Chapter 101#
Two kilometers away from the island was the temporary base camp for this operation’s command.
Military tents dotted the grassy valley floor.
Medical teams came and went, their feet never touching the ground.
The explosion had still injured quite a few people. The most critically injured were hovering between life and death — the base camp didn’t have the capacity for highly complex surgeries. As soon as they were rescued, they were airlifted by helicopter to the nearest tertiary hospital.
According to incomplete preliminary statistics, five were seriously injured, twenty-one sustained minor injuries, and eight had died.
This number continued to climb as the excavation work began.
Of the dead, five had not perished from the collapse.
An assault team member with an injured arm sat on a temporary military cot, wincing in pain. He spoke to a man sitting nearby who was asking about conditions underground at the time: “That Sam was a complete lunatic. Not only did he kill his own people, he had planted gunpowder at the bottom of the pit as well. If that had been detonated too, everyone would’ve sunk to the bottom of the sea. You didn’t see that scene — it was my first time seeing someone leap off a ten-meter cliff face barehanded. No landing point, just a single kick that sent the detonator flying. The gun in Sam’s hand went off right against his waist. He backhanded it away and put two bullets in the man’s leg. That foreigner screamed like a pig being slaughtered…”
Outside the tent, the operation team leader walked past with his entourage.
The conversation drifted out faintly.
“Don’t publicly disclose their identities. Just record them as international auxiliary support in the operation logs.”
Someone chuckled: “I heard Interpol wanted to recruit them, but got turned down.”
“They attracted attention abroad years ago. If he wanted in, he’d have gone in long ago.” The first speaker continued: “But his position is genuinely quite delicate. All these years, the things he’s done for the Ji family have skirted right along the gray area without crossing the line, and his own private ventures are completely untainted. Honestly, someone like that — if he hadn’t already shown his face to the authorities and established an inside-outside cooperation, the higher-ups would probably have flagged him with a threat level.”
The person beside him picked up: “When the Ji family sent him abroad back in the day, they probably never expected him to survive. Who knew this wolf wouldn’t just survive — look at the people under his command. Every single one of them is ruthless. If they started an international bodyguard organization, domestic and foreign, they’d be more than enough.”
“You’re overthinking it. That kind of bloodline runs deep in old-school families — it doesn’t go wrong.”
The team leader who said this suddenly stopped mid-step.
He was looking at the scene a short distance away, where someone was bandaging a criminal. The injured man wouldn’t let anyone near him, cursing and swearing at the nurse.
At that moment, a young man walking past carrying tweezers, alcohol, and other supplies casually flipped the tray in his hand and brought it down with a thwack on the back of the man’s head, snapping irritably: “Shut up. You’re deafening.”
The man was stunned on the spot.
The nurse turned and shot the young man a grateful look.
The leader asked: “Who is that?”
The person beside him said: “That’s Ji Yang, isn’t it?”
The moment the name was mentioned, anyone holding even a modest position in the system could put a face to it.
His presence here had been stamped and approved on the official accompanying personnel list — listed as Nie Xu’s family member. After all, the authorities had always kept their confidentiality work airtight. Not everyone knew the specific details of the Nie and Ji families, and even fewer understood what Elara meant in this experimental project.
The leader didn’t understand the nuances of young people’s affairs. Since he was a family member, and given his age, he categorized him as a brother straightaway, commenting: “The brothers are quite different in temperament and appearance. So young, yet quite the temper.”
The person beside him said: “He’s probably angry.”
“Angry?” The team leader was puzzled.
The person explained: “When the ground collapsed down there — when people came back from the other side, many of them saw it. This one came over with red eyes, almost slapped someone across the face.” The speaker himself felt awkward about it, jerking his chin toward a tent not far away. “See for yourself. One is still in surgery, and the other came back and dove straight into treating the wounded. Haven’t even had a word with each other.”
The leader was very understanding.
He said: “Facing something like this, no one can accept it easily. The reinforcement team has already set out. Transfer him from the medical team — let him take charge of post-operation monitoring for the assault team’s wounded.”
The person beside him nodded: “Consider it done.”
Ji Yang didn’t know that scene had been witnessed by others.
The clothes he wore were still the same dusty ones.
He knew Nie Xu was right there in that tent, and it wasn’t because he was too angry to go over.
The damage caused by close-range shooting was different from long-range shots. For the first time, Ji Yang learned that when a bullet entered the body, the flame and extreme heat would penetrate deep into the tissues, creating explosive shock damage. Even though the doctor said it wasn’t fatal, the difficulty of debridement was still enormous.
Right now, Ji Yang’s mind was still flooded with images of that gory scene — the torn fabric, the savage wound, flesh curling outward, blood pouring out in a rush. He couldn’t imagine, bearing injuries like that, how Nie Xu had held on so long while fighting.
The surgery had been going for nearly an hour and a half.
Ji Yang’s work kept circling around the area, back and forth, but he never once approached that tent.
