Chapter 112 The Butterfly and the Lone Wolf (Revised)...
At the moment of the explosion, He Changyi was slammed heavily onto the snow.
Snow was falling everywhere, swirling and turning the world into a white expanse.
A strange heatwave swept through the area, causing the ice and snow to melt and revealing dark brown earth, like an ugly patch on a white veil.
The enormous sound and vibration made it seem as if the whole world had turned into a shaking raw egg.
Buzz—
He Changyi could not hear anything anymore.
About an hour passed, or maybe only a second, before she was pulled up from the snow.
The other person first waved their hand in front of her eyes, then grabbed her shoulder and said something loudly.
He Changyi's vision blurred, and she gasped for breath. She coughed, her voice deep and muffled, as if she were trying to expel all the suffocating air from her lungs.
When her vision finally cleared again, He Changyi looked up and froze on the spot after seeing the person opposite her.
It's like a silent black and white movie.
This face should be familiar, but its excessively thinness, medium-length black curly hair, bluish stubble, and those melancholic gray eyes make it clearly unfamiliar.
A fresh scar ran down from the side of her face to her neck, until it was completely covered by her clothes.
Seeing him inexplicably evokes the image of a wounded lone wolf wandering the wilderness.
The other person was gripping her shoulders, talking incessantly, and seemed anxious and unfamiliar.
He Changyi couldn't hear him, she could only see his mouth opening and closing.
So she reached out, grabbed the other person's neck forcefully, and rudely slammed herself against him.
A kiss.
But it didn't look like a kiss at all; it looked more like a fight between tongues and teeth, or just venting anger.
Soon, both of them tasted blood.
Bitter and cold.
With hysterical despair and ecstasy.
And just like the beginning, the end was equally sudden.
He Changyi suddenly shoved the other person away, examined him carefully for a few seconds, and without warning, she raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face!
"Alexei, why don't you just die already?"
She stared intently at him, but her voice was soft and gentle.
"Do you know that Grandma Vitalie was waiting for you until her death?"
Alexei turned his face to the side after being hit, remaining silent as he wiped the blood from his mouth—the blood from the wound she had just inflicted.
“I would rather you were dead than watch your grandmother die with regrets while trying to avoid being caught by the police.”
He Changyi suddenly laughed.
"Alyosha, you coward."
She stopped looking at him and turned to leave.
Car debris was scattered everywhere on the snow, and some deadly metal fragments were deeply embedded in tree trunks due to the shockwave.
The wreckage of the jeep was still burning, the black metal twisted in the flames, making it almost impossible to discern the shape of the car.
He Changyi walked along the road back home. The biting cold wind penetrated her mink coat, and it felt as if she were stepping on countless ice spikes.
A short while later, the sound of another person's footsteps came from behind.
He Changyi did not turn around. In silence, the two walked one after the other.
From the sky, they appear as two small black dots moving slowly across the vast snowfield.
Gradually, He Changyi stopped feeling cold; her limbs were completely numb, as if only a warm breath remained in her chest.
In the stillness, she suddenly heard the sound of something heavy falling to the ground behind her.
He Changyi paused for a moment, wanting to leave, but couldn't take the next step.
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again, angrily turning and walking away until she stopped beside Alexei.
He knelt on one knee, one hand supporting himself on the snow. His old cotton-padded coat was tattered, revealing dirty cotton underneath, making him look like a down-on-his-luck, handsome vagrant.
He Changyi harbored resentment; she could not forget the tear that slid down Grandma Vitalie's cheek as she lay dying.
Since Alexei is alive, why doesn't he show up and come looking for her?
Even if the hospital is under heavy police surveillance, she will still find a way to smuggle him in so that Grandma Vitalie can leave without regrets.
Or perhaps, in his eyes, she wasn't trustworthy enough?
But Alexei did not appear until the very last moment.
For a moment, He Changyi even felt that he was actually dead.
And now Alexei appeared before her, unharmed, with all four limbs intact.
He was still alive, living a perfectly healthy life, which made her behavior in the hospital seem like an absurd clown.
He Changyi looked down at Alexei and said to himself:
Why aren't you dead yet?
Alexei remained silent.
Perhaps he did speak, but He Changyi didn't hear it.
She roughly lifted Alexei's face with the tip of her shoe, only to find to her astonishment that his eyes were closed and his face was deathly pale.
The next second, Alexei lost his balance and fell to the ground in the snow.
He Changyi was taken aback. Then, as if she had thought of something, her expression changed. She ripped open his cotton-padded coat, revealing several wet stains slowly spreading across the dirty sweater.
He Changyi felt a sharp metal sheet on his body.
She immediately took off her mink coat and wrapped it around Alexei, then ran out onto the road in only her sweater and stopped a passing truck in the middle of the road.
