TCOR CH50

Chapter 50: Finally I Found You

To the sound of music, Philia sat down on the seat next to the yacht, hugged the computer, and pressed the enter key hard. Then she whistled at the screen.

“It’s done. I thought the bones would be hard, but I couldn’t stand it for two days. So much money! Uriel, with this kind of money, we can do whatever we want in the future, right?” She pointed the computer screen at Shen Wunian, who was lost in his own world, to show him the amount of money.

Shen Wunian, wearing leather gloves and playing with the riding crop, looked at it and reminded him, “Remember the secret key and don’t lose it.

“Don’t worry, I’ll remember it well,” Philia nodded and said to herself.

After throwing the blood-stained riding crop on the table, Shen Wunian wiped the blood from his cheeks with his hand, picked up the whiskey glass on the table, and swallowed a big drink.

The injured Ashmakine was tied to the steel pipe in the middle of the yacht. His blond hair was stuck together with sweat and blood, and his decent clothes were torn to shreds. He struggled to raise his head, his eyes glowing with hatred: “I… I had an accident… the Mexicans… won’t let you go…”

Shen Wunian raised an eyebrow and put down his wine glass, saying, “Don’t worry about us, Father. Outwardly, we will say that you committed suicide out of fear of the law and jumped into the sea and died, but in reality, you escaped to Africa by boat with all the money in your encrypted wallet, didn’t you?”

Ashmakine was astonished and said through clenched teeth, “You won’t believe it!” He then struggled violently, as if trying to break free of the restraints, and bit Shen Wunian’s throat.

“What does it matter if they believe it or not? Can they really send someone to investigate?” Shen Wunian walked towards him, stopping in front of him and leaning forward slightly. No one is irreplaceable in this world. After two or three years, who will remember you?

Ashmakine stared at him, suddenly stretching his neck, his gaze ferocious as he bit down. Shen Wunian stepped back slightly, not letting him touch him.

“I raised you, how can you both betray me? You ungrateful brats! Without me, you’d be picking up trash on the street to eat!” Ashmakine shouted angrily.

Philia closed her laptop and slapped her. “Without you, we wouldn’t have lost our parents and become part of your crimes. You just used us as two useful dogs and never loved us.” She grabbed the other person’s hair and said angrily, “I have been going from man to man for you since I was 14 years old, winning them over and pleasing them for you. How could a real father be happy about his daughter doing such a thing?”

Ashmakine tried to explain, but Philia slapped him again, causing him to cough and spit a bloody molar onto the floor.

“Don’t kill me…” With a red strand of saliva hanging from his chin, Ashmakine begged for his life, realizing that neither threats nor sweet talk would work. If I die, you’ll never find the cure. Uriel, spare my life and I’ll tell you where it is…’

Philia rubbed her hand and frowned, not saying a word, just looking at Shen Wunian and waiting for him to make a decision.

“That…cure?” Shen Wunian’s expression was flat, as if he didn’t know who he was talking about.

“It’s your Cure! His name is…Zhong Ai!” Ashmakine was so excited that his facial muscles twitched. This was his last chance, and he knew it very well, “Without me, you won’t be able to find him at all. Let me go ashore alive and I’ll tell you where he is…’.

“No need,” Shen Wunian interrupted him without hesitation.

Ashmakine’s face froze for a moment. Fearing that he had not made himself clear enough, he said again, “If I do not tell you where he is, he will die, perhaps he is dying now. Uriel, isn’t he your healer? Isn’t he important to you!”

Shen Wunian looked at him with pity, “Is that your trump card? A Cure who is no longer useful?” He curled his lips in mockery, “With Redvein Syndrome, the life of the Cure is only the life of the Redvein when the Cure is sick. I have long since recovered, so what do I care if he lives or dies?”

Ashmakine’s eyes widened and a series of bloody laughs came from his throat, “Heh heh heh…really not important…”

The curve of Shen Wunian’s lips gradually disappeared, and his dark pupils were even deeper and colder than the surface of the sea.

“You play with him some more,” he said to Philia, as if he was tired of arguing with Ashmakine and went down to the first floor of the yacht by himself.

The loud heavy metal music upstairs was turned up again. He sat in the cockpit, closed the hatch to block out the sound, and bit his gloves off with his teeth as he called Liang Zai on the phone.

“Hello?”

As soon as the call was connected, Shen Wunian put the phone on speaker and threw it on the nearby console.

“Have you found it?”

“I’ve already sent a lot of people to look for it, but there’s still no news.” Liang Zai sounded tired, as if he hadn’t had much rest in the last few days.

Shen Wunian stared out into the endless dark sea and rhythmically tapped his finger on the armrest of his seat. He asked again, “Where is Pei Huanchen? I thought Mimic had a tracking function. Tell it to find him.”

Liang Zai was silent for a moment, his tone tinged with dissatisfaction. “He has multiple fractures and was just operated on yesterday. He’s still in a coma. How can you expect him to find him?”

Shen Wunian scoffed: “There are many ways to wake up someone in a coma. Do I have to teach you, Mr. Liang?”

His dissatisfaction escalated into displeasure, and Liang Zai’s voice cooled completely: “Shen Wunian, don’t go too far.”

“He’s just an impostor, not your real Cure. His life or death won’t affect you.”

