22 His beloved fell before him, covered in blood.

"I don't know you."

Tao Wanjia stood in front of Huang Zheng, with his hands behind his back trying to untie the rope.

A dagger with a cold glow suddenly appeared in front of her, and the man's eagle-like sharp eyes fixed on her still stable sight.

"Reporter Tao, stop pretending with me at this point."

The tip of the knife was only ten centimeters away from her. Huang Zheng clutched her arm in fear. Tao Wanji's eyelashes twitched slightly, "You've got the wrong person."

"How could I be wrong? I chased you all the way to Rongcheng. You are indeed cautious, but I am not stupid."

The man laughed, his beard shaking with snowflakes. "If I really admit my mistake, wouldn't all my work for the past six months have been for nothing?"

Tao Wanjia pursed his lips and asked calmly, "Who sent you?"

"I can't say this, but I only received orders," the man paused, "either destroy the report you received from Pei Qiang, or shut you up forever."

Tao Wanjia didn't move, letting the tip of the knife slide in front of her eyelids. Her eyes were firm, and she confronted him without flinching.

"How hard is it to shut me up? Even if I die here today, I still have my colleagues here. They will continue what I haven't finished. It's no use trying to scare me."

"I knew you were difficult to deal with, so I made ample preparations before I came here. There's probably no one else in your department left on the front lines besides you. Why would you, a woman, bother? With your resume, a PR job at a big company would earn you a million a year, but you insisted on guarding this tiny piece of land. Now, you've lost both the land and the people."

The man spoke calmly, each word true. Tao Wanjia's expression remained calm, but her heart was in turmoil. The thing she had been worrying about had finally come to pass, and the outcome was even worse than she had expected.

Reason and clarity allowed her to break free from Huang Zheng's hand in time, "I can handle my own affairs. Let her go. This person has nothing to do with me."

"I just heard you call me sister, how can this be considered irrelevant?"

The man spoke suspiciously. He knew full well that for someone as stubborn as Tao Wanjia, who cared nothing for fame or fortune or his life, a single blow was necessary.

Choose the one they care about most, be it their family, children, or loved ones, and they will definitely succeed if they threaten them. These people can put their own life and death aside, but they will not ignore the people around them.

"She's not my sister."

Tao Wanjia turned away from Huang Zheng and said in a cold tone, "I hate her too. If you want to threaten me with her, then you've got the wrong person. Her life or death has nothing to do with me. It's up to you."

"Tao Wanjia!"

Huang Zheng cursed upon hearing this, glaring at Tao Wanjia. Furious, she reached out to the man for a knife, "Don't you want to kill her? Come! I'll help you. I've wanted to kill her for a long time. I can't wait for her to die!"

The man hesitated for a moment, surprised by the scene before him which was beyond his comprehension.

He paused for a few seconds, and Tao Wanji and Huang Zheng seized the opportunity. After signaling to each other, they made up their minds and attacked together.

Tao Wanjia took out pepper spray from his pocket and sprayed it wildly, while Huang Zheng kicked the man hard in the lower body at the moment when his eyes were dazed.

They both reacted quickly, and after finishing, they tightly grasped the other's hand and turned and ran away.

"You, what have you been doing all these years?" Huang Zheng asked her breathlessly during the bumpy escape, "The money you gave me that day, wasn't it—"

"nonsense!"

Tao Wanjia interrupted in a deep voice, feeling that her throat was about to smoke, but she did not dare to stop, looking around and looking back.

"Every penny I earn is earned through hard work."

She had experienced these things countless times over the years. She wasn't very experienced, but she wasn't too panicked either. However, both of them had limited strength after all.

The wet hillside after the snow not only increased the resistance underfoot, but also became more slippery. Huang Zheng fell down the slope without paying attention, and Tao Wanjia rolled to the ground with her.

Seeing that she was about to hit the rocks, Tao Wanji reached out and grabbed Huang Zheng to block her. She felt a sharp pain in her back and her vision suddenly went black.

She forced herself to pull out her phone from her coat pocket and handed it to the person next to her, "Quick, call the police."

Huang Zheng's hands were shaking uncontrollably. Before her trembling fingertips could unlock the password, the phone was snatched away by the man who caught up with her. The phone fell on the stone, and the screen went black along with the fragments.

The man was completely enraged by the two of them, and the pain in his lower body had not yet completely disappeared.

He raised his hand and grabbed Huang Zheng's hair, "You dare to hit me? Don't you want to live?"

"No! Don't hurt her!"

Tao Wanjia climbed up from the ground, holding his chest. The moment he opened his mouth, he found a strong taste of rust in his throat.

She swallowed the blood, and seeing Huang Zheng's painful expression, she could no longer hide her panic. She took a deep breath to relieve the pain at the moment. Her hands trembled because of the wound, but her voice did not change at all.

"Don't you just want the investigative materials? Let her go, and I'll give them all to you."

/

The snow fell heavier and heavier.

He Yu looked out the French window at the white sky, and the tender voice of a child beside him interrupted his wandering thoughts.

"Uncle He, if you're busy at work, it's okay for me to be alone."

Huang Shengsheng glanced at him, then lowered her head and continued drawing with her crayons. Huang Zheng had entrusted her here before leaving in the morning, and she had always been happy to come to Uncle He's house. Not only was the place spacious, but there were also many of her favorite brushes and paints.

He Yu touched her head and said, "Uncle is not busy, he is just thinking about something."

"Are you thinking about your aunt?"

The child's eyes were bright, his gaze was as direct as his question, and his chubby little face was full of curiosity.

