incapable of understanding what the other insisted on holding to.
Even “Why don’t they eat meat?” seemed almost too mild a comparison.
Elio’s Notes: “Why don’t they eat meat?” refers to the famous story of Emperor Hui of Jin, who supposedly asked why starving people without grain did not simply eat meat instead. Here it mocks the Zhao family’s complete inability to understand suffering outside their privileged world.
Ling He understood now that Young Master Zhao had “sincerely” brought him here to talk: Ling He, why not calmly accept the memory of Gu Yunzhou being tortured to death more than ten years ago, take some money or compensation as a soothing payment for that trivial old memory, call the feud settled, and let both families step back into peace?
Young Master Zhao had successfully reignited Ling He’s fading hatred, instantly turning him back into the Ling He who had appeared aboard the Cloudtop and made ruthless decisions through the cold rain and bitter wind of Linwan Pier 5.
What had soaked into his bones and blood had not changed at all. At last he had fallen once more into the frozen river, cold flooding every limb and bone. To descend into hell with these demons today and turn together into ash and refuse would be exhilarating.
“But Gu Yaoting never actually hurt your parents, did he? Ling He, just put in a word with that Bao fellow and have them release him. Why let this become impossible to clean up?” Zhao Huaifeng lifted a pair of cloudy, helpless eyes from his hunched posture. He truly could not bear to be separated from that strong, crude man who suited his tastes so perfectly. A few days without him felt endless, like an addiction that only deepened the more poison he drank.
“You mean Young Master Gu? Heh. Stop thinking about him. He’s finished.” Ling He mocked him with open disgust. “Young Master Zhao, you really are a rare romantic. You lowered your noble self for a vulgar piece of trash and fed yourself to a demon without even feeling ashamed. Gu Yaoting’s natural advantages alone were enough to make people like you throw away every scrap of dignity and cling to him. You’ve filled yourself with his filth until you reek of it. The two of you really are a perfect pair, two rotten fools sinking together and digging the Zhao family’s grave with your own hands. When both your bodies rot back into the earth, at least you’ll finally be useful as fertilizer while the world laughs and applauds.”
Zhao Huaifeng: “…”
Young Master Zhao stared dumbfounded, then began breathing roughly as cold sweat poured from him. After years of illness and excess, his body resembled a loose sponge riddled with holes. Neither his mind nor his body could withstand Ling He. He had lived ten years longer for nothing, only to be sprayed full in the face by Ling He’s venom.
If his temperament had been a little fiercer, he might already have ended like Watanabe Yangshan, suffering a heart attack from sheer rage. But poor Young Master Zhao was so physically depleted that he did not even seem to possess the strength to be “angered to death.”
The reason he had locked Ling He in the shackles already installed in the room was simple: he could not beat Ling He and was afraid of being hit.
His relationship with the wanted criminal Gu Yaoting had become a profoundly unhealthy sexual dependency. For all the Zhao family’s wealth and status, Zhao Huaifeng himself was physically frail and sexually dysfunctional, yet had spent his life obsessively drawn to powerful, masculine men, ultimately becoming completely dependent on Gu Yaoting’s sexual hold over him.
Once pleasure ruled everything, noble status meant very little. In bed, even the supposedly precious bodies of high society became only flesh, and the private excesses they indulged in could overturn every bit of glory engraved across generations of family prestige.
……
The memorial proceeded smoothly in a peaceful atmosphere. After several rounds of tea, the elderly guests sat around the spacious hall watching a documentary praising Comrade Zhao’s life and listening to commemorative speeches.
These gatherings were full of grand, empty platitudes and could put anyone to sleep, but everyone present was used to them. Today they memorialized and praised one family, tomorrow they would do the same for another. Power and honor passed among a handful of clans like a flower in a party game, all of them bound by shared interests and loyalties.
The speaker onstage finished a long report, and another documentary specially prepared for the gathering began on the large screen. People lowered their heads to drink tea, then let scattered glances drift toward the screen. A faintly strange zzzt, crackle came from the equipment, and at first everyone assumed the playback system was malfunctioning.
The equipment itself was working normally. The problem was that the prepared documentary was not what appeared. Someone had quietly switched the portable drive plugged into the system.
Several painfully familiar figures suddenly appeared on the screen, their faces so clear that everyone in the room recognized them. The expressions they wore and the sounds accompanying the footage made the nature of the scene unmistakable. Most of the perpetrators were exposed without disguise, revealing before everyone the ugliness hidden beneath their respectable public appearance.
