Chapter 93 - Warehouse No. 1 (1/2)
Warehouse No. 1
(Second Part)
Xu Jie screamed and struggled to her feet in a panic, rushing to take cover behind a chair. She looked at Shi Jin with eyes filled with fear and disbelief.
When Shi Jin raised his head just now, his face had suddenly looked like Yun Jin’s, and his voice seemed to become softer and more feminine; it was as if it were Yun Jin speaking to her, saying that she knew everything Xu Jie had done, saying that she wanted to plunge her into the depths of despair.
No, impossible, Yun Jin was dead. The person in front of her was Shi Jin, that slut’s spawn.
She tried to convince herself, blinking and blinking to try and dispel the illusion. However, the more she blinked, the more Shi Jin’s figure looked like his mother, even his expression slowly appeared more and more like Yun Jin’s. Finally, unable to bear it, she ducked down behind the chair, lowering her head and completely hiding herself. “Kill her! I order you to kill her! I’ve paid you for this, so hurry up and kill her!” she screamed, her voice shaking.
Xiao Si’s buff was only effective against Xu Jie, the only one who had actually seen Yun Jin and held a guilty conscience. Therefore, to the members of Tarantula, it looked like Xu Jie had exchanged a few words with Shi Jin, then suddenly hid behind her chair for no apparent reason and started raving like a madwoman.
“Are you sick in the head?” The guard team leader scowled at her, motioning for his subordinates to ignore Xu Jie and stay put.
Shi Jin hadn’t expected Xu Jie to have such a huge reaction—really, wasn’t she acting too scared? After checking the time, he poked Xiao Si in his mind and, with a little reluctance, asked it to remove the buff for the moment.
When the buff disappeared, Shi Jin did find himself feeling a little unwell, but because it hadn’t been applied for long, the degree of discomfort was still within the tolerable range. He moved his bound legs, giving himself a moment to adjust, then cleared his throat with a low cough and looked at Xu Jie. “What are you hiding for, didn’t you want to chat? Why are you panicking all of a sudden?”
It wasn’t Yun Jin’s voice anymore.
Xu Jie gripped the back of the chair tight in her hands. Calming down a little, she peered over the chair at Shi Jin, wary; seeing that he didn’t look like anyone but himself, she almost fell to the ground as her tense body relaxed.
Shi Jin raised his eyebrows, deliberately taunting her. “You seem to be terrified of me? Huh, I thought you’d be difficult to deal with, but it turns out it was all bluff and bluster to cover up your fear.”
Xu Jie’s face went taut at his ridicule. Realizing that her recent behavior was extremely disgraceful, she quickly straightened her skirt and stood up, looking down at Shi Jin from a dominant position. She glanced at the members of Tarantula out of the corner of her eye, only to see that they were looking at her like they were watching somebody mentally deranged, and her expression stiffened further. She sat back down in the chair, acting as if nothing had happened, and said, “I’m just playing with you. At this point, you’re just an insect in the palm of my hand that I can crush whenever I wish—you think I’m afraid of you?”
“I don’t think so, I know so,” Shi Jin replied innocently. “I mean, a moment ago, you very obviously showed everyone how much I scare you, so did I say anything wrong?”
Xu Jie’s expression sank. “You’re looking for death, you damn mongrel! I should have killed you as soon as you were born!”
“You?” Shi Jin shook his head, giving her a look of derision mixed with pity. “You couldn’t even step in the front door of my house. After we moved to M country, whenever you were there as well, Dad would send people to watch you to make sure that you couldn’t get close enough to even catch sight of me, much less kill me. Do you really think I don’t know anything at all? Among all Dad’s women, you’re the only one he didn’t choose. Do you really not have any idea how much he disliked you? If Xu Chuan hadn’t done his best to speak up for you back then, Dad would’ve gotten rid of you straight away—once you climbed into his bed, he knew exactly what kind of scheming, calculating woman you were. I’ve heard you think of yourself as Dad’s rightful wife? Wake up. Even if there was something like that, that would be Fei Yujing’s mother rather than you—at least Dad took the initiative to woo her.”
Xu Jie’s face flushed, then turned white. Her hands clenched on the chair’s armrests, she cried out, “What do you know?! ‘Woo’? You think they deserve that word? They’re just a bunch of baby-making machines Shi Xingrui bought—as if they can be compared to me!”
“Baby-making machines?” Shi Jin’s tone was flat, but his words were deadly. “At least Dad was willing to pay them to birth a child, but what about you? You managed to get pregnant after sleeping with him, but if it weren’t for Big Brother resembling Dad so much, you would’ve been run off as a scammer. I heard you lived with Dad for a few months after giving birth. After that first time, he never touched you again, did he? I’ve seen your medical records for postpartum depression—according to the psychiatrist’s notes, you seemed to be complaining about Dad not wanting to sleep with you?”
The last fig leaf torn off, Xu Jie’s expression distorted with fury. She surged to her feet and rushed at Shi Jin, screaming, “Nonsense! The reason Xingrui didn’t touch me was that I’d just given birth, he was worried about my body! He loved me, he loved me more than anyone else! I’m going to rip out your tongue, dig out your eyes—I’ll make you beg for death!”
The guards promptly moved to block her. “Step back! If you don’t stop, we will throw you out!” one of them warned, glowering at her.
Shoved back, Xu Jie staggered and nearly fell over again.
