When Chu Ci gradually regained consciousness, he felt as though his entire body had been soaked in sweat for a full cycle, damp and sticky in an extremely uncomfortable way.
A cool mountain wind brushed across his face, feeling refreshing. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the dizziness. The intense pain in his body had completely vanished, leaving only a languid, exhausted heaviness in his muscles.
“Chu Ci? Chu Ci!” Han Yue called hoarsely twice, “Wake up! Are you injured anywhere?”
Chu Ci forced his eyes open. His vision was still blurred at first; it took several seconds before it slowly cleared. They had already crashed off the mountain road down onto a steep slope.
The German-made car was relatively durable. The front end had smashed into a large pit; the windshield and side windows were completely shattered, the doors flung open at odd angles, and airbags filled the cabin. Fortunately, there were no more severe injuries.
Chu Ci moved his limbs. Being relatively thin, he could still shift within the warped front cabin. Only his knee burned with pain—likely a scraped abrasion.
“I’m fine,” Chu Ci said after a moment of silence. “…And you?”
Han Yue gave a bitter laugh. “I’ll need a bit more effort before I can answer that… I have to get my foot out from under the accelerator first…”
Chu Ci turned to look at him. Han Yue’s body was half pinned by airbags, and the entire dashboard had collapsed onto the accelerator, likely trapping his foot underneath.
Chu Ci reached into his pocket for his phone, but Han Yue stopped him.
“Don’t call. It’s useless. They installed a signal jammer in the valley beforehand. I estimate it’s blocking signals for at least several kilometers. They didn’t want us calling for help.”
“…What is going on? Who are they?”
“This is a long story. If I explain it, I’m violating confidentiality regulations.” Han Yue paused, then laughed. “Just kidding. I don’t keep any secrets from you anyway… The one in the car who didn’t show himself is Long Jiwei, director of the Ninth Division of State Security. He’s an extremely radical figure within the younger faction. He has deep conflicts with families like Han, Pei, and Wang that are closely interconnected. To put it bluntly, his political goal is to force a group of old men who’ve been fighting their whole lives into retirement, and replace the power center with new blood—what he calls… an ‘radical democracy,’ I guess.”
Han Yue hesitated, his tone becoming complicated.
“In the evolution of any political party, there are bound to be structural issues. There are many people with ideas like his, but Long Jiwei is especially extreme. He’s from an ethnic minority in Guangxi. A rather… unusual person. Don’t be fooled by his young appearance—only he knows how old he actually is. I only know he emerged decades ago. Back then he wasn’t called Long Jiwei; he had a rather strange name.”
“He had a sister. Years ago in Guangxi, she was abducted by several high-ranking Japanese visitors. For reasons that were sensitive at the time, local officials refused to intervene. So Long Jiwei went alone, broke into the hotel where those Japanese men were staying. No one knows exactly what he did, but later investigations found that those men had been reduced to skeletons—completely stripped of flesh, yet their clothes were still perfectly intact, hanging on their bones. No one knew how he did it. Both he and his sister were convicted of intentional homicide.”
Chu Ci raised his brows slightly, a faint trace of disgust in his expression.
Han Yue noticed and quickly explained, “He didn’t die later. People from the Ninth Division wanted to know how he did it, so they pulled him out of prison. They even changed his name to cover it up. His extreme, hostile personality likely developed from that time. You can understand it—minority child, simple temperament, very black-and-white morality, hates evil deeply…”
“…So what exactly is going on this time?”
“We were all neutralized by the thing he keeps.” Han Yue said. “That thing… it’s hard to explain. It’s basically a full-spectrum interference device, except it’s not mechanical—it’s a living organism. Controlled by Long Jiwei, it can emit high-frequency, high-energy particle streams. Its explosive yield is impossible to estimate. When we were building the military project in the Nujiang area, we called it a ‘breathing nuclear bomb.’ It was originally taken by Long Jiwei from a remote region in Guangxi. There are said to be similar organisms abroad as well. His current one is still under his control, but in practice it already belongs to the Ninth Division.”
Han Yue cursed again and tried to pull his foot free, but it only caused him to grimace in pain.
“Damn it. He actually deployed that thing to harm people—doesn’t he fear higher authorities will skin him alive?”
Chu Ci said nothing, watching Han Yue repeatedly try and fail to free his foot.
During their conversation, Chu Ci had managed to climb out of the cabin. He stood on the slope to recover, then slowly walked over and looked down at Han Yue.
He looked slightly disheveled, but far better off than Han Yue. His hair was a bit messy, his face slightly pale, his clothes torn in places, and there was a shallow cut on his arm—but it had already stopped bleeding.
Standing backlit, Chu Ci’s face was hard to see clearly. Even straining, Han Yue could only make out his calm, almost emotionless gaze.
Han Yue liked him like this. Always so composed under any circumstances, with extremely strong emotional control, rational and meticulous in thought. Even at his most disheveled, he still retained a kind of restrained elegance and calm.
He was unlike anyone Han Yue had ever known—untouched by power, status, wealth, or fame. His life was simple and quiet, never stirred by turbulence. He treated everyone with composure and courtesy, cold yet gentle.
It was as if he lived in a world Han Yue could never reach—a peaceful world without conflict or smoke of war, every corner clean and serene, inviting one to sink into it.
Like a jade-green lake: even knowing one would drown, Han Yue still could not resist the urge to jump in.
“…Long Jiwei and the others may send more people here,” Han Yue said quietly, withdrawing his gaze. “You should go.”
Chu Ci said nothing, but also did not move, as if hesitating.
“They’ve blocked the main road. If you walk for about one or two hours, you’ll reach a gas station from a side road.”
“… ”
“If you ever had even half a bit of feeling for me, then once you get out, call my family and tell them I’m here, and my leg is injured.”