The person being abused in the footage might have been Mai Yunliang, or perhaps Gu Yunzhou more than ten years earlier. It was impossible to tell because the victim had been heavily blurred. The abusers, however, appeared with their faces clearly visible. Every expression and movement made their identities unmistakable amid the grotesque chaos on-screen.
It was horrifying.
More horrifying than any horror film.
Because the demons had finally shown their faces in public.
The hall erupted into a low roar of chaos. Everyone was shocked. Many faces went white, followed by frantic exchanges of looks and whispered conversation.
The Zhao patriarch, Zhao Shiyan, stared woodenly at his own degraded image on the large screen. In the old memory captured there, he remembered a strikingly beautiful, gentle, refined man with an extraordinary bearing, and he remembered the helpless child nearby. The rest of the scene was enough to make the truth of what had happened unmistakable.
Zhao Shiyan sat as silent as a clay statue, then began to tremble. The figures around him blurred and the voices in the hall dissolved into noise.
Then shocking blood-red words began appearing on the screen, each line questioning and accusing, pointing directly toward the murder case from more than ten years earlier and the truth behind the Golden Brick Codex, listing one ugly name after another.
The presenter panicked and ran to the back of the hall, fumbling to shut down the projector. In his terror he could not manage it, and the large screen kept playing, the volume growing louder instead of softer, as though determined to continue for three days and three nights. The man was useless under pressure. Pulling the power plug would have been the simplest solution.
While the entire room sat stunned, Professor Ning Hengqian remained silently seated amid the chaos, not looking at the screen, like an old statue already fading into dusk.
He had already quietly peeled off the thin protective gloves from his hands and slipped them into his trouser pocket. They were nothing more than ordinary laboratory gloves, thin and nearly traceless, but enough to keep fingerprints from being left behind.
Ning Hengqian’s face seemed to age irreversibly in that instant, grief emerging from every wrinkle.
What he needed to do was finished, for his student Gu Yunzhou. Back then he had noticed fragments that made him suspicious, but against the overwhelming power above him he had been no more than a mantis trying to stop a cart. He had been forced to swallow his doubt and unease in silence and had spent many years immersed in guilt and regret.
He was nearly eighty now. At his age and with his seniority, there was little left for him to fear. His old life was already nearing its end, so why worry about consequences? Ning Hengqian stroked the handle of his cane, slowly turned, and quietly left the hall.
In the direction Ning Hengqian was walking, about a hundred meters beyond the grounds of the Western Hills villa, Mr. Ling Huang sat in his wheelchair, eagerly waiting for the grand performance to reach its climax. His eyes were exceptionally bright, and his face carried a bronze-gold sheen beneath the sun. With his plan about to succeed and his vengeance nearly complete, all ten fingers trembled with excitement.
Professor Ning passed the wheelchair-bound Ling Huang. The old man shuffled onward blankly without looking at Ling Huang’s expression, as though he had never seen or known him at all.
No one knew whether Zhao Shiyan had noticed anything unusual in Professor Ning’s expression or behavior that day.
Perhaps he had noticed. Perhaps he had sensed something. Or perhaps he had never imagined that someone would stab him in the back. Either way, he no longer had the opportunity or strength to pursue it.
He was only another old man approaching death, a body that already seemed to carry the first hint of decay.
This so-called memorial tea gathering had been Zhao Shiyan’s final struggle before death, an attempt to quietly seek protection and support within his circle and reduce the disaster bearing down on him. Instead, he had dug his own grave and turned the memorial into a public humiliation. It was easy to imagine that whoever wanted him destroyed had already sent the evidence farther up the chain.
Zhao Shiyan began trembling violently in his chair. A foul odor suddenly spread around him, making the nearby guests cover their noses in disgust. Then one side of his body convulsed and he slowly collapsed sideways. As his head struck the floor, his eyes rolled and his face twisted into the unmistakable signs of a severe stroke, his body losing control completely.
He must have known that catastrophe had arrived and there was no escape. Perhaps he could feel the rotten shell of his life falling apart piece by piece as black mud rose around him and swallowed him whole.
People shouted in panic, and an ambulance screamed toward the foot of the Western Hills.
The police had also reached the Western Hills villa, but because of the identities involved they did not dare storm such a sensitive location directly, nor did they use sirens, preserving appearances for everyone concerned. By speaking with several pale-faced guests who left early, task-force leaders learned that Ling He had not appeared at the gathering.
