WAM CH23.2

He and Gu Yanzhou coming here didn’t mean they planned to barge in and fight alone. After giving all the clues to the police, they just didn’t want to stand by and do nothing. They hadn’t expected the police to be even slower than them.

“They got played,” Gu Yanzhou said, reading a text message from Captain Wang. “Lu Jiahui found someone to impersonate Liu Qi. That person leaked a clue, saying Liu Qi was knocked unconscious and stuffed into a black Jeep. After checking the surveillance cameras, they found the black Jeep heading towards a different intersection on Panshan Road. It was a decoy.”

“They are rushing over now and should be here in less than ten minutes.”

Shao Si tilted his head back, looking up from the ground floor. There was a faint light on the second floor.

Just as he was considering whether to wait for the police to arrive first, the system yelled loudly: [No! There’s no time!]

They were currently standing outside the iron gate. Inside the gate, there was a quiet, flower-lined path. They would need to walk a few steps in to reach the main entrance.

The layout wasn’t complicated. Looking straight ahead, they could see the living room window.

Floor-to-ceiling windows with red curtains.

However, at this moment, the curtains were suddenly yanked open from the inside.

Liu Qi appeared in their line of sight with her hair in disarray, her hands flailing wildly as she screamed: “Save me! Save me!”

Lu Jiahui, on the other hand, was in no rush. He slowly walked down the stairs from the second floor, holding a knife in his hand.

…

When Gu Yanzhou vaulted over the wall and triggered the alarm, Shao Si was completely stunned by his speed.

Almost the exact moment Lu Jiahui appeared, Gu Yanzhou took off his coat, threw it to Shao Si, propped his hands on the fence, and vaulted upwards, getting inside in just a couple of moves. For the final move, he jumped straight down from mid-air.

Just like scenes seen countless times in movies, his strength was raw and powerful, every movement clean and decisive, without the slightest hesitation.

Highly efficient and extremely visually impressive.

“Have you trained in this?” Shao Si held his coat, assessing the structurally complex large iron gate. The very top of the gate featured several thin, pointed spikes. Knowing he didn’t possess Gu Yanzhou’s superb wall-vaulting skills, he could only say, “Don’t rush forward just yet, help me open the door from the inside first…”

The situation was urgent. At this point, they couldn’t care about the blaring alarm or the dog barking frantically in the backyard. There was absolutely no time to wait for the police to arrive.

Saving her was the priority.

Hearing the noise, Lu Jiahui stood on the stairs and glanced out the window, vaguely spotting two hurried figures.

Besides the blaring alarm, there was also the sound of Shao Si twisting the door handle—twisting left and right without getting it open—and the internal mechanics of the lock clashing together.

Liu Qi sprinted toward the door at almost her top speed, wanting to open it for Shao Si.

“Shao-ge!” She shook her hands in agitation, but since she didn’t know which direction and how many times to turn the lock, she was completely at a loss. She tried several times to no avail, left sweating with anxiety on the spot. “Open the door, open… open!”

Lu Jiahui was enraged by this ‘Shao-ge’. He closed the distance to Liu Qi in a few strides, gripping the knife and raising it high: “You bitch, who are you calling for? No one is leaving here alive today!”

Before Lu Jiahui’s words faded, through Liu Qi’s frantic twisting, the door finally unlocked with a ‘click’.

Just as Shao Si squeezed in from outside, the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room shattered with a loud crash!

Gu Yanzhou held an iron rod he had found from god-knows-where. With a few strikes, he smashed the glass window to pieces and directly broke in.

Shao Si didn’t have time to care about the situation over there. Taking advantage of Lu Jiahui being momentarily stunned by the loud noise, he shoved Liu Qi out the door with incredible speed: “Run!”

Liu Qi stumbled but didn’t linger. Nor did she copy those idiots in TV dramas who would stop and say, ‘What about you guys? I can’t just leave alone, if we leave, we leave together’. She sprinted barefoot out the main gate, her retreating figure looking desolate and panicked.

Seeing this, Lu Jiahui turned vicious. With red eyes, he swung the knife toward Shao Si’s back!

Fortunately, Shao Si reacted quickly. He dodged sideways, but the tip of the knife still left a deep slash across his lower back.

Blood began to seep outward through the fabric. Good thing his clothes were black, so it didn’t look too conspicuous.

Shao Si hissed in pain, then smiled at Lu Jiahui without a care. The smile didn’t reach his eyes; it was more like a provocation. Reaching behind him to shut the door, he leaned his back against the panel and said, “Stop looking, ge. Your Fangfang is gone.”

