The Scum Gong Villain Returns to Work - Chapter 9

Savoring the orange segment handed to him by Yu Sui, Yu Baihua felt the rich juice spread across his palate, leaving behind a bittersweet aftertaste once the sweetness faded.

Looking at Yu Sui’s face, he suddenly felt a sense of unfamiliarity, mingled with the even more ridiculous impulse to jump straight into a fiery pit despite knowing full well what lay ahead. Weren’t the consequences already proven by past precedent, allowing Yu Sui’s repeated probing and boundary-crossing with implicit permission?

What on earth was Yu Sui after? Money, power, or wealth? Yu Baihua could never quite puzzle it out. If this was how Yu Sui acted now, what did their past even signify?

Unless Yu Sui harbored other designs.

He undoubtedly still harbored intentions he knew nothing about.

Yu Sui was the most talented magician he had ever laid eyes on, and magicians excelled above all else at misdirection. Every ounce of gentleness and consideration was merely a tool deployed by Yu Sui to achieve his objectives. Yu Baihua was crystal-clear on this fact.

Then let’s play along with him for a while, Yu Baihua thought. He, too, was desperately curious to discover what on earth could possess the value to make Yu Sui scheme across two separate lifetimes.

The final segment of orange offered by Yu Sui was swallowed down by Yu Baihua. He offered a smile, yet without answering Yu Sui’s question, he summoned a physician to conduct another examination for Yu Sui before pulling the door shut behind him and departing.

Left alone in the expansive luxury hospital suite, Yu Sui clicked his tongue at the departing figure, then reached over to grab a handkerchief and leisurely wipe the juice from his fingers. Yu Sui had always cherished his hands above all else, but he figured that since Yu Baihua had kept vigil here for so long, he likely hadn’t had the spare state of mind to eat anything properly either.

The doctor’s concluding verdict prescribed strict rest and recuperation for Yu Sui. At present, the vast, upscale room contained only Yu Sui making it exceptionally tedious.

Well, strictly speaking, the system 058 was also present. However, since it was being entirely too noisy alternately fretting over how carelessly Yu Sui had managed to get himself injured and catastrophizing about their mission progress Yu Sui had long since chased it off to go sleep inside the system space.

Without needing to exert any mental effort, Yu Sui could easily guess that Yu Baihua had undoubtedly gone off to investigate Tang Jue and unearth whatever secrets he might be hiding. With Yu Baihua’s current resources, digging up a few minor loose ends wasn’t terribly difficult, yet the genuine mastermind lurking deep beneath the shadows behind Tang Jue was deeply concealed, impossible to unmask overnight.

Where would Yu Baihua begin his investigation? Yu Sui mused with casual indifference: he would likely start right at his own rental apartment.

In that case, Yu Baihua would undoubtedly stumble upon plenty of fascinating items.

Pulling a deck of playing cards from out of nowhere, Yu Sui executed a fluid, cascading cut, happily entertaining himself in solitary amusement.

“When a magician doesn’t want you to see a certain object, he will invariably provide you with something else to look at. When you believe an event is happening in the present, it has already taken place.”

Yu Sui’s misdirection had, in truth, commenced long ago.

The lock on the door of Yu Sui’s apartment had been forcefully and violently pried open. Pushing the door wide, the man standing on the threshold respectfully invited Yu Baihua, who stood just behind him, to step inside.

Dressed in a trench coat and wearing black leather gloves, Yu Baihua cut an intensely formidable figure. Stepping into the apartment, he couldn’t quite identify the emotion churning within his chest—this was the place where Yu Sui had lived prior to meeting him, perhaps concealing a version of Yu Sui he had never once witnessed.

The furnishings inside were actually quite minimalist: a dilapidated sofa in the living room fished out from who-knows-what secondhand market, a small refrigerator standing only half-waist-high, and the remaining space littered with magic props scattered haphazardly across the carpet. One could easily picture the sight of Yu Sui standing within this empty space in the living room every single day, practicing his sleight-of-hand.

The bedroom held nothing out of the ordinary either: a bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a mirror simple essentials and indeed, only simple essentials could ever fit inside this cramped space.

