Outside the Zhao family residence, Gu Chengjing had no idea that the moment he stepped out of his car, news of his arrival had already reached Gu Yan.
He put on a show of politeness, pressing the doorbell twice before waiting for someone to answer.
The people inside clearly had no intention of welcoming him.
A long time passed without the slightest response.
Gu Chengjing pursed his lips and impatiently tapped the toe of his shoe against the ground.
After thinking for a moment, he took out his phone and typed a message.
【Mom, Dad, I’ve brought you another aroma diffuser. You must have used up the last one by now, haven’t you? I imagine Xiao Tong’s scent has almost faded away.】
He knew exactly where these two old people’s weaknesses lay.
Deliberately invoking their deceased daughter, he sought to stir up the grief they still carried.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the front door opened.
The elderly man stood there with a dark expression, saying nothing.
His meaning couldn’t have been clearer.
Leave the diffuser and get the hell out.
Gu Chengjing carried the box into the living room and swept his gaze around the space.
When he noticed that the diffuser he’d brought last time had already been used up, the corners of his mouth lifted in satisfaction.
“I had this fragrance specially blended for you. If you like it, I can order a few more boxes. You could even put some in your bedrooms.”
The poison was administered in such small doses that it needed to be used continuously to take effect.
He was worried that one or two boxes wouldn’t be enough to kill the two old fossils.
“We don’t need your generosity! Don’t bother coming here again. Even if you do, we won’t open the door!”
The old man angrily struck his cane against the floor, making it clear that Gu Chengjing was no longer welcome.
Gu Chengjing ground his teeth and shot him a resentful glare.
Deep down, he wished the two of them would hurry up and join Zhao Qingtong in the afterlife.
However, Gu Chengjing wasn’t ready to leave just yet.
He wandered around the villa for quite some time, already calculating how much money the property might fetch if it were sold.
And it was precisely his greed that kept him there long enough for Gu Yan and the others to arrive and catch him red-handed.
“Get your filthy hands off that painting.”
Gu Yan’s voice suddenly rang out behind him.
Gu Chengjing jumped in surprise.
He had been admiring a priceless painting hanging on the wall.
But when he turned around and saw that Gu Yan had come alone, his initial alarm vanished.
He didn’t consider the young man a threat in the slightest.
“You little bastard! Think you’ve grown wings now? Have you already forgotten who your father is?”
“Shut up,” Gu Yan replied coldly.
He scanned the room and quickly spotted the aroma diffuser Gu Chengjing had opened only a short while earlier.
The moment Gu Chengjing saw him reaching for it, his nerves tightened.
He stormed over and shoved Gu Yan aside from behind.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Gu Yan raised an eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
Yi Heng was already on his way with a professional pharmaceutical analyst.
They would arrive soon.
All Gu Yan needed to do was keep Gu Chengjing occupied until then.
Gu Chengjing was no fool, either.
He immediately sensed that something was wrong.
Growing uneasy, he hurriedly reached for the diffuser, intending to pack it away and take it with him.
But Gu Yan was faster.
With quick, precise movements, he snatched the diffuser off the cabinet before Gu Chengjing could reach it.
Hearing the commotion, the two elderly residents hurried downstairs.
“Yanyan!”
“Gu Chengjing! What are you doing? Let go of Yanyan!”
At the last possible moment, Gu Chengjing managed to grab hold of Gu Yan’s hood.
During the struggle, Gu Yan’s collar slipped down slightly, revealing his slender neck.
Several unmistakable love bites stood out against the pale skin along its side.
Gu Chengjing froze.
Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Gu Yan twisted away and broke free.
Gu Chengjing had no idea why Gu Yan was so determined to take the diffuser.
All he knew was that he had something to hide.
Realizing that force wasn’t working, he immediately changed his approach.
“That’s a gift I brought for your grandparents. Don’t break it. Put it down.”
Gu Yan casually weighed the diffuser in his hand, lifting and lowering it until the fragrant oil inside nearly spilled over the edge.
