Perhaps driven by the stimulation of the drugs, Qi Yan remained in a state of extreme frenzy and excitement. The face that had once been considered strikingly handsome had grown somewhat repulsive.

He hauled Zhou Jin upright, pressed a hand to the back of her neck, and forced her to look down from the rooftop.

In the distance, the red and blue lights flashed in vivid, cycling pulses. Close by, thick smoke from the explosions rolled upward and drifted through the air, acrid and choking. Below, there were lights — scales of light, glinting like armour.

Qi Yan had a climbing rope secured around his waist. This was the escape route he had designed for himself: in the chaos following the explosions, he would use the rope to rappel down and slip away through the villa’s rear garden.

From the very beginning, he had intended to raze this place to the ground — to bury Jiang Hansheng and every police officer who had come to the rescue alongside Wen Lang. The Huaiguang serial murder case, the “8·17” armed robbery — none of the cases he had carried out before would compare in notoriety to this one.

He looped the climbing rope around Zhou Jin’s waist, binding the two of them together, then pressed the flat of the dagger against her cheek.

He issued his threat in a low voice: “Do as you’re told, and I’ll let you live. Otherwise, I’ll kill you first.”

Small explosions continued to detonate — a relentless series of thunderous blasts, like the earth splitting apart.

Police personnel who were able to evacuate had largely cleared the danger zone. Below, ambulances and police vehicles converged in a tight ring, sirens wailing in sharp, piercing cries.

After the second-floor explosion, Jiang Hansheng had been knocked unconscious by the shockwave for roughly half a minute. When he finally managed to recover his senses with great difficulty, he immediately confirmed that the special operations team member beside him was safe, then reported the situation to the squad leader and called for additional support.

Immediately after, he heard Jiang Cheng broadcast Qi Yan’s location over the radio. Without a moment’s thought, he threw everything aside and charged upward.

Qi Yan’s breathing had gradually grown heavier. He suddenly caught the sound of footsteps behind him and snapped to alertness at once — seizing Zhou Jin and spinning around, he wrenched her in front of him as a shield.

On the rooftop: Jiang Cheng, Jiang Hansheng, and two special operations team members — four people, weapons raised simultaneously, all trained in Qi Yan’s direction.

Jiang Cheng shouted first: “Qi Yan — let Zhou Jin go!”

Qi Yan adjusted his position, locking his arm around Zhou Jin from behind in a chokehold, using her body as cover, and demanded: “Put down your weapons!”

Beside the command vehicle.

Tan Shiming raised the radio and asked the sniper: “Can you take the shot?”

Through the thermal imaging scope, the sniper responded without delay: “The hostage-taker and the hostage are overlapping in position. A shot cannot guarantee the safety of the hostage. Over.”

The blade pressed against Zhou Jin’s neck was extraordinarily sharp. Even the slightest movement opened a shallow cut across her skin.

She held her head tilted back. The prolonged standoff had left her utterly depleted. Her vision and hearing had both grown badly blurred. Her eyes were half-open, barely enough to make out Jiang Hansheng and Jiang Cheng directly ahead of her.

Qi Yan demanded again: “Put down your weapons.”

“Shoot—” Zhou Jin’s throat felt as though it was tearing apart. She repeated the words weakly. “Don’t worry about me. Shoot.”

At that moment, a continuous, grating ringing began to sound in her ears.

Through the blur, she could see Jiang Hansheng, his face cold and still, lips moving faintly — seemingly attempting to negotiate with Qi Yan.

Jiang Cheng was frowning hard, shouting something in a fierce, sharp voice.

Her pupils trembled. The night sky before her eyes kept washing over in waves of white. By now, she could hear almost nothing — and see almost nothing.

Yet within that blank, whitened field of vision, she seemed to see Jiang Hansheng’s upright silhouette — and remembered how wretched he had looked, scrambling to fight over a pocket watch, being mocked and played with without a shred of dignity.

She thought of his laboured breathing, his restrained cries of pain.

She thought of what Teacher Wang had once told her — how Jiang Hansheng had given up his promising career at the provincial department and insisted on demanding a retrial of the Huaiguang serial murder case.

She thought of how he had spent two years alone in a hospital, enduring withdrawal — with no one knowing what inner strength of will had carried him through.

And she thought of… the days and nights he had spent following at her side.

All of it — every single part of it — was the price Jiang Hansheng had paid for the “8·17” armed robbery. Every single thing he had done for her carried a tenderness that was almost cruel.

