Chapter 48 It's me. Don't you want to know who killed you? ...

The night was as dark as ink. After Zhang Wei left, the only sound left in the villa was the ticking of the clock.

“That voice…sounds like Shi Yunran.” Shen Xingjian’s voice was low, with an imperceptible tension.

If it was her from ten years ago, Shen Xingjian should be able to see it. If he can't see it, it means...

Gao Xing looked at his worried expression and gently stroked the back of his hand. "Whether it's true or not, all we can do now is wait. If she really knows, she'll definitely take action. We'll then see how she reacts."

Her voice was soft, but it carried a reassuring power. Shen Xingjian held her slightly warm fingertips with his backhand, knowing that this was the only way.

The online world's buzz is like the tide: it comes and goes quickly. A week later, after several shocking twists in Xu Jiakai's case, the buzz was quickly replaced by new gossip.

First, Accountant Liu burst into tears on camera, admitting to fabricating the rumors out of personal vendetta. Soon, Zhang Wei also reversed his stance, claiming his previous accusations were fabricated to follow the trend. Public opinion shifted instantly, and Xu Jiakai went from a murder suspect to a pitiful man framed by his vicious wife, even gaining a legion of sympathetic fans. It was truly absurd.

However, Shi Yunran, who triggered all this, seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth and there has been no news of him since.

What they didn't know was that Shi Yunran was currently curled up in the empty living room of the Shi family's old house. The heavy curtains blocked out all the light, making the house look deserted.

The strange scene she had seen that night in front of Villa No. 1 replayed in her mind like a nightmare. The image of Shen Xingjian sitting in a wheelchair was so clear that it revived those dusty memories.

Suddenly, Shi Yunran woke up from a nightmare and looked at the deathly silence around her. She thought, no matter what, it's time to put an end to it.

She got up and went to the secret room in the study and took out the black box from the safe.

Villa No. 1.

As Shen Xingjian's last death date drew closer, Gao Xing's anxiety grew. She often stared at the calendar in a daze, and Shen Xingjian saw it all.

That morning, just as the sun was rising, he picked up the phone and made the decision he would eventually have to make.

He agreed to sign the demolition agreement.

After hanging up the phone, the living room was silent.

He knew that perhaps from this moment on, everything in the future would be rewritten, and his and Gao Xing's fate would officially move towards the unknown.

“Ding Dong—!”

The shrill doorbell rings suddenly, breaking the morning tranquility.

Gao Xing happened to come down from upstairs and exchanged glances with Shen Xingjian.

She walked quickly to the door and answered the phone.

"It's me."

A hoarse woman's voice came from the doorbell. Gao Xing did not doubt that the voice came from someone else, because Shi Yunran ten years ago would never have acted so embarrassed.

Gao Xing glanced back at Shen Xingjian and motioned him to go back to the room while she dealt with it.

The courtyard gate opened, and Shi Yunran's haggard figure appeared before his eyes. In just a few days, she seemed like a different person. Her once delicate and elegant face was full of fatigue, and her eye sockets were sunken, as if she had aged ten years in an instant.

"Why are you here?" Gao Xing tested her.

Shi Yunran didn’t answer, but just asked: “Shen Xingjian is in this house, right?”

Her eyes were fixed on Gao Xing with a desperate madness.

Gao Xing's breath hitched, and cold sweat instantly broke out on his back: "Why do you say that?"

"I saw him that night."

Shi Yunran’s answer confirmed Shen Xingjian’s guess. It was indeed her who was outside the door that night!

Despite this, Gao Xing still insisted on sticking to his original statement, saying, "The ghosts of the deceased linger, and sometimes there will be some supernatural phenomena. You don't have to take it too seriously."

"I want to see him." Shi Yunran suddenly said, "Can you let me see him?"

Shi Yunran's expression was extremely firm. Just when Gao Xing didn't know how to respond, there was a slight "creak" sound, and the courtyard door that she was holding in her hand was pushed open from the outside. Xu Jiakai from ten years ago suddenly appeared in front of her, wearing a slightly immature gray sweater!

A few days ago, Xu Jiakai heard that Guanya Auto Line had officially passed the review, so he wanted to make a final push. As long as Shen Xingjian promised not to pursue him, he could spit out all the money and even kneel down to him!

He arrived at the gate of the villa and saw that half of the door was open, so he walked straight in. He never thought that just as he stepped into the yard, in less than a second, Gao Xing's figure suddenly appeared before his eyes like a ghost in the yard that seemed empty from the outside!

Xu Jiakai was startled and froze in place, his pupils suddenly contracting.

