Chapter 25: It’s Over Part 2

Anders smiled too, looking at Wei Tingxia like a lion pacing lazily behind bulletproof glass.

“I told him my brother is a lion,” he said slowly, enunciating each word. “Not a word wrong.”

Wei Tingxia hummed indifferently: “Great. Lions eat people. Too bad it didn’t tear you to shreds.”

He didn’t deny the “brother” label, probably tired of correcting it every time. This deepened the amusement in Anders’s eyes.

He waved for the other bodyguards to remove the unlucky one for treatment, then personally pushed open the heavy iron door to the lower hold, stepping aside.

“Please.”

Wei Tingxia gave him a cold glance and descended the dim stairs.

The path to the bottom hold required two steep sets of stairs. Anders let no one follow; only they two remained in the cramped space.

In this brief solitude, Anders spoke again, his voice echoing off the metal walls:

“You’re married.”

“Glad your eyes still work,” Wei Tingxia said without turning. “And you’ve said that more than once.”

“Just surprised,” Anders replied, probing. “Didn’t think you’d enter a cage. But it’s normal—you first met me for him. Same this time.”

Anders had heard too many rumors.

Five years earlier, the Yan family, not yet at its current status, had been thrown into utter chaos. Yan Xinfeng had nearly been expelled from the household and stripped of his inheritance rights, all because of his own younger brother, the mastermind behind it.

As Anders flipped through the gathered documents, he could clearly feel the suffocating desperation on the brink of ruin. Back then, Yan Xinfeng had almost given up hope of inheriting the family business. The lines between the words revealed an all-or-nothing resolve, as if he truly intended to start over from the ruins with Wei Tingxia.

Yet fate had other plans.

Just as Yan Xinfeng had completely lost heart, his staunchly unyielding father suddenly softened and extended an olive branch. The documents unusually conveyed Yan Xinfeng’s suppressed joy, with careful probing in every line.

Unfortunately, fate was never kind. Father Yan’s enemies had hired desperate thugs to orchestrate a car crash, smashing the normally driving vehicle straight into the river. Father Yan and his son ended up one dead and one gravely injured, the Yan family’s century-old foundation collapsing in an instant, its glory turning to ashes.

Yan Xinfeng had plummeted into the abyss.

And it was at his most vulnerable moment, when he needed support the most, that Wei Tingxia resolutely chose to leave, cementing the image in others’ eyes of a heartless, gold-digging wretch who abandoned the poor for the rich.

“I have two things I don’t understand.” Anders stepped down onto the next rung, the old, rusted iron stairs emitting a harsh groan. He asked casually, “Why did you leave back then?”

“Why do you have so many questions?” Wei Tingxia’s voice carried obvious impatience. “Is it that hard to shut up?”

Anders chuckled lowly. “I just can’t help being curious about you. If you weren’t my younger brother, I might even pursue you.”

Wei Tingxia halted his steps and abruptly turned back. Anders met his gaze frankly, his eyes so earnest it was unsettling.

System 0188: [His mental state is abnormal.]

Wei Tingxia deeply agreed, turned his head away, and continued descending, too lazy to respond.

But Anders pushed his luck, adding thoughtfully, “Though… our family lineage does have precedents of close-kin unions.”

Wei Tingxia’s voice dropped to freezing point. “If you keep thinking along those lines, no matter what Yan Xinfeng thinks later, I’ll personally drown you today.”

“…”

Anders finally fell silent.

The conditions in the bottom ship hold were atrocious to the extreme.

The air was foul and stifling, thick with the stench of rust, mold, and a faint metallic tang of blood. The cargo space had been crudely converted into a prison, with thick iron bars dividing it into oppressive cells.

Huddled in the shadows of a corner was the Crime Gang, the perpetrators who had evaded capture since the incident. The only one among them who still somewhat resembled a human was the bait Anders had deliberately released recently to lure Wei Tingxia.

At the sound of footsteps, the man shuddered violently and jerked his head toward the door. The moment his eyes landed on Wei Tingxia’s face, terror nearly overflowed from them. He frantically averted his gaze, his body trembling like chaff.

His fear was so genuine, impossible to fake. That face of Wei Tingxia’s instantly dragged him back to the nightmarish rainy night five years ago.

A man who could be paid to stage a fatal car crash should have viewed lives as worthless, yet even he could only quiver to his bones in Wei Tingxia’s presence.

Because it wasn’t death alone that could intimidate a person.

Wei Tingxia sighed and squatted in front of the cage.

“What did I tell you back then? Hmm?”

His voice wasn’t loud, like a quiet chat between old friends, yet it hammered at the prisoner’s nerves like a blunt instrument. “Didn’t I say that as long as you vanished forever, I’d let you off for the time being?”

The man made gurgling noises from his throat, unable to utter a single word. On the dark floor, a darker puddle of liquid spread silently.

Wei Tingxia’s gaze fell on the man’s cracked, filth-encrusted fingernails. He stood up idly. Moments later, a faint smile tugged at his lips.

“But it’s good that you came back,” he said softly. “I was just worrying about how to meet the parents.”