"Mom said you and Auntie were classmates, and Uncle Wen was also Auntie's classmate, but why did Auntie keep talking to Uncle Wen during dinner last time?"

Huang Shengsheng laughed, "Uncle He, does my aunt hate you?"

After a moment of silence, He Yu nodded under the bright gaze in front of him.

"Yes, your aunt hates me."

Huang Shengsheng covered her mouth when she heard the answer and whispered into his ear, carefully asking him, "But Uncle He likes Auntie very much, right?"

He Yu didn't say anything. In the split second he hesitated, Huang Shengsheng had already exposed his disguise with her gestures. She pointed at the unfinished paintings on the easels by the window, and her voice gradually became louder.

"Look at all the pictures you've drawn of me, they're all my aunt!"

Children don't understand adult matters and say whatever they think, but He Yu was disturbed by the words of the six-year-old.

He turned and looked at the paintings that he had not yet taken away.

He hadn't picked up a paintbrush in years. Watching Tao Wanjia skillfully maneuvering his skateboard on New Year's Eve reminded him of it. The fracture had also given him the courage to regenerate. But because his hand, which had undergone surgery, couldn't maintain the same movement for long, he'd been intermittent for days without finishing a satisfactory painting.

He stared at the face in the painting, his heart feeling like it was tangled in a tangle of untangled threads, which tightened with every breath, spreading with an inexplicable sense of uneasiness and anxiety.

Huang Shengsheng was still chattering in his ear, "But I still think my aunt is prettier..."

"Shengsheng, can uncle go out for a while?"

The feeling of chaos became stronger and stronger. He Yu stood up, took his coat, told the nanny who was preparing lunch in the kitchen, and walked out.

He called Xiao Zhang, the elevator door opened, and Wen Dongyang appeared in front of him with a worried look on his face.

"Lao He, I can't contact Huang Zheng, and I can't get through to Wan Jia either."

On the other end of the phone, Xiao Zhang, who had just hung up on Zhao Kuo, reported the situation the moment he answered, "Reporter Zhao just called and said Miss Tao might be in danger..."

/

After Tao Wanjia said that, the other party did not respond for a long time.

The man looked around. They had already climbed to another hillside behind the cemetery. The mountains were desolate and silent in the winter.

He shifted his gaze back to Tao Wanjia and noticed a hint of red at the corner of her mouth.

"I think it would be better to silence you forever than to destroy your investigative materials."

He stepped forward with the knife in hand. "But before I kill you, I'll take your sister with me, so you two can share the journey to the underworld."

"Reporter Tao, please don't do this job in your next life. The price of buying your head is too much—"

When the tip of the knife was about to hit Huang Zheng's neck, Tao Wanjia rushed forward. She raised her hand to stop the man's knife and shouted at Huang Zheng to leave quickly.

At this moment, the knife that had cut her palm suddenly moved towards her body.

There was a hole in the down jacket and blood seeped through layer after layer of fabric.

Tao Wanjia blocked her subconsciously, it was an instinctive reaction transformed from the guilt she had felt deep in her bones towards Huang Zheng for many years.

Huang Zheng watched her fall in front of her, the blood splattering everywhere made her hallucinate that hot summer evening, when she saw her parents, whose faces were burned to a blur, being carried out and placed in front of her.

She always thought that she became helpless and homeless from that day, but at this moment she realized that it was now.

Without Tao Wanjia, we have completely lost this family.

"Wanjia!"

"Huang Zheng!"

Someone was calling her from behind, but Huang Zheng could no longer hear clearly.

She squatted down in panic and covered her wound. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wen Dongyang running up, and more and more figures swarming around as the sirens sounded.

He Yu was completely stunned when he saw this scene, and he picked up Tao Wanji, who was covered in blood, tremblingly.

He couldn't imagine that being in close contact with her again would be like this.

"Wanjia!"

"Tao Wanjia, wake up!"

He kept walking as he called her, but he was afraid that running too fast would damage the wound. In panic, Huang Zheng followed closely beside him, using her hand to stop the bleeding wound.

He Yu was completely desperate, and an unprecedented fear swept over his body at this moment.

During the days and nights without news of her, during the journeys when he had searched for her time and time again but returned in vain, the vast sea was dark and boundless. He stood on the lighthouse thousands of times and jumped into the flooded water thousands of times, but he could never see the precious boat that had traveled far away.

After all these experiences in the past, he thought he had tasted despair.

But the real despair came at this moment, when his lover fell in front of him covered in blood, her life or death uncertain.

He Yu couldn't accept it, his heart was broken and he wished he could suffer for her.

Tears shook and fell, dripping onto Tao Wanjia's forehead with a plop.

She seemed to feel the temperature and slowly opened her eyes.

"He Yu...don't cry."

What she hated most was his crystal clear eyes.

"Okay, I won't cry." He Yu gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on her. "Don't sleep. Please don't sleep, okay?"

Tao Wanjia nodded in his arms, looking upwards. It was a winter evening in the north, the sky was gloomy, and there was only an endless expanse of white ahead.

She closed her eyes in a daze, and the last scene before her vision went completely black was golden.

In the golden evening, on a winding and bumpy uphill road, He Yu stood motionless at the intersection.

Tao Wanjia ran up breathlessly, "Why don't you leave?"

"I'm waiting for you. I'm waiting for you to go together."

"It's not dark yet. With such a bright road and sunset, I can walk by myself."

"But I want to stay with you."

He looked at her, his smile bright in the afterglow, "Tao Wanjia, I'm worried that you won't remember the way home."