When Motobu Ryo was sent by car to the White Shield affiliated hospital, he flinched at the sight of the well-dressed crowd coming and going.
He became aware of his own wretchedness.
People say that one can keep one’s backbone in hard times and one’s ambition in dire straits, but the startled looks and faint gestures of pinching their noses from the strangers beside him were already enough to kill him a thousand times over.
Motobu Ryo tried hard to smooth the wrinkled hem of his clothes, which gave off the smell of garbage.
But that changed nothing at all.
In the end, he stopped bothering to fix himself up. With a numb expression on his face, he got out of the elevator and headed toward the ward where Motobu Takeshi was staying.
The security along the way was extremely tight—almost one guard post every five steps and one watchpost every ten.
Before he was allowed to officially enter the quarantine ward area, he was thoroughly searched from head to toe.
He tried to speak to the person scanning his body, his tone fawning: “The checks are this strict?”
The White Shield officer frowned slightly. “Yes.” To prevent anyone from sneaking in to silence him.
Motobu Ryo pressed on, “Is he… all right?”
The other man’s answer came a little too quickly. “Please go in.”
Motobu Ryo asked a whole string of questions, but got no useful information.
Only after he had walked more than a dozen steps down the corridor did he suddenly understand why that White Shield officer had frowned and then brushed him off.
…He was holding his breath.
He was disgusted by the garbage smell on Motobu Ryo’s body.
Motobu Ryo staggered onward in a daze.
Waiting for him at the ward was White Shield’s deputy director, a man named Eller. They had dealt with each other before, and had even eaten together.
Eller looked Motobu Ryo over with some surprise at his battered, downtrodden appearance, but in the end said nothing. He courteously extended a hand, intending to shake his.
Motobu Ryo, however, put his own hand behind his back, hiding the black grime caught beneath his nails.
He went straight to the point: “How’s Awu?”
After getting a soft rebuff, Eller was silent for a moment and had no choice but to withdraw his hand. He made a “please” gesture instead.
When Motobu Ryo pushed open the door, he heard a young police officer quietly remind Eller, “Should we have him put on isolation gear?”
Eller hesitated for a moment, then said, “No need.”
Motobu Ryo drew back the dark gray radiation-proof curtain and finally saw his son.
…That thing still breathing could probably no longer be called “his son.”
Motobu Takeshi was lying on the bed, his chest rising and falling faintly.
What was supporting his breathing was not a will to live, but a set of cheap artificial lungs.
What flesh remained on that body was like unsold frozen meat from the market, giving off a cold, rotten stench.
Motobu Ryo stumbled to the bedside.
He felt as though his eyes had dried out, but the moment he blinked, a tear rolled straight down.
He half-crouched by the bed, bracing himself on the edge, and called softly, “Awu.”
The person on the bed reacted.
At first, he pissed himself—because the artificial urethra was leaking a bit.
Then he trembled and opened his eyes.
Motobu Takeshi stared blankly at the blurry ceiling for more than two minutes before he finally seemed to realize he had awakened.
Once he understood that, he suddenly became frantic and agitated. He opened his mouth and kept making strange “ah—ah—” sounds, his bare fingertips scratching rapidly at the bedsheets as if he were desperate to do something.
Unfortunately, his tear glands were broken, and he couldn’t cry at all.
His panic infected Motobu Ryo.
Motobu Ryo hurried closer and took his hand. “Awu, what do you want? Tell me.”
Motobu Takeshi twitched in small jolts as if shocked by electricity, and let out a hoarse cry: “Let me die…”
Motobu Ryo froze.
Eller bent down and spoke to Motobu Takeshi. “Awu, your father is here.”
He deliberately glanced at Motobu Ryo. “Tell your father properly who bullied you. Your father and I will back you up.”
Motobu Takeshi immediately pressed his lips tightly together, his face twisted with pain as every muscle in it trembled.
“Officer Eller, please go out,” Motobu Ryo said, wiping his face. “I’ll talk to him. He’s probably… pretty scared right now. The more people there are, the more he…”
Eller felt that made sense.
Leaving the father and son alone might let them get more out of him.
When Eller left the room, he did not close the door fully, so he could enter at any time.
And so Motobu Ryo heard a brief conversation outside.
The one asking questions was a mid-level detective from White Shield headquarters, someone who had grown up in the upper city: “Director, is this really Motobu Ryo? Wasn’t he supposed to be some capable business elite?”
Eller waved a hand. “Forget it.”
The detective couldn’t help but show pity and condescension, commenting, “He must have loved his son a lot. Without this son, he’s fallen so far he doesn’t even have the drive to move up anymore.”
Motobu Ryo stood there with a wooden face and gave a laugh.