The driver rolled down his window, leaned out, and yelled, "Damn it, do you want to die?!"
He took a short-barreled shotgun out of the car and brandished it outside as a show of force.
"If you're looking to rob me, you've come to the wrong person! Old Man Hark will blow your head off!"
Ignoring the danger, He Changyi clung to the car door, ripped the necklace off her neck, and waved it in front of the other person.
“My friend is injured. Take us to the nearest hospital, and this gold necklace is yours.”
The truck driver's gaze followed the glittering gold necklace as it swayed from side to side.
He glanced at the slender woman, then at the gold necklace, and hesitated, saying, "You know there are many robbers on the road, we usually don't let strangers get on the bus..."
Without saying a word, He Changyi took off the watch again.
"And what about adding this?"
The truck driver beamed and proactively opened the locked door, then jumped out of the truck with a nimbleness that belied his robust physique.
"Come on, girl, you'll never find a kinder person than Old Man Huck! Let's hurry, where's your injured friend?"
With the driver's help, He Changyi loaded the unconscious Alexei into the truck, which sped along the snow-covered road toward the nearest town.
After handing his mink coat to the doctor, Alexei was wheeled into the operating room.
He Changyi borrowed the phone at the nurses' station and called Xie Xuejun, asking him to bring money and clothes to the hospital immediately.
"Don't tell anyone, just do it yourself." She said to Xie Xuejun apologetically, "I shouldn't be bothering you while you're recovering, but I really can't find anyone I can trust more."
Xie Xuejun immediately patted his chest and said that the fracture was no big deal, and that he could take on eight people with one leg now. He Changyi chuckled and added, "Watch out behind you, watch out for tails."
Xie Xuejun rushed over immediately, leaning on his crutches. Upon seeing Alexei on the hospital bed, he exclaimed in surprise, "He's still alive!"
He Changyi looked behind him with concern and asked, "Are you alone?"
Xie Xuejun solemnly said, "Absolutely no one followed me. Those people keeping watch didn't even notice me; they were too busy drinking and playing cards."
He Changyi then nodded.
The advantage of having all bodyguards retired military personnel is not only that they finish every meal, but also that they possess professional-level counter-surveillance capabilities.
On the very first day He Changyi returned to Vladimir from Moscow, she knew she was being watched.
The other side tried to hide, but their surveillance posts had already been exposed. If He Changyi hadn't wanted to figure out what they were up to, the bodyguards, eager to fight, would have charged in with their brass-tipped belts.
At first, Xie Xuejun couldn't understand why his boss wanted to keep the people monitoring them. Later, he realized that it was better to keep these good-for-nothings than to have the other party replace them with a group of more covert and professional monitors. At least they wouldn't affect their actions at crucial moments.
He Changyi asked Xie Xuejun to pay the outstanding medical bills, and didn't take back the mink coat, considering it a gift to the doctor as a gesture of flattery, thus saving them from having to give any more gifts.
The doctor was clearly very pleased with the beautiful mink coat, and was very attentive and enthusiastic. He even pushed the bed next to the patient out of the room because there were no single rooms available, and artificially converted a double room into a single room.
"Hypothermia, blood loss, pulmonary contusion, concussion, malnutrition..."
The doctor shrugged and said casually, "It's just a minor problem; it will heal on its own."
He Changyi saw the doctor off with a smile, but the smile vanished immediately after he closed the door.
She looked down at Alexei on the bed; after changing into a single-layer hospital gown, he was shockingly thin.
"Throw away this pile of garbage."
He Changyi pointed to the old cotton-padded clothes and sweater that had been taken off and ordered expressionlessly, "Shave all the hair off his body and then throw him into the bathtub filled with insect repellent. I suspect there are fleas in the house now."
Xie Xuejun: ...
Xie Xuejun suggested tactfully, "Why don't we wait until he wakes up before saying anything?"
He Changyi exhaled a heavy breath through his nose.
"Pusher".
When Alexei woke up again, he was even a little disoriented.
An overly warm room, an overly soft bed, an overly refreshing body.
He closed his eyes and remained motionless, activating all his senses to perceive his surroundings.
...and, too safe.
Someone sat by the bed, impatiently tapping the table, and asked unhappily, "Why isn't he awake yet?"
Another person tried to reassure them: "The doctor said that once your body recovers, you will wake up naturally."
He said unhappily, "What are we waiting for? We're not waiting anymore. Let's put some ice in his blanket. I don't believe he can still sleep."
The other person seemed to swallow hard.
"This, this, this...it was so hard to get the fever down..."
She said, quite understandingly, "Then forget it."
Before the other person could relax, he said unhappily, "Find me some tweezers."
