The Long Night - Chapter 47

It was raining.

Tang Shaocheng frowned, and his speed unconsciously increased. The car sped like a ghost in the dark, rainy night. Cold rain kept hitting the windshield. The wipers swayed from side to side, clearing a blurry patch of water.

He held the steering wheel with one hand, his jawline taut. His mind was in a mess, and he couldn’t make sense of the sudden change.

How could the plane crash out of nowhere? Was it an accident, or was it man-made… Was it Qin Li? Would Qin Li really be so heartless as to kill his own son?

Tang Shaocheng couldn’t figure out if this was a real coincidence or if someone had an ulterior motive. He just stared at the road ahead and didn’t notice the rearview mirror. Danger was approaching.

“Bang!”

A black SUV suddenly came out from behind. It had been silently keeping its distance behind him. Now, it appeared without warning and suddenly accelerated. Its front hit the back of his car hard.

The huge impact caused the car to instantly lose control and skid. The tires made a sharp screeching sound on the wet road. Tang Shaocheng almost hit the steering wheel. He gripped the steering wheel and used all his strength to barely stabilize the car and avoid hitting the guardrail.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the SUV accelerating and rushing toward him again. A face covered with a black cloth flashed in the car window. There seemed to be a metal object in his hand, which emitted a cold light in the rainy night.

The car hadn’t reached the city yet. Tang Shaocheng quickly looked around. There was an abandoned factory not far away, like a silent sea monster in the dark, rainy night. He quickly pushed the car door open and ran into the cold rain. Almost at the moment he jumped out, there was a muffled sound. The window of the driver’s seat he had just been in cracked in response. It was a bullet.

His shirt was soaked, clinging tightly to his body. The tense muscle lines from his chest to his abdomen could be seen with every breath. Behind him were messy footsteps and fierce curses, as well as the sound of tires rolling over stagnant water, all in hot pursuit.

“There he is!”

Tang Shaocheng ran wildly in the downpour. He slammed open a rusty iron door and rushed into an abandoned office building of a factory that was waiting to be demolished. It was pitch black inside, filled with the smell of dust and mold.

The light on his phone screen came on. The signal bars were empty. He hovered over “Emergency Call” but hesitated, then locked the screen.

Footsteps and flashlight beams were already approaching from the door. He could vaguely hear the other people whispering to each other.

Tang Shaocheng narrowed his eyes and saw a broken window at the end of the corridor. Outside the window was the low roof of an ancillary building. If he stayed here, he would be found sooner or later. He might as well take a gamble.

He made up his mind and quickly got up. He protected his head and face with his arm and jumped out of the broken window.

The window frame was very rusty, and the sound of metal friction was harsh. He didn’t land steadily. Gravel and glass shards left bloody marks, but Tang Shaocheng didn’t care about the pain. He got up and continued to run wildly.

“He jumped out the window! Over there, catch him!”

A roar came from above. Several flashlight beams immediately locked onto his position.

Just then, a dazzling car light, like a sharp sword, cut through the rainy night. A gray car did a very tricky and beautiful drift and stopped precisely in front of him. The wheels splashed a large amount of water.

Zhou Yu-nan lowered the car window and yelled hoarsely, “Get in the car!”

Tang Shaocheng pulled the car door open and threw himself into the passenger seat. Zhou Yu-nan stomped on the gas pedal. The car, like an arrow released from a bowstring, left behind a few futile curses and sounds of pursuit.

“Are you okay?”

Zhou Yu-nan held the steering wheel, and some rain had splashed on his face. “Li Yi-yun was afraid something would happen to you, so he told me to keep an eye on you recently. I kept calling your phone, but there was no signal. But the car had a GPS, so I followed it all the way here.”

“I’m fine. I’m glad I have you, but it was too dangerous for you to come alone.”

Tang Shaocheng was still breathing heavily, and his heart was still beating wildly. His wet black hair was stuck to his forehead. Water droplets slid down the side of his face, rolled over his Adam’s apple, and disappeared into his soaked collar.