He was deliberately trying to get on Gu Chengjing’s nerves.
“I want it. You think my grandparents wouldn’t give it to me if I asked? Stop worrying about things that don’t concern you.”
“You—!”
Gu Chengjing was beside himself with rage.
He lunged forward, desperate to snatch it back.
But Gu Yan darted left and right, effortlessly avoiding him.
With his heavy, overweight body, Gu Chengjing couldn’t so much as lay a finger on him.
Finally, he was pushed beyond the limits of his patience.
Gu Chengjing had always been slow to catch up on recent developments.
He still had no idea that Gu Yan was actually an Omega.
And so, when he seized the teapot from the table and hurled it straight at Gu Yan, he didn’t hold back his strength in the slightest.
The two elderly residents hurried downstairs in a panic.
The sound of the teapot shattering echoed throughout the villa, sending a chill of terror through everyone who heard it.
Fortunately, Gu Yan had managed to dodge it.
His maternal grandfather was absolutely furious.
He immediately raised his cane, ready to give that bastard Gu Chengjing the beating he deserved.
Worried that Gu Chengjing might retaliate by shoving the old man to the ground, Gu Yan moved first.
With a few swift, practiced movements, he managed to restrain him.
Gu Chengjing writhed and twisted like an enormous, overfed caterpillar.
After all, he was still an Alpha, and his natural advantage in physical strength couldn’t be underestimated.
Before long, he managed to wrench one arm free.
By this point, rage had completely consumed his judgment.
Abandoning all restraint, he launched a vicious attack, reaching straight for Gu Yan’s eyes with the intention of blinding him.
But before his fingers could so much as brush a strand of Gu Yan’s hair, another hand—long-fingered and powerful—caught his wrist.
Crack!
Yi Heng’s expression remained utterly impassive as he twisted Gu Chengjing’s wrist with brutal force.
Gu Chengjing immediately howled in agony.
“You’re here!”
Gu Yan’s face lit up with relief.
He finally released his grip, his arms aching from the effort of holding Gu Chengjing down.
It was all because that bastard was so ridiculously difficult to deal with.
If Yi Heng had taken any longer to arrive, Gu Yan had been planning to simply knock Gu Chengjing unconscious and be done with it.
Gu Chengjing’s earlier arrogance vanished in an instant.
Yi Heng’s pheromones swept through the room, asserting complete control over the situation.
Under their overwhelming pressure, Gu Chengjing had no choice but to settle down.
Otherwise, he would barely have been able to breathe.
“You… You set me up?”
Gu Chengjing stared at the pharmaceutical analyst standing behind Yi Heng, dressed in professional work attire.
Whether from fury or fear, his vision kept darkening.
A wave of dizziness washed over him, leaving him feeling as though the entire world was collapsing around him.
The police arrived shortly afterward.
“Yanyan, what’s going on here…?”
Gu Yan’s maternal grandmother clutched the fabric over her chest, anxiously surveying the chaotic living room.
Gu Yan knew that her heart wasn’t in good condition.
He was afraid that once the test results came back, the shock might be too much for her to bear.
So he decided to take her outside first.
But Gu Yan’s grandmother refused to leave.
Instead, she watched intently as the pharmaceutical analyst extracted a small sample of the aromatic oil and began examining its chemical composition.
A terrible suspicion seemed to be taking shape in her mind.
Half an hour later, the results came back.
The diffuser contained substances harmful to the human body.
Prolonged inhalation could cause irreversible damage to the lungs, lead to kidney failure, and even cause cancer.
Gu Chengjing’s lips turned deathly pale.
He thrashed about so violently that he was harder to restrain than a pig being dragged off for slaughter during the New Year.
The police struggled to pin him down on the living room sofa before finally snapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.
“Don’t move!”
Gu Yan’s grandfather stood rooted to the spot, gripping his cane so tightly that his knuckles nearly turned white.
His beard bristled with rage, and his eyes bulged furiously.