"...What do you need the tweezers for?"
Unhappy, he said defiantly, "Pull his beard!"
Despite his earnest attempts to persuade her, he watched helplessly as she bought a pair of surgical tweezers from the nurse and gleefully extended her clutches.
When the cold tweezers touched his skin, Alexei could no longer pretend to be asleep.
"He Changyi."
He opened his eyes and reached out to grab the tweezers of sin.
"I never knew you had such a hobby."
He Changyi tugged at the tweezers, but couldn't budge them, so she angrily shook her hand away.
There's a lot you don't know.
Xie Xuejun happily came over, "Alexei, you're finally awake! Is anything bothering you? I'll go call a doctor for you. By the way, are you hungry? You've been unconscious for so long, what would you like to eat?"
Alexei sat up against the headboard and nodded gratefully to the only good person in the ward.
"Thanks."
He Changyi sat to one side with his legs crossed, looking like a big shot, and sneered.
"Who cares about him? Even if you threw him onto the African savanna, he could still snatch meat from a lion's mouth. He's ruthless and heartless; even hyenas would run away with their tails between their legs. You'd expect him to say thank you insincerely. Compared to him, even wild animals have some humanity."
She turned to Alexei and said softly:
"You agree, Alyosha."
Alexei pursed his lips.
"We need to talk."
He Changyi stared at him for a while, then gestured for Xie Xuejun to leave, leaving a space for a private conversation.
"You should know, right? Grandma Vitalie has passed away."
When only the two of them were left in the ward, He Changyi suddenly spoke, her voice unusually calm.
"Even on her deathbed, she kept calling your name. But where were you then? Why didn't you show up?"
Alexei's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, as if his throat was stuffed with cotton.
He Changyi added, "I even thought you were dead."
Alexei said in a hoarse voice, "I'm sorry."
He Changyi shook his head.
“You don’t need to say that to me. The person you should apologize to is lying in the cemetery. Oh, I almost forgot, she’s no longer going to hear it.”
Her words were sharper than knives, each one piercing his heart with precision.
Alexei was almost speechless.
He Changyi smiled instead and said softly:
"What are you talking about? I should be apologizing to you. You saved my life again, and I'm so grateful. In return, I'll help you immigrate to the United States, plus three million dollars. You can even start a new shit gang in New York—what do you think, Godfather?"
Alexei managed to speak with difficulty: "What..."
He Changyi rudely interrupted him.
Don't call my name!
She caught her breath, then suddenly stood up and walked towards the door.
Alexei suddenly asked, "Grandmother... what was she saying last?"
He Changyi did not turn around, but kept his back to Alexei.
She said...the past can never be undone.
The past cannot be returned to, there is nothing to grieve over—this is the last consolation of the dead, but for the living, grief is grief.
He Changyi opened the door and walked out. Before closing the door, the last sound coming from the ward was like the mournful cry of a wild beast.
Xie Xuejun was guarding the door. When he saw He Changyi come out, he leaned on his cane and went to greet him.
He Changyi kept walking, instructing as he went, "Keep an eye on him, don't let him get away."
She paused, then added, "And don't let anyone kill him."
Xie Xuejun was a little worried, "It's manageable when he's in the hospital, but once he recovers, I won't be able to keep him under control by myself..."
He silently completed the second half of the sentence in his mind—he, a human, couldn't possibly hold down a bear with his bare hands.
He Changyi said coldly, "That's easy. Just put handcuffs and shackles on him, and he'll have to eat, drink, and relieve himself in bed. If that doesn't work, add a gag and have the doctor give him a sedative injection every day. Even if he grows wings, he won't be able to fly away."
Xie Xuejun: ...
He almost tripped and fell flat on his face!
He Changyi walked quickly out of the hospital, followed the path and entered a bustling shopping mall through the back door. After changing her clothes, she came out through the front door and got into her new car waiting by the roadside.
This is a bulletproof off-road vehicle modified by military designers. The interior is lined with Kevlar fiber, which can withstand machine gun fire and rocket launchers, providing maximum protection. The downsides are slow speed and high fuel consumption. The modification cost far exceeds the original price of the vehicle, and can even buy an imported Mercedes.
However, compared to He Changyi's life, these things are nothing.
Lermontov carefully started the vehicle; this behemoth was not easy to handle at all, like a mechanical beast.
He Changyi leaned back in his chair, deep in thought.
Suddenly, she asked, "Are the police still collecting clues about the car bomb case?"
Lermontov glanced in the rearview mirror and said helplessly, "Yes, they practically want to lock every suspect in the interrogation room. We've all been questioned more than three times, and they still want to keep asking."
Yang Jianshe, who was in the passenger seat, added, "Those police officers didn't seem to be locals; I'd never seen them before."