He had just calmed down, but a strong sense of something being wrong quickly replaced the feeling of having escaped.

It was too easy.

The other party had set up a car crash and an ambush to force him into the abandoned building… But they let him get picked up by Zhou Yu-nan so easily? The people who could work for Qin Li should be desperados. They shouldn’t make such a low-level mistake.

Those people were in a hurry to chase him, but they were always half a step behind, as if they were deliberately pushing him into an open space.

“If Qin Li really wanted to do something to me, how could you save me so easily?”

Zhou Yu-nan glanced at him and joked to try to make him relax. “What, gender discrimination? I’m not that bad, you know.”

Tang Shaocheng still frowned, trying to sort out the connections of everything in a short amount of time.

“Don’t be so nervous.” Zhou Yu-nan freed one hand and patted his shoulder. “Qin Li is just a businessman after all. At most, he’ll just scare you like that. He’s not the underworld. He can’t really take someone’s life, can he?”

Tang Shaocheng was still thinking quickly about everything he had learned over the years: the worker who committed suicide at the construction site, the man with the green snake tattoo on his calf who mysteriously disappeared. He remembered the photo of that person. None of the people he just saw had a similar build.

Wang Zhong-feng. Tang Shaocheng remembered that name. Where would he be?

It was almost midnight. This area was a remote suburb, so there were no people or cars on the road, and the shops were all closed.

It hadn’t snowed much this winter, and the roads were clean. Valentine’s Day was approaching, and the shops on the street had all changed to a pink decor style. Hearts and balloons were pasted on the windows, and there were even roses on the doorknobs.

Zhou Yu-nan turned the steering wheel and looked at the dazzling holiday decorations outside the car window. “He’s going to break up all the couples in the world to bury his son.”

Break up all the couples in the world… Tang Shaocheng was slightly stunned. In a flash of lightning, a cold thought struck his brain.

Those people let him go unless their goal wasn’t him at all.

He suddenly realized something. A cold sweat instantly soaked his back, colder than the rain.

The treacherous and cunning old fox. The thing he liked to do most in the business world was to repay others in their own coin. What he did to Qin Li was to stall for time—

As this thought hit him, Tang Shaocheng suddenly sat up straight from the passenger seat. “Yan Liao!”

The phone screen was cracked. Some rain had gotten into the charging port, and the connection was bad. He could only use it by pressing on it very hard.

He called Yan Liao, but there was no answer. Again and again, there was no answer.

Zhou Yu-nan sped up. The car left the suburban road and turned into a closer alley. “Do you have a neighbor’s number? Ask them to go over and check on him? Isn’t he fine at home? The community has an anti-theft system and security guards now. He’ll be fine.”

Tang Shaocheng held his phone as if he were a person on a cliff grabbing a lifesaver. He suddenly remembered that when Qin Li made a phone call, the voice from the receiver was slightly louder. He heard the other side say, “Okay, Mr. Qin,” in a smooth and practiced tone as if they had said it countless times before.

He had felt it was familiar at the time, but he hadn’t paid any special attention to the voice.

Tang Shaocheng suddenly remembered that he wasn’t the only one who knew that Qin Yun-qi and Yu Xing were eloping. Yu Xing had whispered, “I left a suitcase at the hotel.” And Qin Yun-qi had said, “Have your assistant send it over.”

Besides the three of them, there was a fourth person who knew the exact time of Qin Yun-qi and Yu Xing’s departure, but they had remained silent the whole time, not asking where they were going or what they were doing.

Tang Shaocheng gave up on calling Yan Liao and quickly dialed another number.

Lu Xiao had just come out of the club. He was carrying his boxing gloves on his shoulder and was only wearing a black vest, but he didn’t feel cold. He put the phone to his ear and heard Tang Shaocheng’s urgent voice. “Something’s happened to Yan Liao. Someone is trying to harm him.”

“What? How could that be…”

“I suspect it’s Ge Dong-lin.”

