Yin Chen lifted his head, his face beneath the baseball cap revealing impatience. Without further hesitation, he scooped You Mingxu up from the ground, cradled her horizontally in his arms, and carried her toward another parked vehicle nearby.
You Mingxu felt as if all strength had been drained from her body. She could barely keep her eyes open, managing only a narrow slit to glimpse the dark night sky, the fleeting streetlights, and the sharp line of Yin Chen’s jaw.
“What do you want to do?” Her voice was utterly feeble.
“I want to take you home,” Yin Chen replied hoarsely.
The woman I loved died twenty years ago.
The only light I ever encountered in life was extinguished by someone.
Since then, I have loathed sin, yet I live mired in it.
Now, even the faith I held onto for over a decade lies in ruins. We have been proven failures, wrongdoers. Even the mentor I respected most will spend the rest of his life in prison.
In this vast world, I am the only one left.
I desperately want to return to a place—a place warm like home, where no one hits or scolds me, no one despises me, and no one fears me.
But such a place no longer exists in this world.
Then, You Mingxu, on a certain pitch-black, rainy, and clamorous night, I suddenly remembered you.
I remembered that there is still one person in this world who shares her blood and resembles her most.
Like the sole spark igniting in the endless night that has already descended, I—broken, destitute, and drifting in a daze, nearly ready to end my life with a bullet—snapped back to clarity.
If I can have her, he will lose her, lose his home.
And perhaps then, my life won’t be a complete failure.
In this world, only she would never look down on that boy who had nothing and lived like worthless weeds. She would call him little brother, urge him toward goodness. She would unsettle his heart without even realizing it, simply smiling with such gentle serenity, like the softest autumn light he had ever seen in his life.
He did not want to lose her.
He had never possessed her.
He had nothing left. Twenty years had passed, and Yin Chen, now forty, steeped in sin, ruthless, arrogant, and ferocious, suddenly wanted nothing else—only to take that woman home.
And so, he opened the black softcover notebook in his hand.
—
Twenty minutes earlier, Yin Feng stood before the door, his hand on the handle.
The three people behind him held their breath, waiting intently.
Yin Feng suddenly froze.
As if a strange, fleeting glimmer of light flashed through his mind, an incredible thought surged forth.
Where there is abnormality, there must be deceit.
He realized what he and You Mingxu had overlooked.
That black softcover notebook.
At Fan Shuhua’s residence, only one black softcover notebook was missing.
Yin Chen’s copy was gone.
The black softcover notebooks documented the growth process of each Punisher, recorded the crimes they committed, their desires, and analyzed the behavioral patterns and psychological traits of the Punishers.
Moreover, they contained the tailored crime plans Fan Shuhua crafted for them.
In other words, if Fan Shuhua had also analyzed and devised an ultimate crime plan for Yin Chen—just like the television station plan—then she must have known that he wanted to go home.
If Fan Shuhua had assisted him…
If the mastermind behind this series of crimes was not only Yin Chen but also Fan Shuhua…
The clouds in Yin Feng’s mind cleared, and everything became lucid.Whether Fan Shuhua could accurately predict You Mingxu's actions, he didn't know. After all, You Mingxu often acted unexpectedly. But his own behavior, his criminal psychology analysis, was inherited from Fan Shuhua. Thinking of this, Yin Feng's heartbeat quickened. Using the enemy's own tactics against them—could it be that his accurate reading of Yin Chen's psychological patterns, even finding this location, were all within Fan Shuhua's plan, which meant within Yin Chen's plan as well?
Then what lay behind this door seemed hardly difficult to predict.
He would always be the stumbling block on these people's path to crime, on their road to achieving their desires.
Yin Feng suddenly laughed, a sinister and chilling laugh. He slowly released the doorknob, took two steps back, and said, "Let's go."
They were still puzzled but followed nonetheless. After retreating from the gloomy empty apartment and reaching the stairwell, Yin Feng said thoughtfully, "Guan Jun, if there's a bomb in the room, can you safely identify and detonate it?"
Guan Jun raised an eyebrow. "Of course."