Han Yue fell silent for a moment, then suddenly gave a bitter laugh and said in a low voice, “But I doubt you will. After you get out, you’ll definitely act like you know nothing, maybe even just forget I’m here… You probably wish I’d just die.”
Chu Ci remained silent, neither confirming nor denying.
In that silence, Han Yue’s faint hope was gradually worn away bit by bit. It was like a wound exposed to air—blood slowly draining, flesh gradually decaying. Every passing second felt like a blade peeling flesh from bone, grinding him down piece by piece.
The pain was so intense it surpassed anything he had felt under the high-energy particle bombardment on the road. It was more terrifying than the moment of the car tumbling off the cliff, more despairing than waiting helplessly for death.
Han Yue’s face had lost all color, his entire presence almost drained into gray. After a long while, he nodded and said hoarsely, “I understand. After you get out, check the envelope I left in the safe. Inside are my… letters and a few bank cards. The cards are for you. Take the envelope to a lawyer. Most of my assets will be left to you. That apartment was also registered under your name…”
He drew in a sharp breath and forced a faint smile.
“These past few months, I’ve been seeing doctors. We talked about the time we were together, and everything that happened before. I really wasn’t good to you back then. If there’s ever a chance in the future, I’ll make it up to you. If there isn’t… just forget it.”[1]Who’s cutting onion?!!!!!! jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2511591_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2511591_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
Wind moved through the valley, rustling the trees like the sound of tides. Han Yue stared at Chu Ci without blinking, his gaze strangely calm. He looked for a long, long time before slowly closing his eyes.
“Go.”
He heard the rustle of clothing, then footsteps on the soil, and then—slowly, step by step—moving away. Under normal circumstances such faint sounds would have been easy to miss, but now, mixed with the howling wind, they were painfully clear, like they were cutting straight into his eardrums.
Because Chu Ci had left.
Han Yue kept his eyes tightly shut and tilted his head back.
From the moment he was born, he had never felt such bone-deep agony. It was like a knife piercing directly through his heart—so intense that even death seemed inferior.
“A lifetime is too long. There are so many unknowns waiting ahead of you. You think growing old together is only a few decades, but in reality, it’s harder to reach than eternity.”
“May you truly learn to cherish it. May you one day not realize what you had only after losing it.”
Han Yue buried his face deep in his hands. He had no strength left to move a single finger—no strength even left to survive.
Then Chu Ci’s voice suddenly sounded without warning:
“Can you move over a bit? And shift your leg.”[2]You see, I realized in this chapter that Chu Chi also liked Han Yue in his own way, like to use him that is lol haha joke, He like him, that I understand, because if he doesnt he would have already … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2511591_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2511591_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
Han Yue jolted violently and looked up sharply. Chu Ci was standing there holding a stone, staring at him coldly.
“You… weren’t you—”
Chu Ci didn’t bother replying. He pushed hard against the dented car door on Han Yue’s side and leaned down to inspect the situation of his right leg. The collapsed dashboard had pinned Han Yue’s calf against the accelerator. A broken shard of hardened plastic protruded out, stabbing into his calf muscle. The blood had already coagulated, but if that piece was broken off forcefully, it would likely worsen the internal injury caused by the embedded fragment.
Chu Ci raised the stone.
“Bear with it.”
Before Han Yue could react, Chu Ci slammed the stone down onto the plastic shard.
The impact was brutally forceful. The grinding sound of stone against hardened plastic was so sharp it made one’s teeth ache. But Han Yue had no attention left to spare. Chu Ci’s strength was unexpectedly great; the blow loosened the fragment slightly while simultaneously dragging it through the muscle in his calf.
The pain was so severe it raised goosebumps all over his body, and fresh blood immediately surged out.
“Fuck! It hurts! It hurts! Go easier!”
Chu Ci ignored him completely. He smashed the shattered plastic apart in several heavy strikes, then forcefully pried open the dashboard cover. With a loud crash, wiring and instrument components fell loose in a chaotic spill.
Han Yue had never realized Chu Ci had that kind of strength. After dozens of minutes of work, the entire dashboard and accelerator assembly were nearly dismantled. Finally, Han Yue’s blood-soaked right leg was freed. By then, he was in so much pain he felt numb, lying there pale and gasping. The punctured muscle looked like it had been gouged open into a cavity—just looking at it was enough to make one’s scalp tingle.
“You’ve finally experienced the pain you once caused me. I feel very satisfied.”[3]hahahahahaha ahahahahaha I like him hahaha Damn. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2511591_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2511591_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
Chu Ci tossed him a half-height tree branch.
“Use this. Walk.”
Han Yue trembled as he picked it up. It took him great effort just to stand, and he couldn’t take a proper step. The moment his injured leg touched the ground, he would collapse uncontrollably. After several failed attempts, Chu Ci finally grew impatient, pulled him up, and half-supported, half-dragged him forward.
With Chu Ci’s build, carrying Han Yue was impossible; even supporting him like this was already exhausting. Han Yue stole a glance at Chu Ci’s profile—his brows slightly furrowed, sweat soaking his hair at the temples and sliding down his cheek toward his jaw.
At that moment, the valley slope was steep and rugged. The air was damp, clouds thick overhead as if rain was imminent. They had just escaped a deadly ambush. Behind them lay a wrecked Mercedes; ahead stretched kilometers of mountain road. Their bodies were covered in injuries of varying severity.
Han Yue had never been in such a miserable state in his life.
Yet he had never felt such happiness.
He wished time would stop here.
Wished he could remain like this forever—supported by Chu Ci, leaning into him, walking forward together.
He even wished this road would never end.[4]I dont know what to say anymore, Han yue is really love brain dead haha jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2511591_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2511591_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
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