His mother-in-law might not take a liking to him, but if Wei Tingxia delivered these people right to her doorstep—

“I want them alive.” Wei Tingxia looked at Anders, his tone firm.

Anders nodded with a smile, fully understanding his intent. “Rest assured.”

They left the bottom hold. As they climbed the stairs, Anders asked offhandedly, “Does coming here cause you any trouble?”

“What trouble?” Wei Tingxia shot back sarcastically. “Do I have to report to him wherever I go?”

Anders watched the back of the man in front of him with keen interest.

Wei Tingxia’s personality was a contradictory work of art. With a face blessed by heaven that easily won favor and protection, his actions were as sharp and flamboyantly acerbic as a poison-quenched blade. Even with someone in his heart, he bristled with reverse scales, his tongue never sparing anyone, as if losing a verbal spat was the greatest humiliation.

“You’ve never told him,” Anders’s voice rippled through the damp air, carrying a pleasure from uncovering secrets, stated with the certainty of an iron law. “Just like he doesn’t know you’re my younger brother, he also doesn’t know what you’ve done for him behind his back.”

Back then, Father Yan’s enemies had paid for the hit not just to leave one dead and one injured, but to wipe out the entire Yan family line.

Yan Xinfeng had luckily survived, so those desperate thugs clung like a festering sore, lurking in the shadows for their next lethal strike. The threat persisted until Wei Tingxia stepped in and drove them completely out of the country.

Anders had only learned the hidden truth while handling matters for Wei Tingxia.

What passionate, moving love, yet hidden away, refusing to be shown.

Anders was very curious what Yan Xinfeng’s reaction would be once he knew the truth.

Wei Tingxia ignored all his probing guesses. Only as they climbed the stairs did he reach back with one hand and point warningly—

Say a word, and you’re dead.

Anders accepted it with a beaming smile.

He might not say anything, but Yan Xinfeng wasn’t a fool. Anders could see the doubts already piling up in that man’s eyes, like hidden reefs lurking beneath a calm surface.

Even without anyone pointing it out, one day he would follow the clues and unravel that tangled mess with his own hands.

Anders just needed to stand by and watch the show.

The heavy iron door closed silently behind Wei Tingxia, shutting out the foul air of the hold and Anders’s uncomfortably scorching gaze.

System 0188’s cold notification chimed timely in his mind, an assessment of the few prisoners in the bottom hold: [Target subjects’ vital signs stable. Threat level: low. Estimated survival over five years.]

Wei Tingxia didn’t respond and simply continued upward along the narrow gangway.

The upper hold’s two windows were open, sea wind carrying a salty fishiness slamming in, dispersing the rust and blood stench clinging to their clothes—but not the faint weariness in his eyes.

Wei Tingxia took a deep breath and stopped by the porthole.

He needed a moment to suppress the malice those filthy faces in the hold had stirred up, before he could return to Yan Xinfeng as if nothing had happened.

Anders saw through his thoughts, strolled to the other window, lit a cigarette on his own, the wisps of smoke scattered by the sea wind as he waited quietly.

Wei Tingxia smelled the smoke and told Anders, “You’ll smoke yourself to death.”

With that, he turned to leave. Anders promptly stubbed out the cigarette and followed.

But at that moment, the contact radio suddenly crackled with a bodyguard’s voice.

“Boss, there’s someone out there. Boss, there’s someone outside.”

At those words, both Anders and Wei Tingxia froze.

In the dead of night, at a nearly abandoned desolate dock—what kind of person would come?

Wei Tingxia had a bad feeling, and right then System 0188 chimed in: [Protagonist is only 50 meters from you.]

Wei Tingxia: “…”

He instinctively glanced at the pitch-black sea, an absurd thought flashing through—could he still make it by jumping in and swimming away?

Just that daytime, he’d declared to Yan Xinfeng’s face that Anders was deranged, and now at night he was sneaking around at an abandoned port meeting the deranged man…

“Can you jump into the sea and pretend you were never here?”

Wei Tingxia turned to solicit Anders’s opinion, his tone so serious it seemed as if a nod would get him tossed overboard in the next second.

Anders kept a steady smile on his face. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

In the next second, beyond the roughly wind-torn ship door, on the iron gangway extending from the dock, a tall, upright figure wrapped in the night’s chill clearly appeared in the outline of the open cabin door.

Across fifty meters of cold air, Yan Xinfeng raised his head. His gaze swept over Wei Tingxia’s body like a searchlight, emotionlessly roaming up and down, before finally pinning heavily on the less-than-an-arm’s-length distance between him and Anders.

A pinpoint of crimson ember flickered erratically between his fingers. Yan Xinfeng rarely smoked, unless his irritation had reached its peak.

Of course, a reason like his newlywed husband sneaking off for a midnight rendezvous with someone else was more than enough.

The glaring red trend line spiked upward again, nearly wasting all the efforts from before in this one instant.

Wei Tingxia: “Done for.”

System 0188: [Done for.]

It was hard to say whose heart was more like dead ashes.