Chapter Twelve Video
For nearly half a month after that, Li Xiaodong didn't contact Yi Chu again. Even when they occasionally bumped into each other at the bar, he wouldn't bother her, treating her like a stranger. During this time, Yi Chu's relationship with Gu Bai'an was gradually acknowledged and brought into the open, and their meetings became more regular.
One morning in the fourth week after the incident, Yi Chu received a call from Li Xiaodong. As expected, the caller was hostile: "Be at the bar at eight tonight. I'll be waiting for you." The commanding tone left him no room for explanation or rebuttal. He and Gu Bai'an usually met at the bar around 9:30 PM, a fact Li Xiaodong likely knew. Gu Bai'an's location was under constant scrutiny, both by the underworld and the legitimate world; this arrangement was already designed to minimize attention.
That night, he went to the bar alone. The lights in the bar were dim. As he walked to a corner, he was suddenly restrained. The man covered his mouth, signaling him not to struggle, and silently took him away in full view of everyone. He was taken to a backstage area that looked like a lounge, tied to a "torture chair," with a video camera in front of him.
Yi Chu knew that Li Xiaodong wasn't asking for a confession as leverage; such a recording would have no legal effect. Furthermore, there were many traceable inconsistencies in his actions, and he was only relying on the fact that the police wouldn't suspect him. If Li Xiaodong were willing to give the police a hint, they could follow the clues and uncover the whole truth.
"Aren't you scared?" Li Xiaodong asked with interest, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, unlit.
Yi Chu glanced at him, seemingly unconcerned: "What, should I have been scared out of my wits when you delivered the car right under the police's nose? Let me tell you, if you hand me over to the police, I'll implicate you, and neither of us will escape."
“I’ll make sure you never get to speak again until then—little beauty, take a good look at where you are right now. Tell me, if I tell your brother Gu about your situation, do you think he’ll still want you as a nuisance?” Li Xiaodong stood in front of him with his hands in his pockets, looking nonchalant, and kicked Yi Chu’s chair leg before bringing his face closer.
"Little beauty... Gu-ge calls me that with a kind of honor and affection, but when you call me that, it's a bit disgusting." Yi Chu retorted with a smile, as if a human life had made him much stronger and no longer timid.
Li Xiaodong wasn't angry, but he almost pressed his face against the device: "Help me with my work, and I'll make sure you and your Brother Gu are doing well." He took out a small, ingenious eavesdropping device from his pocket, which was only about the size of a thumbnail.
"I won't treat you badly, okay?"
Yi Chu had no room for rebuttal. Even if he didn't agree now, Li Xiaodong handing the video over to Gu Bai'an would be tantamount to admitting that someone had some dirty secret in someone else's hands.
"...Okay, I promise you."
Such is human nature: once one abandons their bottom line the first time, they will only continue to degenerate endlessly.
That one step, just one step, separated us from a world.
Su Yi knew Lu Ming too well. If Lu Ming knew, he definitely wouldn't have let her leave. But precisely because she knew him so well, if she wanted to leave, Lu Ming wouldn't be able to stop her.
When Lu Ming returned home and opened the door, his first impression was one of emptiness, yet he couldn't pinpoint the source of this emptiness. In a daze, he forgot what day it was and simply sat there blankly.
Even during his most difficult and darkest first twenty years, he had never come so close to madness.
With the last vestiges of his consciousness, he dialed Su Yi's number with a glimmer of hope.
"Hello!"
"Lu Ming." It was an old and somber voice. Lu Ming's heart sank, and for a moment he was speechless. He couldn't even accept that the name Su Yi and the words Lu Fang were thought of at the same time—it was simply a defilement, a blasphemy against the light.
“Su Yi is in Z country and will stay there for about six months. You can’t contact him.” Lu Fang’s voice was cunning and sinister. “Lu Ming, if a hundred kilograms of goods are discovered… do you think Su Yi has a few lives left to live?”
Lu Ming began to be involved in the family business at the age of twenty, not the ostensible parts, but the parts that Lu Fang truly considered "business." Lu Fang was willing and happy to involve Lu Ming in it, and to let him navigate the power struggles—because he gradually discovered that this son, whom he had painstakingly nurtured, was more talented than he had imagined, decisive, autocratic, cold, and cruel, with a cruel nature deeply ingrained in his instincts. Compared to the rapidly increasing profits over the past few years, he cared more about Lu Ming himself; he was practically an artwork born for killing.
