Chapter 92

Chapter 92

As a nineteen-year-old male college student, Ning Qiuyan was not yet all that mature. He did what countless couples did and used a wallpaper widget to count the days, setting a countdown beneath the clock. Time ticked down second by second, and every time he lit up his phone screen, he could see that the number had grown smaller.

He really did want Guan Heng to come. He wanted it so much that he felt unsettled even during class, at his part-time job, and when he went to driving school. His heart seemed to float in midair, waiting to land together with Guan Heng’s plane.

These days, the Black House was often lit by only a single small lamp. In the deep-blue dusk, Ning Qiuyan was the only figure inside.

Sometimes he would stand on the little balcony and stare off in a daze at the brilliantly lit Sujing Tower. Too lazy to put on a thicker coat, he would stand there in just a sweater. In the early-spring wind, he closed his eyes and imagined himself on the far side of Du Island, where there was nothing at all, only the biting wind blowing straight at him with snowflakes in it.

Sometimes he sat by the hearth, working on assignments on his laptop in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, or biting the end of a pencil as he scribbled and sketched in his notebook.

Life was like the notes he occasionally wrote wrong in that notebook. There would always be unexpected mistakes.

Rong Qi’s family came to the school to handle his suspension procedures. The stated reason was poor health; he would take time off to recuperate and return to campus after he recovered. A few classmates knew that Rong Qi had been close to Peng Kaile, who had died in an accident, and out of concern, they came to Ning Qiuyan to ask about the situation. Little did they know, Ning Qiuyan had only learned of Rong Qi’s leave of absence when the teacher mentioned it in the class group chat.

Ning Qiuyan thought he and Rong Qi might never contact each other again. Unexpectedly, on Tuesday evening, Rong Qi suddenly called and said he wanted to see him.

Lu Qianque was there at the time. He had arrived that afternoon.

The glossy Maybach had a specially customized protective coating, and Lu Qianque had not even worn his cloak or mask. His trip this time was not low-profile. In fact, keeping a low profile would have been difficult, because news that Guan Heng was about to formally appear in Sujing had already spread on its own.

Lu Qianque toured No. 47 Jinghua Road. Ning Qiuyan hoped he could offer some suggestions on the decor, but Lu Qianque only smiled and said, “Suggestions? No, that should be left to Sir. I have no right to comment on your love nest.”

Ning Qiuyan blushed at his words.

What love nest?

“You’re in Sujing now too, so you can come by often.” Ning Qiuyan extended the invitation sincerely. “Gu Yu can come over too when he’s back. This place has everything he likes to play with.”

“If you don’t mind us imposing,” Lu Qianque said, standing in the middle of the living room, which still looked empty despite the cushions laid out. Then he got back to the point. “I think Sir should like this sort of environment. Simplifying things instead of making them complicated-he was never someone who cared much about formality to begin with. Comfort is the essence of life.”

Life.

The word belonging to Ning Qiuyan and Guan Heng touched something in Ning Qiuyan’s heart, giving him a little more longing for the future.

When he took Rong Qi’s call, Ning Qiuyan did not avoid Lu Qianque.

Rong Qi was still staying at the same hotel as before. Even now, he did not know Ning Qiuyan had entered his room, nor did he know that Ning Qiuyan was the one who had gone to the club and carried him out.

The situation was complicated, and Ning Qiuyan thought it was better not to tell him. He had quietly asked Qu Shu to arrange for more people to keep an eye on him, adding it to Rong Qi’s room service under the excuse of “long-stay guest treatment.”

Ning Qiuyan planned to make a trip over. He looked at Lu Qianque, silently asking what he thought.

They had originally planned to leave together for the airport to pick up Guan Heng.

“There’s still plenty of time. Go see your friend,” Lu Qianque said considerately. “I happen to need to visit that club again too. We’ll meet at the airport tonight.”

The remaining traces of Huanle in the club had mostly been cleaned up. This time, Lu Qianque was going to negotiate with the people in charge and make them stop the trade.

Ning Qiuyan nodded. “See you at the airport.”

