Chapter 22

Chapter 22

When asked about it, Wang Jianjun’s expression turned strange.

“I’m the only one from Longnu Village who came back,” he said. “What would the women come back for?”

“They’re outside?”

“Course they are. If they all came back, what’d happen to the kids?” Wang Jianjun patted his bulging stomach, smacking his lips. The child within mimicked the sound.

He’d married after leaving the village.

Wang Jianjun offered no other useful information.

Leaving the Wang house, Lu Yan couldn’t resist taking another look at the Dragon-Locking Well.

He leaned over the edge. The well’s depth was impossible to gauge, just a gaping black maw.

Faintly, from the darkness, he heard it—the weeping of women and children.

“Were the village women used for sacrifice?” Lu Yan asked.

[Some were. Because that ‘master’ back then said only living sacrifices to the gods could bring wealth.]

Lu Yan cursed under his breath. “What kind of master was that? Pure evil.”

[He never wanted the villagers to get rich. He was just breeding a poison.]

[A backward village that prized sons over daughters. For centuries, barely a soul. But it had the only great lake for a hundred miles.]

[Very convenient for disposing of evidence, don’t you think? Care to guess how many infant girls are buried in that mud?]

[But infants, their spirits unformed… they couldn’t generate a curse or resentment this powerful. Not until twenty years ago, when those lost girls got a ‘mother.’]

[A kidnapped female student.]

[Chained in a basement for three years. Bore two children. The man thought a woman with kids would settle down. But she was different. Educated. Had seen the wider world. She knew right from wrong, understood human dignity, knew some fates were worse than death. But she came from a single-parent home. Her mother died young, only her father remained. She’d been his pride, his pillar since childhood. She wanted to live, to see him again.]

[She almost made it. Her father searched for years. Quit his state job, combed every village in Fuling Province. He found Longnu Village. She was in that basement prison, and through a tiny window, she saw him. Everyone in the village knew, yet no one spoke the truth.]

[That broke her. But she was saved. After her mind shattered, the man’s vigilance slipped. One night, she killed him and ran. Her father-in-law chased her down with dogs, dragged her back. The old man planned a ghost marriage for his dead son—]

[Then, the feng shui master arrived.]

The university student was drowned in the lake. A sacrifice and a ghost marriage in one.

A leaden weight settled in Lu Yan’s chest. Part of him wanted to turn his back on this place and never return.

He didn’t believe in boundless vengeance. Being wronged didn’t justify harming society. But Longnu seemed precise in her retribution. She settled scores with those directly responsible. At least many innocent women in the village were spared.

In his eyes, aside from the dead husband, the other villagers were accomplices. From Longnu’s perspective, the punishment might seem harsh, but it wasn’t unforgivable.

His purpose here wasn’t to cure the villagers’ Pollution Disease anyway. He was here because Longnu had marked him.

He leaned toward the well, voice low. “I don’t know if you can hear me. I grieve for what you suffered. I’m sorry I came so many years too late. One of my professions is doctor. I killed your child because it was harming my friend. My friend did nothing to you.”

No answer echoed from the depths.

Zhou Qimeng asked, “Doc, what are you doing?”

Lu Yan straightened up. “Nothing. Let’s head back.”

“You go ahead. I’ll find a boat, take some readings from the center of the lake.”

“Want me to come?”

Zhou Qimeng considered it. “Nah. If the boat capsizes, I can get myself out. You might not. Get back. If anything happens to you, my game company is definitely bankrupt.”

The game industry was a dead end. Zhou Qimeng might be the CEO of a listed company on the surface, but behind the scenes, he lost sleep over funding. He hadn’t joined the Special Operations Department, but a certain anonymous director from the Pollution Disease Control Center was his major shareholder—his sugar daddy.

Lu Yan almost mentioned his robust health, that he might be more capable in water than on land. Then he remembered his delicate, precious “healer-type Awakener” persona and let it go.

When he returned to the RV alone, Chen Shisi and the Detective were playing cards.

The moment he saw Lu Yan, the Detective adjusted his glasses. “Where’s the boss?”

“Gone to the center of the lake to measure pollution levels.”

“Doctor Lu,” the Detective began, “mind if I ask a question? How old are you?”