It took several people holding him back to prevent him from beating Gu Chengjing to death with his cane.
“You beast! You absolute monster!”
“Was killing Xiao Tong not enough for you? Now you’re trying to murder us too, all for a little family fortune!”
“A bastard like you deserves a miserable death!”
Gu Yan’s grandmother, meanwhile, could barely comprehend the horrifying truth.
She staggered backward a few steps, as though all the strength had suddenly drained from her body.
Gu Yan hurriedly caught her and tried to take her upstairs to rest.
The bedrooms were on the second floor.
But instead of entering any of them, she continued straight up to the third.
There was a locked room on the third floor.
Gu Yan had never been inside.
He’d always assumed it was simply a storage room filled with miscellaneous belongings.
His grandmother tremblingly reached into her pocket and took out a key she always carried with her.
She turned it twice in the lock and slowly opened the door.
Gu Yan followed quietly behind her.
But the moment the door opened, he stopped dead in his tracks.
The walls were covered in framed photographs.
And every single one of them featured the same smiling woman.
Gu Yan recognized her immediately.
It was Zhao Qingtong, the original owner’s mother.
Some of the photographs were very old.
In them, Zhao Qingtong was still a young girl, wearing her school uniform.
She looked innocent, graceful, and effortlessly beautiful.
Others were candid photographs taken during her travels.
She hadn’t deliberately posed for the camera, yet every expression, every fleeting smile, seemed to possess a beauty all its own.
There was even a photograph of her wearing playful braided pigtails, a small white flower tucked beside her ear.
In her arms, she held the original owner, who had only recently been born.
She cradled the baby close, smiling gently at the camera.
Zhao Qingtong in her teenage years.
Zhao Qingtong in her twenties…
Radiant.
Beautiful.
Full of life.
It seemed as though every lovely word in the world could be used to describe this woman.
Not a single photograph was repeated.
The only thing they shared was how immaculately clean they were.
One glance was enough to tell that someone came here often, carefully cleaning and tending to every photograph.
The moment Gu Yan’s grandmother saw the photographs of her daughter, the grief she’d been struggling to contain finally broke free.
Clutching one of the picture frames for support, she burst into heart-wrenching sobs, cursing Gu Chengjing over and over for being utterly devoid of humanity.
Seeing her like this made Gu Yan’s heart ache.
Yet he had no idea where to begin comforting her.
All he could do was bend down and gently pat her frail back.
“You still have me. I’ll always be here with you…”
“M-My mother… She wouldn’t want to see you both suffering like this, either.”
Gu Yan stumbled slightly over the word mother.
In his previous life, his mother had died from unexpected, severe bleeding while giving birth to him.
He had never seen what she looked like.
And because she hadn’t liked having her photograph taken, he didn’t even have a picture to hold on to when he missed her.
To him, the word Mom had always felt painfully unfamiliar.
He didn’t have any personal attachment to Zhao Qingtong, either.
But somewhere along the way, he had come to regard these two elderly people as his own family.
Now, watching his grandmother’s frail body bend beneath the weight of her grief, tears streaming down her face, Gu Yan felt his own nose sting.
It was almost as though, in this world, he had finally discovered what a mother was supposed to look like.
And the emptiness buried deep within his heart, a hollow space he had carried for as long as he could remember, was unexpectedly beginning to fill, little by little.
Gu Yan gently traced his fingertips across the woman’s face in the photograph.
Perhaps my mother looked something like this, too.
Just then, three soft knocks sounded at the door.
Yi Heng stood in the doorway, holding an exquisitely crafted box.
Realizing that she’d lost her composure, Gu Yan’s grandmother hurriedly wiped the tears from her cheeks.
The secrets she’d kept within this room had now been laid bare before Yi Heng, leaving her somewhat embarrassed.
“Xiao Heng, I’m sorry you had to see me like this.”
“No. I’m the one who entered without permission. I apologize.”
