Their gazes locked, clashing in a wordless standoff.

The atmosphere drew tighter and tighter with every passing second. For one brief moment, Zhou Jin almost believed Qi Yan was about to lose control entirely — that his true, ugly nature was about to be laid bare for all to see.

But in the very next instant, he suddenly smiled. A smile entirely devoid of warmth.

“I agree, I agree.” Under Zhou Jin’s bewildered gaze, Qi Yan covered his mouth and gave an erratic nod, laughing as he said: “However, Officer Zhou — only a person with a conscience can feel pain. That sort of noble quality… I don’t have it.”

His eyes held something unsettling and strange.

“So the one who bears the pain isn’t me — it’s Wen Lang.”

Qi Yan smiled breezily, continuing: “You can understand this too, can’t you? Family is a deeply contradictory kind of existence. You love them deeply, and yet sometimes, you can hate them more fiercely than anyone else.”

He still loved Wen Lang — that was beyond question — because in this entire world, aside from Qi Zhen, Wen Lang was his only blood relative.

But they had originally been one and the same, twin brothers born together. Compared to him, Wen Lang had received so very, very much.

When Wen Lang had found him in Huaiguang, he had been crouched in a filthy, mud-soaked alleyway with his knees pulled to his chest, staring at a discarded newspaper on the ground. Reporters railed against him in scalding prose, members of the public spat their condemnations, every word and sentence denouncing the crimes of a serial killer.

He had been cast out by the entire world. Abandoned by the entire world.

Wen Lang, by contrast, had stepped down from a luxury car, dressed in the suit he had worn for his performance, radiant and immaculate as he stood bathed in light — gazing across the distance at him.

In that moment, Qi Yan became convinced that he had been born for crime. Because the instant he laid eyes on Wen Lang, he had only to glance sideways before knowing exactly how to exploit every weakness in human nature — and make him suffer for it.

Qi Yan surged forward and threw his arms tightly around Wen Lang, smearing all his own filth and stench across Wen Lang’s pristine clothes.

On the ground, the silhouettes of two people merged back into one.

Qi Yan wept as he made his accusation: “Brother, why did it take you so long to come find me?”

He heard Wen Lang’s answer, saturated with self-reproach: “A’Yan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve done terrible things — save me, will you? Please save me…”

Wen Lang could not see his eyes. He had no way of knowing that Qi Yan could not even shed real tears.

Wen Lang simply held him, again and again, and made his promise: “With your brother here, you have nothing to fear.”

“My good older brother is foolish, isn’t he?” Qi Yan remarked with a note of appraisal. “He obediently cleaned up everything for me, just like that.”

Zhou Jin thought to herself: a Wen Lang who, while still a teenager, had been able to find Chen Li to take the blame in Qi Yan’s place — outwitting the Huaiguang police, the prosecutors, and the law itself in the process — how could he possibly be foolish?

Wen Lang was highly intelligent. He had likely understood long ago that Qi Yan was manipulating him. But guilt would drive him to choose blindness.

Qi Yan had made him feel as though he owed an unpayable debt — as though everything he now possessed was steeped in sin. He had shared everything of himself with Qi Yan, and had even been willing to trade his own death for Qi Yan’s rebirth.

Qi Yan mocked Wen Lang’s “goodness” — because he himself had none of it.

And at the same time, he cherished Wen Lang’s “goodness” — because he himself had none of it.

“You think I’m seeking revenge against Jiang Hansheng out of guilt?” Qi Yan said in a languid, unhurried tone. “My older brother willingly died in my place. I accepted everything he gave me — that is only right and proper. Why on earth would I feel guilty? Whether Wen Lang lives or dies is mine to decide. Professor Jiang stole that right from me, and he will pay for it.”

Every action he took revolved entirely around himself — extreme cruelty and cold-bloodedness, through and through.

Qi Yan’s fingers drifted from Zhou Jin’s face and slid into her hair.

“Officer Zhou, did you think that a couple of provocative words would make me break down and cry like a child? To shatter someone’s psychological defenses, you first need to understand them.”

