Cong Lin originally wanted to reminisce about the past but accidentally went too far back in time.
Cong Wei and Cong Lin were bought by the Chief of Staff from Paihua Zi. That year, Cong Wei was six years old and Cong Lin was five years old.
He always remembered that it was his older sister who told him the old woman was selling maltose, so he followed her. But after a long time had passed without him returning, his sister came after him, and together, they were both abducted.
The chief of staff threw them into the organization known as “Blood Vermilion Bird.” On their first day, they were beaten so severely that they could barely move. It was a harsh lesson, telling them that the first thing they had to learn was to endure pain.
Years of fighting, bloodshed, and surviving through fire and rain, eating flesh and swallowing dirt to stay alive. The first time Cong Lin killed someone was when he was eight years old. He slit the throat of an unconscious death row inmate. Blood sprayed out, the man convulsed on the ground, then lay still, lifeless.
He was so scared that he peed himself, and of course he was punished to kneel for the whole night.
At that time, he knew that killing would always be with him throughout his life.
On the surface, Cong Wei and he were simply the adopted daughter and son of the chief of staff.
Cong Wei once hugged him and said, “Little brother, Mother told me that if you kill too many people, you won’t be able to enter the cycle of reincarnation. From now on, Sister will do the killing, you should stop.”
Cong Lin secretly laughed at how naive his sister was.
Meeting Duan Zhanzhou was an accident.
The day of the chief of staff’s second son’s tenth birthday party was also Cong Lin’s birthday.
But that day, he lived his life as usual, practicing ten kilometers of weighted long-distance running, fighting, assassination, and poison research, until he fell on the bed covered in dust and heard the congratulatory songs being sung in the chief of staff’s house across the wall, only then did he remember.
A killer who lives in the shadows doesn’t need to celebrate such a boring festival, the killer instructor would definitely say so. But in the middle of the night, he couldn’t help but climb up the wall out of curiosity—he swore he was just curious and wanted to take a look.
It was this glance that marked the beginning of the mistake.
“Who are you?” Duan Zhanzhou, who also had a childish face, was standing in the corner. He looked five or six years older than Cong Lin. There was a rich girl who kept pestering him at the party. He came out to get some fresh air, and when he looked up, he saw a boy with a dark face climbing the wall.
Cong Lin was so shocked that he nearly recoiled, his eyes fixed on Duan Zhanzhou with nervous apprehension.
Duan Zhanzhou tilted his head: “I’m asking you! Are you a thief?”
Cong Lin shook his head. In fact, he was thinking that if this guy yelled and startled the instructor, he would kill him with a knife.
Duan Zhanzhou looked at the banquet hall behind him, turned his head, and said tactfully, “Do you also want to play in a place like this? Want to see it?”
Cong Lin nodded but took out a knife from his pocket. In order to coax Duan Zhanzhou over, he deliberately made a gesture, pointing at the banquet hall, then at himself, and opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
He thought that Duan Zhanzhou would definitely move closer to hear him more clearly, giving him the perfect opportunity to throw the knife down from the top of the wall and pierce his throat.
Unexpectedly, Duan Zhanzhou reacted, said “oh”, and ran back to the banquet hall. Cong Lin was intrigued by what Duan Zhanzhou intended to do, so he stayed by the wall until Duan Zhanzhou approached, carrying a small plate with a slice of cake and a delicately crafted Western candle shaped like a tiny pine tree.
It was really beautiful. Everything inside the ‘Blood Vermilion Bird’ was pitch black, even the windows were painted black, and there were no flowers or plants in the yard. It was so solemn and terrifying. He had never seen anything so beautiful.
The wall was very high. Duan Zhanzhou lighted the candle on the ground and raised it to Cong Lin’s chin so he could see more clearly.
Is that white, cotton-like cream, like clouds, really edible? What wonderful taste would it have?
“Here, there’s only one left. Here you go. You were pointing here and there just now, and I understood immediately. You mean today is your birthday too, right? So, am I smart enough?”
Cong Lin stayed there stupidly, not taking it for a long while. Duan Zhanzhou’s hands were sore from holding, and he frowned, “Hey! Why aren’t you talking? Are you mute?”
Cong Lin came back to his senses, the knife in his hand loosened and fell into the grass. He quickly reached out to catch it. At this time, he heard someone shouting in the distance: “Zhanzhou! We are going back, come back quickly!”