Was he not ambitious enough?
Or was it simply that Silver Hammer City never gave people who were falling a rope to grab, or people drowning a plank to cling to?
If you fell to your death, then you fell.
If you drowned, then you drowned.
Anyway, Silver Hammer City had plenty of people. Lose a few and it would still keep running.
Motobu Ryo’s face was thin and gaunt, with no flesh left on it, only a frame of old bones.
Just like the child on the bed whom he had once cherished most, he too was close to decaying into something unfit to look at.
Motobu Ryo’s ears echoed with Ning Zhuo’s low murmur: “Look on the bright side. Maybe he’s still alive now.”
And that turned out to be true.
Motobu Ryo gave a bitter smile. In this state, could “alive” still really count as a good thing?
The faint voices outside the door continued:
“We spent so much effort keeping him alive. One day of treatment costs tens of thousands.”
“Can’t we give him a better set of internal organs?”
“No chance. The garbage circulation system in his body has already become a whole structure. If you cut off any one part, he’ll die.”
“We have to get him to spit something out, or else…”
Just listening to that, Motobu Ryo felt his own internal organs starting to ache.
The person on the bed clearly could not understand these words.
He endured the most concrete pain, and in every conscious second, experienced in full the feelings of the people he had once turned into mechanical dolls.
He mechanically repeated, “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Motobu Ryo had spoiled him for so many years. Even though he knew he had done many inhuman things, he couldn’t be bothered to care.
He had never heard Motobu Takeshi apologize to anyone.
So when he heard those words, Motobu Ryo did not feel the relief of a son turning back from the wrong path. Instead, he only felt a great terror slowly growing from within him.
…The son he had once known had already mutated from the inside out.
Motobu Ryo reached out and stroked that rigid face.
He muttered, “Awu, you’re too tired. So am I.”
In the end, his hand came to rest on the abdomen.
The moment he pressed down hard, crushing all the organs in the belly, he also yanked out the oxygen tube and clenched it in his fist.
Motobu Ryo murmured like a man possessed:
“Die. It’s better if you die.”
“If you die, you’ll be freed, and I’ll go to prison… At least then I won’t have to keep fighting others for garbage to eat.”
When White Shield noticed the abnormality and rushed in with outrage to pin Motobu Ryo down, he offered no resistance at all.
A doctor arrived at once.
After checking, the doctor shook his head helplessly.
The garbage circulation system in Motobu Takeshi’s body had already been completely destroyed.
He was doomed to die.
As if finally realizing he was about to be freed, Motobu Takeshi’s tense, anxious mind eased somewhat.
Using what little strength remained in his useless eyes, he caught a faint gasping voice amid the chaos.
With his broken mechanical vocal cords, Motobu Takeshi whispered, “Is that Dad?”
Seeing that Motobu Takeshi could still make normal judgments, the people there were somewhat encouraged.
Motobu Ryo was immediately freed, and seven or eight hands together shoved him in front of his son.
Forced to face the son he had personally pushed to the edge of death, Motobu Ryo endured it and endured it again, but in the end he still broke down crying from the intense pain in his heart: “Awu…”
Before the White Shield people behind him could urge him on, he gritted his teeth and asked, “Who did this to you? Was it Ning… Ning Zhuo?”
“…Ning Zhuo… who’s that?”
The name was so distant it sounded as though Motobu Takeshi had heard it in a previous life. He truly had no impression of it.
Motobu Takeshi shook his head, wheezing weakly, “It wasn’t a man. It was… a woman.”
This answer was entirely beyond Motobu Ryo’s expectations. “A woman?”
“Forties. A woman. Pretty. From the upper city. She insisted that I… killed her son…” Motobu Takeshi weakly grabbed Motobu Ryo’s hand and said softly, “Dad… kill her.”
Motobu Ryo was stunned for a moment. Just as he was about to press for more, that tiny bit of strength supporting him disappeared as well.
Motobu Takeshi had no eyelids. Even in death, he could not close his eyes.
He died like a fish on a market stall.
By then, Lin Qin had only just returned from Haina. On the road, he received word that Motobu Takeshi was dying. He sped all the way there and had just reached the ward door when he heard the piercing beep of the machine.
Holding the doorframe, he listened as White Shield, who had rushed out in haste, relayed Motobu Takeshi’s “parting words.”
A woman from the upper city?
Saying that Motobu Takeshi had killed her son?
A speculation gradually formed in Lin Qin’s mind.
Motobu Takeshi mainly targeted women in his crimes. Of course, he had also harmed handsome men, but without exception, all of those people were helpless poor souls from the lower city.
He was evil, but not stupid to the core. He never harmed people from the upper city.
Only in that way could his dark little pleasures continue indefinitely.