Lu Jiahui let out a hoarse roar. Shao Si could now confirm that this guy was absolutely high on drugs. The focus of his pupils and his exaggerated facial expressions showed that his reason had long been completely devoured.

“Fangfang won’t leave me, we’re going to be together forever.” Lu Jiahui desperately tried to thrust the knife at Shao Si’s neck.

Shao Si struggled to lock down his wrist, but verbally continued to provoke him: “Who’s going to spend forever with you? Take a look at yourself right now. What are you going to use to support her? Is your money clean? Why would she like a drug-abusing, drug-trafficking psycho?”

He spoke breezily, but Shao Si was actually losing strength in his hands, his muscles aching as if they were about to tear apart.

The tip of the knife got closer and closer to his windpipe. A few seconds later, Shao Si really couldn’t hold on. He exerted a final burst of strength to push Lu Jiahui’s wrist up, turned his head, and yelled at Gu Yanzhou: “Hurry up, I’m out of strength. Just smash him with the rod already.”

He had said those provocative things just to distract him, allowing Gu Yanzhou to take him out from behind.

Perhaps because his brain had become sluggish after taking drugs, Lu Jiahui only belatedly looked behind him.

However, he was met with a rod straight to the face.

…

Since it was an iron rod, Gu Yanzhou had to control his strength. Lu Jiahui was hit so hard he swayed in place twice. Barely steadying his body, he raised a hand to touch the back of his head and felt a handful of warm wetness.

The smell of blood gradually permeated the air.

“You hit me?” Enraged by the bright red blood, Lu Jiahui’s eyes became even more bloodshot. “Who the hell are you to dare hit me?”

Shao Si kicked him directly from behind: “If he’s a nobody, then you’re not even a nobody, you trash.”

Unexpectedly, this kick sent Lu Jiahui right in front of Gu Yanzhou, and the two instantly began grappling.

Faced with Lu Jiahui’s reckless, death-defying fighting style, Gu Yanzhou was surprisingly able to handle it with ease.

—In the past, I was a punk. Got tattoos, drank heavily, grew my bangs incredibly long and dyed them, wore an earring—a flashy black diamond stud.

—Fought with people all day, reeking of hostility like a savage.

The two sentences Gu Yanzhou casually mentioned in the car seemed to form an image, overlapping with the Gu Yanzhou right now.

Shao Si rubbed his chin, thinking to himself: He is indeed very good at fighting.

Even though Lu Jiahui was like an enraged beast, his combat power off the charts like a cheat code after taking drugs, Gu Yanzhou didn’t fall short in the slightest. He must have learned Sanda before and practiced it often. His moves were very casual, yet every strike was incredibly ruthless.

Clean and decisive, leaving no room for the opponent.

Shao Si decided that after going back, he would give Li Guangzong a live broadcast relay, telling him that his male god Gu Yanzhou… is actually quite wild.

Almost at the exact same time—police sirens blared outside the gate, the alternating red and blue lights illuminating the dark night.

The police had finally arrived.

“Huang Meimei, nickname Fangfang, from the same village as Lu Jiahui. Both took the college entrance exam the same year; one passed, the other failed.”

When Liu Qi ran out, she hadn’t gone far before encountering the police cars. Through the clues Liu Qi provided, the police quickly found out who this ‘Fangfang’ was.

“After failing the exam, she came to Longyan with Lu Jiahui. Lu Jiahui studied while she worked. Later, for unknown reasons, the two broke up. Afterward, due to an accidental car crash, she passed away in her early twenties.”

Captain Wang briefly explained the currently known situation to them: “Liu Qi looks similar to Huang Meimei. It’s precisely because of this that Lu Jiahui risked everything to come back.”

Twenty years ago in the countryside, a pair of young lovebirds.

Whether it was truly because Fangfang despised Lu Jiahui for being poor that led him down this crooked path, Lu Jiahui kept his mouth shut about it all, so they had no way of knowing.

But if one’s moral baseline deviates, then no matter the reason, it cannot become an excuse for crime.

Thus, this major case—a syndicate lying dormant in the entertainment industry, using an entertainment agency as a vessel to lure numerous artists and investors into drug abuse and trafficking—was finally solved. Dozens of the company’s top executives were entirely arrested, and even more ‘downstream’ dealers were being further mopped up.

Tomorrow’s news would clear out massive amounts of space and time to exclusively report on this matter.

It was bound to cause a considerable sensation.

After all, this incident implicated over twenty actors, more than thirty investors, and countless small-time drug peddlers working under those investors.

However, at this moment, Shao Si had no time to think about all this. Even when the system excitedly congratulated him on securing a five-year lifespan extension, he had no reaction. Because he was currently in the police station’s infirmary, having a nurse perform a simple disinfection on his wound.