"Then do it."
At such close range, in a confined space, the best tool to ensure the death of anyone entering the room was a bomb.
The surrounding apartments were all empty, so no one else would be harmed.
Turning the enemy's own stratagem against them—who couldn't do that? Now it was his turn to feign death by explosion, hide in the shadows, and see what Yin Chen was really up to.
Fifteen minutes later, the four of them stood on the staircase one floor below, hearing the deafening explosion. The blast wave and vibrations nearly knocked everyone off their feet.
After a moment of ringing in his ears, Yin Feng was the first to straighten up. "Let's go," he said, turning to descend the stairs.
After going down a few flights, Yin Feng pulled out his phone to check on You Mingxu's situation, but found there was still no signal. He'd noticed earlier that the signal in this building was poor. Whether due to the explosion or not, there wasn't a single bar of signal now.
He put the phone back in his pocket.
When they reached the eighth floor, a sudden, sharp alarm sound faintly echoed from below. From a distance, the noise immediately brought to mind a cheap motorcycle that had been accidentally bumped.
Chen Feng and the others pricked up their ears but didn't pay it much mind, continuing their descent.
But Yin Feng froze.
He looked up. The stairwell happened to have an outward-facing window overlooking the residential complex. His view was filled with greenery, several roads, some cars, and a few people. His gaze shifted, tracking the direction of the alarm sound. The road was mostly shaded by trees, vaguely revealing many parked cars and quite a few motorcycles. Yin Feng's eyes scanned along the road and suddenly stopped—
Too far away, the man was just a dark silhouette, seemingly carrying someone in his arms, walking in the direction away from the building. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared into the shade of the trees.
You Mingxu should be at the chicken coop right now, whether she had rescued the hostage or not. She couldn't be here—a voice calmly analyzed in Yin Feng's mind.
Yet a strange intuition rose in his heart, various details surfacing—the explosion meant to kill him, the phone with no signal, the suddenly ringing alarm, the man carrying someone away... Yin Feng sharply turned his head. Chen Feng, standing behind him, met his gaze and felt a chill.
Yin Feng's face was grim. "Chen Feng, Guan Jun, go get the car immediately and inform Ding Xiongwei of the situation here. Xiao Yan, come with me."Xiao Yan responded with a sharp "Yes," slipped past the two men, and darted behind Yin Feng. Yin Feng immediately broke into a sprint down the stairs, with Xiao Yan close on his heels. After a moment of stunned hesitation, Guan Jun and Chen Feng hurriedly followed.
Yin Feng's skills in climbing walls on foot, much like his lock-picking abilities, had been learned from Xiao Yan. Otherwise, when You Mingxu was taken away by Ahua and the others, he wouldn't have been able to climb down the building so quickly, hide in the trunk of their car, and arrive much faster than even Xu Mengshan and his team. Soon, he and Xiao Yan had put considerable distance between themselves and the trailing Guan Jun and Chen Feng, descending several floors in no time.
Within two minutes, the two had reached the ground floor. Yin Feng quickly oriented himself and led Xiao Yan in the direction where the person had vanished. Moments later, Chen Feng and Guan Jun also descended, glanced at the direction the pair had run off to, exchanged a look, and turned to fetch a car, pursuing the target through dual means.
Just as Yin Feng had covered half the distance in pursuit, he saw a black sedan suddenly pull out from an intersection ahead, heading toward the residential area's exit. The silhouette of the driver was faintly visible and bore a striking resemblance to Yin Chen, but it passed by too quickly for a clear identification. Yin Feng's heart felt as if it had been violently seized, yet through the dark tinted windows, it was impossible to discern whether anyone else was in the back seat.
"Xiao Yan!" Yin Feng shouted. Xiao Yan had also spotted the car, his eyes swiftly scanning the surroundings before he pointed and said, "Teacher Yin, go that way!" The two immediately took a shortcut, racing toward the pedestrian exit.
Several hundred meters behind them, Guan Jun, his face grim, sped out in a car. Chen Feng, equally grim-faced, was frantically making phone calls.
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