Yu Baihua gazed at the bathroom, which the owner had clearly partitioned himself, along with the old-fashioned water heater hanging on the tiled wall had his subordinates not explained its utility to him, he likely never would have deduced the purpose of such a battered, antiquated appliance.

Yu Baihua lowered his gaze. He thought: No wonder Yu Sui was willing to stay by my side; even during the lowest points of my own life, I still resided in the Yu family’s villas.

If you were to claim Yu Baihua remained ignorant of the hardships of ordinary mortal life, he would readily admit it.

Yet in the end, he had suffered his own bitter trials at Yu Sui’s hands was this simply the retribution of Heaven’s impartial justice?

The subordinates accompanying Yu Baihua were somewhat perplexed as well. Whenever they broke into someone else’s residence in the past to gather evidence, they invariably tore through cabinets and dismantled anything in sight, yet Yu Baihua stood frozen here for ages without issuing a single command.

“I’ll handle it myself,” Yu Baihua stated.

He first pulled open Yu Sui’s wardrobe, where the uniform array of identical garments drew a faint, wry smile from him; whether in this life or the last, whenever Yu Sui accompanied him out, he invariably spent vast stretches of time digging out a pair of wearable outfits.

The bedroom drawer was locked and wouldn’t budge. After searching in vain for a key, Yu Baihua ultimately had no choice but to order someone to pry it open.

The contents of the drawer were sparse, featuring only an iron tin. Flipping the tin open, Yu Baihua discovered an old-fashioned lighter nestled inside.

Yu Baihua’s pupils contracted sharply. He remembered this clearly: it was one of the birthday gifts Yu Sui had once given him, and simultaneously the primary source of the raging inferno that consumed everything.

resting beside it was a single artificial rose the most common variety of magic prop, the kind known to children and adults alike. You lit a flame, balled your hand into a fist and held it over the top, and a rose would blossom from the tip of the prop.

Staring at the tin for a prolonged moment, Yu Baihua spotted a sticky note affixed to the inner side of the lid.

The handwriting carried a slightly childish awkwardness, yet failed to conceal the inherent elegance and fluidity of its strokes. The author of those words had written: “Today, I mastered my very first magic trick. I truly adore this wondrous world, and one day in the future, I will undoubtedly become a world-renowned grand magician!”

The offhand declaration uttered by that young boy back then had turned into reality. In Yu Baihua’s memories, Yu Sui had indeed transformed into a world-renowned grand magician, whereupon that very grand magician had handed the lighter he used to conjure his very first rose during childhood over to Yu Baihua as a gift.

Without Yu Sui speaking of it, not a soul would ever have known this history. Perhaps even Yu Sui himself hadn’t anticipated that this lighter would ultimately lead to Yu Baihua perishing within a sea of fire.

“What is this supposed to mean, Yu Sui?” Clenching his grip tightly around the lighter, Yu Baihua exerted a force so extreme that the leather of his gloves compressed to its absolute limit, emitting the faint cracking groan of knuckles grinding together, as though he intended to crush the object directly into his own flesh and blood.

Yu Baihua remembered that night when they stood together upon the observation deck, looking out over the most decadent, extravagant city in the world, backed by the private suite of the Pinnacle Hotel where fortunes were squandered like dust.

That night, Yu Baihua had believed he truly understood Yu Sui: he yearned for wealth and status, neither of which Yu Baihua lacked. Thus, the young master Yu had felt absolute confidence in holding all the winning cards.

Yet right now, Yu Baihua found himself bewildered once more. On that night when even the evening breeze felt intoxicating, the item the world-renowned grand magician Yu Sui had wished to gift him was neither flattering jewelry nor eloquent flattery, but rather a battered piece of junk Yu Baihua considered utterly devoid of genuine thought.

Beneath this weathered lighter, did there actually lurk a tiny trace of genuine sincerity?

Had it not been for his rebirth, had it not been for his desire to investigate Yu Sui, this lighter would have remained forever relegated to the status of worthless junk in Yu Baihua’s mind for Yu Sui had never once intended to speak of it.

Yet even if he remained ignorant, what difference would it have made? Back then, Yu Sui had treated Yu Baihua genuinely well. So well that Yu Baihua believed Yu Sui genuinely cared for him; so well that he felt even if affection wasn’t mutual, he was willing to accept it.