On the way to the hotel, Ning Qiuyan passed a milk tea shop. He remembered that Rong Qi really liked the milk tea from this place and had even bought it to-go several times to treat him back in the dorm. So he got out of the car early, deliberately waited in line for twenty minutes, and bought Rong Qi a cup.

When he walked out of the milk tea shop, the sky was completely dark. The milk tea was warm in his hand, and Ning Qiuyan thought that this might be the last time he saw Rong Qi.

He took the elevator all the way up. In the hotel room, Rong Qi had already finished packing his luggage.

Rong Qi’s parents were not there, probably having deliberately left the room free so he could say goodbye to his friend.

“I meant to call you yesterday afternoon, but I couldn’t work up the courage.”

Rong Qi scratched his hair. It was clear he had washed it; he looked very clean. Aside from his haggard face and the fact that he had lost a lot of weight, he did not look much different from the bright, refreshing young man he had once been.

Embarrassed, he said, “It felt kind of humiliating.”

After living together day in and day out for several months, Rong Qi knew Ning Qiuyan was smart and perceptive. He had probably more or less guessed that Rong Qi had gotten involved with the same thing as Peng Kaile.

College life had only just begun, and now it was ending here, all because of a personal choice.

The person who had once been so spirited had become a shadow leaving the stage in disgrace. Decades from now, perhaps no one in their class would even remember him.

“It’s okay. I saw it in the class group chat.” Ning Qiuyan handed him the milk tea. “I bought this for you.”

Rong Qi took the milk tea, and his eyes instantly reddened. He opened his mouth, but instead of saying thank you, he said, “…I’ll quit.”

Ning Qiuyan was not his guardian. He did not need Rong Qi’s promise.

The person Rong Qi most needed to make that promise to was himself.

The two of them did not have much to talk about, so they simply stood there for a while. Rong Qi’s stomach was probably uncomfortable, and he could not drink the milk tea. After only taking a small sip, he remembered the matter at hand and brought over a cardboard box.

“My parents went to the dorm today to get my things. These are all for you. They said you weren’t there, and I guessed you were probably living off campus, so I had them bring everything back to the hotel.”
Inside the cardboard box were the computer Rong Qi had bought not long ago, along with headphones, audio equipment, and the like. All of it was more or less semi-professional gear.

One look, and Ning Qiuyan said he couldn’t accept it.

But Rong Qi said, “I can’t use any of it now anyway… My head’s a mess. I can’t think, let alone work on this stuff. It would just be wasted sitting here. I might as well give it to you so it can still be useful.”

Rong Qi looked at Ning Qiuyan, his hands trembling a little unnaturally. “Just think of it as helping me. Helping me do something I like.”

Seeing that Rong Qi had made up his mind, Ning Qiuyan had no choice but to accept. “Okay.”

He had always been bad with words and worse at socializing. Even Rong Qi, the friend he had now, had been the one to take the initiative and approach him first.

“You’ll get better.” Ning Qiuyan tried hard to come up with something comforting to say. “I heard there are government-provided support centers in a lot of places now. Not just for physical help, but psychological help too. When you get back, look into it.”

Rong Qi shook his head and covered his face. “No. This is different.”

Ning Qiuyan’s heart sank heavily. He knew this was different too. The human world did not even seem to have defined what this was yet, so where would help even come from?

Even so, he still hoped Rong Qi would get better.

The room was quiet for a while. Then Rong Qi suddenly turned his face and asked Ning Qiuyan, “Do you believe there are supernatural creatures in the world?”

Ning Qiuyan was stunned by the question. “Huh?”

The lights were bright. Rong Qi’s eyes no longer had their former clarity, and his face was full of exhaustion from long suppression.

Maybe he had said it too many times before and no one had believed him. Maybe, after his nerves had been numbed, even he had begun to doubt himself. The thought had been bottled up in Rong Qi’s heart, and he no longer dared to tell anyone-except his roommate, who was his own age.

