Chapter 144
Chapter 144
That deathly pale face was reflected in Chu Jingchu’s pupils.
It was too fast. So fast that her mind hadn’t even processed the word “dodge.”
Then a tremendous force slammed into Meng Rui from the side!
It was Wen Lianfeng.
She threw herself forward and kicked Meng Rui in the waist. A jagged shard of glass slid from her sleeve, something she had grabbed while climbing through the window and kept for self-defense. Now it came in handy.
She lunged at Meng Rui and drove her right hand forward.
Shnk.
The glass plunged up through Meng Rui’s jaw and pierced her brain.
Meng Rui’s body went rigid. Tears still seemed to cling to the corners of her eyes on her contorted face as she toppled over.
Wen Lianfeng rose to her feet, her hands covered in blood. Without looking at Meng Rui’s corpse, she turned toward the far end of the corridor.
The man was standing there.
Motionless in the shadows, he stared straight at her. He had seen everything that had just happened.
He hadn’t intervened. He hadn’t even moved. He had merely stood there and watched, as if enjoying a spectacular performance.
Wen Lianfeng wiped the blood from her hands onto her clothes, then took a step forward.
She walked to the middle of the corridor and stopped less than five meters from him. Blood and grime streaked her face, and exhaustion weighed on her features, but there was one thing she didn’t show…
Fear.
She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth curling upward. “Long time no see.”
Her tone was as casual as if she were greeting an old friend, as if she’d bumped into an acquaintance on a street corner after years apart and was about to ask how he’d been.
The man froze.
For an instant, the expression on his hideous face stiffened. Then it twisted into something intensely complicated. Shock and wild delight surged through his bloodred eyes. The corners of his mouth pulled upward uncontrollably, stretching wider and wider until it seemed his cheeks might split open.
His entire face trembled.
“Hee… hee-hee…” Broken laughter spilled from his throat as though something were lodged inside it. “C-Captain Wen… You… you remember me… I told you. I was never some insignificant nobody…”
He took two steps forward, then stopped, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. His face flushed crimson with excitement.
Wen Lianfeng lowered her eyes and listened to a Madman proclaiming its “love and hate” for her. Behind her back, she gestured to Chu Jingchu with her left hand.
Run.
Leave?! How could she abandon Sister Wen…?
Chu Jingchu clenched her fists until her nails nearly dug into her palms. In the end, she gritted her teeth, spun around, and sprinted toward the stairwell.
She had to find the Director. Only the Madman the Director kept could stand against the Madman before them.
“Do you know how much I’ve missed you…?” The man’s voice rose into a shrill whine, thick with tears. “All those years I spent in prison, there wasn’t a single moment when I wasn’t thinking about you… I missed you so much I nearly went insane…”
He raised his trembling hands, pointing first at his chest and then at his head as he rambled incoherently.
“I want to peel off your skin… I want to drink your blood… I want to crush every bone in your body, one by one… I want… I want…”
He suddenly lunged forward and seized Wen Lianfeng by the throat!
His strength was astonishing. Wen Lianfeng’s feet instantly left the floor as he hoisted her into the air!
“Say my name!” He thrust his face toward hers until the tips of their noses nearly touched. “Captain Wen! Say it again!”
Wen Lianfeng’s face flushed dark red, the veins at her temples bulging, but she didn’t struggle. She merely stared at his hideously twisted face and forced out the words.
“If I… caught you once…”
The corner of her mouth curled upward. “…I can do it again.”
The man’s hand opened.
Wen Lianfeng crashed to the floor, gasping for air. Bracing one hand against the ground, she lifted her head.
The man stood over her, staring down. His expression changed again. The wild delight slowly drained away, replaced by naked malice.
“You’re always like this,” he said, his voice dropping low. “Always so defiant. Always looking down on me.”
He crouched until they were eye to eye.
“Do you remember that year?” His voice turned airy and light, tinged with amusement. “When I used your car to run over your teammate… Right up until she died, she still thought…”
Wen Lianfeng’s pupils contracted.
At that very instant, she moved. She slammed her head into the man’s face!
She put her entire body behind the blow. Forehead struck forehead with a muffled thud. Caught off guard, the man reeled backward, and both of them crashed to the floor.
Wen Lianfeng landed on top of him, the bloodstained shard of glass already raised in her hand. Without hesitation, she drove it down with all her strength!
Shnk!
The shard plunged into the man’s left eye!
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”
The man erupted into maniacal laughter. One hand clamped around Wen Lianfeng’s wrist to stop her from pushing the glass any deeper, while the other flailed wildly through the air like a child overwhelmed with excitement.
“That feels amazing! So amazing, Captain Wen! Push harder! Harder!”
Blood gushed from his eye socket and streamed across his face. But his laughter only grew louder and more deranged, his blood-soaked face twisting into a hideous mask of mirth.