Lermontov shrugged and said, “Here, if you really want to investigate a case, it’s best not to let the local police handle it. They just take bribes and make up false reports. Oh, and they’ll just grab someone off the street and point at them and say, ‘Look, we’ve caught the suspect.’”
Yang Jianshe: ...
No, he has to hold back; he's a professional!
He Changyi showed no expression, only saying, "Let's go back first."
The armored off-road vehicle arrived at the apartment, and strangely enough, Nikolai was waiting at the door today.
Ever since he rashly offered himself as a bedmate to his employer, he lost his eligibility to be a bodyguard and was confined to either the apartment or the office; in short, he was not allowed to get close to the boss.
Nikolai was extremely disappointed, but he was trained in the army and had excellent obedience, so he reluctantly did his job as a bodyguard.
Lermontov hurriedly jumped out of the car and pulled Nikolai aside.
"Hey, I'm warning you, you're a bodyguard, not a male prostitute!"
Nikolai looked at him, puzzled.
"Of course I'm a bodyguard. Miss He only paid me one salary, not including the salary for the male prostitute."
Lermontov: ...
Nikolai had already shaken off his hand and walked up to He Changyi in a few steps.
Yang Jianshe was shocked. They had all heard this kid confess his heartbreak during their late-night dorm conversation. He was still confused and even went to ask some of Zhong Guo's bodyguards for their lewd comments about what positions Zhong Guo women liked.
Is this something a normal person would say?!
Yang Jianshe frantically tried to stand between the two, but He Changyi pushed him aside and stood directly in front of Nikolai.
"What's up?"
She appeared calm and composed, almost like a beast tamer, easily intimidating restless wild animals even without a whip in her hand.
Yang Jianshe and Lermontov: ...The boss is the boss!
Nikolai stared intently at He Changyi with bright eyes until she began to frown impatiently and said coldly, "If you still have your tongue in your mouth, you should have basic language skills instead of trying to communicate with brainwaves."
"Tell me, what exactly do you want?"
Nikolai wasn't angry at all; in fact, he seemed even happier.
“You have a guest from Mosk who has been waiting for a long time.”
...Mosk?
He Changyi stepped into the apartment. The guest who heard her footsteps had already stood up on the sofa in the center of the living room.
"Changyi".
The blue-eyed guest turned around, his blond hair reflecting a dazzling light under the lamp.
"Long time no see."
He Changyi stopped and slowly revealed a smile.
"It's been a long time, Andrei."
The atmosphere in the living room was a bit strange. The bodyguards all went back to their rooms and listened intently to the sounds outside the door.
"Who is he? How come I've never seen him before?"
"Shh, keep your voice down. Do you want everyone outside to hear?"
"I must say, the new guest does have a good face. Why doesn't he go to Hollywood to make movies?"
Nikolai pondered, "She likes blonde hair? Should I get my hair dyed?"
Lermontov couldn't take it anymore and tried to kick him in the butt, but Nikolai grabbed his ankle and threw him to the ground.
With a loud bang, the room seemed to freeze in time, so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Lermontov lay on the ground and muttered under his breath, "Nikolai, you idiot!"
Yang Jianshe: ...Sometimes he really has a hard time not doubting the professional ethics of his colleagues in Emei.
living room.
Andrei turned his head, listened carefully, and then asked, "It seems something has happened in one of the rooms."
He Changyi said expressionlessly, "It's nothing, the gorillas are wrestling."
Andrei, understanding the situation, considerately changed the subject.
"You seem to have run into some trouble lately, and you need my help..."
He paused, then said, "Could I help you? Perhaps I can be of some use."
This sounds like he's seeking He Changyi's help, not the other way around.
He Changyi looked at him and sighed softly.
"Andrei, I've always wanted to apologize to you."
“I’m sorry, I was too rough with you.” She shook her head self-deprecatingly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Andrei was taken aback, but his expression softened quickly.
No, there's no need to apologize.
At that moment, his blue eyes looked just like cornflowers.
You never need to feel sorry for me.
He Changyi reached out her hand to him, and Andrei discreetly hid her hand in his palm.
"So, what brings you here this time?"
Andrei suddenly increased the pressure in his hand, but loosened his grip before he could actually hurt He Changyi.
"I know everything."
His voice carried a coldness he himself was unaware of.
He Changyi's heart tightened, and she immediately thought of Alexei, whom she had locked up in the hospital.
However, what Andrei mentioned was—
"Trotsky, and car bombs."
He looked like a complete stranger at that moment.
But when Andrei looked at He Changyi, the ice melted quickly, and he transformed back into the little policeman in front of the train station.
"Don't worry, I will protect you."
He lifted her hand and gently kissed it.
Then, the butterfly landed.
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