"Xu Jiakai?!" Gao Xing blurted out, his face full of surprise.

Almost at the same time, Shi Yunran, who was outside the door, heard the exclamation and instinctively walked in. The moment she stepped into the yard, the air around her twisted, and a younger version of Xu Jiakai suddenly appeared beside her!

The three of them looked at each other, too shocked to speak.

"Happy!"

Shen Xingjian's voice came from inside the house. He had been paying attention to the movement at the door. Seeing that the situation was out of control, he immediately drove the wheelchair out and protected Gao Xing behind him.

“Shen Xingjian?!” Shi Yunran looked at the person who appeared in front of her alive, her eyes widened in horror, and one hand quickly reached into her bag to grope for something.

Before she could make a move, another loud shout rang out from the door!

"Shi Yunran!"

Ten years later, Xu Jiakai followed her trail and rushed into the yard with a murderous look on his face.

He had been looking for her these days, but he didn't expect that she was actually with Gao Xing. He knew that Shi Yunran's sudden madness was related to this Gao Xing!

However, when he saw the scene in the yard clearly, all his anger turned into extreme shock.

There was actually a person in the yard who looked exactly like me!

“Sizzle——!!!”

Suddenly, without warning, a piercing electromagnetic explosion erupted! Somehow, the ground began to shake violently, and the air seemed to have turned into a viscous liquid, squeezing everyone's body madly. Invisible forces tore at flesh and blood, and everyone's face twisted in agony!

Gao Xing and Shen Xingjian immediately realized that the appearance of Xu Jiakai from two different time and space caused the shock. If this continued, they might be torn apart by time and space!

"Separate quickly!" Shen Xingjian shouted with all his strength, his voice was cut into small pieces in the high-frequency vibration, and was transmitted intermittently into the ears of the people present.

"There's a time-space overlap here! If this continues we'll all die!"

In this critical moment, the instinct for survival overwhelmed all chaos. Shi Yunran and the two Xu Jiakais endured the severe pain and desperately retreated to the two ends of the yard.

As the distance widened, the terrifying shock finally subsided.

"This...what on earth is going on?!" The young Xu Jiakai held his knees and gasped, his face pale. He looked at Shen Xingjian and Gao Xing, who had not separated but were still at peace, in shock.

Before Shen Xingjian could answer, Xu Jiakai ten years later suddenly looked up and stared at Shen Xingjian, his mind rapidly analyzing what he had just said.

Time and space overlap? So those dreams he had... were due to time and space overlapping?

His voice was dry and trembling with disbelief: "You're not dead?"

Shen Xingjian's physical fitness was not as good as everyone present. The intense space-time shock made his heart seem to explode, causing radiating pain and unconsciously hunching over.

Gao Xing immediately bent down to support him upon seeing this, leaning his body against the back of the chair to keep his airway open.

"Are you okay?" she asked anxiously.

Shen Xingjian shook his head, indicating that he was fine, and then turned his gaze to Xu Jiakai behind her.

A slightly weak voice traveled through ten years of time and finally asked the question that was weighing on his heart: "Xu Jiakai, did you kill me back then?" Xu Jiakai didn't expect him to ask this. He was stunned and then sneered: "Shen Xingjian, I hate you, but I'm not so crazy as to do this!"

"What about the neurotoxin?" Shen Xingjian pressed, "How do you explain it?"

When the young Xu Jiakai, who was standing at the other end of the yard, heard this word, his face suddenly changed and he blurted out: "How do you know..."

Shen Xingjian’s sharp eyes immediately turned to him: “So, are you here to kill me today?”

"No!" Young Xu Jiakai denied eagerly, his voice filled with panic, "I didn't! I just wanted you to stop pestering me! I admit that I had the thought, but it was only for a moment! I didn't do it! I..."

"Bang!"

A low and sudden gunshot tore through the tense atmosphere.

The young Xu Jiakai's voice suddenly stopped. He lowered his head in disbelief, watching the blood quickly seeping onto his grey sweater, and collapsed in an instant.

Almost at the same time, at the other end of the yard, Xu Jiakai also groaned ten years later. A bullet hole appeared out of thin air on his expensive suit, and he staggered and fell to his knees.

The two of them looked at the direction of the shooting at the same time—

Shi Yunran stood there expressionlessly, holding a silenced pistol.

"Why...?" Ten years later, Xu Jiakai vomited blood and asked with difficulty.

Shi Yunran slowly walked up to him, squatted down, and said in a terrifyingly calm voice: "Because only if you die can my father live."