The nurse took the items from his hands and said: “If you’re really that worried, go over there and keep watch. You’ve been here in body, but your eyes haven’t moved away from that tent.”
Ji Yang denied it: “I’m not worried. He walked out of there himself, what’s there to be worried about?”
“Just angry words,” the young nurse saw right through him and laughed helplessly: “If you weren’t worried, how could you be so short-tempered with everyone, snapping at people left and right?”
The medical team had initially all thought he had a wonderful personality.
He looked like a refined young gentleman — dependable and capable, working tirelessly in all directions.
He was especially patient with the children.
He’d saved the medical team a great deal of trouble.
Until this brief two-hour stretch — particularly since every patient their team had taken on was a criminal, and with armed SWAT officers surrounding them — he’d cursed out seven or eight people in a row, completely transforming from a refined gentleman into a ticking time bomb. The people who’d interacted with him earlier were left absolutely dumbfounded.
Everyone guessed the reason. Half amused, half compelled to push him forward.
No fewer than five or six groups had already been to the outside of that surgical tent — teammates and leaders alike. Yet ironically, he himself hadn’t gone over once.
In the end, Ji Yang did go.
But all he could do was stand at the entrance. He couldn’t go in.
Police escorted prisoners past, one after another.
Except for a handful of the fearless, most kept their heads down like cornered rats. Those self-proclaimed experts had their heads nearly tucked into their chests.
Ji Yang also saw Ji Chengyi, who had woken up.
Head bowed, being escorted past, Ji Chengyi raised his head when he saw Ji Yang. He stood there and refused to move. The police shoved him, but he wouldn’t budge.
Ji Yang stared at him for half a minute, then spoke coldly: “Any last words, Third Brother?”
“Ji Yang.” Ji Chengyi’s voice could barely come out. The marks on both sides of his neck had already turned black, his voice was raw and hoarse. His gaze shifted from Ji Yang to the tent behind him, and he said slowly: “What a pity. I didn’t die at his hands in this lifetime.”
Ji Yang stepped forward, bringing his face close to Ji Chengyi’s, teeth clenched: “You want to drag him into hell. In your dreams.”
Ji Chengyi’s gaze drifted back and settled on Ji Yang’s face.
In a voice so quiet only they could hear: “You really are as insufferable as ever. Do you know what I was thinking when Nie Xu found out what I’d done in the last life — when he locked me in the basement and broke my arms and legs? I was thinking: I have to make you experience every bit of that ending. You were taken, and he tore through all of Fanzhou like a hurricane. From that moment, I knew — you had to die.”
Only with Ji Yang dead could he truly possess everything he wanted.
The legitimate status as the eldest son of the Ji family’s main branch.
The inheritance rights of the Ji family.
And most of all — that person’s gaze.
So when things started over, he had firmly believed heaven was finally on his side.
Even though many things were different, he would get what he wanted.
But the car accident hadn’t killed Ji Yang.
The Ji family couldn’t let him die, so in the end, he’d merely lost one leg.
Years of public opinion had failed to crush Ji Yang, and instead had become Ji Yang’s bargaining chip.
Even the news of the chip on his body had failed to get Xilemen and the Tomb Keepers to capture him alive once more.
Ji Chengyi: “Truly enviable. Luck is always on your side.”
Ji Yang already understood what those so-called spoilers online — from his memories of the last life — actually were. He found it utterly ridiculous: “You think that’s luck? Speaking of luck, who can compare to you and your mother’s illegitimate status — and then encountering a fool like Ji Changshou, otherwise where would your title as Third Young Master of the Ji family come from? Speaking of luck, you played the part of a person for over twenty years without being exposed, living a life above everyone else — who has better luck than you? Don’t bring your neurotic rhetoric at me.”
Ji Chengyi: “You won. So say whatever you want.”
Ji Yang’s expression was cold enough to freeze into icicles.
Suddenly: “Ji Chengyi, have you ever seen the victims from the laboratory?”
Ji Chengyi let out a sharp sneer: “I have. But what does that have to do with me? I didn’t capture anyone. I didn’t run the experiments.”
Chest heaving, Ji Yang lunged forward and grabbed Ji Chengyi by the collar.
His voice squeezed through gritted teeth: “Listen. No one cares what you want! Not everyone cares about the Ji family’s money, or that laughable identity of legitimate heir and grandson. Not everyone is like you, doing the most depraved and absurd things under the guise of ’liking someone.’ Nie Xu isn’t just after revenge. Every person here, risking their lives to protect — those are the very innocent lives you couldn’t care less about!”
Having spoken, Ji Yang shoved the man back hard.
Ji Chengyi immediately began to struggle.
The police gripped him tightly and barked: “Hold still!”
Ji Chengyi’s voice was as raspy as a saw cutting wood. Bent forward by the pressure, he strained his head up and cracked a grin at Ji Yang: “Yes, I’m rotten to the core. But so what?” While fighting the officers’ grip, he said: “We both have the Ji surname, you know. We’re destined to fight to the death. If you want to blame someone, blame your mother. She should never have married into the Ji family in the first place. Can’t find the experimental core data? Then just wait for a life of never-ending turmoil!”
