When the heavy fog of self-deception passed, the dusty truth about that suffocated face at last appeared, unhidden.
Fei Chengyu buckled the other end of the metal ring around the woman's thin neck, crouched down, and very softly asked him, "Darling, who gave you the code?"
The boy's deathly pale face was like a ghostly porcelain doll's. He seemed to have lost the ability to speak.
He'd been so cowardly, so powerless, his limbs merely ornamental. He couldn't grasp his own fate, and neither could he walk out of another's prison.
"What did you hear?" Fei Chengyu's blood-scented hand passed through the boy's hair. "Good children shouldn't eavesdrop on adults talking. I know you didn't do it on purpose.—You didn't do it on purpose, did you?"
Fei Du remembered that stupid boy instinctively shaking his head.
Why had he shaken his head? Fei Du thought that if people could go back in time and face their past selves, the first thing he'd do would be to wring that boy's neck.
Of all the deep negative feelings in the world, hatred for your own cowardice and powerlessness was always the most intense, the most bone-piercing. It was even often unendurable, making it necessary to find a way to turn it around and blame it on other people and things.
Fei Chengyu saw that slight shake of the head and smiled. Pointing at the woman covered in shards of porcelain, he said, "The child didn't do wrong on purpose. If he did wrong, he must have been lured into it by an ill-meaning adult. Should we punish her, then?"
Fei Du didn't dare to look into her eyes, but he was forced to look. Her gaze was as dim as usual, as numb, like a corpse's. The woman with the brisk step who'd kissed him that day seemed to be only a product of his imagination.
Fei Chengyu beckoned to him, but Fei Du kept retreating, until the man got impatient and closed the metal ring over the boy's neck—two rings buckled on two necks. One end would only loosen a little when the other tightened, and the controls were in little Fei Du's pale, helpless hands.
If he only clenched his fists, he could escape the unbearable feeling of suffocation. And over the course of countless forced trainings, that movement had nearly become instinct.
Why had he forgotten how he'd gotten into the basement?
Why had he blurred out all his memories concerned with his mom?
Why was the woman in his dreams always full of resentment?
Why could that suffocated face, transposed onto any other person, always disturb his sleep?
"Fei Du! Fei Du!"
Fei Du was trembling unnaturally. Luo Wenzhou shook him, and Fei Du suddenly came around. Then there seemed to be someone squeezing his neck. He coughed so hard he couldn't catch his breath.
Luo Wenzhou hadn't expected that his questions would get such a major reaction. For a moment he was so frightened he couldn't move. Hearing that tearing cough, Luo Wenzhou suspected he was about to cough up his lungs. He couldn't resist touching his throat. But at that light touch, Fei Du gave a start and pushed him away, stumbled a couple of steps, and fell to his knees among the fallen teacups.
There was a moment where Luo Wenzhou thought there was a shadow in those light-colored eyes, like a long-sealed monster seeing blood and emerging.
Luo Wenzhou held his breath and carefully crouched down along with Fei Du, reaching out a hand towards him in terror, shaking it in front of his eyes. "Darling, it's me."
Fei Du's eyelashes were longer at the corners of his eyes. Slightly dampened by cold sweat, they made the corners of his eyes look unusually pitch black and slender, as though they'd been carved with a knife. His gaze also seemed to have been carved by a knife. It fixed on Luo Wenzhou's approaching hand for a moment, and Fei Du's soul seemed to return to its position. He lowered his eyes slowly and allowed Luo Wenzhou to put his hands on his shoulders.
Luo Wenzhou stroked his arms gently, feeling the muscles of those arms he usually didn't bother to raise rigidly tensed. "Talk to me."
Fei Du opened his mouth and tasted blood in his throat. He couldn't make a sound.
"I'll…" Luo Wenzhou felt helpless. Then his gaze fell on Fei Du's bloodless lips, and he blurted out, "I'll kiss you, is that all right?"
When he'd said it, he himself felt that these words sounded pretty disgraceful, but this wasn't the time to take it back. Acting on his own initiative, he simply grabbed Fei Du's arms and pulled him over, stopping when they were extremely close together, looking into Fei Du's eyes. His pupils were slightly enlarged. Then he seemed to recognize him and quickly struggled to calm down.
Luo Wenzhou sighed, roving around his forehead, nose, and lips.
Fei Du closed his eyes and forced his rapid breathing to become extremely quiet, extremely slow. This was his habit. He was always reserved, always controlled; he never minded what he was feeling but judged how he should behave based on others' reactions.
He even tried to smile at Luo Wenzhou. The smile frightened Luo Wenzhou even further.
"Fei…uh, Fei Chengyu came with someone. He headed right for the basement when he got in. He was too fast. My mom tried to stop him, but she failed," Fei Du said hoarsely. "I heard a movement and quickly put everything back in place and hid in that cabinet. I thought I could get through it again, but I'd overlooked something."
