Chapter 15

Chapter 15

I vaulted over the guardrail and tore after him.

Wu Si was carrying a jar in his arms, so he couldn’t run very fast. Wild Ditch was overgrown with weeds, and he hadn’t gotten far before he tripped and went sprawling.

I launched myself forward and pinned him under me.

At over six feet three and built like a tank, I nearly crushed the breath right out of Wu Si.

He lay facedown on the ground for a long while, unable to recover.

I grabbed him by the collar, hauled him up, and snarled, “Talk! Was it you? What did you do to Uncle Cheng?”

Wu Si looked at me, barely breathing. After a long moment, he actually laughed.

I slammed my fist into his face with a crack, shattering half the teeth in his mouth.

“You ungrateful bastard! Uncle Cheng and I helped you so much back then. We would’ve been better off helping a dog!”

“Helped me? Bullshit…”

Wu Si spoke in broken, halting gasps. “What are you pretending to be good people for? You clearly left him to die, and now you still want to act like heroes?”

“My brother was right there. He was so close. All you had to do was reach out, and he would’ve been saved-”

“That’s a load of crap!”

I slapped him across the face. “You hid behind everyone else like a spineless turtle the whole time. The second your brother went missing, all you knew how to do was cry and beg other people to help!”

“You didn’t trust this person, didn’t trust that person-so why didn’t you go look for him yourself?!”

Wu Si stared at me with those hollow eye sockets, his lips twitching nonstop. He was still trying to find some excuse, still trying to pin the blame on someone else.

I cut him off cold. “You’re nothing but a coward. You were a gutless little shit from the time you were a kid!”

“If it weren’t for you, your brother never would’ve come all the way to the Northeast to work in the dead of winter!”

“I’m telling you right now, the ones who left your brother to die weren’t us. It was you!”

“You know better than anyone why your brother got out of the truck!”

“His death was all because of you. You’re the one who made him get out. You were afraid to die, so you begged him to get out-”

“No!”

My words finally struck Wu Si right in the heart, confirming the guess I’d had back then.

Although Wu Da had seemed arrogant and impulsive, he had been a long-haul trucker for years.

On a snowy day like that, when it was so easy to lose your way, he never would have gotten out of the truck unless he had no other choice.

For example, to get help for his own younger brother, who could no longer endure the bitter cold…

Wu Si thrashed under my hands, kicking and flailing. “It wasn’t me! It was you! You killed my brother! You did it!”

“It was you. You’re the one who killed your brother. Your brother died because of you!”

“When your brother was freezing to death, you were curled up in the cab. You even pretended you couldn’t hear him calling for help!”

I clutched Wu Si’s collar in both hands and drove him into a corner with every word.

He broke down, sobbing and screaming. Blood from his shattered teeth filled his mouth, and he could no longer hold on to the jar in his arms. It rolled onto the ground.

The lid popped open when it hit the dirt, and I immediately saw, buried among the deathly pale ashes, a pitch-black object that looked like a badge.