The new work is not entirely fictional; to be precise, several core plot points are based on murder cases he witnessed firsthand.
Before their romantic affair escalated into a shocking murder, Xue Jing's parents, like every love story praised by poets, had an extremely romantic first encounter.
On a sweltering summer evening, as dusk settles, the sea breeze from Victoria Harbour blows relentlessly from Nathan Road all the way to Tsim Sha Tsui.
At the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce banquet, Feng Yun, who was serving as a hostess, was like a butterfly that had strayed into a spider's web. In order to avoid several middle-aged wealthy businessmen who were taking advantage of her while she was drunk, she lifted her skirt, grabbed a wine glass, and ran quickly up the spiral staircase.
Seeing that the lustful man behind her was about to catch up with her, she panicked and plunged headlong into the rooftop terrace where there was no way back.
On the terrace, a tall, well-dressed man was smoking with his back to her. She could faintly hear nauseating shouts and screams behind her. Faced with two evils, Feng Yun had no choice but to bite the bullet and ask the stranger for help.
She grabbed the other person's arm, her nostrils filled with the smell of tobacco after it had passed through their lungs. She didn't know what brand of cigarettes the other person smoked, but she could smell the crisp mint. It was as if by fate that Feng Yun, who had always disliked men smoking, didn't find the smell unpleasant. Before she could even see the other person's face clearly, she pleaded softly, "Please help me."
Fortunately, Xue Lianwu's features were strikingly handsome when he turned around. He was perfect from head to toe, and even the fingers holding the cigarette were incredibly sexy.
Moreover, he is a kind and approachable gentleman.
On that day, the handsome and wealthy Xue Lianwu not only helped Miss Feng, who had dropped out of school after graduating from high school to work, out of a predicament, but also lied to others that she was his female companion. Before the party was over, he invited her to go out for a walk and go to Victoria Peak to see the night view together.
The path up the mountain was overgrown with weeds, and fearing that Feng Yun's heels might tip over and injure herself, he specifically instructed the driver to pull over and buy a pair of comfortable sneakers to carry with him.
After exchanging contact information, a steady stream of designer gifts poured in like snowflakes.
Every time Xue Lianwu took her out on a date, he would choose an expensive restaurant and bring a large bouquet of beautiful roses.
Thus, no matter how sunny and cheerful the boys of her age were, they could not catch her eye. Feng Yun and Xue Lianwu, a young and talented man who came to Hong Kong from Jicheng to do business, began a passionate romance.
She moved out of her parents' cramped room and into a sea-view apartment rented for her by her boyfriend. Every day, she would wake up and start dressing up in front of the mirror. Then she would go shopping in Central with Xue Lianwu's card. She had to take five days off from work each week. When her boss called to question her, she simply resigned with profanity.
The good times didn't last long. Less than a year into her role as a wealthy woman, she discovered that her boyfriend was frequently traveling back and forth to Jicheng to prepare for their wedding.
The wedding was grand, a blend of Chinese and Western styles, but the enviable bride was not her.
Moreover, on the night of the confrontation, Xue Lianwu walked out of the bathroom barefoot, wrapped in a white bath towel, and didn't even apologize when he saw her crying in front of the stack of wedding photos on the coffee table.
When Feng Yun questioned him about why he was marrying someone else, he casually listed more than a dozen investment opportunities that his fiancée's family could bring him.
The other party is the best candidate for a business marriage. She is an only child, her mother has passed away, and although her father is strong, he is old and stubborn. By using marriage as a means of cooperation, Xue Lianwu will eventually gain the other party's trust and achieve a great deal of success.
As for Feng Yun's parents, they were just a taxi driver and a full-time housewife who had lived in a rented house for decades. In addition to Feng Yun, who would occasionally sell luxury goods to supplement the family income, there were three younger siblings who were all beggars.
From the very beginning, Xue Lianwu positioned her as his woman in the port city.
He probably had many women like her everywhere. The only difference was that, faced with Xue Lianwu's indifference, Feng Yun immediately wiped away her tears, forced a fawning smile, and threw away the stack of her boyfriend's wedding photos.