Lu Xiao stopped abruptly, thinking he had misheard. He subconsciously retorted, “That’s impossible!”

“I don’t have time to explain to you. Go find Ge Dong-lin now. He must know where Yan Liao is—”

Before Tang Shaocheng could finish, he suddenly felt a strong white light in front of him. He was immediately dizzy. Zhou Yu-nan honked the horn abruptly and quickly turned the steering wheel, trying to avoid it, but there was no way to dodge it.

The last thing Tang Shaocheng heard was Zhou Yu-nan shouting, “Watch out!”

A giant dump truck, as if it had rushed out of hell, sped out of a side road at full speed without warning. Like a silent steel monster, it crashed completely and thoroughly into the side of their car.

In an instant, there was only a “bang” on the empty road. The car was sent flying, rolling down the slope.

The world instantly lost its sound, leaving only the terrifying roar of metal being frantically torn, squeezed, and twisted. The airbag suddenly exploded. The huge impact smashed Tang Shaocheng’s consciousness into endless darkness.

The first thing he thought of in the darkness was Qin Li’s inscrutable face and the sentence he didn’t understand at the time: “It wasn’t me who chose you; it was the people around you who chose you.”

The pain became long and numb. Waves of dizziness seemed to come from deep within his body. He felt like he was lying on a bumpy deck. Many distant memories flashed through his mind like a slideshow. Both his past and present lives turned into messy fragments, thrown toward the depths of his consciousness.

The scenes in his memory were like old photographs with yellowing edges, hazy and blurry. He thought of his birthday last September. Yan Liao had turned off the lights and walked out with a cake. There were twenty-four candles on it.

“You can make a birthday wish again. Did last year’s wish come true?”

The flickering candlelight reflected Yan Liao’s delicate features. He nodded contentedly in the center of the warm candlelight. Yan Liao brought the cake closer and asked with a smile, “Have you thought of your wish for today?”

He said, “It’s the same as last year. I hope you’re safe and healthy.”

“Why don’t you say things like ‘I hope we’ll be together forever’ or ‘I’ll always love you’?” Yan Liao asked him on purpose. “What will you do if I’m safe and healthy but I cheat on you?”

He pinched Yan Liao’s face and didn’t respond to the joke.

Now he realized that he should have said it back then. He should have said it for him to hear. No matter what, no matter if you’ll be with me forever, I hope you’re safe and healthy.

He thought that when he was with Yan Liao, he always felt very relaxed, like sitting in the shade of a tree in a park on a crisp autumn day, with a gentle breeze blowing through his hair. Occasionally, they would argue, but Yan Liao would always be the one to make up first and would say proudly, “I’m only giving in because I’m kind.”

He thought of the years they were in college. He didn’t have many memories of college life. He was either in the library or going back and forth to the law firm every day. He hadn’t been to many places on campus until he graduated.

But wherever he went, Yan Liao was there. No matter where he was, he was never alone. There was always someone by his side. It was like walking on a dark road. Even if there were no lights, he could look up and see the moon.

Yan Liao, who descended to his side like the moon.

He thought of a New Year’s Eve when a student council event went on very late. It was snowing heavily outside. As soon as he walked out, he saw Yan Liao stomping his feet in the snow because of the cold. When he saw him, he looked up and smiled with his lips pressed together.

“I kept thinking that I was going to see you soon, so I didn’t feel cold. I left in too much of a hurry and forgot my gloves. Feel my hands. Are they very cold?”

If he didn’t know this person well enough, he would have been fooled. It was clear that he had deliberately not worn gloves, and his hands were cold so he had a good reason to put them in his pockets.

The person who always liked to say “I’m a puppy if I’m lying” had said such lies countless times, but it only made Tang Shaocheng think he was so cute. He was so cute. He was willing to pretend not to know and coax the child lovingly, holding Yan Liao’s hand and not letting go the entire way, reminding himself to always love him well.