Yi Heng’s gaze swept across the photographs covering the walls before finally settling on Gu Yan’s slightly reddened eyes.
Gu Yan turned his head and discreetly rubbed the corners of his eyes against his shirt.
He was a rather strange person, even by his own standards.
Sometimes, his heart could be as hard as iron.
At other times, the emotions of those around him could move him with surprising ease.
How embarrassing…
Gu Yan cleared his throat and asked what Yi Heng was holding.
Yi Heng opened the box.
It was something he’d prepared well in advance, and he’d just asked his driver to bring it over.
A fresh, natural fragrance of daisies drifted gently into the room.
It carried the warmth of October sunshine, mingled with the faint, earthy sweetness of soil.
“This is…”
Gu Yan’s grandmother’s eyes widened slightly.
Almost without realizing it, she began walking slowly toward Yi Heng.
The diffuser Gu Chengjing had brought them had merely smelled somewhat similar to Zhao Qingtong’s pheromones.
But the fragrance coming from Yi Heng’s box was the true, unmistakable scent of daisies.
“Xiao Tong…”
His grandmother whispered the name, her voice barely audible.
With trembling hands, she accepted the new diffuser.
Gu Yan gently nudged Yi Heng’s arm and asked in a low voice,
“When did you prepare this? How come I didn’t know?”
“The day after you discovered that Gu Chengjing had poisoned the diffuser.”
Gu Yan was left speechless.
Yi Heng had anticipated this moment so far in advance.
Not only had he considered what might happen today, but he’d also gone to the trouble of finding a replacement.
Spring was just around the corner.
And the anniversary of Zhao Qingtong’s death was approaching.
Life was endlessly unpredictable.
Those tiny daisies could bloom stubbornly even in the bleak winds of autumn.
And yet, the woman whose scent they carried had departed this world forever in spring, the very season when all things were meant to come back to life.
But perhaps it was precisely because life held so many things that could never turn out as one wished, so many losses that left wounds too deep to forget, that those memories deserved to be cherished all the more.
“Thank you,” Gu Yan said softly.
Gu Chengjing was taken away by the police.
Once the two elderly people understood how much thought and care Yi Heng had put into his gift, they were deeply moved.
They treasured the diffuser like two children who had just received a precious present and eagerly wanted the young couple to stay for lunch.
Unfortunately, the real drama had only just begun.
They had reached the crucial moment of closing the net, and neither Gu Yan nor Yi Heng could afford to waste any time.
They could only promise to make up for the missed lunch another day.
There were still numerous charges against Gu Chengjing that had yet to be established.
While he remained in detention, they needed to investigate his past as thoroughly and quickly as possible.
Shen Yan, who had been detained earlier, still had one remaining opportunity to receive a visitor.
That visit had originally been reserved for Gu Chengjing.
But now that Gu Chengjing had been detained as well, Gu Yan decided to use the opportunity himself.
He intended to personally deliver this piece of “good news” to Shen Yan.
Shen Yan had grown considerably more haggard.
In less than half a month, she seemed to have aged several years.
There was no trace left of the arrogant, domineering woman who had once been so accustomed to ordering everyone around.
The moment Shen Yan learned that Gu Chengjing had also been arrested, she burst into wild, almost hysterical laughter, clapping her hands in delight.
“Karma! That’s karma!”
As Gu Yan was about to leave, Shen Yan suddenly sprang to her feet and grabbed the iron bars, calling after him with desperate urgency.
“How has Xingxing been lately? Is he doing all right? If you have time, could you please go and check on him for me?”
Gu Yan stopped.
The image of Gu Xingxing crouching on the floor, clutching his head and sobbing uncontrollably during their last encounter, flashed through his mind.
“I don’t know.”
Shen Yan frantically shook the bars.
“Wait! Gu Yan, don’t go!”
“Tell me how Xingxing is doing! Is he getting enough to eat? Does he have warm clothes? Where is he living now? Gu Yan!”
Gu Yan had no answers to any of those questions.
