Chapter 25
For a moment, Ding Qizhen forgot all about the pain in his face and looked at Xia Fengsheng with worship in his eyes.
Compared with how he looked when he had first been separated from Xia Fengsheng, his face was now swollen badly. A trail of blood ran in a miserable line from his nose to his chin, and because he had been kicked down onto the ground, there was both dirt and blood all over his face.
Xia Fengsheng stared at Ding Qizhen, then turned and asked the robber,
“You did that to his face?”
His low, drifting voice rang out through the good night wrapped in darkness, light as a feather.
Looking at the dark gun muzzle, the robber swallowed. He had not expected the other party to be carrying a gun. He threw away the baseball bat, raised both hands, and dropped to his knees. The arrogance in his tone immediately softened.
“Hey, bro, let’s talk this out.”
Ding Qizhen had good sense and quickly bent down to pick up the baseball bat from the ground for self-defense, in case the robber got any funny ideas and tried to grab it again to attack them. Blood raced all over his face from his nose, and when he wiped it with his sleeve, it smeared into a crooked mess.
“Bro?” Xia Fengsheng smiled. Under the moonlight, his pale face looked bizarrely beautiful.
Seeing his smile, the robber hurriedly pulled one out too.
Smack—
A slap landed squarely across the robber’s face.
In the dim surroundings, the color of Xia Fengsheng’s black pupils seemed even deeper. “What’s so funny?”
The slap came out of nowhere. The robber’s head snapped to one side. It felt as if a hundred mosquitoes had flown into his ear, buzzing nonstop. His face burned with pain, the muscles spasming, and he felt as though his jaw had nearly been knocked off by that one strike.
Even Ding Qizhen jumped at how loud the slap was.
If you used five fingers when slapping someone, the force, the effect, and the pain would all be greatly weakened. To hurt properly, the force had to be concentrated in the palm.
“Felt good hitting him just now, didn’t it?”
Xia Fengsheng stood there looking down at him from above. Scarlet lips. White teeth. Eyes carrying a smile, yet gleaming with a deep green light.
He wore a smile on his face, like some evil ghost crawling out of hell.
The smile was nothing more than curved brows and eyes—there was not the slightest trace of laughter in those black pupils.
In the dimness, he looked terrifying.
His long fingers were like white bones stripped of flesh. They rose and fell.
Smack—
Another slap.
Xia Fengsheng’s hands did not stop. He slapped the robber more than a dozen times in a row, lifting his arm high every time before bringing it down with full force.
The night filled with the unbroken sound of slaps. Apart from that, everything was silent.
The noise of palm striking face was abrupt and eerie, like the warning sign of some horror descending.
At first the robber endured it without a sound, but Xia Fengsheng’s force was astonishing. After several slaps, he could no longer bear it and started clutching his face, stumbling backward again and again.
His howls won him no mercy. Xia Fengsheng’s hand never stopped.
“N-no, no, don’t hit me anymore.” The robber’s words were slurred. He felt as if his whole face no longer belonged to him.
Xia Fengsheng ignored him completely.
At last the robber could take no more and roared, “Stop!”
Xia Fengsheng’s hand paused in midair. He looked at him and tilted his head slightly. Reflected in his pupils was the robber’s furious face, twisted with rage.
The next second, the raised hand curled into a fist and smashed straight into the robber’s face.
The robber clutched his face and rolled to the ground, writhing in pain.
He hit the earth with a heavy thud like a lump of iron. Ding Qizhen shivered, hugged the baseball bat tighter, took two steps back, then glanced at Xia Fengsheng again.
Once again, the policy of “encourage reconciliation, not separation” between Shi Ye and Xia Fengsheng deepened in his heart.
Xia Fengsheng coldly ordered the worm on the ground, “Get up.”
The robber’s whites were webbed with blood vessels. Hatred made his face turn ugly and savage. His nose kept snorting angrily.
He stared fixedly at Xia Fengsheng, as if he wanted to stuff him into his mouth and bite him to pieces. Then, as his breathing grew bigger and bigger, without warning, he suddenly threw himself at Xia Fengsheng.
Ding Qizhen’s eyes widened. “Xia Fengsheng!”
Bang—
The robber remained standing there in the posture of having lunged forward, both hands raised like claws, but his face had gone deathly pale and his whole body was frozen in place.
Plop.
A drop of blood landed on his shoulder. Blood was pouring from one of his ears without end.
The threat of the bullet grazing past his ear turned the robber into a wooden dummy. His pupils shrank tight. For a moment, he even forgot how to breathe.
A purely physical sweat instantly soaked through his clothes. The edge of one ear had been torn through where the bullet grazed it.
The robber had never imagined Xia Fengsheng would really fire. Or that, when faced with him lunging like that, Xia Fengsheng would not be intimidated in the slightest, but instead react with incredible speed.