He thought of the two years they were in a long-distance relationship. The countless text messages and calls on his phone, and the thick pile of plane and train tickets. Yan Liao said that he could eat well, sleep well, and live well, and that he could take good care of himself, but what was the point of that?

On the night before he left Ping City, they lay in the same bed. Yan Liao squeezed into his arms and said in a low voice with a faint nasal sound, “If I can’t be by your side, it’s the same no matter where I am. I might as well just exile myself to the worst place.”

“From the moment you shaped me into a different person, from the moment I deviated from the life path I had chosen, I became completely and utterly yours alone.”

At that time, Tang Shaocheng still wanted to correct Yan Liao’s extreme ideas. He knew that Yan Liao’s purpose for doing this was only out of love for him, like a kitten racking its brains to express its love by catching a mouse and putting it next to his pillow.

But in fact, he was the same.

In the vague and distant memories of his previous life, in the year he was left alone, the year the whole world was left with only him. He also felt, “If I can’t be by your side, it’s the same no matter where I am.”

In the last year of his previous life, for a period of time, his hand was wrapped in gauze. Yan Liao lay in bed, turned his neck, and kept his eyes on his hand. He said nonchalantly, “I got a cut.”

And Yan Liao’s words of concern were even harsh. “Take good care of yourself. If you get injured, there will be two disabled people in the house.”

It was a late summer night after the accident. The soundproofing in the kitchen was very good. He had washed the glass cups and lined them up neatly. He suddenly broke one of them and gripped the shards tighter and tighter.

He was just thinking about how much pain Yan Liao must have been in at that time, but even if he could simulate the pain, the more tormenting fear and despair could never be truly experienced.

After Yan Liao woke up in the intensive care unit, he asked him, “Why didn’t you answer the phone? I was waiting.”

Later, Tang Shaocheng would often dream that his phone was ringing continuously. In a dark room, his body seemed to be suspended over an abyss by a steel wire. He waited for sixty seconds and then another sixty seconds, but no one ever answered.

He thought of his second chance at life. During the last part of his senior year of high school, Yan Liao borrowed his “Sword of the White Horse,” and a few days later, he returned it. He wasn’t in the mood to read the novel, but because Yan Liao had flipped through the book, he also wanted to read it page by page.

There was a folded piece of paper inside the book. At first, he thought it was a love letter, but when he read it, he found that it was a page from Yan Liao’s diary that he had accidentally left inside.

“Please like me, just like I like you. Please be with me, be with me always, be with me forever, be with me every day from now on. Please, please, please, is that okay?”

He had talked to Yan Liao about this in the winter one year and asked with a smile, “Do you really like me that much?”

Yan Liao clung to his back like a sloth. “Of course. I like you the most.”

…

The all-encompassing pain.

Cold air hit him in the face. The strong smell of gasoline and burning fumes stung his nostrils.

Tang Shaocheng struggled to open his eyes. His vision was a blurry red. He found himself trapped in the bottom of the deformed car. Cold rain mixed with warm liquid flowed down his forehead.

The dump truck had long disappeared without a trace, just as it had appeared.

“Tang Shaocheng! Don’t sleep! Don’t sleep! Wake up!”

Zhou Yu-nan’s voice was filled with a rare panic and hoarseness. Her face and neck were covered in dust, and there was a faint red bloodstain on her forehead. She was desperately trying to pull the deformed car door open, trying to drag Tang Shaocheng out from under the crushed car.

Zhou Yu-nan gritted her teeth and pulled with all her strength. Tang Shaocheng felt a dull pain, but he was finally dragged out of the wreckage.

He wanted to speak, but he could only make broken gasps. He collapsed on the cold, wet ground, and the rain washed over his face.

“It’s going to explode! Hurry!”

Zhou Yu-nan propped him up and stumbled, desperately trying to get away from the wrecked car that was still leaking oil.

They had just stumbled less than ten meters away when a huge explosion “boomed” behind them. A hot wave of air mixed with debris rushed at them, completely engulfing their figures in the chaos of flames and downpour.