"I'm in an awkward position, having to follow my enemy's intention to threaten an associate I haven't yet had time to turn from an enemy into a friend." Fei Du was having a hard time enunciating. While the metal ring around his neck hadn't been drawn tight, the familiar sensation was already making it difficult to breathe. His voice seemed about to tear apart along with his throat. "Chairman Zhang undoubtedly wants to open a hole in my head now."
"The doctors say I have less than three months to live. For me, death is only a belated homecoming," Fan Siyuan said to Zhang Chunling. He pointed at Fei Du. "You can shoot me now, as long as you're willing to gamble—will you kill me faster than I'll kill him?"
"I don't especially want to die. I'm not sick, after all," Fei Du said. "So…Chairman Zhang, has Zhang Donglai contacted you?"
His words, full of hidden meaning, succeeded in raising the veins at the corners of Zhang Chunling's forehead—Zhang Donglai's phone was sending him a photograph every minute of Zhang Donglai tied up, holding a giant countdown display. The countdown was constantly going down. There were only three minutes left on the latest photograph.
This was Zhang Chunling's territory. He could easily remove the kerosene underground, clear away Fan Siyuan's ambush, raise a hand and turn the whole gang of them into crushed watermelons. But Fan Siyuan's gun was pressed to Fei Du's head, and Fei Du held Zhang Donglai in his hands. Zhang Chunling had been short of close relatives since childhood. He was obsessed with the idea of pampering his children, and with their blood relationship to him. Zhang Donglai, far off in a foreign land, was Zhang Chunling's life.
There were three protagonists on the scene; adding in the innocent useless rich kid Zhang Donglai elsewhere, they formed a life-and-death ring spanning over a dozen time zones and the boundless ocean, coming to a perfect deadlock.
But time was constantly ticking down.
"It seems that among the four of us, one must die to break the equilibrium. Who will die first?" Fan Siyuan looked at Zhang Chunling with a furtive smile. "Your territory. You have the say."
Xiao Haiyang, hiding in a corner, had prepared to charge out, but he was held in place by the complicated "relationship quadrangle." He didn't know where to start meddling.
Lang Qiao ran to the secret passage's entrance on one breath. She was just about to leap out when she suddenly thought of something, paused in her steps, and lightly tapped the mouth of the cave twice before showing her head. It seemed that her broken phone was secretly blessing her; Lang Qiao's sudden quick wits gained great reward—as soon as she tapped, there was an answer outside. Someone walked towards the mouth of the cave and said in a low voice, "What's wrong?"
Those three people just now had left a lookout outside!
Lang Qiao spat out a breath. In the instant he stuck his head out to look into the mouth of the cave, she flung out her handcuffs like nunchucks, wrapping around his foot. Then she yanked. The person cried out and lost his balance. He tipped over backwards and kicked at Lang Qiao.
Lang Qiao ducked and dodged, then quickly charged out of the secret passage. But before her feet touched solid ground, a fierce wind swept by her ear. Lang Qiao subconsciously blocked in front of herself with both hands, and a wooden stick smashed into her forearms with a crash.
After a fierce pain, her arms went numb, and her gun slipped out of her hand—there was more than one lookout!
Meanwhile, the one she'd pulled down climbed back up, pulled a knife, and stabbed towards her.
This place was worse than the narrow secret passage; she couldn't launch a secret attack and take them unawares. Lang Qiao instantly went on the defensive. She'd just narrowly swept aside the knife with her handcuffs when she took a hit to the shoulder from the stick. The hit was accurate. All her internal organs shook, and she stumbled and went to her knees. Suddenly, in the faint light, she saw that there was a gun at the belt of the stick-brandishing person who had hit her.
They had guns, so why were they attacking with a knife and a stick? Posing for a photograph?
The Reciter's people were basically all gathered underground. Who were they afraid of alerting?
In a flash, a thought swept through Lang Qiao's mind—she rolled awkwardly into a ball on the ground and threw herself towards her own knocked-aside gun. The stick, as thick as a person's arm, flew threw the air, smashing down on her back. Lang Qiao nearly felt she'd been smashed into two halves. The knife-wielding thug followed closely after, stabbing towards her. "Die!"
Just then, a beam of light from somewhere swept into the unremarkable thatched cottage. The two thugs were startled, and Lang Qiao seized the opportunity to turn, grab some grit off the ground, and throw it into their faces. The knife went astray and caught on her sweater, the ice-cold blade brushing her skin. The worn-out sweater was pulled out of shape. She struggled on the ground with all four limbs. Her hand touched her gun. The stick-wielder brought the stick smashing down towards her head.
At the same time, Lang Qiao hooked her finger over the trigger, turned her head, and shot twice at the thug's shin—
The sudden gunshot in the forest at the foot of the hill made Luo Wenzhou, searching the old mill, raise his head.