If the idiot he had first robbed had been the one holding the gun, he would already have subdued both of them by now.
Click—
Another bullet chambered.
Xia Fengsheng pressed the gun to his forehead. When he fired earlier, he had not even blinked. The hand gripping the gun had not trembled once.
The robber’s eyes went slack. His knees gave out, and he collapsed to the ground as if all the strength in his body had been drained away at once.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” His nerves were stretched so tight he no longer dared make a single move of resistance. He desperately begged Xia Fengsheng, “Please let me go.”
“I was blind, I’m sick in the head, I never should have come to rob anyone.”
“If you let me go, I’ll definitely turn over a new leaf and start over!”
“I mean it, I swear, please let me go!” Snot and tears ran all over the robber’s face as he clutched at Xia Fengsheng’s trouser leg, begging in a humble posture, kneeling on the ground and begging to be spared. “Please. I don’t want to die. I really don’t want to die.”
Xia Fengsheng crouched down and hooked a finger through the chain hanging around the robber’s neck.
A cross. Under the moonlight, it gleamed brightly.
“You believe in God?” Xia Fengsheng asked.
The robber’s face was drenched in tears. The moment Xia Fengsheng questioned him, he nodded frantically, trembling.
“Yes. I believe in God.”
Looking at the cross, Xia Fengsheng’s blood-red lips trembled.
“Pfft… hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—”
In the end, he simply could not hold it back and burst out laughing. He laughed so hard he knocked his head against the utility pole beside him.
Ding Qizhen: ……
Sheng’er, even while laughing, don’t forget to take care of your body.
“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha— believing in God, you?”
Pointing at the robber, he asked in utter disbelief. He laughed so hard tears actually came out.
The robber’s face shifted from miserable to furious.
Seeing how angry he was, Xia Fengsheng wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with a finger. “Sorry. It’s just too funny. This is the funniest joke I’ve heard all year.”
“Really.” Xia Fengsheng looked at him smiling. “Without you, who would amuse me?”
“What’s so funny?!” the robber shouted, fists clenched in rage. “Do you know what that means to me?! What right do you have to mock someone else’s faith?!”
“Faith?” Xia Fengsheng’s eyes moved. “You?”
He patted the robber’s face. “You misunderstood. I’m not mocking God. I respect Him very much.”
Word by word, his expression playful and hateful, like some paradise-loving demon crawled out of hell, he said, “The one I’m mocking is you.”
“How can there be someone as interesting as you in this world?”
“You believe in God.” Xia Fengsheng laughed so hard he had to bend at the waist, completely moved by his humor. “So after every robbery, every beating, after you’ve done every bad thing there is, you run to church to confess, ask God to forgive you and absolve you, and then feel like your stinking soul has been washed clean?”
Clap clap clap—
Xia Fengsheng applauded for him.
“Brilliant.”
He leaned in close to the robber. “So if I shoot you dead right now, then run to God and confess afterward, that means I’m innocent too.”
The robber was dumbstruck. “You… you…”
His throat stopped working. His teeth chattered in fear.
The way he looked at Xia Fengsheng was as though he were looking at a lunatic.
Tonight, he had robbed the wrong person.
“I wasn’t always like this. I only entered this line of work because I had no choice,” the robber said, his face twitching out of control, his mind beginning to fray.
“When I was little, my father beat my mother and me all the time. Back then there wasn’t a single piece of good flesh on my body. I had an unfortunate, miserable childhood. My mother died when I was in middle school, and after that my father’s abuse only got worse, until I couldn’t even keep going to school normally.”
“There was no way for me to work like everyone else.”
“And besides…” the robber wailed, “I have a child now. I’m doing all of this for him. I have to bring bread home for my child to eat, otherwise he’ll go hungry.”
“His mother—my ex-girlfriend—gave birth to him, handed him to me, and then disappeared.”
“I have to take responsibility for him. The responsibility of being a father. Can you really bear to watch a child waiting and waiting for his father to come home, sitting there hungry?”
The robber begged desperately. “I was wrong, but my child did nothing wrong. He’s still so young.”
“He can’t lose his father. He can’t live without me!!”
A miserable childhood leading to a life of misery—standing there with the baseball bat after calling the police, even Ding Qizhen felt a little moved. Part of why the robber had become what he was now really did come from the family he had been born into.
Xia Fengsheng, however, looked at him without expression, not moved by his pitiful past in the slightest. He was like a silent, cold snake, merely listening.
In Xia Fengsheng’s eyes, the robber saw no pity whatsoever. So he roared at him, “Cold-blooded animal! You don’t understand at all!”
Xia Fengsheng quietly looked at him. Amid the robber’s heaving, shouting tirade, a low flat voice cut through.
“Do you hit your child?”
The robber froze.