Duan Zhanzhou turned around: “Coming! Wait a minute!”
But when he turned around again, the person on the wall had disappeared, and the cake had also not been taken away.
“Hello? Hello? Where’s the person? Gone?” How rude… he clicked his tongue unhappily and left.
On the other side of the wall, Cong Lin was afraid of being discovered, so he quickly grabbed a handful and then retracted it. When he opened his hands, he only had time to take the candles off the cake.
Because he was in a hurry to put out the candle with his hand, his palm was slightly burned, a small blister appeared, and his fingertips were stained with cream.
He put it in his mouth and tasted it for a long, long time.
That night he returned to his room and lay on his pillow, unable to sleep all night. When it was almost dawn, he asked Cong Wei, “Sister, do you know… what cream tastes like?”
Cong Wei was half asleep, turned over, and muttered, “That’s a taste we will never be able to taste in our lifetime.”
From then on, he would often climb over the wall to see if that youth would appear again.
It was not until several years later that he and Cong Wei finally walked out of the organization and were introduced to the upper class by the chief of staff in a positive capacity. He could finally face Duan Zhanzhou with dignity.
Duan Zhanzhou was already a soldier at that time. He was no longer as immature as before. His tall figure attracted people’s attention wherever he stood.
No one would know that when Cong Lin shook hands with Duan Zhanzhou, his heart was beating like a storm under his calm appearance. The slightest touch of his fingers was like a tingling electric shock.
“Hello, Mr. Duan. I’ve heard a lot about you.” If one listens carefully, they can hear that his voice was actually chaotic.
“En, hello.” However, Duan Zhanzhou just shook hands politely and left.
He didn’t remember him. Well, it was just an episode as small as a weed, no one should remember it.
Sometimes things are just like this. When Duan Zhanzhou came to propose to Cong Wei, Cong Lin felt an emptiness inside, the same way he had felt that night when he didn’t get the cake.
If he never tasted the cream, he wouldn’t miss the whole cake either. But fate offers you just a hint of sweetness, enough to make you long for it, yet keeps it out of reach.
All that is left is bitterness.
Perhaps because he was his fiancée’s younger brother, Duan Zhanzhou treated Cong Lin well. Seeing that Cong Lin was interested in guns, he took him to the shooting range to practice target shooting.
This made Cong Lin not know whether to laugh or to cry.
He had learned to use a gun since he was six, his skills far surpassing Duan Zhanzhou’s. Yet now, he had to pretend to be clumsy and incapable of using one.
“Hold this first, and then look here… yes… put this one in front of…”
Wrong, Cong Lin thought. Duan Zhanzhou’s shooting method was very personal, and this habit was something the killer instructor often taught him not to make.
However, listening to Duan Zhanzhou’s instructions, he deliberately pretended to be humble and willing to learn.
When he fired the first shot, he pretended to be injured by the recoil, threw the gun away, held his arm, and cried out in pain.
“Are you alright?” Duan Zhanzhou came over, picked up his arm, and massaged it gently, making his muscles feel relaxed. Looking at him up close, his eyelashes were not long but very thick. When he focused on one thing like this, he was particularly charming.
This sporadic tenderness can make Cong Lin seem like a girl in the boudoir saving up her dowry, secretly keeping it at the bottom of a box.
“I’m sorry, I’m stupid, it’s hard for you to teach me.” Cong Lin said to him.
Duan Zhanzhou smiled and took off his gloves: “It’s already pretty good to be able to do it like this for a first timer. You practice more, and I’ll take your sister out for a walk.”
When he turned around, he saw Cong Wei standing at the door, like a docile little bird waiting to be taken away, smiling sweetly at Duan Zhanzhou.
They left, and Cong Lin trailed behind them to the door, hiding to watch their retreating figures. As they got into the car, Cong Wei clung to Duan Zhanzhou’s neck and kissed him on the cheek.
They looked like a perfect couple. It was dazzling to look at.
Cong Lin returned to the shooting range, picked up the gun, and shot through the target with accurate and sharp movements, using up all the bullets without missing a single target.
It would be nice if love was as simple as shooting. At least he was good at it.
The wedding came despite no one’s expectations.
The decision to kill Cong Wei was like a blister from a burn, it was painful.