A long gash hung conspicuously and glaringly across his lower back.

Lying on the simple infirmary bed, Shao Si felt his clothes being gently lifted. However, halfway up, there was resistance. Because the flesh and fabric were stuck together, it couldn’t be ripped open directly, as that would exacerbate the tearing of the wound.

The nurse turned sideways, picked up a small pair of scissors from a tray, and carefully snipped away the fabric around the wound before continuing the treatment.

When Gu Yanzhou and Captain Wang rushed over, Shao Si had his bare back exposed, his face buried in the pillow. His waistline was clean and lean, dipping into a hollow where it met his hips.

He had never been tolerant of pain. Perhaps because his skin was tender, many times when Li Guangzong thought something like a scraped knee was a trivial matter, he genuinely felt the pain.

“Are you alright?” Gu Yanzhou walked in first.

Hearing the voice, Shao Si lifted his face slightly from the pillow. Just as he was about to politely say ‘I’m fine’, the tweezers in the nurse’s hand applied a gentle force, tearing off the last corner of the fabric, and Shao Si cried out again: “Ouch!”

The nurse’s hand trembled. Placing the fabric into another receptacle, she said, “I’m sorry, I’ll try to be gentler.”

After she spoke, Shao Si buried his head back in again. His mouth said it was fine, but his hands very honestly gripped the bedsheets tightly, refusing to let go.

Standing at the door, Captain Wang said grumpily, “No need, it’s better to be a bit heavier to help his memory grow. Let’s see if he dares to be so impulsive next time.”

“If we weren’t impulsive and waited for you to arrive, she might have been completely dead.” Shao Si turned his head to look at them, his hair covering part of his face, feigning seriousness as he said, “Captain Wang, you should be giving us a silk pennant instead.”

“There will be a pennant, but criticism is also unavoidable.”

“You were lucky with today’s incident. But if you encounter a similar situation next time, you absolutely must not take this brute-force approach. If anything had gone wrong at any step—for instance, if the glass window was bulletproof and couldn’t be smashed, or if Liu Qi hadn’t managed to open the door for you in time—would you two still be standing here safely? Would Liu Qi have been able to escape unharmed?”

Admittedly, the situation was urgent at the time and allowed no room for further thought. It was a rushed action with no layout to speak of.

There were definitely many problems with it.

“Of course, we are also at fault.” Unexpectedly, Captain Wang bowed deeply to them. After straightening up, he said, “It is our responsibility for putting you in danger. If we hadn’t trusted the black Jeep clue too much, we wouldn’t have forgotten to prepare a few backup plans. Just wandering around the vicinity of Panshan Road earlier without going up the mountain to check was negligence in our work.”

Even though Liu Qi had clearly given the range, and the range was so small.

Yet they still overthought it, believing Lu Jiahui was so shrewd that he was just using Panshan Road as a decoy.

Fortunately, the matter wrapped up perfectly in the end without resulting in a grave mistake.

Gu Yanzhou bowed back to Captain Wang in return: “You don’t need to do this, I cannot accept this bow.”

Shao Si used his arms as a pillow for his head and nodded: “I can’t accept it either, but I can’t move right now. I’ll owe you this bow and return it another day.”

Shao Si’s wound was somewhat deep; it was unknown if it would leave a scar later. After a simple stitching and applying gauze, the nurse gave him a small bottle of medicine that helped wound healing, reminding him to remember to change his dressing.

“Mhm, got it, thanks.” Shao Si was just about to get up and put on his clothes when he remembered his jacket had already been snipped by the nurse’s scissors. “…”

Bare-chested, he sat on the bed, scratched his hair, and looked for his phone to call Li Guangzong.

“Ancestor, you can’t touch that!” When Li Guangzong picked up the phone, he didn’t even have time to discuss business before he started yelling, “Your Uncle Gu will be back very soon, ah. Look, I have your Uncle Gu hanging all over this wall, you can take your time looking, look at whichever one you like.”

“…Is Gu Sheng still with you?” Just as Shao Si finished asking, the soft, sweet voice of the little girl indeed came through the phone.

“Let me play with it.”

“It’s a lighter, you can’t play with it, be good.”

After Li Guangzong finished coaxing the kid, he finally had the energy to talk to Shao Si: “Dad, are you guys back yet? Is my male god there? Have him come over and pick Shengsheng up…”

Shao Si stealthily sized up Gu Yanzhou, who was currently talking to Captain Wang, and said, “Do this: drop the kid off at the police station, and bring me some clothes while you’re at it. My clothes got ruined.”