Meanwhile, the phone in Zhang Chunling's pocket vibrated again with a message notification.
Zhang Chunling knew without looking that there were two minutes left on the fatal countdown next to Zhang Donglai!
If no one broke through the deadlock, the first to die would be Zhang Donglai!
Cold sweat rolled off Zhang Chunling.
"Zhang Chunling, you're guilty of monstrous crimes. Why don't you look at the vegetable in the hospital bed? When you were working hand in glove with Fei Chengyu, did you ever think a day would come when you would see him under circumstances like this?"
Zhang Chunling said, "Shut up… Shut up!"
"As for Fei Chengyu, he was a child of poverty. His father went to prison for intentional homicide when he was little. His family had no source of income and managed to survive relying on the financial aid of a kind soul. That kind soul supported him all the way through university, until he coveted the man's only daughter.—Oh, that's wrong. It wasn't the stupid, useless woman he coveted; it was the man's great wealth. His backer understood what there was in the bones of this presentable-looking man and forbade his daughter to have contact with him, and cut off his financial aid… There's no need for me to tell you the outcome. Fei Chengyu thought it was Wuthering Heights, but to me it looks more like 'The Farmer and the Viper15.' Am I right, President Fei?"
Fei Du's bloodless lips curved slightly.
"You've inherited everything of his—his property, his baseness, and his dirty methods. If Chairman Zhang decides to abandon his darling son, then I'll have no choice but to abandon you. But you seem not to have killed anyone before, so for the sake of fairness, I'll give you some preferential treatment… How about a choice?"
Fei Du's gaze fell on the metal ring closed around his neck—this metal ring was so familiar, so strange.
When he'd been little, the other end had been a handful of simple rings, forcing him to squeeze his fingers closed when he was suffocating, squeezing the necks of those small animals.
Later, the mental ring had taken on a more complicated installation, the other end closed over a person's neck with a small handgrip in between. If he only subconsciously squeezed it, he would see the other person's panic-stricken, suffocated face…and breathe another breath.
This was an instrument of torture Fei Chengyu had invented himself, full of malicious imagination.
Now, his great invention, the other end of that metal ring, was closed over his own neck.
"Chairman Zhang is still rather indecisive.—President Fei, let's play a game while we wait for him. Do you think you'd like to die first yourself, or do you have an injustice to report, a wrong to avenge? Will you make Fei Chengyu die first instead of you?"
Before he'd finished, one of his subordinates immediately stepped forward, grabbing the metal ring around Fei Du's neck and lifting him.
Fei Du had no room to resist. He was hauled up, the seemingly eternal calm at last disappearing from his face. He began to cough reflexively. Xiao Haiyang came to the end of his endurance. He wiped the cold sweat in his palms on his pants, raised his gun, and charged out, roaring, "Don't move! Police!"
The word "police" wavered midway, the pitch rising up to the ceiling of the underground room. The glaring, gun-toting criminals all turned their heads at once, silently watching the four-eyed young person charge in through the mouth of the secret passage in full public view—the above-mentioned young person's calf muscles were trembling, shaking so hard his pant legs were moving without a breeze. He only remembered halfway through the "Don't move!" that he'd forgotten to take off the safety again and fiddled with it as though fooling around.
For a moment, an expression of seeing a sight too horrible to look at crossed even Fei Du's face.
Xiao Haiyang was entirely unaware of his own awkward plight, insisting on reciting his lines to the end. He roared, "You're all under arrest! Put your guns down! Hands up!"
…but no one paid attention to him.
"Teacher Fan, I'm going to break this 'equilibrium.'" Fei Du's gaze flashed. While everyone's attention was divided, he seized the opportunity to speak. While he was addressing "Teacher Fan," he turned to the woman named "Ruobing" while he spoke. "Before Zhu Feng and Yang Xin were arrested, a taxi driver came to find me, saying he was one of your people. He was very sloppy, easily tailed, letting the police follow him to catch Yang Xin and the others. Did you do that deliberately?"
The woman beside Fan Siyuan stared emptily. Then, as though her hand had been burned, she released the back of the wheelchair.
"Fu Jiahui had been revealed, so Yang Xin had no more use, either. Letting her run around would only attract the notice of the police and give Zhang Chunling and the others an opening. So you deliberately put her and the important lead Zhu Feng together, and…"
Ruobing realized something from his words and stepped back slightly, shaking her head in disbelief.
Fan Siyuan howled at the man holding the controls to the metal rings: "What are you waiting for!"
