Chapter 136

Qi Dongjun's nasolabial folds suddenly twitched as if in a spasm, and his Adam's apple ground over the choking sound like gravel under his aged skin: "You won't understand..."

Qi Fei was nailed to the spot. The criminal investigation logic constructed by his rationality was collapsing in his skull. He couldn't think. All the truths he wanted to know, all the clues as intricate as a spiderweb, the monster hiding in the center of the web, was actually his own brother. At this moment, the shadows of the father and son split into countless overlapping shadows on the wall. Xi He seemed to have turned into a shadow mixed among them.

"Xi He was only one year older than you. From the moment he was born, I knew he was a smart child. I still remember when he was still in swaddling clothes, those dark, bright eyes were always turning nimbly, as if he could understand what adults were saying. He could speak before he could walk—not babbling, but expressing meaning completely. He would say, 'Mom, I love you so much.' Zi Yun often said she was the happiest mother in the world. But as Xi He gradually grew up, all the beautiful and dreamy things began to develop in a worrying direction. At first, he just arranged ants in circular queues and used honey to guide them to cycle to death. He would also tear off cicada wings one by one and tuck them into a dictionary, saying he was making insect specimens. He would squat in front of an anthill on a rainy day for six hours, soaked to the bone, refusing to go home, just to watch the struggle of the worker ants before they drowned. We thought this was just a child's scientific exploration and even stupidly felt relieved because of it, until that day..." Qi Dongjun suddenly coughed violently, as if he didn't want to mention it to this day, "Until we found the neighbor's cat nailed to a plane tree, with two glass marbles embedded in the cat's eye sockets—those glass marbles were rewards Zi Yun gave him when she played with him. And he did this just because your mother saw that the cat was cute and shared a piece of the cookie she made for him with the cat..."

"What's even more terrifying is his tampering with rules." Qi Dongjun loosened his tie, and his Adam's apple rolled, making a sound like sandpaper rubbing, "At that time, he was only three years old, but he knew how to use my Swiss pocket watch to time things when playing hide-and-seek—every time it was his turn to hide, the watch chain would always 'accidentally' wrap around the door lock. When I broke in, he was squatting in the closet, using a utility knife to carve marble patterns into the lining of Zi Yun's mink coat. The arrangement of those knife marks was so neat, without a child's scatteredness or innocence at all.

What worried me even more was his attitude toward you." Qi Dongjun said, his gaze looking at Qi Fei.

"Did he ever hurt me?" Qi Fei asked, but he wasn't confident, because in his memory, the child whose face he couldn't see clearly had always been very good to him.

Qi Dongjun waved his hand: "On the contrary, he was very protective of you. He would abuse small animals and create cruel pranks for adults, but toward you, he acted like a perfect brother. Zi Yun was very relieved by this, but I had other thoughts."

"I don't understand..."

"His love for you seemed to be a deliberate performance to please Zi Yun." Qi Dongjun's gray, ash-like gaze suddenly fell on Qi Fei's left wrist—there was a round scar there that was almost invisible, "When you were two years old, one day, you were clearly asleep when you suddenly cried loudly. When I ran to check, I found that your left hand had touched a lit mosquito coil and was badly burned. Zi Yun blamed me for putting the mosquito coil in that place, but I clearly remembered that the mosquito coil was on the windowsill, not by the bed. I still remember Xi He's reaction when he saw your burn. He stretched his wrist onto the mosquito coil and burned himself, saying he wanted to share the pain for you. This action completely moved Zi Yun, while I was full of doubts about it. My only hesitation was how a three-year-old child could plan such a complex conspiracy?"

The temperature in the study dropped sharply, and breath turned into frost. Qi Dongjun loosened the first button of his shirt, revealing three scratch marks faintly visible on his collarbone: "I began to worry about this child. I wanted to take him to see a doctor, but Zi Yun said Xi He was her child, and no one knew her child better than she did. He was just more precocious than the average child... When the neighbor's cat appeared on the plane tree in a weird posture, the cookies your mother baked were deliberately stuffed into the dead cat's mouth. The beast was posed in a begging posture, and the glass marble-embedded eyeballs swirled with eerie colors in the morning light, as if the child was warning Zi Yun not to share her love with others. Regarding medical treatment, although Zi Yun opposed it, after he killed the neighbor's cat, I still insisted on sending him to the psychiatric department. The diagnosis was cruel. The doctor said, 'Pathological Rule Reconstructor'—he would trample on human nature in a way that seemed to follow rules. At three years old, he could plan a precise alibi. In the future, he would very likely develop ritualistic serial killing tendencies. It was suggested that we isolate and monitor him.

We didn't dare tell anyone that we had a child with mental problems.

We secretly kept him in a hidden house in Nanling and arranged for someone to look after him.

On the other hand, you were gradually growing up. Xi He brought me deep fear when he was so young. You know now why I made up my mind to take Xi He away before you had memories. I was afraid that you would become another Xi He."

Qi Dongjun looked at Lu Man, who had been standing slightly further away and had not disturbed their father-son conversation: "Lu Man is not my lover. She is an outstanding graduate I selected from the health school, specifically responsible for taking care of Xi He. It was hard for her to have to take on such a difficult job when she had just graduated."

"I'm sorry, Old Qi, I didn't take good care of him..." Lu Man still blamed herself to this day, "If I hadn't failed to follow your requirements and let Sister Zi Yun take Xi He away, maybe the tragedy wouldn't have happened... As a woman, I sympathized with Sister Zi Yun's longing for her son and even helped her hide it from you..."

"I have thought about this many times. Xi He always acted obedient and sensible in front of you. No one would have any guard against a child. I know that at that time, everyone thought the person with mental problems was me. Everyone thought I was a neurotic and cold father. Sigh, perhaps, everything is fate, not something I can control." Qi Dongjun sighed to the sky. His hand knocked over the iron can on the table, and the glass marbles that Xi Zi Yun had saved during her lifetime rolled all over the floor, making a continuous crisp sound."

When Lu Man heard this sound, her face suddenly lost its color. She muttered: "I will never forget that after you completely separated, the pine floor of the Nanling little building always made such rhythmic vibrations in the middle of the night. He was always playing the marble game alone—the first marble's impact sound disappeared into the darkness, and the second followed closely, repeating itself like a pendulum in hell..."

"The person he hates the most should be me, not your mother... He killed the person who loved him the most in this world..." Qi Dongjun's voice trembled so much that he couldn't continue speaking.