"What?"
"I'd touched his computer. Fei Chengyu felt it and discovered that the computer was warm."
Luo Wenzhou thought this sounded like a spy movie. He massaged Fei Du's wrist and quietly asked, "What did you remember?"
"I was only ten. Fei Chengyu didn't believe that I could have worked out the code myself, and my mom had tried to stop him outside the basement, so Fei Chengyu thought that she'd urged me to get into the basement, that she was 'misbehaving.'" Fei Du pressed on his throat. He seemed to want to cough again, but he forced himself to hold back. "His pet had rebelled in front of an outsider. Fei Chengyu was very angry that day. He nearly killed her."
"In front an outsider…and you?" Luo Wenzhou asked quietly. "And that's why you forgot this segment of memory?"
Fei Du didn't want to lie to him, but neither did he want to talk about it, so he didn't answer. Forcing the subject away, he said, "The person Fei Chengyu brought home was very tall—Fei Chengyu was over a meter eighty, and this person was nearly half a head taller than him. He was in his thirties or forties, wearing glasses, with a teardrop birthmark at the corner of one eye. I only saw him once."
There were a thousand questions clogging Luo Wenzhou's mind, but hearing this, he could only make them wait in line. "Wearing glasses, a birthmark at the corner of his eye. You're sure?"
Saying so, he hurriedly got out his phone. Not paying attention to the pile of missed calls, he pulled up a file he'd photographed with his phone, enlarging a blurry ID photograph on it. "Was it him?"
Fei Du looked at the characters clearly written on the CV next to the photograph: Fan Siyuan.
"While I was going through the files, I found one with a photograph and secretly took a picture." Luo Wenzhou paused. "Wait—didn't you see a roster and detailed materials about the people taking part in the Picture Album Project? You even knew which school Lao Yang's daughter attended. You didn't see Fan Siyuan's photograph?"
"No." Fei Du slowly shook his head, countless thoughts spinning quickly through his mind. "No—the materials had detailed information about Director Zhang's older brother, Director Lu's fiancée's place of work, even Teacher Pan's parents' address…but there was nothing about Fan Siyuan. I think that name only appeared on the line where the head of the Picture Album Project was introduced."
In other words, the mole who'd given Fei Chengyu the materials had only dispensed with the formalities when it came to Fan Siyuan!
"You said it was winter," Luo Wenzhou followed up. "You're sure of the season?"
"I'm sure. I was on winter vacation." Fei Du looked up. "When did Fan Siyuan 'jump into the sea?'"
"At the end of the solar year." Luo Wenzhou sat right down on the floor. "In other words, Fan Siyuan really didn't die, and he was in contact with Fei Chengyu!"
This organization had collected countless vicious wanted criminals like Lu Guosheng, and at the time Fan Siyuan had been a wanted suspect!
"What did they say in the basement?"
Fei Du closed his eyes.
"If you want total control over them, it won't be hard," the man wearing glasses said casually. "You know how you train a hawk? If you want to tame it, you first have to weaken it. You can't be kind. It's necessary to starve it appropriately."
"Starve it?" Fei Chengyu asked.
"If you overfeed it, President Fei, over time, it will become greedy. If a tool doesn't obey, it has to be honed. What kind of knife honer is afraid of breaking the knife?" The man's laughter was cold. "You know I have some manpower, but not much. If you want me to help you with this, you'll have to give me more support."
Fei Chengyu laughed. "Your manpower… How do I say it? The people you 'rescued' while upholding justice?"
"You're ridiculing me, President Fei." The man smiled. "But you're right. They're useful, and they're obedient. Hatred and trauma are excellent resources. They can make people recognize a favor and want to repay it, and you can use them."
"Fei Chengyu must have found out that 'they' had other backers and became unsatisfied. He wanted total control over them," Fei Du said quietly. "Fan Siyuan was his 'consultant.'"
Luo Wenzhou's brain revolved at high speed. "They gathered wanted criminals who had nowhere to go, including Fan Siyuan, a serial killer who was cautious and understood the police. But in fact, Fan Siyuan had been in contact with Fei Chengyu beforehand. He was going to act for Fei Chengyu, get involved, place his people everywhere…"
Fei Du picked up his words. "Establish 'The Reciter,' a revenge league, and use them to trap all the financial backers apart from Fei Chengyu, seriously injuring the organization, bringing it to its wits' end, in the end bringing it under Fei Chengyu's sole control."
All of Fei Du's ideas, even some of his own actions, hadn't been invented out of nothing. The seeds of these thoughts were deep in his consciousness.
There was also money—carrying out this plan required a large quantity of capital and energy, and now there was a source—only the source hadn't come now, but over a decade ago. This plan covered a longer period of time than imagined, and The Reciter, an independent third party force, had been carrying out an infiltration of the organization's interior for over a decade.
