Chapter 64
The traditions of marriage are different in the north and south, but Zhou Yue said that she wanted to have a wedding first and then get a marriage certificate. She said that she would only marry Jiang Huai if his wedding was decent.
Jiang Huai said that this was a bad habit she had developed. Although he rarely mentioned her past in recent years, if he were to say it, it was he who protected her for so many years and prevented her from falling into prostitution. Besides, he was seventeen years older than her, so how could she have the say in matters of marriage?
But when she put the tape measure in her hand on him, he said nothing.
"You've lost too much weight. The previous size doesn't fit. You need to measure again." She stood behind him, her arms around his waist. This was the suit she promised to make for him, and it just happened to come in handy this time.
He stood in front of the mirror and looked at her. At the end of the story, people always think of the beginning. He thought of how she wrapped him in a bath towel so calmly and attentively on Shahe Street.
At this moment, she knelt on the ground to measure his thigh circumference. He thought of the first few years when he would sleep with her and bully her whenever he felt horny. Afterwards, she would kneel on the ground to tie his belt because of the stomachache. Like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, she would always put the metal buckle in the middle, without any error. No matter how much he ridiculed her or looked down on her with contempt, she still looked pious, but she only sped up her hands. Her hair was so anxious that it was soaked with sweat and stuck to her forehead in clumps. She was afraid that the sweat on her hands would stain his pants again, so she would just wipe it with her arm every time, looking up at him with a timid smile, "It's a little hot, sorry, Mr. Jiang."
She had never loved him once.
He lowered his head to watch her compare several pieces of fabric on his body. He was speechless and could only smile and murmur, "White still looks better."
"Well, yes," she whispered, putting the black and grey material aside and leaving the white. Her expression and words were the same as they had been all those years ago, except that she didn't remember that he liked white.
"Let's go check it out in the mountains in a few days." He averted his gaze and tightened the watchband on his wrist. The dial flickered, and the delicate, mechanical luster shone like a blue lake in the sunset. "This time it's real."
"Okay, whatever you want." Zhou Yue looked indifferent, measured his shoulder width again, smiled, stroked his back from behind, patted his shoulder, and said softly: "Old man, you have really shrunk, your shoulders have become narrow." He turned his back, picked up the pencil and wrote down the number, but the tip of the pen hovered on the paper for a long time.
You really have lived too long.
Before the wedding, Jiang Huai often came to Zhou Yue's house to spend the night, look after the two children, and teach Tiantian how to read and do math.
During that period, Zhou Yue suddenly became very energetic. She cooked and cleaned the room. The Bulgari jewelry that Jiang Huai had Liao Jie buy for her was delivered. All the sets were placed in the rosewood cabinet in her small bedroom. She sat on the bed and reached out to touch it, but her fingertips felt cold. She looked down at the old and mottled mother-of-pearl jewelry box on her knees. All the jewels that Jiang Huai had given her over the years were lying in small compartments, except for one empty compartment. The ring with the stars and the moon entwined together was gone.
When Jiang Huai came back, she had put everything back in its place. Things that needed dust bags were put in dust bags. She took out the clothes at the bottom of the closet that smelled of mothballs, washed them, and hung them on the balcony. She asked Liao Jie to take the ones that couldn't be washed to the dry cleaners. She locked all the jewelry in a rosewood cabinet.
"As if you won't need them anymore." He laughed, and she laughed too, saying that she didn't go out, and these jingling chain pendants and haute couture evening gowns that she wore for show to outsiders would be of no use.
Jiang Huai still pestered her at night. Maybe he was really old and had lost his earlier brutality. He was even more clingy than his younger brother who was still breastfeeding. He was like the continuous rain in the plum rain season, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, making people sweat and sticky, and the bedroom was covered with a layer of mist.
"If your legs aren't good, save your energy. Don't be unable to get out of bed tomorrow." She leaned her head against the bed and looked out the window at the hazy moonlight, her heart filled with despair. He leaned on her chest, panting, and smiled foolishly, "Do you love me?"
…
"like."
His breathing hitched, and after a while he smiled, "Your heart is beating so fast."
"You know your heart beats so fast every time you lie."
