Chapter 34: Doll Party 16
Zhuang Ningyu was astounded. “You’re…”
It wasn’t until he walked out of the hospital building that he realized it was raining heavily outside. A hazy mist shrouded everything, and when the wind blew, he was enveloped in the cool dampness of early autumn. Zhuang Ningyu’s gaze didn’t linger on the Maybach limousine across the street. He was unlocking his phone to call a car when a black Mercedes business van pulled up steadily in front of him.
The passenger door opened, and a young man holding an umbrella ran out, eagerly saying, “Captain Zhuang, Brother Yi said it’s hard to get a car around here, so he asked me to pick you up.”
Zhuang Ningyu recognized Jing Lan. He didn’t stand on ceremony, thanked him, and got into the car. Just as he fastened his seatbelt, a slightly warm stew pot was thrust into his hands. Jing Lan leaned against the car door, a smile revealing two canine teeth. “Brother Yi said you didn’t eat much tonight, so have a few bites to tide you over.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “…Thank you.”
The stew pot contained lily bulb and apple soup with lean pork, refreshing and slightly sweet. The vehicle moved smoothly. Jing Lan chose a soothing piano piece, and for the rest of the journey, he didn’t say much more. Midway, he pretended to look for something and turned around. Seeing that the soup in Zhuang Ningyu’s hands was nearly finished, he sat back down, relieved, and replied to his gang of scoundrel friends with an “OK” gesture. When I handle things, you can rest assured.
Yi Ke enlarged the image on his phone. It was the “OK” proof Jing Lan had just sent. In the picture, Zhuang Ningyu was leaning back against the seat, looking extremely relaxed. The light from the streetlamps gently enveloped his features, like a warm-toned oil painting. Yi Ke used the back of his index finger to brush against the other’s nose on the screen, then chuckled. Zhuang Ningyu had opened a crack in the hospital room window earlier—he had an unusual obsession with “getting fresh air”—and now it perfectly let in the beautiful pitter-patter of the rain.
Zhuang Ningyu lived in an old-style apartment building in the 15th district called Fuxing Yuan. There was no residential complex; the building’s entrance directly faced the street. The area had a strong sense of daily life, with food, drinks, and entertainment available almost twenty-four hours a day. It was nearly dawn, yet the surroundings were still filled with a clamorous and bustling energy. After dropping him off, Jing Lan waited in place for another half hour. Only after confirming that no one who shouldn’t be there had appeared nearby did he feel at ease and let the driver leave.
The driver was a distant relative of the Jing family who had taken care of Jing Lan for many years, and the two had a close, uncle-nephew relationship. He asked, “That Maybach parked at the hospital entrance earlier, that was Fu Han’s, right? Why would he go to see Xiao Yi?”
Jing Lan tutted and casually deflected, “Probably to see someone else.”
The driver frowned. “You should still remind Xiao Yi not to get involved with Fu Han. The Fu family has been having a lot of trouble recently.”
“I don’t need to remind him about that,” Jing Lan stretched and adjusted his seat back. “Don’t worry, Uncle.”
Fuxing Yuan, Apartment 201. Zhuang Ningyu, having dried his hair, held a toothbrush in his mouth as he answered the phone. “Mom.”
Zhong Yu heard the “kaka-ka” sound of brushing teeth from the other end and asked sharply, “Did you go downstairs for barbecue again?”
“No,” Zhuang Ningyu protested. “I went to the hospital to see a friend. I just got home and showered. Why are you calling me so late?”
At the mention of this, Zhong Yu sighed. “Your Auntie Zhao just called me to explain about Xiao Xue. She said she didn’t delay on purpose, it was just that she really couldn’t get over that hurdle in her heart. Then she thanked you for recommending the psychologist and said she would take Xiao Xue this weekend.”
Zhuang Ningyu rinsed his mouth. “Actually, it’s a good thing Zhao Jiaxue went to the bar back then; it’s what left a crack in the rules. Also, I wasn’t the one who booked the counseling. It was a friend I was on a mission with. He… has a lot of clout.”
“Then you should thank him properly on Auntie Zhao’s behalf. Buy him some fruit,” Zhong Yu instructed, then asked, “How are things going with the demolition on our old side?”
“Still collecting signatures,” Zhuang Ningyu said, flopping onto his bed. “Mom, I want to sleep.”
Zhong Yu was amused by his mumbled voice. “Alright, go to sleep.”
