Chapter Thirteen: The Death of Luo Xiu

Despite Left Daoyin’s arm being so thin and withered it resembled a dry stick, his strength was astonishing. Very quickly, I felt as though I could hardly breathe.

He seemed furious, squeezing my throat with all his might while grinding his teeth and blaming me—demanding to know why I hadn’t trusted him, why I had insisted on going up to the attic on the second floor of his house.

I gripped Left Daoyin’s wrist with all my strength, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t pry his hand from my neck. Just as I was about to pass out, he suddenly flung me aside, and I landed heavily on the ground.

I coughed a few times, tears welling up in my eyes, and looked nervously at Left Daoyin standing before me.

He took a deep breath, then stomped his foot hard on the ground, his face twisted with rage. “Wu Dao, do you know how much trouble you’ve brought upon yourselves this time?”

I looked at him in confusion, unable to grasp his meaning.

Left Daoyin ignored me, turned, and strode toward his house, a murderous air radiating from his entire body.

My heart went cold. Was he going to kill Wang Feiyang? Instinctively, I snatched up a stone from the ground and hurried after Left Daoyin.

Having witnessed his ruthlessness and his previous abuse of Luo Xiu, I knew without a doubt that Left Daoyin was a dangerous man. I couldn’t let him return home—Wang Feiyang would be in grave danger. No matter what, I had to stop him until Wang Feiyang had safely left the house.

Clutching the stone tightly, I raised my hand and aimed for the back of Left Daoyin’s head.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

He spun around so suddenly that I jumped, but instead of being frightened off, my resolve grew stronger. With a loud crack, I brought the stone down hard on his forehead.

A large lump instantly swelled up, blood trickling from the wound. Left Daoyin glared at me furiously. Terrified, I dropped the stone and stammered, “Grandpa Zuo, I—I’m sorry.”

He shuddered all over, then collapsed to the ground. I rushed to support him. Gasping for breath, he didn’t scold me, but instead forced out the words: “Quick—go to my house, stop him…”

“Stop who?” I was momentarily stunned.

“Quick… quick…” Left Daoyin gripped the corner of my shirt with all his remaining strength, repeating this single word over and over.

I stared at him, bewildered, unsure what he wanted me to do. But seeing the blood streaming down his forehead, the painful, anxious look on his face, I suddenly realized how foolish I’d been.

I wanted to bandage his wound—afraid he might bleed to death at any moment—but Left Daoyin stopped me. “Don’t worry about me,” he insisted. “Go now, bring Wang Feiyang out of the attic.”

He pushed me away with surprising force, then lay on the ground, panting heavily.

He repeated himself: he would not die, but I must hurry to his house. Now I realized something was terribly wrong. I got up and ran towards Left Daoyin’s home.

My mind was a mess as I ran. Why was Left Daoyin so anxious? Who was he telling me to stop—Wang Feiyang, or Luo Xiu?

A chilling possibility occurred to me: what if Luo Xiu wasn’t as simple as we’d thought, that Left Daoyin kept her locked in the attic for some unspeakable reason? Was Wang Feiyang in danger?

A cold dread rose in my chest. I ran even faster, finally dashing into Left Daoyin’s house.

The place was eerily quiet. I stood in the main hall, staring at the half-open door of the attic room above, and hurried up the stairs.

When I pushed open the door and saw Wang Feiyang and Luo Xiu still quietly in the room, I breathed a sigh of relief. Things didn’t seem as dire as I’d feared—they were unharmed.

Luo Xiu was still lying on the floor, while Wang Feiyang sat expressionless about a meter away from her. Between them, the ground was densely covered in rows of funerary script, all written in Luo Xiu’s own blood.

I couldn’t read the script, but I could guess it told the whole story. Luo Xiu had written everything she knew. Now she lay there, raising her pale, paper-white face to Wang Feiyang, and managed a smile of relief.

Wang Feiyang must have learned the entire truth. I was about to call him to leave, but what happened next completely caught me off guard.

I didn’t know when Wang Feiyang had started carrying a bamboo knife, or if he’d kept it ever since his family was murdered. Suddenly, he drew it and brought it down on Luo Xiu’s neck.

I was stunned and rushed to stop him, but I was a moment too late. By the time I reached him, the bamboo blade had already severed half of Luo Xiu’s neck.

Blood pooled across the floor, washing away the blood-written script. Luo Xiu died instantly, her body still chained, her head hanging by a strip of skin, her face twisted at a right angle to her shoulders.

I stood there in shock, feeling as though the sky had collapsed. Left Daoyin had wanted me to stop him—not Luo Xiu, but Wang Feiyang. Now I’d witnessed Wang Feiyang slice through Luo Xiu’s neck with that sharpened bamboo knife.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

I snatched the knife from Wang Feiyang’s hand and threw it to the ground, shouting, “You’ve killed someone! Do you understand? You’ll pay with your life! Why did you kill her?”

I never thought Wang Feiyang would actually commit murder. He was only in his early twenties, yet he’d chopped off a person’s neck without hesitation. Strangely, he seemed far calmer than I was—even before and after the killing, he hadn’t so much as frowned.

He stood up slowly and, to my astonishment, told me to calm down.

“How am I supposed to calm down? Do you know what you’ve done?”

Wang Feiyang looked at me coldly and said, “I know. I killed someone.”

Panicked, I asked, “What do we do now? Shouldn’t you turn yourself in?”

He scoffed. “Why should I? Luo Xiu has been dead for over a decade. Besides you, me, and Left Daoyin, who else knows she was still alive?”

With that, Wang Feiyang picked up the bloodied knife, wiped it clean, and headed for the door.

Frightened, I said, “Are you crazy? Are you going to kill Left Daoyin too?”

He glanced back at me, the corners of his mouth twisting into a strange, cold smile. “Wu Dao, deep down, aren’t you even darker than I am?”

I stared at him, bewildered.

He pulled me along. “Let’s go, unless you really want to wait for Left Daoyin to return. Do you actually want me to kill him too?”

I seemed to understand, and hurried out with him. We didn’t go to the paper shop or back to the coffin store, but instead rented a double room at a secluded inn.

Once we’d both calmed down, I asked, “Did Luo Xiu ask you to kill her?”

Wang Feiyang gave me a knowing look but didn’t answer.

I sighed. “Maybe for her, this was a kind of release. But Wang Feiyang, when did you become so ruthless? That was a living person, not an animal.”

He answered, “If you had watched your family die, one after another, you’d be like this too.”

I sucked in a breath, not daring to pursue the topic further. Instead, I asked him if he’d learned the whole story from Luo Xiu, and urged him to tell me.

At this, Wang Feiyang’s expression suddenly grew serious. He fixed me with a strange, unsettling gaze that made my skin crawl. “Wu Dao, do you really want to know the truth? I’m afraid if I tell you, it might scare you to death.”