After returning back to school, Ouyang Ye urged his bodyguards to swear to never speak of a word about anything that had transpired, and only then sent them away. How fortunate that his mother had made arrangements on her deathbed for him to have only true-blue personnel and would not disclose the events to anyone else in the Ouyang family.
“Shao Qi, you’ve caused a great deal of trouble today. I’m sure I won’t be able to protect you once someone has a slip of the tongue,” he accessed the news websites through his brain and knitted his eyebrows together.
After tidying himself up and changing into a brand new suit, Qi Ze finally went to the drawing room and sat down languidly, having an indifferent expression. “Yan Junyu is the head of the Yan family, he has a crucial position. The Yan family won’t let anyone know of this until he’s confirmed dead. If his body will not be found, then Neptune will remain as calm and tranquil of a place as ever.”
“Calm and tranquil? Didn’t you notice the sudden arrival of many unfamiliar faces at school? They’re all Yan family’s people. Maybe they’ve already put everyone in school under surveillance.” Ouyang Ye pressed on the holographic screen anxiety-ridden.
“I have no scruples about it, why are you so nervous?” Qi Ze also opened1 his brain, but instead of skimming through the news, he began playing video games.
The game was specially aimed at children from two to three years old. The background music was appealing, the sound of bubbles bursting and small critters whining worsened Ouyang Ye’s mood. “What do you mean by having no scruples about it?” He inquired quickly. “Weren’t you the one who took Yan Junyu’s corpse away?”
As if he’d done something wrong, Qi Ze lost the level, which prompted him to glare at the other and utter, “now you have the body. If all the evidence points at me, I’ll just lay all the blame on you.”
Ouyang Ye’s face turned a shade whiter and stumbled over his words, “so, this was your intention from the beginning? You’ve already thought of making me your scapegoat?”
“What do you mean?” Qi Ze tugged the corners of his lips into a seemingly ingenuous smile. It did nothing but bring a chill down everyone’s spine.
Apart from his doubts and fears, Yan Junyu developed a deep hatred for Qi Ze. His charming and naive appearance only accentuated his wicked inner self. Conversely, Ouyang Ye, who had been arrogant up until now, was in actuality a good young man with a sense of justice, patriotism and rectitude.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. These words passed from ancestor to ancestor were, indeed, full of common sense. Yan Junyu suspired as he stepped closer to Ouyang Ye and patted him on the shoulder. He caught on to Qi Ze’s plan to avail of Ouyang Ye—such a thing would, undoubtedly, cause him to be held responsible for Qi Ze’s crimes in the future. The only way to effectively solve the problem was to survive and tell the truth himself.
However, resurrection of the dead would not be a realistic concept, even if technology was ahead-of-the-time and groundbreaking. Having considered this impossibility, Yan Junyu shook his head hopelessly, his heart bursting with shame for being inutile in this situation and at Ouyang Ye’s cluelessness.
“Shao Qi, I didn’t know this side of you. You stuck to me like glue for two years for an opportunity like this one, am I wrong? Did you plot Yan Junyu’s death?” In an instant, Ouyang Ye was brainstorming conspiracies with a convoluted chain of events, and his head felt like it was splitting. Trying to withstand submitting to his immoral thoughts, he also acknowledged the fact that he should not provoke Qi Ze. He glanced from side to side and ran to the gate.
After leaving the dormitory, he first made a beeline for the dean’s office to report Qi Ze, so he could later return the iced coffin to the Yan family for clemency. In theory, this was a great idea, yet nothing seemed to work in his favor, as the fingerprint lock refused to open and the beeping sound of the alarm rang continuously because of his constant typos. He was sweating bullets. His palms pressed against the sensor again and again, peeking back at Qi Ze once in a while, like prey assuring it was not being observed by its predator.
“Quit being so anxious, Qi Ze must have altered the lock,” Yan Junyu’s sympathy and solicitude for Ouyang Ye reached an all-time high. This boy wouldn’t be able to escape from his clutches today. His corpse was a means for Qi Ze to intimidate the other. As mentioned earlier, he had to collect whatever supplies he needed, such as energy fluid and thunderstorm crystals. This was only the beginning. If there’s a first time, then there’d be a second and third time… His greed was so overwhelming and hard to satisfy that Qi Ze would demand more and more until Ouyang Ye wasn’t useful anymore.
“Kill him,” said Yan Junyu coldly. If something similar were to happen to him, he would not hesitate to take action by eliminating the source of the evil. In any case, Ouyang Ye was the eldest son of the Ouyang family. Murdering a carbon-based individual could be easily arranged by laying out cleverly a scene, making it look like an accident. Carbon-based people were known to be particularly fragile, and even a common cold was death-dealing for them.
Yan Junyu’s resolution to be appointed as a soldier and his sense of justice, however, were deeply embedded in his haughty nature. Therefore, something as trifling as ending one’s life was not taboo for him, but an essential means of dealing with trouble.
Yet, Ouyang Ye had an entirely different outlook on this matter. Noticing that the door wouldn’t budge, Qi Ze calmly strode in his direction. He sank to the floor in terror, waving his hands wildly and shouting, “don’t come any closer! I’m not running away. How about we talk this out instead!?”
Qi Ze gazed down at him. Suddenly, his lips curled faintly. “Why so serious? I was just joking around.”
“Huh? Are you really?” inquired Ouyang Ye, nonplussed.
“Get up, you look awful sitting on the ground,” Qi Ze said and struck him with his foot, irritated.