Bao Zhengwei immediately called Xue Qian and the others searching in another direction across Yandu. “Ling He isn’t at the Western Hills villa. Of the secret locations Gu Yaoting told us about, which one do you think is most likely now?”
Xue Qian answered without hesitation, “I just discussed it with someone. The place where Gu Yunzhou was killed.”
……
The location was a scenic area called Yandang Lake at the foot of the mountains north of Yandu.
The most beautiful stretch of lakeshore at Yandang Lake was closed to the public year-round. Several elegant villas stood half-hidden beneath dense greenery, with almost no ordinary visitors.
This was one of the locations Gu Yaoting had identified as a venue where their so-called games and transactions were held, with extravagant gatherings staged there on a regular basis. The people who came to indulge themselves would choose numbers, perhaps according to the numbering in the Twelve Young Masters dossier, calling for Number Two, Number Three, Number Six, or Number Eight.
Number One, the most coveted of them all, had escaped back then. Otherwise he would surely have become the most prized young man at those midnight gatherings around Yandang Lake, favored again and again.
Ling He’s wrists were still restrained, his long hair loose around him, a faint smile resting at his lips.
A beam of light entered through the villa window and fell across the side of his face and body, carving graceful shadows over his features. Above his head, the light formed a half-circle against the wall, almost like a halo protecting him.
Zhao Huaifeng sniffed and seemed almost sincere as he apologized: their family was willing to compensate Ling He financially for the physical and emotional harm caused by the deaths of his parents.
Ling He, you were already living comfortably overseas. You never should have come back to stir things up. Our family has more than two hundred million US dollars in a Swiss bank account. We can transfer all of it to you. One hundred million for one life, two hundred million for both your parents. Two lives worth that much should be enough, shouldn’t it? Enough for an ordinary person to live the rest of his life in paradise.
Yes, your mother unfortunately died too. There was only a slight error with the treatment back then. She really did not have to die so soon. Ling He, I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll simply have to swallow this bowl of “meat porridge” too…
Young Master Zhao dragged his frail body upright with difficulty and paced for a long time before finally realizing he had no way to deal with Ling He. The police already possessed witnesses and physical evidence, so what did Ling He have left to fear? Zhao Huaifeng could only keep pleading for Ling He to accept the lavish terms, help recover Young Master Gu from police custody, speak to the task force on the Zhao family’s behalf, and agree that from then on neither side would revisit the past.
Even with disaster hanging over his family, Zhao Huaifeng was still thinking about rescuing his rough old lover and dreaming of fleeing far away with Gu Yaoting, perhaps to the United States, to continue living in pleasure.
Then one sentence from Ling He shattered that dream.
Ling He gave a cold laugh. “I’ll tell you a secret. Your Zhao family is almost finished. Zhao Huaifeng, do you know what entertaining little spectacle is going to happen at today’s memorial in the Western Hills villa?”
Zhao Huaifeng looked increasingly agitated. “…What do you mean? What’s going to happen?”
Ling He glanced at the clock on the wall, perfectly aware of the timing, then gave him a look. “Call your bastard father right now and ask him.”
Half believing him and half not, Zhao Huaifeng ordered his assistant to make the call. The moment it connected, the assistant’s face changed dramatically. He did not dare report what he heard and simply handed the phone straight to Young Master Zhao.
“What? What did you say they’re playing at the gathering?
“What happened to my father?… What’s happening to him now?!…”
Zhao Huaifeng looked as though someone had poured boiling water over his head, his eyes burning red. He had imagined today’s negotiation as a prolonged tug-of-war, with plenty left to discuss with Ling He, persuasion first and force later if necessary. He had never expected someone to cut away his retreat and pull the foundation out from under him.
Sweat burst from every pore and streamed down his face and neck. Zhao Huaifeng nearly lost his footing and collapsed. “You did this?… Ling He, was this you?!”
Ling He threw back his head and laughed with unrestrained satisfaction.
Sunlight fell across Ling He’s eyelashes. A thick metal needle was driven into the vulnerable area at the base of his throat between his collarbones.
Zhao Huaifeng was trembling all over, eyes red, pleading without dignity. Ling He, soften a little. Give in. I never meant to hurt you. It was only a cruel game people played, not something that had to end in death. If you would only submit, no one would need to kill you. Why are you so vicious and relentless?