Shi Jin chuckled. “He loved you more than anyone else? Stop talking in your sleep, Xu Jie. The person he loved the most was dead, and the living can never compete with the dead. And now, he’s gone to reunite with his favorite person in the afterlife. You couldn’t have him in life, you won’t have him in death—you’re doomed to never obtain his love, for all eternity.”
Snap.
The last string of reason in Xu Jie’s mind broke. She looked at Shi Jin’s mocking smile, remembering Shi Xingrui still pining for his deceased lover, even after she bore him a child, remembering him burying any information about that person so deep that no one could find any trace of it at all, remembering how he kept looking for substitutes and how obsessed he was with Yun Jin… Then, an image of Shi Xingrui, blissfully happy together with his true love or Yun Jin in the afterlife, appeared in her mind. At long last, her sanity completely collapsed. Shrieking, she lunged at Shi Jin again. “I’ll kill you! I’m going to kill you!”
Boom—！
At the same time, the faint sound of an explosion could be heard outside.
The guards stopped Xu Jie once more. Hearing the explosion, very convincingly tense expressions appeared on their faces; after a brief exchange, they all took out their weapons and moved closer to Shi Jin, keeping him in the middle.
Xu Jie was still struggling to get free, looking completely deranged.
The leader of the guards, who had caught her, raised a hand and slapped her. “We’re under attack and the enemies already broke in, keep quiet!” he growled.
The enemies broke in already?
Her face swollen and painful and her mouth tasting of blood, Xu Jie was forced to regain some reason. She looked in the direction of the noise, disbelieving. “What’s going on? We’re being attacked? By who?”
“Who?” Shi Jin said with a smile. “Of course, by the ‘cripple’ who you said couldn’t protect me, who else? Unfortunately for you, it seems it’s not your destiny to be able to kill me in this lifetime, Xu Jie.”
Xu Jie’s eyes widened and she screamed in denial, once again struggling to rush at Shi Jin.
Finally reaching the end of his patience, the team leader tossed her aside, cussing her out. He crouched to cut the rope binding Shi Jin’s feet. “Watch them,” he ordered his subordinates. “I’m going out to check the situation. If I don’t come back in ten minutes, take them and retreat!”
His subordinates acknowledged the order and changed their formation to surround both Xu Jie and Shi Jin as the team leader stepped out of the storeroom.
Xu Jie stared blankly for a moment, dumbfounded, then turned to look at Shi Jin next to her. A twisted smile crawling onto her face, she breathed, “How nice, I can finally reach you.”
Shi Jin gave her a sideways glance, sneered, and extended his leg to kick her without hesitation.
Thump.
Caught off guard, Xu Jie crashed to the ground.
Tarantula’s guards looked over at the commotion. Seeing that it was Xu Jie who’d suffered a loss, they turned back as if nothing had happened.
“You damn mongrel…” Gnashing her teeth, Xu Jie struggled to get up.
Out of the corner of his eye, Shi Jin saw Gua One’s figure appearing at the door of the storeroom. Asking Xiao Si for the buff, he kicked Xu Jie down once more, then deliberately got closer to her and whispered, “Hey, don’t you want to kill me? Come on.”
It was a soft female voice again, Yun Jin’s voice.
Xu Jie shuddered. She looked up at Shi Jin, but saw a woman’s face instead and screamed in horror. Scrambling back at first, she came to an abrupt stop, her expression turning vicious. “Yun Jin, if I could kill you the first time, I can kill you a second time! Go to hell, you slut!”
A woman’s shrill voice resounded in the car. Shi Weichong started and instinctively turned towards the comm, then got up and tried to get closer to it. The other brothers also glanced over at the sound. Li Jiuzheng asked hesitantly, “Was that Xu Jie’s voice just now? What did she say, she’s going to kill Xiao Jin’s mother a second time? What does she mean?”
The car was dead silent as everyone looked sideways at Shi Weichong. Shi Weichong stiffened, then sat back down and buried his face in his hands, a low howl like that of a trapped animal escaping his throat.
At this point, the last glimmer of hope flickering in his heart was completely extinguished. What was even more terrifying was that his mother’s true face and past may be much darker and weigh heavier than he thought.
The other brothers watched him in silence, their expressions complicated.
Lian Jun’s cool voice broke the stifling atmosphere inside the car. He switched the comm to a two-way communication with Gua One, who had been the one to broadcast Xu Jie’s voice, and asked, “What is the situation, have you found Shi Jin?”
{Yes, in the storeroom in the deepest part of the factory. Both Shi Jin and Xu Jie are there, guarded by Tarantula, and Xu Jie is attacking Shi Jin. We’re not willing to risk charging straight in for fear of accidentally injuring Shi Jin.} Gua One gave a calm report.
Lian Jun’s eyebrows knitted. “Hold them down with cover fire and try to find a way around to enter the storeroom from the rear, then wait for an opportunity to rescue Shi Jin.”
Gua One acknowledged the order and began to discuss a detailed plan with his subordinates. Xu Jie’s voice, intermittently sounding in the background, provided an unpleasant accompaniment.
Hearing that, Lian Jun added with a frown, “Don’t let Xu Jie hurt Shi Jin. Set up a sniper—if she tries to do anything drastic, kill her.”
Shi Weichong’s head snapped up. “No, don’t kill—”
“So you’re going to watch her hurt Shi Jin?” Lian Jun interrupted him, looking at him with eyes like ice. “Don’t try to interfere with my decision or I’ll take care of both of you together.”