Cong Wei, his older sister, died on her wedding night. A dagger was plunged into her heart—swift, precise, and merciless.
The person holding the knife was her own brother.
He had killed many people before, but this time, he killed someone he knew, and more importantly, a relative.
Duan Zhanzhou held the bleeding Cong Wei in his arms and shot through Cong Lin’s shoulder. If Cong Wei had not held his hand while dying, the bullet would have been aimed at Cong Lin’s head already.
Before she died, she said, “…Don’t hurt my little brother.”
The look in her eyes when she glanced at him in the end was clear and transparent. She understood everything that was in his mind.
Everyone said that Cong Lin was crazy, possessed by the devil, and a traitor. Only Cong Lin himself knew that his world, from the moment his sister died, was shattered like a glass mirror and was filled with debris.
Duan Zhanzhou had every right to torture him for killing the woman he loved, his wife. It was just like what he had said when he forced himself to swallow charcoal as penance for Cong Wei—
“Cong Lin, as long as you are in front of me for one second, I will make you feel pain for one second, deep into your bones, and make you regret it!”
He has always done this from the beginning to now.
Just like on the Jiuhuang Mountain, at this moment, Cong Lin was lying there gasping for breath, his eyes went dark, and Duan Zhanzhou walked up to him and stepped on his wound.
“Ugh!”
Cong Lin shrank in pain. Duan Zhanzhou squatted down and pinched his chin, his eyes almost blazing with anger: “I am really blind. A disaster like you has always stayed by my side, and I have never seen through you!”
That look of disgust, cutting through him to his very core, as if he were nothing more than a piece of trash—Cong Lin wanted to laugh again, but something stopped him, and he realized he couldn’t.
Duan Zhanzhou pressed his hand firmly against the wound on his cheek, squeezing it painfully. “What? Didn’t swallowing charcoal teach you anything? How many more people around me are you planning to kill?”
“Cough, cough… cough, cough, cough…”
Duan Zhanzhou was so angry that he lost his mind. He fiercely lifted up Cong Lin and strangled him by the neck: “No wonder you refused to leave no matter how I tortured you! So, you are a spy!”
“I spared your life for your sister’s sake! And you colluded with the Military Control Commissioner to harm me? What benefit did he give you? Wealth and glory? You are really patient, you are amazing ah.”
“I regret letting you swallow carbon and making you mute, because I really want to hear what you can say!”
He felt a strong sense of betrayal and disappointment in his heart, a feeling he had not experienced even when Cong Wei died.
For so long, he had been venting his anger by torturing Cong Lin. The terrifying thing was that this one-sided suppression actually caused some changes in his heart.
How many methods did he use? He once made Cong Lin kneel in the snow for a whole night in the coldest winter, making him have a high fever for several days. He had once left Cong Lin on a boat when he went out to sea, abandoning him to die, exposed to the harsh wind and sun. He once locked him in the woodshed and did rough work without food or water until his hands were covered with frostbite… Cong Lin endured everything that ordinary people could not endure.
But after each punishment, Cong Lin would always stand there, his face showing no emotion, but his eyes showed worry and anxiety, and he looked like a pitiful person who was not tolerated by the world.
Every time, Duan Zhanzhou felt a stinging pain in his heart. He interpreted this toughness as guilt towards Cong Wei and then tortured Cong Lin even more severely.
This guy, this bastard, how could he be a spy?!
At this point, Cong Lin knew that he had completely lost, so he could only close his eyes as if giving up, point his finger at him, then at himself, and stroked his neck with his palm. This was to say—
“You can kill me.”
Feeling a slight pain in his heart as if being bitten by ants, Duan Zhanzhou loosened his hand, his face froze, and Cong Lin fainted from excessive blood loss.
Seeing Cong Lin covered in blood, his chest the only thing still rising and falling, he resembled a lifeless corpse. It was a sight so pitiful that it stirred an overwhelming urge to hold and protect him.
Duan Zhanzhou bit his lower lip, turned around with great difficulty, and ordered, “Bandage him and take him back…”
“Military Commander, just kill this guy.”
“No!” Duan Zhanzhou refused, “…I …I need to interrogate him to see if he has any accomplices!”
He couldn’t die yet because he hadn’t been tortured enough. Duan Zhanzhou explained to himself.
Yes, he still owed him.