Yet Yu Sui had betrayed him all the same.

Yu Baihua assumed Yu Sui desired loftier power and greater wealth, commodities he possessed in abundance this lifetime which explained why Yu Sui had gone to such elaborate lengths to draw close to him once again.

It was an exceedingly logical deduction, yet this time, Yu Baihua found himself lacking the courage to hold onto that certainty.

Beside the iron tin lay a thick notebook thick not due to an abundance of pages, but because numerous loose items had been tucked between the leaves, swelling the paper outward.

Flipping it open, Yu Baihua found scattered sticky notes plastered everywhere; it appeared Yu Sui genuinely adored recording his life through sticky notes.

The timeline spanned a considerable stretch. The earliest entries seemingly recorded homework assignments from his school days, accompanied by casual written complaints about a teacher running overtime or why homework had to be so profuse.

Flipping page by page, Yu Baihua felt as though he were genuinely watching a flesh-and-blood Yu Sui grow up right before his eyes.

Then, such mundane recordings abruptly ceased.

The remaining slips featured handwriting that grew remarkably scribbled yet significantly more mature. One particular note stood out starkly: it was scrawled entirely with Yu Baihua’s name, repeated over and over.

That entry was likely penned around the time Yu Sui also transmigrated back in time.

The names varied between neat and messy, some written casually while others pressed so hard the ink tore through the paper fibers perhaps whenever the author’s mind drifted elsewhere, he unconsciously jotted down that name by reflex.

A person never writes the name of someone they despise a multitude of times; you wouldn’t even care to record their actual name, preferring instead to assign them a codename.

Allowing someone to repeatedly and willingly fill an entire sheet of paper with another person’s name implied that the emotions woven within were bound to be complex and profound.

Flipping further still, Yu Baihua reached the final sticky note. It no longer served as a casual diary entry for emotional release, but rather a sprawling mind map constructed from dense clusters of character names. Countless connecting lines and arrows extended outward from every single individual, with Yu Baihua positioned dead center at the core. Certain names had black circles drawn around them, while those encircled in red belonged to Tang Jue.

Alongside it, Yu Sui had casually scrawled an annotation:  Yet to be unmasked; handle promptly.

Closing the notebook, Yu Baihua thought to himself that the contents documented herein likely represented the intelligence Yu Sui had painstakingly accumulated bit by bit while lingering by his side. As for the names marked with black circles, he had ceased encountering them after his rebirth in the past life, and this lifetime he had personally wiped them out.

It hadn’t been overly difficult, though not entirely effortless either.

Closing his eyes, Yu Baihua slid the drawer shut and stood frozen in place, lost in a daze. Sunlight streamed inward through the exterior window, illuminating even the floating dust motes in sharp relief. The patches where the light landed shone brightly resembling Yu Sui’s amber eyes.

Pulling the drawer open once more, Yu Baihua retrieved the lighter and took it with him.

Certain matters appeared utterly absurd, yet proved entirely plausible upon reflection.

There had been periods when Yu Sui was perpetually exhausted thinner than he was now, even paler, and consistently impossible to track down. Yu Baihua had assumed he was busy preparing a new touring schedule, yet Yu Sui would occasionally materialize unexpectedly at cocktail parties where Yu Baihua casually tossed away his invitations.

Burning with fury, Yu Baihua would rush over to collar him and demand of Yu Sui: “Why must you attend these low-class banquets and fawn over those people? If you want something, why can’t you just ask me?”

Yu Sui would offer a helpless, resigned smile, extending a fingertip to brush away Yu Baihua’s bangs while his eyes carried that same gentle warmth, reminiscent of winter sunlight.

“You’re a fool, Yu Baihua,” he would murmur, pinching Yu Baihua’s cheek with a smile before speaking softly:

“Never mind, being a fool suits you just fine.”

The greatest magician in the world excelled above all else at misdirection. He deceived not only others, but his own heart as well.

Yu Sui’s misdirection had, in truth, commenced long ago.

Yu Sui’s unacknowledged, unspoken heartbeat had, in truth, commenced long ago.