Do you really have to follow your father down the same road, Ling He? Gu Yunzhou refused to submit too, and they kept forcing drugs into him until he died. What I’m giving you now is a dangerous mixture meant to overwhelm your body and mind. If you keep resisting, it could kill you while you remain conscious and overstimulated. Do you really want both sides destroyed over this? How much hatred can some stale old case from years ago possibly justify?
Ling He smiled with breathtaking beauty and spat his contempt directly into Young Master Zhao’s face. His answer was simple: “A blood feud beyond measure. We cannot live beneath the same sky.”
The syringe emptied its clear, frightening liquid into Ling He’s body.
The drug made his muscles tremble beyond his control and sent a deep chill through him. His body spasmed involuntarily, his vision gradually blurring as the effects took hold.
With nowhere left to retreat, Zhao Huaifeng had ultimately chosen to drug Ling He.
Young Master Zhao even possessed his own warped idea of tenderness. In his mind, someone like Ling He should not be cut or shot and have his beauty ruined. A “clean” death that left little more than a needle mark seemed far more appropriate.
He had not originally planned to kill Ling He because killing him would accomplish nothing. He had hoped to crush him beneath a mountain of money and buy an agreement instead, only to fail miserably. The two hundred million dollars had originally been intended as a bribe for Bao Zhengwei and other senior members of the task force, but every offer had been refused. At this point no one dared shelter the Zhao family. And Ling He himself remained impossible to silence.
Supported by his assistant and bodyguards, Young Master Zhao hurried out of the room, stumbling as the group left with ashen faces and disordered movements.
“Did you erase the surveillance?”
“We took care of it before we came in.”
“Erase every trace in the room too. Everything…”
“…”
With one person supporting him on either side, Young Master Zhao slowly made his way downstairs, nearly needing to be carried. Years of illness and excess had left him barely recognizable as a healthy man.
One bodyguard stayed behind to clean up the scene. He was supposed to wait for Ling He to die, then call the others back to remove every trace that Ling He had ever been there and make him disappear completely.
For the moment, the two of them were alone in the room.
Even in extreme weakness, Ling He’s profile remained striking, the line from his nose to his lips and chin beautiful in the sunlight. But his breathing was steadily fading. His head lowered inch by inch until his chin rested near the needle at his collarbone, and his eyes closed.
The bodyguard looked visibly agitated, pacing several times with his gaze shifting. Then, without warning, he moved toward Ling He and touched him inappropriately while Ling He appeared helpless.
The man’s “agitation” was not fear at all. He had decided to take advantage of Ling He’s incapacitated state.
Ling He did not move and looked as though he had lost consciousness and was close to death.
The bodyguard apparently decided that the restraints were getting in his way and that, since Ling He was supposed to disappear soon anyway, whatever he did would leave no witness.
He released the shackles from Ling He’s wrists and ankles one by one. As Ling He slid weakly down the wall onto the cool floor, the bodyguard, overcome by his own predatory impulse, moved in to assault him.
Before the man could get any farther, Ling He’s eyes snapped open, cold enough to cut to the bone.
Their gazes met. Ling He struck hard behind the man’s ear with the same disabling blow he had used on Yan Xiaodao a few days earlier, putting every scrap of strength he still possessed into it and dropping the attacker.
Ling He forced himself up from the floor, pausing as a violent spasm ran from his throat through his chest and abdomen.
He tore the syringe free and turned the remaining drug against the bodyguard, then took the gun from the man’s waistband.
Ling He knelt by the room’s window. Below, a group was emerging from the entrance, and among them was Young Master Zhao, hurrying away.
Ling He’s hair had fallen loose, half of it covering his face.
The uncovered half of his face was grave and utterly focused as he raised the gun and aimed at Zhao Huaifeng’s staggering figure, sighting toward a lethal target.
It was a compact suppressed handgun, not the type he handled best. Ling He was more accustomed to military rifles and semi-automatic or automatic hunting guns. Even so, this was enough for him to finish his revenge today and kill Young Master Zhao.
Ling He’s gun hand would not stop shaking. He used sheer willpower to fight the violent effects surging through his body.
Fresh blood kept seeping from the needle wound at his neck, gathering into a thin line that ran down his half-bared chest and onto the floor, carrying away what little strength he had left. His vision blurred further, yet he kept his teeth clenched and his gaze fixed on the back of Zhao Huaifeng’s slowly moving head until the bodyguards shoved Zhao into the rear seat, taking away Ling He’s angle and his chance.