Wen Lianfeng gritted her teeth and pressed down hard on the shard of glass, trying to drive it deeper. But his hand clamped around her wrist like an iron vise, holding it perfectly still.
Once he had laughed his fill, he slowly quieted. His one intact eye stared at her, gleaming with an almost pathological satisfaction.
“Tell me,” he rasped. “What’s my name?”
Wen Lianfeng said nothing.
His grip tightened, bending her wrist back bit by bit.
Crack.
The sound of bone splintering.
Cold sweat instantly beaded on Wen Lianfeng’s forehead, and her face turned white as paper. But she clenched her teeth and refused to cry out.
“What’s my name?” he asked again, his tone as gentle as if he were coaxing a child.
Crack.
Again. Her wrist was now completely deformed.
Cold sweat streamed down her cheeks. She opened her mouth.
“Jiang…”
The man’s eye lit up.
“…Wei.”
He was a subordinate of the woman Wen Lianfeng had been hunting all this time. A criminal it had taken her three years to catch.
A man with the blood of seven victims on his hands. A man sentenced to death. She had thought he was long dead.
Satisfaction spread across his face. He murmured to himself, “You said my name… You remember me… You remember me…”
“But you never expected this, did you? You didn’t expect it, did you? Did you?! Not only did I get out, I had plastic surgery too. Got myself a new face. A fresh start at being human… Oh, no. A fresh start at being a ghost.”
The man rose to his feet as though announcing a long-awaited plan. “I’m going to torture you, little by little. I’ll let you taste what it was like for me, locked up all those years.”
He tilted his head, savoring the expression on her face.
“Captain Wen… Hee…” His breathing was heavy, and after every sentence, he had to suppress the laughter threatening to burst out. “When you arrested me, did you ever imagine this day would come?”
Wen Lianfeng smiled faintly. “In our line of work, we never know which will come first: tomorrow or death.”
“I’m a Madman!”
“So what?” Cold sweat coated Wen Lianfeng’s back, and her fingertips nearly dug into her palms, yet her expression remained almost numb with indifference. “You’re still nothing more than… one of the many criminals I’ve put away.”
If he wanted to torture her, she might as well play along a little.
The smile abruptly vanished from the man’s face when he saw her complete lack of fear.
“Why aren’t you scared?” His voice rose to a shrill pitch, growing increasingly agitated. “Why… Why…?”
He suddenly brought his foot down on Wen Lianfeng’s lower leg.
Crack!
The bone snapped.
“Agh!”
A scream tore from Wen Lianfeng’s throat, but she quickly swallowed it. The pain was so intense that her vision went black.
Yet her mind became calmer than ever.
It wanted to torture her, which meant it would not kill her so quickly.
She still had a chance.
Jump out a window and get away from here first. Or find that girl, the Madman the Director had raised, and set the two Madmen against each other.
Maybe Jingchu had already gone!
The man covered one eye, blood still streaming between his fingers. As he watched Wen Lianfeng’s face contort in agony and listened to her scream, he chuckled under his breath.
He ground his foot down on Wen Lianfeng’s leg, but no matter how hard he pressed, he never heard another cry.
He looked down. The woman who had always regarded criminals like him with cold disdain was still staring at him with that same icy gaze, even from beneath his foot.
Wen Lianfeng was the one being trampled into the floor, yet the man suddenly felt as though he were back in prison.
“Aaargh! You filthy bastard! Aaargh!”
His furious roar cut off abruptly.
Wen Lianfeng forced a weak smile onto her pale face, but her voice dripped with mockery. “After all these years… you haven’t improved in the slightest? Are you really that woman’s subordinate?”
“This is why you were the first one caught. You have no brains. You don’t even know how to torment your prey. All you can do is stand there roaring like a wild animal.”
The man’s entire body trembled. His remaining eye bored into her. “Good. Very good. Wen Lianfeng, I’ll give you ten seconds to run.”
He raised one hand and began counting down.
“Ten…”
Wen Lianfeng struggled to her feet.
Her broken arm hung limp at her side, completely useless. Her leg throbbed, and every step felt like walking on the tip of a blade, but she still managed to stand.
“Nine…”
She ran.
“Eight… seven… six…”
The corridor streaked past beneath her feet.
“Five… four… three…”
“Two… one…”
Footsteps sounded behind her, unhurried and always keeping the same distance.
The man’s amused voice drifted after her.
“Run… Keep running… I love watching you run… Just like when you chased me all those years ago…”
Wen Lianfeng’s nerves were drawn as taut as a fully pulled bowstring, but her heart remained utterly detached. The idiot had turned into a Madman. Other than gaining brute strength, he had not improved at all. He was still nothing more than a cornered beast that knew only how to chase after her and bark.
Find that girl.
The thought consumed her mind. Only the Madman raised by the Director could restrain the crazed beast behind her. Right now, it was her only chance of survival.