With official verification backing it up, the only famous man Motobu Takeshi had ever harmed was Ruskin, who died from poison injection in the 930 incident.
And in the case files, Ruskin was like a man who had sprung out of the earth out of nowhere—no father, no mother, and a perfectly clean background.
Lin Qin closed his eyes and gave a helpless smile.
Ning Zhuo, is this the matter you wanted me to keep digging into?
……
When all of Motobu Takeshi’s life-support systems were removed, Third Brother contacted Ning Zhuo and got straight to the point: “Don’t worry. He’s dead.”
Hearing that it really was Third Brother’s voice, Ning Zhuo gave a very flat “Mm.” “Got it.”
Third Brother made no mention of being imprisoned: “Hey, how’s Shan Feibai?”
There was a strange silence on Ning Zhuo’s end.
Then he said, “Not bad.”
Third Brother: “?”
A muffled, smug laugh came from the communicator.
Then the communication was cut off one-sidedly.
Ning Zhuo tossed the communicator backhandedly, and Shan Feibai caught it at once, placing it properly on the bedside table.
Only after returning to the room did Ning Zhuo realize in the mirror that this white shirt of his was very problematic—what should have been covered had not been covered at all.
He changed clothes, while Shan Feibai busied himself studying Ning Zhuo’s body from the side.
“So your waist is this thin.”
Shan Feibai raised one hand to measure it, then loosely grasped the air around Ning Zhuo’s calf. “And your calves are this thin.”
He sighed. “How come only your butt has any meat?”
Ning Zhuo, bare from the waist up, gave that sharp-tongued little wolf pup a sidelong glance through the corner of his eye, planning to teach him a lesson.
Facing the mirror, he covered the pale blue fingerprints Shan Feibai had left on the side of his waist with his hand.
Shan Feibai, who had been lounging lazily on the bed, moved his throat slightly and involuntarily sat up.
Ning Zhuo pressed down a little, waking the latent pain.
He drew in a breath and muttered to himself, “Pretty strong grip.”
Ning Zhuo did all this knowing full well it was seduction, so he remained very calm.
However, the spark Shan Feibai had planted inside him flared back to life at the wrong time, spreading light and heat recklessly through his body and making his lower abdomen twitch in an unnaturally subtle way.
Ning Zhuo faced the burning desire inside him with the same expressionless attitude he would use to endure torture.
Ning Zhuo was willing to endure it, but Shan Feibai was not willing to sit still.
He scooted over, buried his face in Ning Zhuo’s back, and softly called his full name: “Ning Zhuo.”
Ning Zhuo frowned. “What did you call me?”
Smelling the mint oil on his skin, Shan Feibai said sincerely, “Ning-ge, hug me.”
He noticed Ning Zhuo frowning, but not objecting.
Then Shan Feibai was surprised to find that Ning Zhuo had blushed.
The red spread all the way to the roots of his ears.
Ning Zhuo was not afraid of being pinned against a wall and fucked.
He always had a strange sense of detachment from his own body, subconsciously feeling that it was not really his. So no matter how much pain there was, he accepted it all with indifference.
But what he found hardest to endure was pure, sincere affection.
Like when his mother praised him for being a good child when he was little, or when his father kissed his face.
…Like being held like this by Shan Feibai.
Shan Feibai loved him so much he didn’t know what to do, and bit his neck on impulse—lightly, without force.
Ning Zhuo clicked his tongue, and the redness on his face receded like a tide: “You a dog?”
Shan Feibai got excited and started talking nonsense again: “If I’d known Ning-ge liked this, I would’ve done it earlier.”
Ning Zhuo gave him a cool look in the mirror. “Then your ashes would have already drifted to the Atlantic.”
Shan Feibai knew their tangled grievances and grudges couldn’t be explained in just two or three sentences.
If it had been one year earlier, or half a year earlier, or even three months earlier, the outcome might not have been like this.
Full of sweetness, Shan Feibai leaned close to Ning Zhuo’s ear and whispered mysteriously, “Ning-ge, let me tell you, the first time I ever took care of it with my hand, I was thinking about what you’d look like bleeding…”
Seeing him get more and more outrageous, Ning Zhuo was ready to throw him off.
“I love Ning-ge to death,” Shan Feibai continued shamelessly. “Ning-ge likes me?”
Just when Ning Zhuo rarely found himself at a loss for how to answer, Jin Xueshen came to save him.
He knocked on Ning Zhuo’s door from outside.
Jin Xueshen’s eyes were red, but his emotions had already returned to normal.
“I have an idea,” he said bluntly. “I don’t want Ma Yushu to die right away. I want all of his money.”
If you want, I can also do the same kind of name replacement for Chapter 104 and onward.