Shi Yunran came here today, intending to use this gun to destroy Shen Xingjian's ghost, but unexpectedly she discovered a way to solve the problem once and for all. Since people from the past can appear in the space before our eyes, if this person dies, will the past also change?

She would always remember that her father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage after a huge argument with Xu Jiakai, and he had been bedridden ever since. Over the years, she had constantly regretted marrying that beast. Now, with the chance to set things right, how could she not seize it?

Xu Jiakai didn't expect that his father and daughter were both cold-blooded. The old man had killed Shen Xingjian in order to get promoted and make money, and Shi Yunran was even more cruel than him. She even killed her husband of ten years!

Extreme anger and sarcasm flashed in his eyes. God knows, even if Shi Yunran betrayed him like that, he never thought of really breaking up with her.

Xu Jiakai's eyes finally blurred and he could no longer speak.

After making sure that he was dead, Shi Yunran slowly stood up and turned the gun towards Shen Xingjian and Gao Xing.

"What are you going to do?" Almost instinctively, Gao Xing stood in front of Shen Xingjian.

"You said you'd help me save my father. You were lying, right?" Shi Yunran analyzed as they walked. "You don't have any psychic abilities at all. You just knew about the space-time changes here earlier than we did. You thought Xu Jiakai was the murderer, so you wanted to use me to judge him. Am I right?"

"Shi Yunran, I advise you to calm down! Not only will you fail to save your father, but you will also be charged with murder!" Gao Xing warned her.

Shi Yunran suddenly laughed, "Killing someone... so what? It's not the first time anyway."

Her voice became distorted due to her low laugh, as if she was mocking him, "What's more, I killed someone ten years ago. Now that he's dead, can the crime still be pinned on me?

“What do you mean by this?” Shen Xingjian asked sternly.

"At this point, there's nothing to hide." Shi Yunran shrugged nonchalantly. "Don't you want to know who killed you? It was me."

Shen Xingjian and Gao Xing looked at her in shock!

"That day, I saw the materials you had reported on him in my dad's study. I wanted to go and talk you out of it, but I accidentally saw Xu Jiakai sneakily throwing something into the bushes..."

Shi Yunran spoke calmly, as if discussing someone else's affairs. "I was just curious at the time, so I picked it up and put it in my bag, thinking I'd ask him about it later."

"But I didn't expect that when I came here with good intentions to persuade you not to try to stop a chariot with your bare hands, you humiliated me and told me to get out! How could the bottle have broken if you hadn't knocked over my bag?"

She didn't know what was inside at the time. The moment the bottle broke, she felt panic and shortness of breath, and she lost all her strength. When she woke up again, Shen Xingjian was already dead.

Her eyes turned cold, and her tone was filled with resentment. "I didn't do anything! Yet I have to endure this unprovoked disaster, living in constant fear, and finally giving up on myself and marrying someone like Xu Jiakai. Is this fair?!"

"So you always knew Xu Jiakai wasn't the murderer!" Gao Xing was shaking with anger. "You're making the evidence public just to frame him?!"

Shi Yunran remained silent, her tone shrill and strange: "I had no intention of bringing this matter up at all, it was you who forced me to make it public!"

No wonder! No wonder she hadn't reacted when Father Shi said Xu Jiakai was the murderer! No wonder she didn't release the evidence until Gao Xing threatened her! Because from the very beginning, she was the murderer!

Shi Yunran's scheming and lack of remorse made Gao Xing feel cold all over.

“Okay, enough nonsense,” Shi Yunran raised his gun and aimed at Shen Xingjian, his eyes crazy, “Anyway, you are a dead man. If you die, my dad will have less trouble.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she pulled the trigger!

"Happy!"

The moment the gunshot rang out, Shen Xingjian wanted to push her away without thinking, but Gao Xing turned around and hugged him, blocking him tightly!

At the critical moment, the gun in Shi Yunran's hand jammed because it had not been used for many years. The hammer fell, but the bullet failed to fire!

It was during this brief pause that Shen Xingjian burst out with amazing strength, flipped Gao Xing aside, pounced out of the wheelchair, and knocked Shi Yunran to the ground with all his strength!

"Bang!"

The two muffled sounds almost overlapped—

One sound was the back of Shi Yunran's head hitting the stone hidden in the grass, and the other sound was the jammed bullet finally fired under the impact, shooting through Shen Xingjian's body at close range.

Time seems to freeze at this moment.

Gao Xing fell to the ground, watching the blood gushing out from the bullet hole in Shen Xingjian's back, staining his pajamas with layers of red.

At that moment, her world seemed to have lost its sound and color.