The next day at three in the afternoon, Zhuang Ningyu was so bored in the dispute resolution department office that he felt like he was growing mushrooms. He was still contemplating whether to put “buy some fruit” into practice when a familiar young nurse called, asking politely but with a hint of urgency, “Mr. Zhuang, when are you coming to bring Mr. Yi his meal today? He had a blood test this morning and didn’t eat. For lunch, he only had a small bunch of grapes. He just said he’s so hungry he’s dizzy.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “…”
A little over an hour later, Yi Ke successfully ate his pork rib soup without scallions. Afraid that the man would actually faint from hunger, Zhuang Ningyu didn’t have time to go to a private kitchen and just grabbed him a bowl from a street-side food stall. Fortunately, Yi Ke wasn’t a picky eater. He finished the meat and soup in one go and looked up, still wanting more. “Why are you off work so early today?”
Zhuang Ningyu was astounded. “Do you have any shame asking that question?”
Yi Ke chuckled and pressed the call button for the nurse to come and clear the small dining table. Before Zhuang Ningyu arrived, he had been reading the new materials uploaded by the investigation team. Li Jie’s grandfather had been in very poor condition back then. Out of options, he had privately sought out You Hong. Fortunately, she was very accommodating and arranged everything within a week. To better care for his grandfather, he chose to temporarily resign from the bar.
“Looking at it now, Li Jie’s resignation indeed intensified Tong Yishuai’s hatred for You Hong,” Yi Ke said. “Li Jie’s appearance perfectly matched Tong Yishuai’s aesthetic. He saw him as an indispensable part of his ‘masterpiece,’ but because of You Hong’s ‘meddling’ help, Li Jie’s grandfather’s surgery was moved up significantly, which almost caused Tong Yishuai to permanently lose the chance to take Li Jie away.”
From this perspective, his thunderous rage became logical. At first, You Hong thought Tong Yishuai was just throwing a tantrum by not inviting her or any of the VIPs. But in fact, it was just a paranoid man on the path to ruin’s absolute defense of his idea of “beauty.”
Unfortunately, Li Jie was later lured back to the anniversary event by Tong Yishuai with a high single-day salary.
“Remember that photo? The Goddess of Beauty Lingers in Paradise,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “Tong Yishuai was truly a madman.” A madman who, through the cruelest means, thought he had truly “preserved” beauty.
He wanted to preserve time, to preserve that face from the past. But unfortunately, once the joint announcement from the Order Maintenance Department and the police was released, everyone would know of his “ugliness”—”ugliness” on every level. A person who took away countless beautiful lives did not deserve to possess even a shred of beauty.
Yi Ke asked again, “What about You Tu?”
“You Tu is still being stubborn, but he won’t last long. The lab technician from Star Beauty Medical’s testing department has already confessed. He admitted to taking a sum of money from You Tu. In exchange, when the police came knocking, he was to insist that both You Hong and Tong Yishuai were HIV patients, to make it easier for You Tu to keep steering the whole thing towards a romantic entanglement and continue to mislead the investigation.”
Yi Ke recalled You Tu’s face on the screen during the interrogation—at times sincere, at times helpless, at times sad, at times clenching his teeth. He tutted. What an actor.
At seven in the evening, a food delivery person brought a fruit platter for the two of them. Zhuang Ningyu was leaning on the sofa reading. He didn’t mention leaving early tonight; it wasn’t like he could leave anyway. Yi Ke was both satisfied and dissatisfied with this. The main point of dissatisfaction was that the sofa was too far from him! So he decisively ran off the bed barefoot and, with lightning speed, squeezed in beside Zhuang Ningyu with a “whoosh.” “Quick, feed me a grape.”
Zhuang Ningyu could clearly feel the soft, cloud-like sofa sink down. To maintain his balance, he had to grab the armrest on his side. Yi Ke didn’t get his grape after a while but wasn’t discouraged. He draped an arm over the back of the sofa and started a conversation. “Your check-up report should be out today, right?”
Zhuang Ningyu turned to look at him but said nothing. Yi Ke felt a bit uncertain under his gaze, his smile fading. He frowned and leaned closer to observe him, his voice softening slightly. “What’s wrong? Is there a problem with the results?”
“No.” Zhuang Ningyu was a bit uncomfortable with the proximity. He paused before saying, “Thank you.”
He no longer needed to take pain injections during missions, and his old knee injury hadn’t worsened after the rules ended. If it weren’t for Yi Ke, he wouldn’t have put the already-opened pack of NO.9 back.
Because of this “thank you,” Yi Ke’s face suddenly began to flush at a visible rate. Under the light, his thin earlobes looked as if they were about to drip blood. Zhuang Ningyu never expected that something so small could make him blush. He pushed off the armrest and decisively dodged to the side before the other could make his next move. As expected, Yi Ke missed his target. He sprawled on the sofa, clutching his ill-fated ribs with one hand while extending the other, grumbling in annoyance, “Give me a hug.”