"Yeah." Zhou Yue closed her eyes and smiled, "As a woman, you can only please a man by lying." She waited for the water droplets to roll down from her eyelashes and flow into her hair. When she opened her eyes again, she gently pushed the person away, put on her clothes, and went to the kitchen to boil medicine for him.
His cough was not as severe anymore, even at night he would only cough once or twice and then stop. It was not the Sichuan Fritillaria and Snow Pear or the Dextromethorphan, but the Chinese medicine he prescribed for himself. Zhou Yue's bleeding also decreased because of the Chinese medicine he prescribed.
She would easily get sleepy while decocting the medicine, and would fall asleep as soon as she closed her eyes on the table. He would wake her up every time, "You go, if you can't do it well, I'll do it." She stood behind him and watched him gently waving a fan with one hand and skillfully controlling the heat with the other. His focused expression still reminded him of the little boy in the pharmacy back then.
Soon after, she realized that he had told her again and again about the hardships of his childhood when he was making a living in the Chinese medicine shop, but he had only told her the first half and not the second half.
In fact, before he returned to his ancestral home, he was no longer a child laborer who was beaten and scolded and had his wages deducted at every turn. He was extremely smart and meticulous. When encountering difficult and complicated diseases, the shopkeeper would ask his opinion on how many grams of medicinal materials to put on the scale.
But this was not the main reason why he was in charge of the drugstore. The main reason was that the shopkeeper had been ruined by him. He lay in bed wailing all night long, begging him to give him more "cigarettes".
That was his first taste of power, the first time he trampled on those who trampled on him.
Next came his half-brother Jiang Pingnan. When Jiang's father and mother were not at home, he would come down from the attic and throw the "cigarettes" wrapped in oil paper to his brother Jiang Pingnan like feeding a dog.
A little bit of "smoke" can make him "lie on the ground and bark like a dog, even his wife gives up her hand to him."
He married his eldest sister-in-law, seized the kingdom from his father and brother, and completed his revenge. Until the innocent woman died of depression due to his insults and torture, he still felt empty until he achieved some "great achievements."
That morning, the sky was clear and sunny. Jiang Huai took Zhou Yue up the mountain. Before they got in the car, a man in a black suit came over, blindfolded her with silk, and said respectfully, "Madam, I'm sorry."
The car drove up the mountain, which was flat at first and then rugged. It turned left once, right once, and then repeated twice. When it turned left again, the strong fragrance of flowers could be smelled through the car window glass. At the same time, the light in front of my eyes became dim and the temperature felt dropped sharply. This should be deep in the dense forest, about 800 meters above sea level.
Zhou Yue stood in the factory in panic. It was hard for her to believe that the evil flowers that people were so afraid of were produced here. There were neither dirty beakers gurgling with white foam, plastic barrels full of biochemical waste, and cement floors flowing with sewage as in the movies, nor were there Southeast Asian children and women with dull and fierce eyes. If it weren't for the piles of crystals on the ground, she would think this was a traditional Chinese medicine factory.
She and Jiang Huai were wrapped tightly in three layers of protective clothing. The workers also wore white protective suits, masks and goggles, and stood in front of the assembly line with calm and focused expressions. Among the medicinal herbs visible on the conveyor belt, she had only seen Selaginella truncatula.
But further inside, there was a place behind a professional radiation-proof lead door similar to the ones used for CT scans in hospitals. Jiang Huai wouldn't let her go there, saying it was dangerous.
Zhou Yue couldn't understand it, but Kang Xingxing did. He was proficient in chemistry and knew that what this "Chinese medicine factory" was dedicated to synthesizing was L-methamphetamine hydrochloride and D-methamphetamine hydrochloride.
"Ephedra and poppies are difficult to get; they're too dangerous." Jiang Huai spoke of this with such nonchalance. He told Zhou Yue that in the years after killing Three Eyes, he had tried importing poppies and ephedra, but the costs and risks were too high. Furthermore, the products produced using their own techniques were "too low-quality, pure industrial waste."
The unit price of his products is extremely high and the output is not high. Mainland China and Hong Kong account for a small part, and the vast majority are sold to Southeast Asia and Russia where drug control is weak. He showed the finished product to Zhou Yue. It was wrapped in gold foil and looked like high-end soap. It was not so strong when inhaled, and there was a faint floral fragrance that was refreshing, making one feel intoxicated as if wandering in a heavenly realm.