"…exposed them, but you gave them a misleading warning and weapons, because…"
Fei Du's words came to an abrupt halt as the metal ring drew in tight. Boundless darkness engulfed him along with the familiar feeling of suffocation, and his memories opened their bloody mouths towards him. The basement, the ice-cold corpse, the bloody fur, the woman's screams… There was a loud rumble. The man holding his neck by the metal ring cut apart the cords tying his hands. The fatal handgrip was in front of him, and he instinctively reached out to grab it.
At the same time, Ruobing understood what Fei Du hadn't had time to say.
Because…
Because Fan Siyuan understood the marionettes under his control, knew that they were all carved wood steeped in poison, knew that they couldn't forgive. He also absolutely didn't believe that Fei Du was as innocent as he had displayed himself to be at the start; he'd been certain that he would get his eyes on the warehouse where Yang Xin and the others were hidden. When the time came, there would be a conflict between the two sides, illegal guns and violent injuries; there was a 100% chance the police would be alerted, and he could kill two birds with one stone, blowing both the useless garbage and the deeply-scheming Fei Du out of the water together.
But something had gone wrong. Fei Du had kept calm, had held back and not moved rashly, letting the police find the warehouse first.
In a moment of desperation, Xiao Haiyang's mind went blank. He quickly pointed his gun at Fan Siyuan. "Let him go!"
Meanwhile, Zhang Chunling's mind roared; he'd heard a different meaning in Fei Du's brief description of these events—Fan Siyuan had deliberately exposed the warehouse where Yang Xin and Zhu Feng were hidden to Fei Du, but the people who ought to have been under Fei Du's gaze had inexplicably fallen into the hands of the police.
And when they'd tried to kill Zhou Huaijin, who had secretly ganged up with Fei Du, the police had arrived abnormally fast.
Fei Du could have gotten inside information from the police so easily by tricking them so they were going around in circles, or he could also have…
Now that he'd also seen the little four-eyes calling himself the police, what else was there for Zhang Chunling to understand?
Fei Du's plot to dupe them hadn't been at all seamless, but Zhang Chunling and Fan Siyuan, one because he was wild with worry for his son, the other because of his long-ago strong first impression, had determined that Fei Du wasn't at all a good person, and so they hadn't carefully considered some details. And Fan Siyuan still hadn't realized it!
"You told me to choose how to undo this ring?" Zhang Chunling's expression changed several times. Unforeseen by anyone, he raised his gun, laughed coldly, and shot at Fei Du.
The equilibrium had broken!
The men holding Fei Du subconsciously pulled him aside. The bullet brushed past Fei Du and fell at the foot of Fei Chengyu's hospital bed. The situation on the scene once again rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, and Zhang Chunling's and Fan Siyuan's people opened fire on each other.
All of Xiao Haiyang's hair stood on end. In the confusion, he charged towards Fei Du.
Just then, Ruobing retreated into a corner and suddenly called out, "He put a bomb under the hospital bed! If you squeeze the handgrip it'll…"
Before she had finished speaking, a bullet hit her. The woman groaned and went down.
The woman's shout fell like thunder on everyone's ears. Fan Siyuan instantly looked at Fei Du—Fei Du was holding that fatal handgrip in his hand, but for some reason, he would rather be choked than squeeze it. He was using the remains of his consciousness to look with his blurred vision at Fan Siyuan, actually forcing out a smile towards him, as though he'd had some insight.
When the word "bomb" was spoken, Zhang Chunling tensed, and his subordinates charged up without even thinking about it, wanting to screen him and run out in the midst of Fan Siyuan's mad dog counterattack. At the same time, Zhang Chunling shot again at Fei Du, who was holding the handgrip.
Xiao Haiyang gave a cry, quickly pulled over Fei Chengyu's hospital bed, and threw himself at Fei Du, rolling him under the hospital bed. Something fell out of his pocket along with his gun. At the same time, Fan Siyuan found the strength somewhere to push away the wheelchair. Using the bodies of his subordinates as a shield, like a crawling monster, he fired his gun as he approached Fei Du and Xiao Haiyang.
Suddenly, Zhang Chunling, who had already retreated to the entrance of the secret passage, heard his subordinates calling out in panic. "Chairman Zhang, there's…"
Before Zhang Chunling could turn his head, there was a gunshot, and a fierce pain in his hand holding the gun—a bullet had passed precisely through his palm.
This time it was the genuine goods at a fair price—
"Police! Don't move!"
Fan Siyuan, taking no notice, raised the gun towards Xiao Haiyang, who was blocking Fei Du. "Press down! Press down! Fei Chengyu used that thing to train you to squeeze your mother's throat, countless times! Have you forgotten! Aren't all your dreams of killing him? Huh?"
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Author's note:
(15) The Aesop's Fable that gives us the idiom "to nourish a viper in one's bosom."