“I told you not to talk about him like that,” the person on the other end of the line warned word for word, “Zhong Ai was kidnapped because of me. I’ll do my best to find him, but whether I find him alive or not is up to his own luck. With that, he hung up the phone.

Shen Wunian stared straight ahead for a long time, not sure if he was really looking at the sea or if he was thinking about something else through the black surface of the water.

The waves came in one by one and the tapping on the handrail stopped. His fingers sank into the soft leather surface. He flexed his hand, showing the distinct finger bones, and clawed at the railing like an animal with sharp claws, leaving shocking scratches.

Suddenly, there was a thud, and something white and glistening fell from the upper level across the first-floor cockpit and into the cold sea.

Shen Wunian’s body stopped slightly, and his gaze fell to the surface of the sea. He accidentally glanced over and saw Philia struggling to surface, faintly shouting something over the noise of the waves. He reacted almost instantly, quickly running outside the cabin, untying the life preserver hanging from the yacht and throwing it in Philia’s direction.

“Look out, he untied the rope!” Philia shouted, grabbing the life preserver.

Shen Wunian strode into the kitchen with a somber face, picked up a boning knife with an exceptionally sharp tip, and walked slowly toward the second floor.

“Father, I was thinking, maybe we don’t have to go to this extreme…” He rubbed his thumb sideways along the blade, his tone softening with each step up the stairs, “Tell me where Zhong Ai is and I’ll let you go ashore and send you to Africa to spend your old age.”

“Raise your fist and vent your pain!

As the days go by, my heart is growing cold.

I can’t let all this pass me by.”

In response, there was no sound but the heartbreaking chant.

He stepped onto the last step and had a panoramic view of the second floor, but he couldn’t see Ashmakine anywhere. Shen Wunian looked around, then down along the edge, obviously suspecting that his opponent was hanging outside the yacht.

So he came to the end of the yacht, and as Shen Wunian leaned over to look down, a riding crop suddenly and unexpectedly strangled him around the neck.

“I have told you many times since you were a child not to expose your weaknesses, Uriel,” Ashmakine said, tightening his grip. He smiled cruelly and viciously.

I awoke with a start. There was a faint stench in my nose, and the inside of the container was the same as always. I closed my eyes tightly and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use.

I hit my head hard and was filled with remorse.

Why did I have to wake up at such a critical moment?

Shen Wunian can’t be dead, can he? I fidgeted, picking at my fingers. He was a real asshole, sure, but… I never thought he’d die.

Climbing to my feet, I looked out of the vent and saw Liang Weiren’s body outside. He was in the same position he’d been in two days ago, and the blood on his body had dried and turned black, attracting flies and emitting a foul stench.

I couldn’t bear to look at him for more than a moment, so I covered my mouth and gagged.

I vomited until tears and snot streamed down my face, and I held up a bucket and luxuriously swallowed several mouthfuls, barely able to dilute the sour bitterness in my mouth.

Forget it, just die. I’m going to die anyway, everyone dies…

After drinking the water, I lay back down and stared blankly at the dim ceiling. Occasionally, a fly would come in through the vent, but since it couldn’t find an exit, it kept fluttering around the container aimlessly.

If only I had a needle, I could carve something on the fly’s wings, just like in those martial arts novels. I’d carve “I’m in a container” and wait for someone to suddenly get a crazy urge to look at a fly’s wings, see the words, search for the source, and find me, already a skeleton…

But could flies live so long?

It seems that flies die when it gets cold.

A fly landed on my hand and I didn’t chase it away. I let it explore and crawl all over my body.

If someone had told me a week ago that I would make friends with a fly, I would not have believed them. But now I am grateful that it is here, adding more sound and vitality to this place.

At least I won’t die alone, with them by my side.

The closed environment was taking a toll on my mental health, and I had forgotten that flies were one of the ten plagues in the Bible and were known to spread disease and death.

That night I began to vomit and run a fever, and it seemed that I had contracted acute gastroenteritis. To make matters worse, no matter how dizzy I felt, my dreams were no longer related to Shen Wunian, as if he had really died.

Three days later I was lying in the container, dying. I couldn’t eat, and even drinking made me vomit. I could already feel more and more flies circling around me, each one looking at me hungrily, waiting for me to die so they could feast on my flesh.

“Sigh…” I wondered who would find my body first. I hoped it wouldn’t smell too bad.

It was clearly the middle of summer, but I was feeling increasingly cold. I tried to open my eyes, but I was too weak to keep my consciousness from fading.

In the mist, I thought I heard a dog barking from far away, or maybe it was just an illusion, or maybe it was the last beautiful dream I had before I died, I don’t know.

After a short while, there were chaotic footsteps outside.

“There’s a corpse here!”

“It looks like he’s been dead for a few days.

“Master Huanchen’s senses only go so far…”

“This is Liang Weiren.” A familiar male voice mingled with the unfamiliar voices, “Open the container.”

At his command, the container door slowly opened from the outside and the blinding sunlight shone in, making me close my eyes in pain.

Someone approached me and gently touched my face. After noticing that I was still warm, they picked me up directly from the ground in a horizontal position, covered in dirt.

In my blurry vision, Shen Wunian had a bandage wrapped around his neck. His face was white as ice, but his smile was brighter than the sunlight outside.

“I’ve finally found you, Zhong Ai.”

I wondered if this was a dream or a nightmare, and soon sank into darkness.

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The background music is Papa Roach’s “Take Me”.