Then she thought of Jiang Cheng.

She remembered rescuing him from Kuang Mountain — covered in wounds from head to toe, and yet the moment he saw her, he was already grinning at her in that irreverent way of his. She remembered going to Guhua Prison to investigate and hearing that he bore a wound seven or eight inches long across his back. She remembered the look in his eyes — that tortured expression — when he returned after five years of living without a glimpse of daylight and had to sit through interrogations. She remembered him at the drug manufacturing plant on Kuang Mountain, desperation filling his eyes as he told her: “If I don’t settle this blood debt with my own hands — if I don’t atone for what I’ve done — I’d rather die than live with it.”

And then there was her brother — Zhou Chuan.

All this time, every one of them had protected her so thoroughly, so completely — so thoroughly that it pained her. So completely that whenever she thought of it, it made her want to cry.

In that hazy blur, Zhou Jin saw Jiang Hansheng and Jiang Cheng lower their weapons together and raise both hands toward Qi Yan.

Zhou Jin said, her voice torn and raw: “Don’t you dare put down your weapons!”

Stop worrying about her. Stop making any more concessions. Stop letting themselves be hurt for her sake. Stop — stop —

The relentless ringing in her ears vanished all at once, as though she had jolted awake from a dream. Zhou Jin gasped a harsh, deep breath.

She clenched her teeth. A moment later, in a voice so low that only Qi Yan could hear, she said, hoarse and rasping: “Qi Yan — you’ve made one mistake. I didn’t come here to be your hostage…”

She quietly tightened her grip on the climbing rope at her waist. Then, facing Qi Yan — who was already teetering on the edge of madness — she suddenly smiled. She said: “I came here to avenge my brother.”

Zhou Jin drove her feet into the ground without warning, ramming her back hard against Qi Yan. Qi Yan had not anticipated Zhou Jin suddenly losing all reason — his feet stumbled backward instinctively, step after step.

Behind him, the rooftop parapet was no more than a metre high.

Everyone — even Jiang Cheng — was plunged into horrified shock in that single instant.

Jiang Cheng’s pupils contracted until they trembled. He thought: What is she doing? What is she doing!

Qi Yan suddenly registered Zhou Jin’s intent. He reached back to cut the climbing rope with the dagger — but it was already too late. The sudden violent plummeting weight dragged him over the parapet, and his entire body was hurled backward.

In the frozen instant when everyone stood paralysed — Jiang Hansheng’s figure swept past like a fierce gust of night wind. Without a moment’s hesitation, without any pause at all, he leapt over the edge after Zhou Jin.

No need to think. No need to fear. The wind chases where it longs to go — purely by instinct.

Jiang Cheng stood dazed in the trailing gust, then heard, one after another, the deep, resonant sounds of bodies hitting water. He came back to himself and rushed immediately to the edge of the rooftop.

In the night, hazy moonlight spread across the surface — shimmering and trembling with light.

Jiang Cheng’s fingers swept across his forehead, damp with cold sweat. He brushed aside the scattered hair and forced his eyes to find the water’s surface more clearly.

Water surged in from every direction, rushing in and swallowing Zhou Jin’s consciousness. Every one of her senses was stripped away by the current. Before her eyes was nothing but suffocating darkness.

Her body sank downward. Downward.

So cold. Cold enough to cut to the bone.

But she was not afraid at all. She had long since fallen into a boundless, bottomless abyss — five years of it. Perhaps, by now, it was closer to six.

This nightmare, so unbearably long, was finally coming to an end.

Zhou Jin was exhausted beyond all limit. Gradually, she could no longer feel even the cold. Every sensation drained away alongside her remaining strength, little by little.

Like setting down a burden of a thousand pounds — she closed her eyes, and let herself sink.

Just in the moment before Zhou Jin lost consciousness entirely, a pale and slender hand reached through the dark current and seized her wrist with a firm, unyielding grip. The rope at her waist was swiftly undone.

Zhou Jin had one brief moment of clarity. She felt as though someone had wrapped their arms around her — a hand cradling her waist, pulling her free from the endless descent.

Then cold lips pressed against hers.

A familiar body. A familiar presence. In the surging, freezing dark, every part of Jiang Hansheng seemed to be merging with her.

Zhou Jin instinctively reached up and gripped his arm. Here, at the very razor’s edge between life and death, even the hurried exchange of breath between them carried the tenderness of a kiss — sustaining one another, the most absolute and pure form of romance.

She thought: even if the next moment brought death, she would feel no regret.