His eyes held a faintly hazy, amused gleam as he scrutinized her carefully, saying: “You see, I’m starting to understand you a little, right now. You’re a good person — so your subconscious assumed I would suffer from guilt, because that is how your own mind works, isn’t it? Let me take a guess — I heard Zhan Wei mention it once: the reason Zhou Chuan chose to take the assignment on the day of ‘8·17’ was precisely to celebrate his dear little sister’s birthday…”

Zhou Jin visibly shuddered.

That involuntary reaction set Qi Yan’s excitement spiraling beyond his control.

He was obsessed with the sight of women in fright — especially women dressed in red skirts. Vibrant and arresting, like a rose in full bloom. Pitiful. Beautiful. Rousing in a man an endless, insatiable desire to possess.

And when the desire to possess reached its absolute limit, it became destruction — to crush every petal savagely underfoot, so that she could never belong to anyone else.

Qi Yan cupped Zhou Jin’s face in his hands and, unable to stop himself, pressed his lips to hers. “Darling,” he murmured, “does the guilt tear you apart?”

She threw every last ounce of her strength into wrenching her hands and feet free, desperate to kill the man before her — but the more she struggled, the more the nylon ropes bit into her flesh.

She threw her head back and screamed: “Don’t touch me!”

“Can’t handle this already? Where did all that fire go just a moment ago?!”

Zhou Jin snapped her head forward and sank her teeth into his fingers with everything she had. A low, furious sound tore from her throat — something raw and animal.

Qi Yan showed no sign of pain whatsoever. A few stray tears slid onto the back of his hand, and realizing that Zhou Jin was crying, he burst into loud laughter instead.

He reached out and closed his fingers around Zhou Jin’s throat, forcing her to release his hand, the madness pooling in the depths of his eyes growing ever more dense and rampant.

Qi Yan’s voice was light and quick: “Though I’ll admit — you made me a little angry just now, because there was one thing you said that was entirely correct: five years ago, I did lose to Jiang Hansheng, and it was he who made me lose my older brother.”

Zhou Jin opened her mouth, gasping in rasping, labored breaths. The light in front of her eyes warped and twisted into shapeless masses, blurring into incomprehensibility.

Gradually, her consciousness began to fragment and scatter.

Shortly after, Qi Yan released her. He leaned in close to her ear and said, word by deliberate word: “But he has also suffered a great deal in return. He once publicly mocked me on television, calling himself an artist — something I still cannot accept to this day. Officer Zhou, would you care to appreciate one of my masterpieces from back then?”

Zhou Jin was currently in no condition to form sharp, clear reactions. Her ears were filled with a persistent ringing, and the injuries from the car crash had sapped most of her strength.

It hurt.

All she could do was endure.

Zhou Jin listened as the sound of Qi Yan’s footsteps gradually receded — and then gradually drew near once more.

Shortly after, she watched as a white screen descended slowly across the small stage, and a beam of light projected dim, wavering images onto its surface.

Qi Yan settled himself beside her, his eyes bright and gleaming. He propped his chin on one hand, and rather than looking at the screen, he kept his gaze fixed attentively on Zhou Jin.

Zhou Jin had no interest in his so-called “masterpiece.” She kept her head lowered, forcing her consciousness to hold together by sheer will, turning over in her mind how to deal with Qi Yan.

She had originally kept a short defensive blade strapped to a leg holster beneath her skirt. It was gone.

Her phone had fallen somewhere she could not identify. And the ring on her neck…

She looked down at her own chest — completely bare. She closed her eyes in despair.

Then, all at once, a familiar voice reached her from the footage on the screen.

“Give it back to me.”

The camera appeared to have been set on a table, positioned at a low angle. From that vantage point, only the lower half of Qi Yan’s body was visible — along with Jiang Hansheng.

He was seated in a chair, his hands and feet unbound, and yet he seemed to have no strength whatsoever to resist.

Zhou Jin saw that his face was as white as a corpse, cold sweat soaking through his dark, disheveled hair.

Qi Yan sat at ease on a freight crate, his fingertips looped around a thin silver chain.

The chain wound around his fingers, then was flicked loose again. Two or three seconds passed before Zhou Jin could make out clearly what hung from the chain — a pocket watch.

That earlier voice, hoarse to the very edge of breaking, had indeed come from Jiang Hansheng’s direction.

He said: “Give it back to me.”