Xia Fengsheng asked again, “I said, do you hit your child?”
The robber looked as if he had never expected that question, and at the same time looked shocked that Xia Fengsheng knew to ask it. For a moment, not a single sound came out of his throat.
The robber’s silence made Ding Qizhen, who had been feeling touched only a second earlier, break out in goosebumps.
A robber raised in violence, now grown to his father’s age, was inflicting on his own child the same nightmare-like violence he himself had once suffered.
The child he used to be had become the father. His child had become the younger version of himself. It was like being trapped in some terrible cycle, one that could not be escaped.
“Hitting him?” Xia Fengsheng raised a brow. “Or not?”
The robber’s eyes darted away. He said nothing.
Xia Fengsheng gave a short laugh, the tip of his tongue pressing lightly against his teeth.
In an instant, the indifference in his eyes turned into ruthless force. He shot out one long leg and kicked the robber hard.
Like a madman, Xia Fengsheng began grinding his foot down on the person beneath him.
The robber clutched the cross at his neck in panic, squeezed his eyes shut, and shouted, “God says you’ll go to hell!”
Xia Fengsheng hauled him up and smiled, flashing white teeth. “God spoke to me too. Want to know what He said?”
He leaned close to the robber’s ear. “God told me to send you to hell right now.”
Then he took the baseball bat from Ding Qizhen and swung it hard into the man’s shin.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Before the police car arrived, Xia Fengsheng stopped.
The robber was arrested on robbery charges, half out of his mind as he was shoved into the police car.
“Officer, may I have a word?”
The officer turned and looked at the well-dressed Xia Fengsheng, smiling. “Of course. Go ahead.”
Xia Fengsheng said, “The robber is suspected of domestic violence. I hope that will be investigated.”
The officer looked surprised. “Oh! Of course! That absolutely needs to be looked into. Thank you.”
Since the robber had been armed, and both Xia Fengsheng’s and Ding Qizhen’s lives had been under threat during the robbery, the officer classified the fight as self-defense, with full right to fight back.
After recording a few basic statements, the two of them were free to leave.
Xia Fengsheng handed the gun over to the police. “Picked it up on the roadside near that black-market street.”
The officer patted him on the shoulder in thanks.
Ding Qizhen stood beside Xia Fengsheng holding the bag he had bought for Shi Ye. When Xia Fengsheng turned around, he met a gaze full of worship.
Xia Fengsheng frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Ding Qizhen said, “From today on, I will not allow anyone to defy you.”
Xia Fengsheng: ……
Ding Qizhen added, “That was too handsome, brother. Seriously.”
If not for Xia Fengsheng, whether he lived or died tonight was anyone’s guess. Xia Fengsheng had basically saved his life. He could still fight just as fiercely as he had back in high school.
Since Ding Qizhen was injured, the two of them went to the hospital. Fortunately, after examination, they turned out to be only superficial injuries, with no subcutaneous bleeding.
The doctor prescribed Ding Qizhen painkillers and gave him two ice packs to reduce the swelling.
Ding Qizhen had still not forgotten everything Xia Fengsheng had just done. “Where did you buy that gun? How did someone sell it to you without a firearms permit?”
Xia Fengsheng replied calmly, “Didn’t buy it. Picked it up.”
That really was the truth. He had picked up the gun, intending to hand it over to the police.
Even though he was abroad, he still did not do illegal things.
The reason he had not taken it out from the start was also that he did not know how skilled the robber was, or how quick and agile his movements might be. He had been afraid that if he rashly pulled it out and it got taken from him, the two of them would have had no way out at all.
Ding Qizhen recalled the way Xia Fengsheng had fired. “Have you trained before? Your aim looked pretty good.”
“Mm.” Xia Fengsheng nodded.
“Where?”
“CS.”
Ding Qizhen: ……
No, big brother.
Once Ding Qizhen’s face was no longer red and swollen, the two of them returned to the hotel.
By mutual understanding, neither of them told Shi Ye about the robbery.
The experience had been frightening, yes, but now that it had been resolved safely, there was no need to tell those around them and make them worry too.
Especially since Shi Ye’s birthday was right around the corner.
Ding Qizhen bought Shi Ye a luxury-brand bag, while Xia Fengsheng, within the limits of what he could afford, bought him a cashmere towel.
These past few days, Shi Ye had been very busy, constantly going back and forth to his studio in Beautiful Country, searching for inspiration and writing music. Composition and arrangement both had to be developed side by side.
He came home very late every day, and they could barely see him in daylight.
That worked out well, though. It gave Xia Fengsheng and Ding Qizhen plenty of time to set up the birthday scene.
There was no hesitation when it came to ordering the birthday cake. Based on the impression Shi Ye usually gave people, they directly chose a Happy Puppy-shaped cake.