“Get up!” Zhuang Ningyu smacked him. Yi Ke didn’t manage to grab his hand, but he did catch a wisp of wind that slipped through his fingers.
That night, it was Yi Ke’s driver who took Zhuang Ningyu home. After picking him up, he first called his boss to report, then asked enthusiastically, “Captain Zhuang, what time do you get off work tomorrow? So I can come pick you up.”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t stop flipping through his book. “I’m not coming over tomorrow. Thank you, Uncle Li.”
From the Burmester sound system, Yi Ke’s 360-degree, surround-sound wail of despair immediately erupted. “Why!”
The driver’s face contorted, clearly struggling to hold back his laughter. Zhuang Ningyu covered his face with one hand and leaned back against the seat, exasperated and amused.
Yi Ke stayed in the hospital for a total of three days. On the fourth day, he was so bored that he just up and went home. Zhuang Ningyu was greatly relieved by this, thinking he could finally have two days of peace. But at seven o’clock on Saturday morning, Yi Ke, dressed to the nines like a prince and holding a large bouquet of lush, dewy red roses, appeared at the door of Fuxing Yuan, Apartment 201. Zhuang Ningyu, initially woken by the knocking, thought it was Grandma Xiong from downstairs, who had dementia and had mistaken her apartment again. So he bleary-eyed, got up to open the door—
And then tried to shut it again.
“Hey!” Yi Ke blocked the door with one hand and forced his way in. “We agreed to have a meal together after I was discharged.”
Zhuang Ningyu pointed at the clock on the wall.
It was a little early, true, but Yi Ke grabbed his finger and argued illogically, “You don’t need eight hours of sleep anyway.”
“Not needing it doesn’t mean I can’t sleep. In fact, I am extremely fond of sleeping,” Zhuang Ningyu’s voice was hoarse. “Do you want to leave on your own, or be thrown out by me?”
Without a second thought, Yi Ke replied, “Be thrown out by you.”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t hesitate for a second. His attack speed was top-tier even among S-class evolved individuals. His fist stopped a centimeter from Yi Ke’s nose. The latter just closed his eyes slightly and didn’t dodge. In fact, he didn’t think Zhuang Ningyu would actually hit him. So, the moment the wind stopped, he curled his lips and, with extreme speed, planted a kiss on the hand in front of him.
Zhuang Ningyu: “?”
Yi Ke turned and fled. “I’ll come pick you up at noon!”
Zhuang Ningyu: “Watch out for the—”
Yi Ke was already squatting on the ground, clutching his nose.
Zhuang Ningyu: “…wall.”
Half an hour later, the doctor at the clinic downstairs scribbled on the medical report. “Don’t worry, young man. It’s nothing. The bridge of your nose isn’t broken.”
Yi Ke had two rather comical-looking XL-sized cotton plugs stuffed up his nose. He first asked in a stuffy voice if the exposed parts could be trimmed, as he really looked like a woolly mammoth. After being rejected by the doctor, he still didn’t give up and pestered him for a long time. In the end, it was Zhuang Ningyu who invested one yuan to buy him a mask, finally leading the handsome, face-conscious man back home.
“Hold this yourself.” Zhuang Ningyu handed him an ice pack. “Sit still and don’t move.”
Yi Ke’s eyes were teary, forced out by the doctor’s rough handling earlier. His nose stung with a sourness as if it had been pickled in green limes, a sourness tinged with the smell of rust.
Zhuang Ningyu patted his head. “Read a book for a while. I’ll go make some congee.”
The apartment, though old, was large. It was a big suite made by knocking through the adjacent apartment 202. The home was filled with bookshelves. In front of the bookshelves was a long rectangular workbench. Yi Ke, clutching his nose, moved to the table and casually picked up a pen from the pen holder.
Zhuang Ningyu could cook, but he was no chef. He made century egg and lean pork congee, ordered two steamers of meat buns from the breakfast shop downstairs, and took two bottles of fruit juice from the fridge. But Yi Ke, due to his blocked breathing, refused to eat, looking like he was on the verge of death. Zhuang Ningyu had no choice but to take him downstairs again and have the doctor help remove the cotton plugs early. Fortunately, Yi Ke had a good constitution. Even though they had only been in for an hour, the bleeding had actually stopped.
While cleaning the tray, the doctor asked, “How did you manage to hit yourself like that, young man?”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t give Yi Ke a chance to cause a scene at the clinic and promptly dragged him out. He asked, “Are you going back now?”
