The pot had overturned, and nearly half a basin of scalding soup had splashed onto Zhou Jin’s arm.
Jiang Hansheng came rushing in. One glance told him everything — a large patch of Zhou Jin’s arm had already gone red. His whole body gave an involuntary shudder. He seized her arm and pulled her toward the sink, wrenching the tap open and running cold water over her scalded skin.
Zhou Jin furrowed her brow. Her arm was in agony — the kind that had burned past pain into numbness, like being held over an open flame. She bit down on her lower lip and said nothing.
Mrs. Jian had been pushed to the side. When she looked up, she met Jiang Hansheng’s pitch-black eyes directly — the cold edge and silent accusation in them made her heart lurch violently.
She said in a panic, “I — I didn’t mean to—”
She had only been trying to move the small pot onto the bamboo mat to let it cool down so she could free up the stovetop for stir-frying, and had lost her grip without warning.
The stream of cold water crashed against the burning sensation on Zhou Jin’s arm. Rather than easing the pain in the short term, it intensified the discomfort. The fingers of her hand submerged in the water were trembling without her realizing it.
But to comfort Mrs. Jian and spare her from feeling too guilty, Zhou Jin murmured softly, “It’s all right, I’m fine — it’s not that hot, a bit of cold water will sort it out.”
Jiang Hansheng’s frown deepened, and he said with a note of irritation, “Zhou Jin!”
Zhou Jin saw that his expression had darkened to its worst and couldn’t understand why he was snapping at her. She was just about to ask, when from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Jian reaching for the knife on the kitchen counter, trembling as she raised it toward them.
Zhou Jin froze, uncertainty flooding through her. “Mrs. Jian—”
“Officer Zhou, leave my home. Leave this place!” Her eyes were red. She held the knife toward Zhou Jin and Jiang Hansheng, threatening them. “Get out. You are not welcome here. The person you’re looking for is not here! Lao Jian knows nothing!”
Zhou Jin still hadn’t pieced together what was happening. She tried to pull her hand back so she could deal with the knife in Mrs. Jian’s hand — but Jiang Hansheng had her wrist in his grip, and he applied firm pressure, saying, “Don’t move.”
In the face of this sudden turn of events, he appeared to have expected it all along. He wasn’t surprised in the least, only lowering his head and keeping his focus intently on the patch of red, swollen skin on her arm.
Seeing that neither of them moved, Mrs. Jian advanced a step with the knife, pressing closer. Her emotional state was beginning to veer toward something distinctly unhinged. “Get out! Do you hear me!”
Jiang Hansheng did not look up. He said in a cold, flat voice, “Qi Zhen — if you still want to go on living the life you have now, and you don’t want to bring trouble down on Jian Liang, then put the knife down and stop trying to provoke me.”
Zhou Jin: “Qi Zhen?”
The vivid red garnet bracelet slipped slightly down the wrist, losing its cover. On Mrs. Jian’s wrist, a savage, terrible scar was exposed.
Zhou Jin went still, as though something had just clicked into place.
But Qi Zhen denied it sharply: “I am not Qi Zhen! My name is Jian Zhen — I, I am from the same hometown as Jian Liang. I’m not her. You have the wrong person. You really have the wrong person—”
Jiang Hansheng said, “Your identity — Jian Liang forged it for you?”
“No! No! He has nothing to do with it!” Qi Zhen looked nothing like the gentle, dignified woman of moments before. She seemed to be drowning in some kind of terror — unraveling, frantic. “Don’t hurt him — if you’re going to arrest someone, arrest me. He only helped me, he only helped me. He doesn’t know anything. I never told him a single word—”
Zhou Jin said quietly, “Qi Zhen. Put the knife down first, and we’ll talk. All right? I’m not here to hurt you.”
Qi Zhen looked at the scalded burn on Zhou Jin’s arm. Fear seized her — and alongside it, remorse. She had no desire to hurt anyone inside the home she shared with Jian Liang.
Her features crumpled, and tears came streaming down her face all at once.
She would not lower her guard. The tip of the knife remained pointed at them as she wept: “Why — why did you find your way here? Who are you, really? You’re not police, are you? You’re his people — he sent you to drag me back, to drag my son back!”
Zhou Jin caught the irregularity embedded in her nearly incoherent words with sharp instinct, and countered: “‘He?’ Who? Your son — his name is Qi Yan, isn’t it?”
At that, Qi Zhen reacted as though she had just received some kind of confirmation. Her hostility toward Zhou Jin sharpened into something unmistakable.
Qi Zhen let out several bursts of laughter — wild, discordant — then screamed in a raw, shredded voice: “You’re too late! Go back and tell that man — I strangled his son to death. His son died long ago!”
Her voice grew more and more shrill.
“I should never have harbored any illusions about a child carrying tainted blood. The son of a beast can only be a beast himself — a vile, degenerate beast! A rapist! To hell with all of you — let him and his son rot together! I will never go back with you. Jian Liang is a clean and decent man — if you dare touch a single hair on his head, I will fight you to the death!”
---
In the off-road vehicle, Qi Yan sat with his eyes closed. His hand still hung out the window, the wind flowing through his fingers.
His fingers began to tap lightly against the air — as though playing something. Following the rhythm of his fingertips, he started humming a melody.
The vehicle picked up speed, and the wind became fierce, gusting in with a roar, thick enough to choke the breath from a person.
Suffocation. The suffocation of drowning.
He hated this sensation of being suffocated.
Over all these years — when bullets had grazed past his ear, he hadn’t felt he would die. When he trained in boxing and combat and his opponent had beaten him to the ground, leaving him unconscious, he hadn’t felt he would die. When he had undergone starvation and endurance training deep in the wilderness, reduced to a state barely above dying — he hadn’t felt he would die then, either.
The only time he had ever come close to death was when he was fourteen years old.
That woman — the woman he loved most — had wrapped her hands around his neck and squeezed with everything she had. Tears streamed down her face, falling like beads snapped from a broken string, pattering onto his face one after another.
He was almost suffocated — the kind that felt like being drowned in her tears. The suffocation of drowning.
In that moment, Qi Yan had truly believed he was going to die.
He lay on the floor. Qi Zhen knelt over him, and in the eyes that fixed on him was a ferocious, savage hatred — her beautiful face twisted beyond recognition.
A faint shimmer of tears moved through her eyes, swallowed by the deep shadows there.
“Beast — beast! How did I give birth to you? I should have strangled you long ago — strangled you when you were small! You disgust me just as much as your father!”
She squeezed tighter, and tighter, and with more and more force.
At the time, Qi Yan still possessed the emotion called “fear” — but it was not fear of death. It was fear of the deep, abyssal hatred and terror he saw in Qi Zhen’s eyes.
She had always been so slight, so soft — loving him so fiercely it could have destroyed her. She had said once that the reason she was alive was to protect him, to watch him grow up, to see him through to a peaceful old age. Yet the Qi Zhen before him now was unrecognizable. The hands around his neck were like steel rebar — the force in them terrifyingly immense.
Qi Zhen wanted to kill him.
Had he done something unforgivable?