When it came time to pick the candles, Ding Qizhen found something fun.
“Look at this one—what do you think?” he called out.
Xia Fengsheng went over to look and read the name aloud. “Self-relighting candles.”
There was a QR code on the page linking to a product demo video.
In the video, the birthday child, wearing a party hat, blew out the candles, but after only a few seconds they lit themselves back up again. Blow, relight. Blow again, relight again. The birthday child looked into the camera with a face full of delight.
“Wow, this is so much fun! Everyone should try it too!”
The candles did seem cheerful and would make the birthday more fun, so the two of them ordered them without hesitation.
Soon enough, it was Shi Ye’s birthday.
From the moment he woke up, birthday wishes and gifts delivered to the door poured in nonstop, like a little stream that could not be cut off.
Shi Ye had many friends. He was an E-person.
A super E.
Whether he was traveling or eating in a restaurant abroad, even in places where he knew no one, he could effortlessly strike up conversations with locals.
As if they had known each other in a previous life. He simply had a natural ability to make people warm toward him.
Xia Fengsheng knew he had a lot of friends, but he had not expected this many. There were so many gifts that they no longer fit in the suite, and they had to open another room just to store them.
In keeping with the principle that the birthday star should not have to labor on his birthday, Xia Fengsheng and Ding Qizhen voluntarily took over receiving the deliveries.
They were practically running a parcel station now.
Birthday gifts were the embodiment of people’s feelings toward Shi Ye, so Xia Fengsheng took out a little notebook and carefully registered each sender one by one.
Ding Qizhen read the names aloud while Xia Fengsheng wrote them down.
“Lawrence.”
“Branifer.”
“Qu Wenxiao.”
“Karen.”
“Chen Ting.”
“Li Hello’s parents.”
Xia Fengsheng: “Huh?”
Ding Qizhen: “Huh?”
Li Hello’s parents?
Did Shi Ye have friends with children too?
Ding Qizhen knew most of Shi Ye’s friends more or less, and after thinking hard, could not remember any Li Hello.
Just then, Shi Ye returned from outside, scarf hanging over his shoulder. The moment he opened the door, he saw the two of them wearing identical question-mark expressions, and had no idea why they were looking at him like that.
Ding Qizhen asked him, “Who is Li Hello? Why are that kid’s parents giving you a birthday gift?”
Shi Ye changed his shoes. “A hometown dog’s dog-friend. Met them while walking the dog.”
Xia Fengsheng: ……
Ding Qizhen: ……
His networking circle extended across species.
By nightfall, once it was properly dark, the birthday cake arrived right on the dot at eight. The room was filled with birthday decorations.
The head chef set the dishes on the dining table. Shi Ye took his seat. Everything was ready.
Xia Fengsheng stuck the candles into the Happy Puppy cake.
The moment the candles were lit, Ding Qizhen sprinted over and shut off every light in the room.
The faint glow from the skyscrapers outside became little scattered stars.
Ding Qizhen said, “Happy birthday. Make a wish.”
The dancing flames reflected in Shi Ye’s eyes, the firelight illuminating his handsome face.
What should he wish for this year?
In the dim, hazy atmosphere, he secretly glanced at Xia Fengsheng sitting quietly beside him. The low light was like a filter softening him.
The finance circle was a mess.
Maybe Xia Fengsheng really did have many boats.
Kidney deficiency.
Shi Ye lowered his lashes.
Since this year’s birthday had Xia Fengsheng beside him, then he might as well make a wish about Xia Fengsheng.
He wished that Xia Fengsheng would have no other lovers besides him, that he would not cheat, would not change his heart, would not step on multiple boats—at the very least, not before their relationship ended.
Shi Ye closed his peach-blossom eyes, pressed his hands together at his chest, and silently made the wish over and over in his heart, praying with complete sincerity for it to come true.
Only after reciting it countless times did he finally open his eyes and lean forward to blow out the candles.
“Whoo—”
The candles went out.
A thread of white smoke drifted into the air.
Shi Ye smiled: OvO
So happy!
Pop—
The next second, the candles, which had just been extinguished, suddenly flared back to life without warning.
Shi Ye: !
Xia Fengsheng and Ding Qizhen held in their laughter as they watched his expression.
Ding Qizhen teased, “Maybe your heart wasn’t sincere enough. Make the wish again.”
Shi Ye licked his lips, closed his eyes, and made another wish.
“Whoo—”
Pop—
Close eyes. Wish again.
“Whoo—”
Pop—
Wish again!
Pop—
Pop—
Pop—
Resting his chin in one hand, Xia Fengsheng watched Shi Ye repeatedly making wishes and puffing out his cheeks to blow at the candles, secretly laughing.
The next second, Shi Ye looked at him with a face full of speechless complaint.
Xia Fengsheng: ?