Yi Ke looked at him in disbelief. What a cruel sentence! You’re telling me to leave? I haven’t even eaten!
Zhuang Ningyu: “…”
Sunlight streamed onto the dining table by the window. Zhuang Ningyu handed a bowl to Yi Ke. “Wen Yue’s mother called me yesterday.”
“She called me too.” Yi Ke lowered his head to eat a bun. “Said she wanted to send a silk banner to the team. Old Qiu was overjoyed.”
Wen Yue hadn’t suffered any major injuries in the rule zone and had mostly recovered after a couple of days of rest. After her promotional photoshoot for Yin Bar, she had been knocked unconscious in a white fog as soon as she approached the bar. When she woke up, she was locked in a bathroom, standing before her longed-for sister.
The ALICE WEN account had never belonged to Wen Ling, but to Wen Yue. From the very beginning, Yin Bar had invited Wen Yue. Tong Yishuai had personally called just before the event began, expressing his regret at not discovering her before the poster shoot. He said that although the posters couldn’t be changed now, he still wanted to invite her to the anniversary celebration. Perhaps worried he would be rejected, he also promised to pay a ten-thousand-yuan fee for her trouble after the event. Who knew that on the day of the event, it was the second day of Wen Yue’s period, and she was in too much pain to get out of bed. So she asked her sister to go for her.
“Anyway, we look pretty much the same. Just sit there for a bit. You can leave after midnight.”
But her sister’s midnight never came.
Wen Ling had never been to a club, didn’t know how to play the games, and was annoyed by the people hitting on her. She simply slipped away to the quiet third-floor bathroom to call her sister.
Towards the end of the call, the phone started getting hot. Wen Ling said, “It’s almost out of battery. I’ll go out and find a power bank.”
“Okay,” Wen Yue said. “There should be a lucky draw later.”
Wen Ling hummed in agreement and reached for the doorknob.
Then Wen Yue heard a very strange, muffled, and indistinct sound.
“Sister?” Wen Yue probed.
But the phone had already indicated it was turned off.
So Wen Ling hadn’t been on the lively first floor, raising a glass with everyone else. The sounds Wen Yue heard were the sounds of her struggling as the murderer covered her mouth.
“My sister died a more painful and terrifying death than the others,” the young girl said, lying in her hospital bed. “She was poisoned separately by the murderer.”
The police agreed with this theory. The investigators looked at the tear-streaked face of Wen Yue and sighed silently. In this rule zone, logically, the sister should have been the “key.” Her name was never in Tong Yishuai’s plan. Five years ago, she could have left through Gate 3 by taking the freight elevator next to the bathroom. But five years later, Wen Yue appeared in the rule zone. Because of this variable, the sister unhesitatingly chose to appear early, and based on past experience, left the chance of survival to her younger sister.
Wen Yue covered her face and sobbed quietly. The moment she saw her sister, she knew her sister’s plan. But she wasn’t willing to accept it. She wanted to correct the mistake of five years ago, even if only within a fake rule zone. But in the end, the younger sister was still protected completely by the older sister.
Zhuang Ningyu said, “The reason Wen Ling kept throwing herself at Tong Yishuai on the night of the party wasn’t because of love, but because of hate.”
“If I had known,” Yi Ke said with some regret, “we should have helped Wen Ling.”
Zhuang Ningyu cleared the dishes. “When you pushed Wen Yue towards Gate 3, did you hear the dolls scream?”
“I did,” Yi Ke nodded. “They were wailing like ghosts.”
“Actually, their screams had nothing to do with Wen Yue,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “They weren’t even looking at Wen Yue at the time.”
After confirming that Yi Ke’s action had succeeded, Zhuang Ningyu dragged Tong Yishuai out of the bathroom. Before the rules dissipated, he slammed him against the second-floor railing and, in front of all the guests, ripped off that hypocritical mask.
An ugly heart could not be torn out, but at least this face, as ugly as the heart, could be exposed to the world.
The moment the mask came off, Tong Yishuai’s body went limp, like a pile of rotten mud. But his head was still held by Zhuang Ningyu, forced to be raised high, displaying his secret to everyone—a complete monster hiding behind a mask.
He died in overwhelming despair and terror.
After hearing this, Yi Ke felt a little better. He tailed him eagerly into the kitchen, bent down, and pressed his cheek against Zhuang Ningyu’s shoulder. “How can you be so good?”
Zhuang Ningyu flicked soapy water from the detergent at him.
Yi Ke sputtered “Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey,” and ran out.
Sunlight filled the entire living room.