"The tobacco companies are innocent, so what am I guilty of? They've been eaten away by the flesh for a long time. I just created a beautiful dream for them."
Zhou Yue looked at him through the thick mask and goggles, and realized that he never felt guilty from the beginning to the end.
Her lover, Tiantian's father, like many other lovers and fathers, was nothing more than an inevitable sacrifice in his eyes on the road to achieving "great achievements."
He wanted revenge because he had suffered humiliation and pain, but such a person was so numb to the pain of others.
Perhaps on one evening when he was limping home to see his mother, the kind and filial little medicine boy had already died on the road.
"It's time to finish this here," he said, smiling proudly yet shyly. "If I don't show you now, you won't be able to see it again."
"Hmm." Zhou Yue lowered her head and weighed the small square. "It's time to end it."
He had taken his revenge, and it was her turn.
For a while afterwards, Zhou Yue continued to do what she was supposed to do, cooking for Jiang Huai and walking around in circles with him on crutches in the backyard of the villa, as if she had just taken a look and didn't ask any more questions.
In her free time, she would hold Xiaocao in her arms and bask in the sun in the yard, rocking on the rocking chair and smelling her fur that was tanned by the sun and smelled as fragrant as roasted popcorn.
"Do you miss him too?" The grass meowed for a while after hearing that. She stood up, took off the bell on her neck, put her on the side of the driveway, pushed her butt, and said, "Go." The grass circled around her three times, turned around and ran into the depths of the dense forest.
During the day, Songzhu came to see his brother and play with him and Tiantian. Zhou Yue hurried to make a suit for Jiang Huai. She stood in front of the mannequin with glasses on, standing there all day, from noon to dusk, until night fell. Her brother fell asleep, and a floor lamp was on next to the sofa. Songzhu was behind her, watching her silently.
"Songzhu."
"Um."
"I'm getting married in a few days."
"Um."
Zhou Yue smiled with narrowed eyes, "It's a spoiler, so I just say "hmm." Song Zhu lowered his head and also said "hmm".
"I don't care, just comb my hair!" Zhou Yue turned around and smiled desperately, her eyes disappeared from laughing.
That day, Song Zhu sat in front of the mirror, combing Zhou Yue's hair bit by bit, and then tied it up, using a hairpiece to cover the metal on her temple bone. After combing her hair, he did not leave, but sat quietly behind her.
Songzhu loved to sing operas, and she sang all her words into the lyrics, so she didn't like to talk anymore. Zhou Yue looked up at her backwards in the gentle light and laughed at her, "Why are you crying? Shouldn't you wish me and Mr. Jiang a happy marriage?"
That night, when she sent Songzhu away, she went out and ran back, hugged Zhou Yue tightly, and pushed her back several steps. Zhou Yue smelled the fragrance of her hair, which was the fragrance of flowers and fruits in midsummer, the gurgling of clear springs, and the joyful life, but all of this no longer belonged to Zhou Yue.
It was a cloudy day on the wedding day. Zhou Yue sat in the hillside villa that locked up the rest of her life, watching one black Rolls-Royce after another, like cold tropical fish, circling up the mountain road under the gloomy sky. The red silk flowers in front of the cars looked like blood and fire, blooming among the silver-gray mountains.
"Mom." Tiantian appeared out of nowhere holding his younger brother and stood in the empty room. His ginger sweater made him look even darker. The sleeves were a little long, hiding his little fleshy hands. Zhou Yue smiled and stretched out her hand to call him over, rolled up his sleeves, revealing his chubby little hands, rubbed his round fingernails that looked like coins, and gently stroked his furry eyelashes like a little animal.
"You really are..." she laughed, "You look exactly like your father."
After saying that, she kissed him on the face once, then kissed him again, stood up and led him to a door in the room, squatted down, and finally hugged his soft little body tightly. After enduring the heart-wrenching pain, she let him go and made a "hush" gesture.
"Tiantian, let's play hide-and-seek now. Don't come out if you hear any noise."
Tiantian said nothing. He held his brother in his arms and looked up at her with his little face, silent and calm. He blinked his eyes slowly, as if he could endure all the pain and misfortune in his life with just a blink of an eye.