But Shen Yan assumed he was deliberately withholding information about her son.
She immediately erupted into a torrent of abuse.
Trapped behind the iron bars, she could only yearn desperately for the world beyond them, her anxiety gnawing at her until she felt as though she might lose her mind.
After leaving the police station, Gu Yan reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette.
It had been a long time since he’d last smoked.
Only recently, with so many problems demanding his attention, had he picked up the habit again.
The first drag felt unfamiliar, catching in his throat and making him cough several times.
He spent the length of one cigarette sorting through the tangled thoughts in his mind.
Then he crushed the cigarette butt beneath his shoe, got into a car, and headed toward Gu Xingxing’s rented apartment.
The place was small and tucked deep inside a maze of narrow alleyways.
Finding it required navigating one winding turn after another.
Several low-rise buildings were crammed together, most of them old structures that had stood there for decades.
Occasionally, one or two buildings appeared to have been repainted recently.
Unfortunately, whoever had done the painting hadn’t been particularly skilled.
The colors were darker in some places and lighter in others, resembling mismatched patches sewn onto an old piece of clothing.
Gu Yan didn’t go upstairs.
Instead, he approached an elderly man sitting in a rocking chair downstairs and asked a few questions.
The man was well past sixty and spoke with an unfamiliar regional accent.
“Oh, you mean that young fellow who just moved in? He’s got quite a temper. Not much in the way of manners, either. Doesn’t even bother greeting me when he sees me.”
“He’s so young, yet he’s already quit school. I could tell at a glance that he’s the restless, impatient sort.”
“I think he’s been looking for work lately. If you want to see him, you’ll have to wait until this evening.”
Gu Yan thanked the old man.
He had absolutely no desire to see Gu Xingxing.
He’d only come to check on him on Shen Yan’s behalf.
He might as well consider it a small act of kindness, a way of accumulating a little good karma.
Perhaps then everything Yi Heng was planning next would go smoothly.
What Gu Yan didn’t know was that Gu Xingxing had actually gone to visit Du Ting.
And the experience had frightened him out of his wits.
There were so many murderers and robbers locked up together, their cold, sinister eyes following his every movement.
One visit had been enough to convince him that he never wanted to set foot in that place again for the rest of his life.
A crooked sapling had, quite literally, been frightened into growing straight.
After returning home, Gu Xingxing began looking for work.
He no longer dared entertain foolish schemes or indulge in improper thoughts.
The possibility that he might someday become one of the prisoners behind those bars terrified him.
Unfortunately, adjusting from luxury to poverty was easier said than done.
At work, Gu Xingxing was often lazy and disliked dirty or physically demanding tasks.
As a result, his employers frequently scolded him.
He could earn enough to get by, but his life was far from comfortable.
None of this particularly concerned Gu Yan, however.
He arranged for someone to pass a message to Shen Yan, then left the cramped, suffocating alley behind.
Meanwhile, several hundred kilometers away, at the Yi family’s ancestral residence…
The door to the underground wine cellar, where the darkness was so complete that one couldn’t see a hand held before one’s face, slowly opened.
A shadowy figure slipped inside without making a sound.
The intruder moved with extreme caution, every footstep utterly silent.
They seemed intimately familiar with the cellar.
Without even turning on a light, they made their way straight to its deepest corner.
The figure reached out and felt along the wall.
Among countless identical bricks, a finger pressed a concealed switch.
The wall shuddered.
Then, with a faint movement, its two sides slid apart, sending a thin layer of dust drifting to the floor.
Hidden behind it was a narrow secret compartment.
The intruder quickly entered a password and opened the box concealed inside.
A thick stack of documents lay neatly arranged within.
The shadowy figure carefully tucked the papers inside their clothing and was just about to leave when—
Click!
The cellar’s overhead lights suddenly blazed to life.
Yi Heng stood in the doorway, dressed in a long overcoat.
His voice rang out, cold and commanding.
“Put it down.”
Leave a Reply