Chapter 115
Chapter 115
By now, we had reached the door of an elevator.
“This elevator goes straight to that Basement, but it requires a fingerprint to unlock.”
“Whose fingerprint…” I asked.
Anyone capable of entering the Basement had to be someone Du Ruhai trusted implicitly, or perhaps only he himself could enter.
Old Zhao Seven pulled out a small card and said, “I have Du Ruhai’s fingerprint on this, but the verification method has likely been changed.”
As he spoke, Old Zhao Seven tried to use the fingerprint on the card for verification, but the display showed a failure.
“What do we do now…”
“Use his.”
Old Zhao Seven grabbed the Impostor’s finger, intending to press it against the scanner, but the Impostor resisted with all his might.
“Kill me if you have the guts! I’ll never betray President Du!” He was remarkably loyal.
Old Zhao Seven said with a smile, “You really are a good dog. Don’t push me; I don’t want to scare the youngster here.”
The Impostor had already been severely beaten once, yet he still dared to provoke him. “Come on then! See if I’ll ever bow to you, you old fossil!”
Old Zhao Seven didn’t say another word. He suddenly pulled out a knife, grabbed the Impostor’s thumb, and sliced it off in one swift motion.
I didn’t even have time to react to what he was doing before the finger was already gone. I gasped in horror.
The Impostor immediately began to scream in agony.
Ignoring him, Old Zhao Seven used the severed finger to open the elevator.
“I don’t consider anyone with that tattoo to be human. Get in, you good dog.”
Old Zhao Seven kicked him, sending him tumbling into the elevator.
The elevator descended straight to the bottom floor-the Basement.
When the doors opened, the scene before me left me utterly stunned.
I saw Lv Zhengxian!
The real, actual Lv Zhengxian!
Of course, it was only his physical body. His eyes were open, and he sat in a wheelchair as if he were the master of this Basement, welcoming our arrival.
“He…” I was too terrified to speak.
Old Zhao Seven frowned and said, “He is Du Ruhai now. The soul inside that body is the real Du Ruhai. He’s essentially a vegetable.”
I held onto the Impostor for Old Zhao Seven as we stepped out of the elevator, not daring to approach for a moment.
The Basement was massive, filled with various pieces of medical equipment, likely set up to sustain this “Lv Zhengxian’s” life.
This “Lv Zhengxian” sat in the wheelchair with an IV drip attached, though I couldn’t tell if it was nutrient solution or something else.
My scalp crawled at the sight. The man sitting in that wheelchair was the true boss of the Weihai Group, yet he had been reduced to a vegetable while his soul resided in another’s body.
His eyes were open, and he could even blink, which meant his consciousness was clear. He had to watch helplessly as another man replaced him, enjoying everything that belonged to him, while he was forced to live in this Basement, sitting in a wheelchair every day like a puppet.
And to make matters worse, that man wouldn’t even let him die.
I couldn’t imagine the agony he endured every single day.
At that moment, he began blinking his eyes frantically at us.
But neither Old Zhao Seven nor I could understand what he was trying to convey.
“What is he trying to say…”
“Maybe he’s asking us to kill him.”
Old Zhao Seven sighed. “How tragic. For this man, living is just pure suffering.”
With that, we began walking toward him.
But when we reached the center of the Basement, a thunderous crash suddenly echoed from above.
Old Zhao Seven and I instinctively looked up at the ceiling, and our expressions shifted instantly to pure horror.
A massive iron cage was hurtling down toward us.
It happened in less than a second. Fortunately, Old Zhao Seven was quick-witted and fast-acting; he yanked me aside just in time so the edge of the iron cage didn’t crush me.
I was lucky, but the Impostor wasn’t. He was struck head-on by the edge of the iron cage; his head was split in two and his internal organs were scattered across the floor. He died instantly.
While Old Zhao Seven and I weren’t hit, we were trapped inside the cage.
I froze in place, unable to recover for a long time. Seeing the gruesome state of the Impostor, I collapsed onto the floor.
“It’s over…”
Old Zhao Seven’s face was also ashen. “We’ve been played. How are we supposed to get out of this?”
I looked at him. “The man was blinking at us to tell us not to come over. How did you interpret that?”
Old Zhao Seven replied crossly, “Damn it, don’t be a Monday morning quarterback. He wasn’t speaking, so how was I supposed to know what he wanted to express? I was trying to look out for him!”
As we were talking, the sound of a door opening suddenly came from a room in the Basement.
A second later, Du Ruhai walked out.
With a smile on his face as if mocking us, he walked behind “Lv Zhengxian” and pushed the wheelchair toward the iron cage.
At this moment, I didn’t even know what to call these two people anymore; I could only refer to them by their appearances.
Du Ruhai cupped “Lv Zhengxian’s” face from behind, forcing him to look at us.
“President Du, we have guests today. They’ve added a bit of fun to your otherwise dull life. Are you happy?”
Two lines of tears suddenly rolled down the face of the man sitting in the wheelchair. This was perhaps his only form of freedom.
I had finally witnessed the full extent of this man’s perversion. In every word and action, there wasn’t a single trace of anything resembling a normal human being.
“Do you truly have no humanity at all?”
Old Zhao Seven stared coldly at Du Ruhai, completely baffled.
He probably couldn’t understand how someone in this world could be so thoroughly evil.
“Humanity? How do I lack humanity?”
Du Ruhai leaned over the shoulder of the man in the wheelchair and laughed. “When I was six, I got into a fight with a kid from my village because he wouldn’t share his food with me. I took a knife and chopped off his finger. My dad praised me, saying his son was brave and would definitely grow up to be a real man.”
“When I was eight, I stole money from an Old Woman in the village. She cursed at me and told everyone in the village I was a thief.”
“My mom felt sorry for me. She said I was just a child and that the woman should have been more patient. Later, my mom literally cursed that Old Woman to death.”
Du Ruhai narrowed his eyes and looked at Old Zhao Seven. “My parents never said I lacked humanity, so who are you to say it? Tell me then, what is humanity? I’ve lived more than half my life and I still haven’t figured it out.”
Old Zhao Seven remained silent.
I said with disdain, “Lacking humanity means not acting like a human being. You haven’t done a single decent thing since you were born. People like you are born demons.”
“Demons?” Du Ruhai looked at me again and laughed. “Then isn’t your father a demon? Back then, to save you, he ruined seven people. If I’m a demon, then what is he? An angel?”
I was speechless.
I couldn’t deny what my father had done, so I had no way to refute him.
He pointed at me and continued, “Before I met your father, I had never killed anyone. It was your father who used money to bribe me, making me kill my first victim, and then all the way to the seventh. Your father ordered me to kill all seven of them.”
“If you really think I’m a demon, then I am a demon created by your father’s own hands.”
Du Ruhai looked at me mockingly. “You want me dead? Then the first person you should kill isn’t me-it should be your father.”