In a daze, Rong Qi said, “For example… Vampire. Not like the ones in movies. They drink human blood and eat raw meat, but they’re more like Monster. It’s like they can’t think. Do you know, the thing Peng Kaile and I got hooked on isn’t really some drug. It’s a kind of secretion from those Monster. The police have already taken it for testing. There’s nothing like that on the market at all.”

The disgusting image of Ray’s friend slicing open the corner of the Monster’s mouth and extracting toxin immediately surfaced in Ning Qiuyan’s mind.

Could Rong Qi really have discovered something? Shocked and afraid, he asked, “How do you know that?”

Rong Qi thought he did not believe him.

He had told his parents and the police the same thing, but none of them had believed him. They all thought he had hallucinated after getting high.

“I saw it, but I don’t know if it was real either.” Rong Qi lowered his head and painfully tugged at his hair. “Ning Qiuyan, I think I’m going crazy.”

Ning Qiuyan sat beside Rong Qi, his heart filled with fear and unease. Suppressing his nerves, he asked, “I believe you. Rong Qi, where did you see it?”

Rong Qi turned to look at Ning Qiuyan. His lips moved, and he revealed the scene he had witnessed. “At a club… There was a basement there. Inside were a lot of that kind of Monster, too many to count… Peng Kaile and I took a wrong turn and kept going down. It felt like we went really, really deep. It was a little dark, and there was the smell of blood everywhere.”

Ning Qiuyan was shocked and hurriedly asked, “Was it Lost Club?”

Rong Qi looked bewildered. “How do you know?”

Ning Qiuyan had no time to answer and only pressed on, “What else was there?”

“There was one level where the light was strange. Blue.” Rong Qi said, “Very bright, and very empty. I couldn’t open my eyes.”

Ning Qiuyan was not sure whether that detail had been Rong Qi’s hallucination, so he asked, “Did you tell the police?”

“Yeah.” Rong Qi’s thoughts were chaotic. He did not ask again how Ning Qiuyan knew. He only wiped his face again and sighed. “They said there wasn’t any basement there.”

Holding the cardboard box Rong Qi had given him, Ning Qiuyan walked out of the hotel room, his mind replaying what Rong Qi had just said over and over.

A basement. Monster too numerous to count…

Could it be true?

But Lu Qianque had said the matters there had basically been handled. He had brought several of the Vampires who sold “Huanle” under control, and today he was just going over to wrap things up. Like the police, Lu Qianque did not seem to know there was any basement there where so many Monster were being kept.

Outside the hotel, all the streetlights had come on.

Ning Qiuyan looked out at Sujing’s nightscape, and a thought suddenly flashed through his mind. Could the blue light Rong Qi mentioned have been ultraviolet light?!

Then, could that basement actually exist, instead of being a figment of Rong Qi’s imagination?

Ning Qiuyan immediately set down the cardboard box in his arms and called Lu Qianque.

He called three times in a row, but Lu Qianque did not answer.

The night breeze blew softly. A chill swept over Ning Qiuyan’s back, giving him a very bad premonition.

He immediately called Guan Heng as well, but the automated message said the phone was temporarily unreachable. At this hour, Guan Heng should have just left Du Island and still be on the helicopter. The signal over the sea came and went, so it made sense that the call could not go through for now.

The unease grew stronger and stronger. Ning Qiuyan did not know if he was overthinking it.

He called Qu Shu instead. Qu Shu was just about to come to the hotel to pick him up, and after hearing what he said, she said she would immediately send someone to the club to check.

Just then, at the hotel entrance, a black car slowly pulled up beneath the steps.

The window rolled down, revealing a pale, unfamiliar face.

It was one of the Vampires.

That person looked straight at Ning Qiuyan and asked, “Excuse me, are you Ning Qiuyan?”

Ning Qiuyan had just hung up the phone. Not understanding what was going on, he nodded.

The person got out of the car and handed over a square wooden box. “Please be sure to pass this gift on to Mr. Guan.”

With that, he turned, got back into the car, and left.

The box had no lock, nor any clasp.

Ning Qiuyan opened it. What appeared before his eyes was, shockingly, a severed hand.