In the end, Ling He did not fire.
His eyes burned and filled with a pale mist. He felt that he had failed his father.
What made him hesitate and tremble in that instant was not the drug. Even that could not crush the nerves hardened over fifteen years or the resolve for vengeance that had carried him this far. What overwhelmed him instead was everything he could not bear to lose about Yan Xiaodao. At that decisive moment, within the narrow field of his aim, he saw the engagement ring on the ring finger of his left hand.
He had proposed to Xiaodao only yesterday. He did not want to break that promise.
He had to take responsibility for the choice he had made. He still wanted to spend the rest of his life with Xiaodao.
A large task-force contingent surrounded one of the villas at Yandang Lake and moved in to rescue him.
Xue Qian arrived with the local Yandu criminal-investigation officers assigned to the task force, and they quickly found the exact location.
The police saw Young Master Zhao scramble into the black official car and flee from the villa entrance.
The instant Yan Xiaodao jumped from the vehicle, his eyes were bloodshot and a blade was already in his hand, ready to fly toward the back of the privileged figure visible through the rear window. All the pain and determination of his sleepless night had gathered into that single knife point.
Xue Qian reacted first, yanking him back and clamping down hard on his hand before Yan Xiaodao could release the fatal throw.
Xue Qian growled, “I don’t want that bastard dying by your hand… Save him first!”
The words save him first jolted Yan Xiaodao awake. They were about to rush the villa’s front entrance when a muffled pop sounded overhead.
One tire on Young Master Zhao’s car burst apart, rubber tearing into shredded pieces.
The officers, Yan Xiaodao included, were experienced enough to recognize the muted report of a suppressed gunshot.
Everyone else instinctively rushed for cover and protected their vital areas. Yan Xiaodao alone remained where he was, tilting his head back and searching the upper floors.
He knew it had to be Ling He.
And there he was, Ling He’s silhouette at the window with a gun in his hands. Long hair hung across his face, hiding his eyes. His body seemed to be shaking violently, yet the next shot was startlingly precise. As Zhao Huaifeng’s black car veered toward the curb, a second tire blew. This time the vehicle was finished, lurching onto the shoulder and stalling there helplessly.
Ling He slid downward and disappeared from the window.
Armed tactical officers broke the lock on the front door. Personnel flooded into the building, securing room after room in a systematic search.
Yan Xiaodao found Ling He again in the largest room on the second floor, the so-called “game room.” The entire house carried a cold, foul atmosphere that made any ordinary person instinctively recoil. Even the cracks in the floor seemed steeped in the smell of old blood. The decorations and objects on the walls were bizarre and unsettling. With the electric lights extinguished and candles lit at night, this was the kind of place where monstrous games had once been staged.
Ling He sat quietly on the floor beside the window, leaning motionless against the wall, but his eyes were open as though he had simply been waiting for Yan Xiaodao to arrive.
The officers who entered first saw the scene, dragged the unconscious Zhao bodyguard aside, and cuffed him.
Emergency personnel immediately took over and began treating Ling He on the spot with chest compressions, anti-allergy medication, airway support, and an IV.
Ling He lay on the floor amid the frantic work of the medics, his eyes still open. His emerald irises remained vivid and alive, and his lips moved faintly as though he still had countless things he wanted to tell Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao’s entire awareness drowned beneath pain and guilt, leaving him unable to speak. His hands shook as he cradled Ling He’s head and held him against his body. He had failed to protect the person he loved. He had almost lost him again.
A clear bite mark and blood showed at the center of Ling He’s lower lip, a thin line dividing his chin. Trembling, Yan Xiaodao kissed the blood away.
A smile appeared at Ling He’s lips. He managed one strong, reassuring smile for Yan Xiaodao, then his chest jerked and his heartbeat and breathing weakened further.
Yan Xiaodao knelt in front of him and gently kissed his mouth. Both their lips were cold, each trying to warm the other, until the emergency staff finally lost patience, pushed Yan Xiaodao aside, and fitted an oxygen mask over Ling He’s face.
With the hand wearing his ring, Yan Xiaodao tightly grasped Ling He’s hand, which wore the matching ring.
He kept reassuring him, making the promise over and over. “Xiaohe, I said yes. I’m willing.
“Xiaohe, I’m willing.”
……