Chapter 5
Chapter 5
I returned to Lu Ze’s side.
We had an unspoken understanding: he offered no explanations, and I asked no questions.
But I could tell that Lu Ze was doing noticeably better with me around.
In front of Gu Xurou and the caregivers she’d hired, he had to pretend to be a normal person, listening to normal music and watching normal movies.
But with me, Lu Ze could be completely himself.
He used the projector to play videos he’d bought off the dark web with US dollars.
They were filled with all manner of gruesome, horrifying scenes, twisted beyond belief.
Even the most experienced doctors were too frightened to go near him.
I was the only one who would sit beside him with a bag of chips and watch along.
We spent countless nights that way. Somewhere amid that quiet, constant companionship, Lu Ze gradually seemed to grow closer to me.
He would steal chips from my bag.
He would ask for my opinion when choosing what to watch.
And afterward, he would discuss the videos with me.
Then, on one perfectly ordinary night, Lu Ze suddenly said, “These are all boring. Want to watch one where I’m the star?”
He looked at me like a child eager to show off his favorite toy.
Completely uninterested, I kept hold of the remote. “You, the star? Give me a break… Here, I want to watch this one. The Chainsaw Freak.”
Lu Ze snatched the remote from me.
“Just wait,” he said.
He took a tiny USB drive from the jade pendant hanging over his chest and plugged it into the computer.
The next second, Jiang Yan’s face appeared on the enormous projection screen.
So that was what happened.
I stared blankly at the screen.
No wonder.
No wonder Jiang Yan, a professionally trained police officer, had died at the hands of a spoiled rich kid like Lu Ze.
It wasn’t just because Lu Ze had a knife. He’d also had more than a dozen men helping him.
And no wonder there hadn’t been a single intact bone left in Jiang Yan’s body when he died.
It hadn’t merely been uncontrolled violence. It had been torture and murder for pleasure.
Jiang Yan hadn’t died after being stabbed all those times.
He lay on the ground, clutching a box in his blood-soaked hand.
One of Lu Ze’s men picked it up and handed it to him.
Lu Ze opened the lid. Nestled against the soft velvet was a diamond ring.
The setting had been specially commissioned in the shape of a rose.
Roses were my favorite flowers. Jiang Yan had planted so many of them in the garden for me.
Lu Ze held the ring up to the camera and sneered.
“I thought it was some kind of treasure. Turns out it’s a piece of trash that isn’t even one carat.”
Jiang Yan laboriously reached toward Lu Ze.
He had no strength left. It was already a miracle that he was still conscious after losing so much blood.
Yet he struggled to stretch out his hand, reaching for that tiny rose.
“You want it? Come and get it.”
Lu Ze grinned roguishly and tossed the ring into the distance.
The video’s final image was of Jiang Yan dragging his shattered body inch by inch toward the ring.
A long trail of blood snaked across the floor behind him.
So that was what happened.
Jiang Yan.
So this was the final road you took to reach me.