Chapter 137

Qi Fei's Adam's apple rolled as he swallowed the bloody taste, and he said hoarsely: "I know why he killed Mom. When he killed the neighbor's cat, he was warning you. He couldn't allow Mom to share her love for him with others. He thought you didn't take it seriously... He felt Mom didn't love him anymore..."

Qi Dongjun's tone was full of the coldness of the wind and rain outside: "For so many years, I have asked myself countless times, if I had known he would eventually kill Zi Yun, would I have killed him on the day he was diagnosed? I still don't know the answer to this.

Over the years, no matter how you treat me, I have always been glad that you are still here, Xiao Fei..." Qi Dongjun called Qi Fei's childhood name, "I am very glad that you are completely normal, and even have more empathy and a sense of justice than the average child. You and Xi He seem to be a huge joke that God played on our family—a demon and an angel were born into my house at the same time. I advised your mother countless times, but I also deeply knew in my heart that as a mother, Xi He was also her child. The cuffs of the sweaters she knitted always had an extra secret pocket, the size just right to hold seven glass marbles—that was the maximum number Xi He could hold in his palm when he was three."

Qi Fei's auditory hallucinations were still continuing intermittently, as if Zhong Kui's hypnosis was being constantly evoked in Qi Dongjun's narration.

"Xiao He, Xiao Fei, touch the marbles..." The two childish voices repeated. The chubby little hands held up the marbles in the sunset, gradually turning into the appearance in the Huanyu International surveillance.

Qi Dongjun's hand gripped the back of the chair tightly: "I don't want there to be any intersection between you. I hope you are a normal, complete child.

So when you were three years old, your mother and I had a deep conversation, and finally she agreed to ensure that you were separated before you had memories.

I knew Zi Yun's soft-heartedness and reluctance toward Xi He, which made it impossible for her to meet the doctor's requirements, so I took the initiative to propose that Xi He be taken care of by me, while your mother lived with you in this white little building. I just never expected that she would secretly take you to Nanling to find Xi He.

Sigh, it's really ironic. Although my family was already broken, my business was getting better and better. Xi He seemed to be a bargaining chip fate gave me, making me wealthy, yet making me suffer the curse of father and son.

Busy with business, I could only hire the best caregivers and psychologists with money to take care of Xi He instead of me.

At that time, I naively thought that his problem could be cured through treatment.

Xi He performed better and better, yes, normal.

He would thoughtfully write thank-you cards for every caregiver, take the initiative to donate his toys to the orphanage, build rain-shelter wooden houses for stray cats...

I didn't realize at all that he wasn't gradually recovering, but was learning more advanced camouflage as he grew older.

He knew very clearly what everyone needed. As long as he was willing, he could become that perfect son...

He used those camouflaged details to break down my psychological defenses bit by bit. Invisibly, I was actually being manipulated by him, reassuringly leaving him to the people I hired with money, and putting my focus on business.

However, these people were just strangers I hired with money. If even I couldn't discover the problem, how could they?

What's even more terrifying is that he even deceived the psychologist I hired.

Only Lu Man once reminded me that she found Xi He seemed to be hiding the medicine he was supposed to take.

However, I didn't pay attention. My neglect ultimately caused me to suffer a backlash.

Xi He ran away. I only found out later that he had been preparing for the day of his escape since he was isolated for treatment.

The sound of marbles coming from his bedroom every night suddenly stopped on the day he escaped. This made the caregiver on duty downstairs worriedly go upstairs to check, only to be attacked by Xi He, who was hiding at the door.

And outside the house, the infrared alarm I installed had long since made the security guards numb because of the stray cat he took in often triggering it.

They thought the alarm that night was still triggered by the stray cat.

He left so easily.

Thinking about it now, the psychologist I hired didn't make him better, but instead gave him the opportunity to learn psychological manipulation techniques from the doctor, and I didn't know it.

I didn't even know he ran out to find Zi Yun, to find your mother, who was also his mother.

We searched for Xi He for many days. I saw the records of his treatment and realized he had never forgotten the time he spent with Zi Yun and you in Nanling. I stood in his bedroom. The marbles on the table rolled under the bed. When I tried to pick them up, I saw that the bottom of the bed he slept on was densely covered with marble-in-the-hole route maps.

On those nights when he was alone, he must have hidden under the bed, thinking about the days he played marbles with you while drawing these route maps.

All of this was not discovered because of my negligence.

I still remember that whenever I thought of his idea of finding you, I would have an ominous premonition that made everything go black.

By the time I arrived here, the courtyard gate was open.

The trees in the courtyard were only half as tall as they are now, and that white-painted wooden door was swaying slightly in the wind. That scene has often appeared in my dreams for so many years.

In the dream, your mother's blood kept seeping out from the crack in the door, and the door handle was covered in solidified blood beads.

No one can understand that this image is the darkest terror of my life. After this door was pushed open, everything changed." Qi Dongjun looked at the door in reality, as if he could still hear the sound of the door hinge turning overlapping with the baby's crying in the depths of his memory, "I remember every bloodstain left in this room, splashed on the kitchen blinds. The arc-shaped bloodstains were divided into segments, like sharp blades, tearing my nerves. The longest bloodstain was exactly Xi He's height at that time.

Zi Yun was lying on the ground with her back to me like that. There were still scattered cookies by her hand. I don't know if she intended them for Xi He.

I never dared to think about how your mother faced Xi He at that time.

Blood overflowed from the steps, flowing down like the water of the Luomeng River. Everything was beyond saving...

I don't remember why I walked to her side and picked up the knife that was left beside her, so the fingerprints of both our father and son were on the handle.

Just when I was clutching the knife, not knowing what to do, you appeared. On the verge of a breakdown, I mistook you for Xi He, which is why I said those things to you..."

"You knew from the beginning that it was Xi He who killed Mom?!" Qi Fei looked at Qi Dongjun, whose temples were stained with frost, and asked in disbelief, "You didn't tell the police?!"