The Binhai graveyard, the Zhou Clan, Wei Zhanhong, the Beehive… Like Fei Chengyu had wished, all these lairs and sources of capital had been dug out and cut off one by one. If Fei Chengyu had still been conscious, his wishes would have been fulfilled.
"Wait a minute." Luo Wenzhou waved a hand. "Wait. Didn't you tell me that Fei Chengyu has been in a vegetative state for three years? A vegetable is the one manipulating this from behind the scenes?"
Fei Du was watching him quietly.
Luo Wenzhou instantly seemed to feel what he was going to say. He stood up at once.
One word at a time, Fei Du said, "Fei Chengyu is a vegetable, but I'm still alive."
Luo Wenzhou flared up. "Shut your mouth!"
"Who told you that Fei Chengyu was in a vegetative state?" Fei Du ignored him, and he was indifferent to the tea soaking the hem of his jacket. "It was me."
Luo Wenzhou said, "Fei Du!"
"I'm in close contact with the police, and I've done everything I could to participate in the second Picture Album Project. I can monitor the progress of each case in real time, help you reach the 'ideal' resolution to each case," Fei Du said. "And I have my own people. My train of thought was identical to Fan Siyuan's.—Perhaps Fei Chengyu is only faking, and I'm his accomplice. Perhaps I simply committed patricide and became his sole heir…"
Luo Wenzhou pulled him up off the floor. "I told you I don't like it when you…"
"Shixiong." Fei Du sighed and patted the back of his hand. "I'm only saying what the most reasonable possibility is now. I didn't say I really did it. Tricking people out of money but not into sex is the quality villain's basic principle of personal integrity. If I'd had a goal in getting close to you, I wouldn't have let things develop to this stage between us."
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
"That would be too contemptible, and out of keeping with an appreciation for beauty." Fei Du pulled his collar out of Luo Wenzhou's hand and straightened the creases in his lapels. Then he picked up his phone. The missed call displayed was from "Binhai Sanatorium." Fei Du looked at Luo Wenzhou, turned the speaker on in front of him, and dialed back.
As soon as the call connected, the person on the other end hastily picked up. "President Fei! President Fei, I've called you three times, and you haven't picked up! I've been so worried.—Your father has disappeared!"
"What does disappeared mean?" Fei Du asked unhurriedly.
"I, I don't know. The security cameras were cut off. Everything was fine when we checked on the room last night, but first thing this morning he was gone!"
Fei Du hung up. "It seems the script they've chosen is rather gentle. They don't want me to commit 'patricide.'"
At the Second Hospital, Lu Youliang saw someone and suddenly stood up. It wasn't easy for Tao Ran to move, and he couldn't turn around at first. He could only hear a series of hurried footsteps approaching.
Lu Youliang said, "Everyone, this…"
"Director Lu," said one of the newcomers, "we just learned that the Criminal Investigation Team is currently pursuing two suspicious cars, including one containing a person named Yang Xin, whose mother Fu Jiahui is suspected of taking part in illegal eavesdropping and leaking secrets. We believe she's a suspect in the murder of Yin Ping."
Tao Ran, using the one arm he could force to move, finally turned the wheelchair around and saw that a host of investigators had come to the hospital, and Xiao Wu was anxiously following after them, as though he'd done something wrong.
"Deputy-Captain Tao," Xiao Wu said quietly, "They… These leaders suddenly asked me, and I, I, I didn't, didn't dare to cover up…"
Meanwhile, Lang Qiao, who couldn't get in touch with Luo Wenzhou for the moment, had just returned to the City Bureau. She saw two investigators taking Director Ceng away.
"Director." Lang Qiao's eyes opened wide. "What's going on?"
Ceng Guangling shook his head at her gravely.
"He's assisting with the investigation." One of the investigators nodded very warmly to Lang Qiao. "Comrade, please write up a report of the progress of your ongoing investigation and submit it to us. Thank you for your cooperation."
"Hey…" Lang Qiao said.
A colleague tugged at her. When Director Ceng and the others had walked off, he quietly said to Lang Qiao, "I think you know some of our security cameras were bugged?"
Lang Qiao looked at him in bewilderment.
"Because of that, even old Director Zhang, who's stepped back to an advisory position, was taken away to be investigated. But because the installation and repair factory fees were comparatively low, according to regulations, final approval didn't have to come from the superiors. Director Ceng was in charge of administrative work then. It sounds like there were some shenanigans at the factory."
In the villa, Fei Du had just hung up on the Binhai Sanatorium when a call came from Assistant Miao. Assistant Miao was a little panicked. "President Fei…can you come back to the office right now?"
Not at all surprised, Fei Du asked, "What's the matter?"
"There are some people who say they're with the police. They want to investigate one of our past investments—"