Day after day, Lu Fang grew older, and power increasingly shifted into the hands of Lu Ming, who stood at the pinnacle of the Lu family's power, wielding absolute authority. That year, Lu Ming was only thirty-two years old. But to Lu Fang's surprise, things didn't go according to plan. On his first day in office, his first order was to close the A-channel route from Z country. Z country was a neighboring country with unparalleled opium poppy cultivation and drug production. However, due to strong domestic crackdowns, large-scale trade had always been difficult. Only in recent years, with the financial and material support of the Lu family, had a few trade routes opened, and the A-channel was the safest and had the largest volume of goods, once accounting for over 70% of the total. This was tantamount to self-destruction.
However, Lu Ming was clearly not one to act rashly. With the support of several factions within the industry advocating for whitewashing, Lu's side was powerless to resist them.
Is Lu Fang using Su Yi to get him to let him pass?
“Lu Ming, the crimes you committed deserve to be punished a hundred times over. Do you think that pretending to be ‘good’ means you’re safe and can live a carefree life?”
No... it's not about surviving... it's just that I don't want to disappoint anyone else.
Although I was too timid to tell him, or dare to ask him, whether he would be willing to love someone like me again.
Suburban private residence
A withered woman sat before a tall, floor-to-ceiling window, the bright sunlight filtering through the newly sprouting leaves of the garden trees outside, dappling her body. Yet, a somber, deathly atmosphere lingered.
She was actually not even sixty years old. She had meticulous care and abundant material resources, and her wrinkles and gray hair were far fewer than those of her peers. But no matter how carefully she tried to dress up, she could not hide the decay of life itself.
Thirty years of torment had completely worn away her internal organs. Lu Ming personally took a syringe, drew a dark purplish-red liquid from a glass tube, carefully disinfected it on her forearm, and administered an intravenous injection. The woman desperately tried not to show the undeniable physical pleasure brought on by the drug, gasping for breath like a drowning person, her hands constantly clenching in the air. Lu Ming paid special attention to the doctor's diagnosis; for this round of treatment, the dosage of medication still hadn't been reduced.
This drug wasn't widely sold or circulated on the black market. From the time Lu Ming remembered Lu Fang first injecting it into a woman until now, at least eight years had passed. Highly addictive with few side effects, its availability would be incredibly lucrative. The formula was in Lu Fang's hands. Countless experts under Lu Ming's command had tried for years without finding a formula or an effective treatment. He didn't know what Lu Fang's concerns were. He even suspected that his sending Su Yi to Z country this time was for this very reason.
"Aunt Chu." He stood beside the woman for a long time before calling out softly. In that one word, he seemed to shed all his pretense. Whether it was his gentleness towards Su Yi or his indifference towards Lu Fang, his eyelashes even trembled slightly, like a confused child facing a gentle mother.
Upon hearing her call, the woman's empty eyes softened instantly, like withered trees blossoming in spring, revealing a strange radiance, making her seem ten years younger: "Xiao Ming, come here." Hearing this, Lu Ming walked to her side and knelt down, her head hovering in front of her knees.
After a long while, a suppressed and sorrowful gasp mixed with restrained sobs came, which then turned into grief. The violently trembling shoulders were so thin. In fact, this was just a mortal body that could feel pain and sorrow, could be vulnerable and could rely on others. In many midnight dreams, it was filled with the lingering fear of death and blood. It could make it involuntarily want to accept its fate, and also yearn to wash away its sins and escape to heaven.
The world before him was so starkly black and white that it seemed to tear his soul and body apart.
"My child." The woman gently stroked his hair, like a loving mother looking at her wronged child, yet with an incomparably deep and hidden sorrow. "My child, this is not your fault—someone will forgive you." There was no preaching about right and wrong, good and evil, or digging into the root of the problem; it was simply forgiveness, unconditional forgiveness.
Someone will come to your side and love you with their life, using the vibrant colors of their world to cover up your bloodshed. Hell and heaven will never abandon you.
Someone will come to forgive your soul, on behalf of the gods.
But my God has fallen because of me.
"No, he left me... just like everyone else... I don't blame him, because leaving was the best choice."
"But...but why did everything turn out like this? It's my existence, my existence destroyed him!" Lu Ming seemed trapped in a terrible nightmare, struggling with all his might but unable to survive, crystal tears tremblingly hanging on his dark eyelashes. Through the mist, he saw the world—as if it were an inescapable pane of glass, separating him from the world right before his eyes.
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