She had decided from a young age that she would never live the same life as her parents. After meeting Xue Lianwu, she gave up her ability to work hard in her career because of her greed for money. One wrong step led to another. She felt that she was no longer qualified to compete with the younger workforce in society. So the best way was to compete with other vain women for Xue Lianwu.
What happened next was not hard to predict. Feng Yun painstakingly followed Xue Lianwu from Gangcheng to Jicheng. In order to become Xue Lianwu's best choice one day, she also decided to leave her hometown, abandon her parents and compatriots, and learn how to be a qualified lover for Xue Lianwu.
The year Xue Lianwu's wife, Li Shulan, became pregnant, she also began to try every means to get Xue Lianwu to agree to let her have a child.
Fortunately, Li Shulan's first child was a girl, and due to a difficult childbirth that severely damaged her health, she was able to give birth to Xue Jing a few years later.
But after wasting over a decade of her youth, the "leap in social status" she had envisioned through her son never materialized. Therefore, she once again turned her resentful gaze towards Li Shulan, who was always in the spotlight, arm in arm with Xue Lianwu. Meanwhile, Xue Lianwu, under the pretext of being busy with overseas markets and frequently traveling for work, turned a blind eye to the friction between the two, completely disappearing from this battle of the women.
He gradually grew tired of this tug-of-war and began refusing to answer Feng Yun's calls. Even his secretary gave evasive answers to her inquiries.
The last confrontation between Feng Yun and Li Shulan took place at Li Shulan's villa in the suburbs. Feng Yun deliberately brought her child with her to the villa, intending to provoke Li Shulan by using her son's presence.
But no matter how rude she was, Li Shulan sat on the sofa, expressionless, her eyes like fish eyes, and kept repeating one sentence: as long as their Li family's daughter was alive, she would never get a divorce.
That was her father's dying wish to have her, and she never disobeyed her family.
She would never allow her daughter to grow up without a father, like Xue Jing.
Of the two, Feng Yun was the younger one. Her punches landed on cotton. Frustrated and angry, she shoved the child hard towards Li Shulan with a cold laugh, saying, "Fine, you're playing the Buddha, aren't you? Since you're so kind and generous, why don't you raise my son too? Isn't my son pitiful? For so many years, you two have monopolized Xue Lianwu during holidays. How many times has he seen his father? Even the kindergarten kids call him an illegitimate child!"
After yelling at Li Shulan, Feng Yun turned to Xue Jing and said, "Tell your father I can't wait any longer. He has to give me an answer to this. If he doesn't agree to a divorce, don't send you back to me!"
"I have my own life to live too! Tell him to stop contacting me!"
Feng Yun abandoned Xue Jing and flew abroad for vacation, thinking that revealing her last trump card would ensure everything was foolproof. She knew that Li Shulan was a well-bred lady and would not resort to underhanded tactics like her. She only needed to wait for Li Shulan's "magnanimity" to run out and for her to break off relations with Xue Lianwu, so that she could reap the benefits.
But all she got in the news was news reports about a gas explosion at the Li family villa that caused casualties.
The day Li Shulan decided to turn on the gas, it was snowing heavily outside the window. No one knew what she was thinking. Perhaps a string in her mind suddenly snapped, or perhaps she had already thought it through carefully.
Early in the morning, eight-year-old Xue Ting, after getting her mother's permission, took five-year-old Xue Jing to build a snowman in the yard.
This wasn't the first time the siblings had met. In the past, when Xue Lianwu and Feng Yun met secretly, he would have his daughter bring Xue Jing to wait in the park downstairs. When Feng Yun threw a tantrum and ran away from home, he would also bring Xue Jing to pick up his daughter, who was learning piano at a tutoring class, and hand her over to his secretary.
The half-siblings have strikingly similar appearances, but their personalities are very different. Whenever the adults argue endlessly, Xue Jing will cover her ears with her fingers and pretend she doesn't exist, while Xue Ting will turn on the TV and turn the volume up to the maximum until she forces her arguing parents out the door.
That day, when the snowman was half-built, Xue Jing started crying again. He asked Xue Ting, "Sister, when is Mommy coming to pick me up and take me home?"
He often asked this question during those days. All the servants in Li Shulan's house had already been dismissed. Everywhere you looked in the villa was covered in dust. She hadn't bathed in a long time and wore a nightgown with menstrual blood stained on the hem. She sat in her room all day, applying lipstick in front of the dressing mirror and talking to herself. Xue Jing didn't dare to talk to her. She was like an annoying mouse chasing after Xue Ting, squeaking.