She closed the door, took the phone, removed the back cover, threw away the customized SIM card inside, tore off the SIM card stuck on the back of the Western clock, put it in the phone, and dialed the number.
The phone rang once before it was picked up. A familiar voice said, "Hello."
Zhou Yue stood in front of the window and said, "Protect my son."
"rest assured."
"His factory is located on XX Mountain in Luohu District, about 800 meters up the mountain road and 500 meters east of the primeval forest where there are large clumps of Selaginella truncatula."
She pulled aside the curtains and watched the last car drive through the sealed iron gate. "Two-thirds of his men are here with me today. If you can't catch them here, you useless people should forget about this."
"receive."
Throwing away her phone, she sat down on the bed with all her strength, looking down at the colorful phoenix feathers on her Xiuhe skirt. When she looked up, the pearls and jade on her head made a crisp tinkling sound.
"Really, I don't feel anything at all." She sighed softly, turned to look at the shadow on the wall, and waved to it.
"Will you blame me for leaving Tiantian alone?"
The shadow was silent.
"But I'm really too tired." She smiled, looking down at the red invitations piled on the coffee table. She had written halfway when she realized she had no one to invite. The remaining paper was just thrown there, pressed with a pair of scissors. She looked back at the cracks in her palm. A strand of hair fell out. She picked it up and shook it towards her shadow. "Look, I have long white hair."
Shadow remained silent, but downstairs became lively. The convoy stopped at the door, and the sound of tires scraping against the ground came one after another. The door opened, and Jiang Huai's footsteps echoed in the empty living room, going up one step at a time, from far away to near.
Zhou Yue stood up, carefully gathered her hair, put on the emerald phoenix crown, faced the mirror, looked at the person in the mirror's rosy lips, and the flying fox eyes regained their former brilliance. Her fingertips lightly brushed over the buttons, which were all tied neatly and decently. She had never looked so decent in her life.
When I looked up, the door opened and Jiang Huai came in. He was wearing a white suit and his white hair reflected the vicissitudes of life. He was really old, and his smile made the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper.
He walked towards her, one step, two steps, but stopped in the middle of the room, his leather shoes stopping abruptly on the marble tiles.
The noise and gunshots from downstairs came up through the stairs, muffled. He listened with his back to her, his body stiff. After a while, he suddenly relaxed, as if he had no strength left. He staggered back a step, raised his head and sighed, smiled and shook his head. When he turned around, his eyes were bloodshot, but he was still smiling. He looked down at the scissors on the coffee table with a smile, leaned over, picked them up, looked at them, then took a few quick steps, raised his hand, and stabbed the scissors into her chest.
With a puff.
It turns out that blood is so hot and so red, Zhou Yue thought, watching the blood splatter on his face with a sticky muffled sound, staining the white suit she made with her own hands and his pale face red, the black blood splashed into his eyes, even dyeing his eyeballs a watery bloody red, sliding down his cheeks like tears of blood, dripping onto the ground and his hands.
"I should have killed you right here on Shahe Street." His voice trembled, and his pale face looked crazy and ferocious.
"Me too." She laughed, blood seeping out from between her teeth.
He loosened his grip for a split second, helpless heartache in his eyes, but then he smiled again, pulled out the scissors and tried to stab her again, but it was too late. Before the tip of the knife pierced her chest, he was pinned to the ground by the person who broke in.
Zhou Yue also fell to the ground. She could no longer speak and just wanted to vomit. As soon as she opened her mouth, she spat out a flower of blood in the air. She was almost blind. Fortunately, before her vision disappeared, she saw three or four policemen wrapping Tiantian and his brother in police uniforms and carrying them away.
Her eyes were blood red, and she felt that there were many people around her, opening and closing their mouths like little birds waiting to be fed by their mother. It was really funny. Their voices were intermittent, like an old radio.
She reached out and grabbed a man by the collar, dragging him toward her. Finally, she heard him yelling at her anxiously, "Miss Zhou, what are you saying? Speak! I'm listening!"
"I said the police uniform is really nice." She laughed, "He must look very handsome in it."
"You are so useless, Zhou Yue. The dead bastard is in front of you." She let go of his hand and could no longer see anything. In front of her was a sky full of stars, very bright and very close.
"But it doesn't matter." She smiled sweetly, "I'm going home."
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