Chapter 90: Two Demons

We won. Now it is time for you to keep your word.

Zhong Huayan vaulted onto the gambling table. In the blink of an eye, her gaze turned sharp, and a fierce heat seemed to surge from her jaw. It was like sparks bursting on the rotten rosewood tabletop. Smoke curled around them as she leaned close to Xu Yaochuan’s ear.

“Tell me everything you know.”

Xu Yaochuan lounged carelessly in his chair, one knee braced against the table, a single king of spades left in his hand.

He smiled brazenly, then set the king of spades alight. With two fingers, he pinched the flame in silence until it died in his palm.

Just as, years ago, she had stood in the prime of her youth and died in agony beneath cruel plots and schemes.

“Come closer.”

Zhong Huayan leaned in a little more. Xu Yaochuan tilted his head and spoke not quite softly.

“Why are you so concerned with the truth behind Zhong Huayan’s death? Could it be—”

“Ask no more. If you lose, accept it. Say something I want to hear.”

“Want to hear it? Then I’ll be generous and tell you. Back then, the Xu family and the Zhong family wanted me to kill that woman. Her death was just me lighting the fire bit by bit. Watching someone teeter on the edge of death was truly intoxicating... And to think, someone wanted her dead, all of them—her aunt, her uncle, her maternal uncle. Every one of them.

“This whole bizarre case is the funniest masterpiece in the world, the biggest joke of all! Zhong Huayan is a pitiful soul too, just like me—her own kin were waiting for her to die. Buried beneath money, struck by fire on a rainy day, cast into the Yellow Springs, with relatives and husband splitting the spoils! Hahahahaha!”

Xu Yaochuan was a complete madman. He did not even seem to feel his own heartbeat; he had never once known nervousness.

Perhaps in a society so consumed by greed and profit, the kind-hearted are always the first to leave.

His voice sounded like a demon’s roar from the depths of the soul, slowly baring the filth he took pride in.

At this moment he was like an executioner, tearing open that wound once more, killing her again.

Back then, he repaid kindness with betrayal, burying his conscience with his own hands and ruining his future. From that day on, the sky over his life grew darker by the degree.

Dark enough to make it impossible to see the way.

Zhong Huayan only felt a splitting pain at the back of her head. Her hands began to tremble, and even her memories started to shake.

Buried beneath money, struck by fire on a rainy day, cast into the Yellow Springs, with relatives and husband splitting the spoils...

She felt as though her chest were about to split open, and a suffocating pressure came over her. She had thought she could face the truth calmly, could face those years without flinching, but hearing such cruel words spoken as mockery only made every bone in her body ache.

Xu Yaochuan had played them.

He had no idea who the real mastermind behind the fire was. He had merely followed Old Master Xu’s orders and set it alight.

Zhong Huayan had not yet spoken, had not yet reacted, when she saw Fu Yanyan stride forward in a single step and lock onto Xu Yaochuan’s throat. Veins bulged across the back of that icy hand. He was dressed in a suit, cool and immaculate as moonlit water, yet the ruthless skill with which he strangled a man was practiced and old. And still, not a speck of dust stained him. Even as he watched a face flush red and veins stand out, he seemed utterly unmoved, looking down as though at something already dead.

His assistant received the order and entered from behind the door, a document bag in hand, which he handed to his boss.

Fu Yanyan placed a cigarette between Xu Yaochuan’s lips, then yanked him hard, pinning him against the window. The man gave a muffled groan.

The night wind caught the ember at the tip of the cigarette in Xu Yaochuan’s mouth and made it flare brightly. A clear strangling mark stood out on his neck. Just as he had struggled, that flare of light from the cigarette tip illuminated the photographs Fu Yanyan had placed before him.

Though the darkness beyond the window made the images hard to see in full, one could still make out their rough outlines.

On one photograph was a woman covered in injuries, filthy all over, crouched in a dim corner, leaving only a pair of frightened eyes staring toward the camera.

Another photograph showed an old man slumped in a sealed, airless room.

And another was a close-up of the old man’s hands.

All the old man’s fingers were gone, leaving only a bead bracelet on his wrist. The beads gleamed so sharply that Xu Yaochuan forgot to inhale; the ash on his cigarette burned through and was slowly scattered by the night wind.

Fu Yanyan’s words reached only the two of them, whispered into his ear.

So close that breath mingled, like a devil murmuring in hell.

“On a dark night with high winds, it is the perfect time for murder and arson. Your mother had beautiful eyes, clear and bright. I kept her for last on purpose, because I, too, enjoyed watching those eyes slowly dim into despair... Ah... what a pleasing feeling. And your grandfather, too—I saved him. Strange, isn’t it? How could a perfectly good car just explode like that?

“I saved him because I wanted to keep tormenting him... Have you ever heard the sweet, lovely sound of someone breathing their last? ‘Please, save me, please save your mother, your grandfather, your sister...’ Have you heard the sound of a blade gliding beneath beautiful skin? Ah—watching that person tremble on and on. Tsk tsk. That sound is truly even more exquisite than the fire itself.”

Fu Yanyan slowly, methodically, returned the photographs to the bag, then let the string of prayer beads trail over Xu Yaochuan’s throat.

His hand was cold, like a knife being drawn slowly across the skin.

Fu Yanyan felt Xu Yaochuan stiffen for a moment. As if remembering something, he spoke again, softly.

“Oh... I remember now. You have another younger brother? Xu Chuyin? I will find him.

“I’ll make them lose their sight, their touch, their sense of taste, their ability to run, everything—leave them with nothing but a mouth to cry out, son, grandson, brother...

“I’ll keep you until the very end, so you can feel the heart-wrenching agony of watching those you care for slowly go out. You’ll taste the most cruel torture this world has to offer.

“Are you ready to embark on the road of no return that began three years ago—a road of flames, a hell on earth?”

When Fu Yanyan finished, he released the hand that had held Xu Yaochuan in place.

Zhong Huayan did not know exactly what Fu Yanyan had shown him. Xu Yaochuan remained turned away for a long time. His trembling fingers clasped the cigarette; he took a deep drag, and the smoke swallowed the night whole.

Only then did he slowly turn back. In the depths of his phoenix eyes flickered a trace of excitement, fear, stimulation, even blankness...

Such expressions had never appeared on his face before.

Xu Yaochuan crushed the cigarette in his bare hand, then, with a dry throat and eyes webbed in deep red veins, said:

“Thank you for the cigarette, Brother Fu. That smoke went straight into my lungs. By now, the two of us have already entered hell—we are only racing to see who can reach the deepest part faster. Betting our lives against me? Xu Yaochuan is astonished.

“But if you dare touch my younger brother, I do not mind if we all perish together. Even as a ghost, I’ll drag you with me. In this life and the next, we’ll be together; even in death, we’ll be together!”

Under Zhong Huayan’s gaze, Fu Yanyan gave a refined smile, cool and distant, his tone faintly indulgent.

“How nice. So you still have someone you care about. Xiaochuan, if you are no match for me in life, do you really think you will be any better as a ghost?”