Ouyang Ye rose to his feet and asked, “were you playing with me? You scared the bejesus out of me intentionally, didn’t you? I thought you meant to set me up and make me the one to be blamed for everything.”
“Definitely not, I may not be a good person, but I don’t do such things.” Qi Ze’s bottomless eyes flashed with unconcealed conceit and, in a trice, returned to their initial state. He reclined lazily on the sofa and went on to say, “I offer you one more chance to obtain the things I previously mentioned and I’ll grant you the powers.”
In the presence of Qi Ze, Ouyang Ye was but a trembling M2. After getting bullied mercilessly and becoming acquiescent, he inclined his head in agreement and uttered, “rest assured, Shao Qi, I’ll do my best to get everything for you.” As for those so-called powers, he was reluctant to bring the matter up to discussion, which proved he didn’t believe it.
Yan Junyu, who looked very much ferocious in that moment, desperately wished to pry open Ouyang Ye’s skull and understand his thought process.
“It’s no surprise that Ouyang Tao wants to hand over the bequest to Ouyang Duanhua instead of you. How can you be in charge of an entire family if you can’t even tackle this minor issue? Of course, there are many ways to deal with this predicament you’re in, yet you choose to continuously sink deep down, eventually turning out to be a carbon-based person’s plaything. I can predict your future and it’s not looking good.” Yan Junyu hated iron for not becoming steel3.
There was not one single soul who was cognizant of the warnings muttered bitterly by him, but if he remained mum, the morbid notion of his demise was enough to overwhelm him entirely. He kept giving the appearance of still having a beating heart and walking among the living, expressing his opinions to the others, despite his words falling on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, Qi Ze regarded Ouyang Ye’s answer fairly satisfactory and gave him a transparent crystal stone out of his Interspatial Space Button, saying, “hold it tight, don’t let your mind wander and use your inner Qi.”
Ouyang Ye, having no idea what else to do, did as instructed. A few moments later, the crystal glowed in brilliant blue and red, shimmering a couple of times before dousing gradually.
“What kind of rock is this?” he inquired, intrigued.
“Go to the subterranean training ground,” Qi Ze responded quietly after he received his stone back.
“What on earth is it this time, Shao Qi?” Ouyang Ye lost his cool yet again, panicking a tad.
“You’ll understand once you get there.” Qi Ze opened the door situated on the floor and descended at a leisurely pace down the stairs.
Due to his illustrious family background, he resided in a detached apartment, not a dormitory, constructed a subterrestrial training ground of several hundreds of square meters and installed a copious amount of fitness equipment. The pounding of their footsteps reverberated through the strait stairwell, turning on one by one the overhead induction lights. Ouyang Ye trailed behind thoughtlessly without even knowing that the silhouette of a spirit was attempting to block him from proceeding onwards.
“What an absolutely perfect spot to kill people, where only you and Qi Ze have the authorization to access this room. Can you determine when your bodyguards will deduce something happened to you? By the time they become aware of your disappearance and prise the door open, Qi Ze would have left for a long time,” Yan Junyu smiled mirthlessly. “You can jet off Neptune in one hour, get as far as the closest space transit station in two hours, and go out of the Empire and into space in three hours. No matter whether the military did its damnedest to capture the criminal, the probability of that happening is pretty low. I urge you to get out of here at once. Regardless of your methods, pacify Qi Ze, show him a little grace to relax his guard, then make use of this golden opportunity to contact Yan Bo. I previously requested for you to set up my communication number and Yan Bo’s as a shortcut, do you recall that? If there’s no way for you to flee, then you can resort to dialing Yan Bo using that shortcut key, and let him listen in on your conversation.”
He scowled, “there’s so much you can do to successfully run away from here, but you can’t even rack your brains for something. You don’t know how to protect yourself at all! If I were alive, you would’ve been long since discharged! You’re not competent to qualify as a soldier.” He stared at Qi Ze who was the one in the lead, glaring daggers ominously right through his body.
In spite of the fact that Ouyang Ye was deaf to the instructor’s rebuke, he felt a sudden drop in temperature around him, causing him to turn around and promptly dash away.
Yan Junyu felt elated catching the sight of his retreating back. It was, indeed, a clever plan to make adjustments to the door’s lock in order to seal in Qi Ze once he retreated and left the room. However, in the following moment, his spiritual body all but faded out of existence, along with his already extinguishing soul. What that imbecile Ouyang Ye actually did was rush to the door, fumbled with the control panel to raise the room temperature a bit, then clasped his arms around his neck and returned purposefully.
Qi Ze twisted his neck to glance at him and beamed, his facial expression and voice tinged with jest.
Yan Junyu rubbed his forehead exasperatedly and felt that, eventually, his spiritual body would vanish completely by these two. Never had he encountered such a black-hearted or foolish child, which was what the ancient people called this, perhaps, ‘one thing falls upon another’4?
Fuck this one falling thing with another thing! It’s definitely about being sold while counting the money for the others5!
1I can’t seem to find another verb that fits the context better; the author used the verb for ‘open, turn on, unfold’. I’m not exactly sure for now how he opens his brain, so I’ll leave it open for interpretation
2Masochist lol
3The expectation is futile since it would require the person to change their very nature
4There is always one thing to overcome/conquer another; everything has its vanquisher/conqueror (一物降一物)
5It means you don’t know what others are doing to you while helping others take advantage of you at the same time haha, quite fitting
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