Gu Yanzhou and Shao Si, two people going out for something. At the police station, and the clothes were ruined.

Li Guangzong ran these four clues through his mind, then said in disbelief: “Did you guys go visit a brothel? No way, right?”

“…Brothel my ass.” Shao Si really wanted to just hang up the phone, but he thought about it and held back, saying, “Hurry up and come over.”

After he finished his call, both the nurse and Captain Wang had already left. Only Gu Yanzhou was left standing on the side, looking at him.

Shao Si: “…” What are you looking at.

However, the next second, Gu Yanzhou suddenly started taking off his clothes.

He took off his coat and tossed it to Shao Si: “Wear this for now.”

Gu Yanzhou added, “What’s with that expression? You don’t have to wear it, then you can just stay here alone. I’m going to eat.”

Eat.

Shao Si belatedly felt very hungry.

From the time he finished work in the afternoon until now, it was already late at night, and he hadn’t had a drop of water or food.

So Shao Si put on the coat and followed him out to forage for food.

Gu Yanzhou’s coat was one size too big for him, a bit loose and baggy. He rolled the sleeves up two folds, then walked out lazily: “Gu Yanzhou, let me tell you, there’s a pretty good Sichuan restaurant nearby.”

Perhaps because the two of them had gone through so much together tonight, Shao Si’s attitude and tone toward Gu Yanzhou unconsciously became somewhat casual. When calling him, he used his full name directly, no longer calling him ‘Gu-ge’ like before.

“…Look at you, still wanting Sichuan food. Eat something light.”

Shao Si didn’t care: “It’s just a minor injury the length of a finger.”

Gu Yanzhou scoffed: “Minor injury, with eighteen stitches. You were squealing like a pig in pain just now.”

Shao Si: “…”

In the end, the two went out through the underground passage and went to Li Ji to drink a bowl of congee.

Clear and bland.

The two sat in a private booth, only taking off their masks after the waiter left.

Shao Si took two sips and admitted the congee was indeed not bad. It was probably because everything tastes good when you’re hungry.

Gu Yanzhou ate very quickly. After finishing, he wiped his mouth and sat across from Shao Si, waiting for him.

Shao Si was taking small, infrequent bites toward the end. He stirred the congee with his chopsticks and asked a question he had been holding in for a long time: “Today, why did you go with me?”

Saying it was to prevent him from holding the police back was obviously just nonsense.

Gu Yanzhou sat across from him, his expression unchanged upon hearing this question. Just as Shao Si thought he wasn’t going to answer, Gu Yanzhou suddenly said in a deep voice: “That night when Yang Yinyin called me, I didn’t think much of it. If I hadn’t been too busy with work and lacked the mind to probe further, I could have noticed that her mood was clearly off.”

“Hm?” Shao Si asked, biting his spoon. “What did she say?”

Gu Yanzhou raised a hand to loosen his collar, leaned his whole body back against the wooden chair, and slightly closed his eyes.

That sentence was still clearly audible.

—Gu-ge, the day I met you, I was very happy.

So when Liu Qi was in trouble, he wanted to make amends.

To make up for the things he didn’t manage to do back then.

Shao Si hadn’t expected that his initial reason for getting close to Gu Yanzhou was just to know the contents of this call. And this content, just as he had guessed earlier, was of no help to the case.

Shao Si was silent for a moment before bringing out an extremely stiff word of comfort: “…Don’t overthink it, she won’t blame you.”

After this topic was turned over, Gu Yanzhou sat up straight and scrutinized him for a long time. The stare made Shao Si feel awkward even while eating.

Shao Si swallowed the last mouthful of congee and touched his face: “Is there something on my face?”

“No.” Gu Yanzhou said meaningfully, “Just feeling that compared to before, you’ve changed a lot.”

“Before?”

Shao Si put down the soup spoon and licked his lower lip: “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask for a long time. Is there some misunderstanding between us?”

On the way back to the police station, Shao Si kept thinking about Gu Yanzhou’s words: Five years ago, the TV Drama Awards.

…Five years ago.

“Did I ever attend this whatever-it’s-called Awards?”

Walking beside Gu Yanzhou, Shao Si crunched the fallen leaves beneath his feet. Still not quite figuring it out, he reached out and tugged at the hem of Gu Yanzhou’s shirt: “Can you speak more clearly?”

They walked in a hurry, not noticing that half a street away, a black sedan was slowly following them.

A camera lens slowly poked out from the black sedan, secretly and carefully resting on the car window. A hand reached out to turn and adjust the focus, and then the camera let out a ‘click’.