Xue Ting picked up two pebbles from the ground to make the snowman's eyes, then took out a few tissues from her pocket and handed them to him with a look of disgust, saying, "Didn't I tell you, your mom will come when you wake up tonight?"
"Your crying is disgusting, wipe your nose!"
Xue Jing's hands were red as she blew her nose hard. She walked to the trash can in the yard, stood on tiptoe to throw the trash in, then came back and stuck a tree branch on the snowman. In a childish voice, she expressed her grievance, "But I've slept many nights, and she still hasn't come."
"Then sleep one more night. Silly."
Xue Ting glanced at Xue Jing, who was still crying, rolled her eyes, and couldn't understand why such a coward would be her father's child. But in the end, she clapped her hands, stood up, and said, "Don't cry. I'll go find my mom to get some money. I'll take you to buy a hamburger."
"Maybe your mom will come after you finish eating the burger."
"Really? We're having hamburgers for lunch? Can I have fried chicken wings?" The child's sadness was limited after all, and Xue Jing's eyes lit up again when he heard the word "hamburger".
"Why not? The set meal has everything, including onion rings and Coke. Do you want pizza?" Xue Ting was very familiar with buying food with her own money. Ever since she started elementary school, Li Shulan had been acting crazy. She had driven away the maids, and there was often no food at home. Whenever she cried out that she was hungry, her mother would throw her a stack of hundred-yuan bills and tell her not to bother her, as it would give her a headache.
"My mom usually doesn't allow me to drink Coke... Could you please not tell on me?"
Xue Jing followed Xue Ting a few steps toward the villa, muttering to herself. When she mentioned cola, she suddenly remembered something and hesitated, a little frightened: "Will your mother agree? She won't hit me, will she? Last night I heard her screaming downstairs... It sounded like she was talking to herself."
From the time Xue Jing could remember, Feng Yun often made him call Xue Lianwu. In addition to the prepared lines that Feng Yun made him memorize, he was forced to say every time that he missed him very much and loved him very much, and to ask his father to come and visit him at home.
If Xue Lianwu refused, Feng Yun would take her anger out on him, and beating and kicking him was a common occurrence.
The worst time was when Feng Yun knocked out one of his teeth. Fortunately, it was a baby tooth. Afterwards, Feng Yun apologized and told him that the tooth would grow back when he turned six, so it was okay.
Xue Jing feared that Li Shulan was also an adult who liked to use violence, and he worried that his older sister would also be beaten.
"It would be better if she hit me, but she rarely even talks to me. She just looks in the mirror all day." It's always the same few questions: What time are you coming home tonight? Do you have any social engagements tomorrow? How's business at the company lately? There's not a single word she wants to say to her daughter.
It's incredibly boring.
Seeing Xue Jing hunched over, looking scared, Xue Ting kicked a dreg of dirt in the snow and said nonchalantly, "If you're scared, then you can wait outside. I'll look in her purse."
"I'm not afraid, I'll go with you."
Upon opening the door, Xue Ting immediately smelled a strong stench. She wondered if her mother was again sitting on the toilet without closing the door. Without thinking, she nudged Xue Jing, who was following behind, and, with a stern face, told him like an adult, "You wait outside. Don't run around." Then she closed the door.
In just two seconds, the little girl turned on the light in the room, and a tiny spark ignited the gas in the air, which had reached its maximum concentration, followed by a violent explosion.
"That was the last time I saw them."
Thick smoke choked them, they suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, and extensive burns. Two days later, at their funeral, Li Shulan and Xue Ting were placed in crystal coffins for mourners to pay their respects.
Then, Feng Yun quickly moved Xue Jing into Xue Lianwu's house. From then on, Xue Jing was never beaten again, and Feng Yun and Xue Lianwu never quarreled again. The three of them lived the perfect life that only exists in fairy tales.
Xue Jing paused for a moment, speaking as if telling someone else's joke with a carefree and indifferent tone, but his voice was icy cold, with a barely perceptible tremor if you listened closely, "Except for me, I wet the bed throughout elementary school because of nightmares."
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