She knelt beside Shen Xingjian, pressing her trembling hands tightly against the wounds on his chest and back. Warm blood gushed out from between her fingers, staining her pale hands and the grass beneath him red.

She wanted to help him by calling 120, but she never expected that her joke would come true. Even if 120 came, she wouldn't know where to take him.

"Chen Xingjian... Shen Xingjian, don't sleep! Look at me!" Her voice was fragmented, and her tears fell on his face, mixing with blood to form a wet mark.

Shen Xingjian’s vision had begun to blur, and the severe pain was eating away at his consciousness, but the hot tears on his face were more distressing to him than the wound.

He had never seen Gao Xing cry like this before. Even when her parents came to visit her last time and she was so desperate, her tears just rolled in her eyes and didn't fall. But now, she was crying like a child for him.

Shen Xingjian felt that he was really not a human being. Not only could he not make her laugh, but he also made her cry!

Shen Xingjian used all his strength to raise his hand to wipe away her tears, but his arm was too heavy to move, and he only raised it slightly before falling down weakly.

"Don't move! Don't move!" Gao Xing begged with sobs, his hands still pressing tightly on his wounds, as if this could save his fading life.

Ever since he knew he would die, Shen Xingjian had imagined countless farewell scenes. He had prepared many contingency plans, but he never expected death to come so unexpectedly, so bloody, and so undignified.

He looked into her tearful eyes, which were filled with joy and despair and could not speak, and tried hard to force a smile, saying, "You have to... smile..."

This sentence made Gao Xing completely collapse. She leaned over, pressed her forehead against his, and cried: "Shut up! Don't say anything! You are not allowed to speak!"

Watching her crying for him, Shen Xingjian suddenly felt that if he had known that his death would make her so sad, he would not have secretly made a wish for her to never forget him.

The burning sensation in his chest grew stronger, and breathing became incredibly difficult. Shen Xingjian suddenly wanted to curse those TV dramas. What kind of ignorant screenwriters were making up stories all day long, saying that people who were shot could still talk for half an hour before dying? Why did his throat feel like it was blocked, and he couldn't utter a single word?

But he couldn't just die in silence like this. He knew that if he didn't even say goodbye, Gao Xing would never be able to get out of this shadow in his life.

Shen Xingjian held on to his broken body, almost using up his last bit of willpower, and shook his head like a jerk:

"I'm happy... I can't live through hard times..." He smiled, panting, each word seeming to be squeezed out of his lungs, "Remember... burn more paper money for me..."

After saying this, he seemed to have used up the last bit of his energy and closed his eyes, unable to hold on any longer.

“Shen Xingjian!”

She cried heartbreakingly with joy, shaking his unresponsive body. "I won't burn paper money for you! I won't burn a single penny for you! Wake up! Wake up!!"

But the body in her arms no longer gave her any response.

Gao Xing didn't know how long she sat holding him like that, until her tears dried up and her throat became hoarse.

She realized that Shen Xingjian was really dead. He would never argue with her or cook for her again. He would never be picky or complain again. He would never appear in front of her again.

She lost the only person in the world who loved her.

After a long time, Gao Xing leaned over and gently kissed his cold forehead.

Shen Xingjian was dead, but life had to go on. She stood up, ready to deal with the dead in the yard, not knowing whether the police would believe this absurd thing when they arrived.

At this moment, for some reason, the air in the yard suddenly began to vibrate, and the two iron doors seemed to be controlled by an invisible force, opening and closing wildly, making a deafening crash.

Then, everything in front of her began to distort and deform—

Shen Xingjian's body gradually became transparent. Gao Xing wanted to catch him, but could only watch him disappear. Soon, the other people in the yard also disappeared one after another. Then, she seemed to have strayed into some high-dimensional space:

The clouds above her head moved rapidly, the creepers on the wall turned green and yellow, yellow and green again, and translucent figures busily shuttled around her, some carrying cement in and out, and some lifting large furniture up and down with cranes...

Everything was like a pantomime, fast-forwarded and played out quickly before her eyes.

She didn't know how long it had passed, but the vortex of time and space finally stopped, and she found herself still standing in the yard, but there was no one around and the silence was terrifying.

“Squeak—”

The iron door was suddenly blown open by the wind.

Gao Xing stumbled out the door, and the next second, her steps suddenly stopped.

Not far away, a man wearing a turtleneck pullover, a tweed coat and leaning on a cane was standing next to the car, seemingly waiting for her.

There were traces of time on that face, but she would never mistake that person.

"Happy, it's me."

A familiar voice sounded in my ears, carrying with it emotions that had been suppressed for ten years.

Shen Xingjian has waited for this moment for ten years.