Preoccupied, Lu Yan answered absently while opening the fridge to start dinner. “Twenty-six.”

“Do you have an older or younger brother?”

“No.”

Chen Shisi and the Detective exchanged a look. Finally, Chen Shisi pulled a student ID from his jacket. “That’s weird. We took a walk this afternoon, found an abandoned house. The Detective said his talent hinted at clues inside. We broke in and found this.”

Lu Yan took it. He opened the plastic sleeve and his pupils constricted.

It was a student ID from Donglan University.

The photo showed a young man bearing a seventy percent resemblance to him, but with a gloomier, more severe expression. The name read: Lu Cheng.

His father.

[Congratulations. You’ve discovered one of the most crucial clues of this trip. Your father was here in his youth.]

Lu Cheng graduated in 2091. This was at least thirty years ago.

“This is my father,” Lu Yan said after a pause. “He’s dead.”

The Lu Cheng in Lu Yan’s memory always had a sinister look in his eyes, emotionally volatile, face often twisted in a sickly cold smile.

Children from unhappy homes remember things early.

Lu Yan remembered the pitiful woman, petite and frail. She’d been Lu Cheng’s middle school classmate, secretly in love with him. Not pretty, average education, no job—a housewife who seemed to have nothing but diligence.

But Lu Yan remembered her cakes were delicious. Her hand holding his after kindergarten was warm.

That pitiful woman, even when beaten black and blue, would hold him and sob quietly, saying Dad wasn’t always like this, he’s just upset his project failed.

She always found excuses for Lu Cheng.

Later, she jumped from a building. More unbearable than the physical pain was Lu Cheng’s day-after-day indifference.

Lu Yan wanted to kill Lu Cheng. The man didn’t seem to mind; he even enjoyed the process. It was always the younger Lu Yan who failed.

Each failure brought punishment.

Sometimes his abdomen was slit open and sewn shut. Sometimes needles in his back. Sometimes watching live insects forced up his nostrils—strapped to an operating table, unable to move.

Lu Yan didn’t consider it abuse. Just the penalty for failure. After all, he was aiming for Lu Cheng’s life. At least Lu Cheng never let him die.

His only regret was devising a perfect, flawless plan to finally kill Lu Cheng—only for the man to mutate before he could execute it.

Later came news of Lu Cheng’s death. The authorities even allocated him an apartment as survivor’s support.

To die so simply… it felt like an immense letdown.

The Detective asked, “Why was your father here? Donglan isn’t close to Fuling Province.”

“Don’t know. Maybe he liked traveling when he was young.”

The system corrected him: [You do know.]

Lu Yan paused. “That… feng shui master?”

[Yes. I told you. This is a place for breeding poison. Now, the poison is fully grown, perhaps? Also, correcting an error. Lu Cheng isn’t dead. Not in the sense that matters. He retains his body, his intellect, his memories.]

Lu Yan’s hand still rested on the photo. His expression turned profoundly dark, icy.

The killing intent radiating from him was so sharp and sudden that Chen Shisi stood up, eyeing him with wary alarm.

Then, in the next second, Lu Yan smiled. “Apologies. Got lost in thought for a moment. Remembered something.”

The Detective rubbed his arm. “Wh-what was it?”

Lu Yan’s smile was gentle, like a spring breeze. “Just that the pig back home still needs slaughtering.”

Having spent two days with him, this was the first time either had seen Lu Yan smile. It was startlingly beautiful, enough to make one’s heart skip a beat.

With that, Lu Yan turned to the compact kitchen and began preparing dinner. The RV was small. With the two men playing cards in the living area, every chop of the knife was clear and distinct, echoing like a scene from a grisly murder.

By the time the meal was nearly ready, Zhou Qimeng finally returned, dripping wet.

He’d lost a shoe. Long strands of hair clung to his clothes. He looked utterly wretched.

“Boss?” Chen Shisi stared, dumbfounded. “What happened to you?”

Drive. Now." Zhou Qimeng's face was paler than when he'd spilled milk on Lu Yan's hand days before. "I saw the pollutant at the bottom of the lake. Pollution reading… six thousand three hundred. It's not something we can handle. I only got back alive by adding a 'I am its father' parameter, and that's about to wear off. We leave before it comes ashore. Go!