The police dislocated his leg with a sharp click, nodded to Ji Yang, and dragged the man away.
Ji Yang stood there, staring in the direction Ji Chengyi had been taken.
When he turned back, he saw Lu Li standing several meters away.
Lu Li was still looking in the direction Ji Chengyi had been led away. His arm was in a sling, and there was a scabbed wound on his temple.
Ji Yang: “You’re not going to ask him why he shot at you back at the riverbank?”
Lu Li withdrew his gaze. “No need.”
“You’ve come to your senses?” Ji Yang was surprised.
Lu Li turned to look at him. The way he stared made the back of Ji Yang’s neck tingle.
Two seconds later: “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sick,” Ji Yang said.
Lu Li didn’t say it. After his wounds healed in Zhouling, he’d returned to the Fanzhou police precinct to review the case files. Almost by accident, he’d come across the archived transcripts of the kidnapping case from back then.
In that instant — the suspicion that had been buried deep in his heart since Zhouling was suddenly punctured right through.
He’d also learned that Nie Xu had another set of transcripts about the kidnapping case, kept sealed in the archives all along.
The child who had saved him alongside Nie Xu at the brink of death — that had never been Ji Chengyi. When that flatbread was fed to his mouth, there had been no warmth in it at all. Yet he’d carried that memory for years.
At first, he thought Nie Xu had forgotten the bond of life and death they once shared. Later, he thought Ji Chengyi had lost himself in the dazzling, extravagant life.
Until finally, he realized.
The one who’d been wrong from the very beginning — from start to finish — was himself.
Everything that had seemed irrational in that moment became rational. Not because he was rationalizing it, but because it was simply the truth.
He had gone to Huizhou to arrest him.
Had left him hungry and thrown him into a warehouse.
He had been an accomplice in the kidnapping on South Island, had nearly put him on a surgical table at the gravel quarry, and in the end, between him and Ji Chengyi — had chosen Ji Chengyi.
Every last one of these things became a past that could never be looked back upon.
Just like now — looking at the young man before him who had grown into a full-fledged adult. For the rest of his life, he would never again be able to sit down with him and, in a casual tone, speak of the wind from that night, the freezing rain, the dense forest that, once turned away from, could never be returned to.
Fortunately, all three of them from that year were here.
So in the end, Lu Li simply nodded: “Yeah. You could say I’m sick.”
A sickness of both mind and eyes.
Ji Yang couldn’t make sense of him, and frankly couldn’t stand to watch him standing there with a sling on his arm looking half-dead. He shooed him away: “If you don’t want to see him, and you’re that bored — go help someone out.”
He drove the man off directly.
At last, the area before the tent fell quiet.
Ji Yang stood with his head down, rubbing the sand beneath his feet with his shoe. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes when the tent flap behind him was pulled open.
Qi Songqing peeled off his surgical gloves while looking at him: “What was all that noise just now?”
“Nothing.” Ji Yang shook his head. “Police were escorting prisoners past.”
Ji Yang was too lazy to explain further.
His gaze involuntarily drifted toward the inside of the tent. Whether Qi Songqing did it on purpose, Ji Yang didn’t know — the moment he looked over, Qi Songqing stepped to the side, and Ji Yang saw nothing at all.
He held back the question.
Qi Songqing was amused to the point of exasperation: “If you want to ask, just ask! You’re making me anxious.”
“I’m not anxious.” Ji Yang rolled his eyes at him. “I know nothing’s wrong. If something were wrong, you absolutely wouldn’t have that look on your face right now.”
Qi Songqing was defeated.
He pointed at Ji Yang: “One day you’re going to kill me from sheer frustration. Do you know my heart rate spiked to 180 when Han Biao’s call came through? You’re something else, you know that? Han Biao is still waiting to come apologize.” Qi Songqing gestured toward the tent behind him. “Thank goodness it was himself who got hurt. If the person I’d been rushing to operate on was you, I wouldn’t even bother showing up — I’d just let the person inside put a bullet in me and call it a day.”
Ji Yang was speechless: “You talk too much.”
Qi Songqing was completely out of words. He stepped aside, grudgingly: “Go on in. I shouldn’t have spoken to you.”
Ji Yang paused for half a beat, then lifted the tent flap and went inside.
He’d expected to see Nie Xu still unconscious from the anesthesia.
Instead, the moment he entered, he found him sitting at the head of the bed, eyes lifted, gazing right at him.
In the tent of a dozen or so square meters, doctors and nurses were putting away instruments. Nie Xu sat at the head of the military cot, his upper body bare except for a jacket draped over his shoulders. White bandages wrapped around his waist and abdomen in layer after layer.
The only sounds in the space were the soft clatter of packing up. No one spoke.
The nurses moved quickly. Within moments, they had finished, gathering their things and leaving together.
The air was quiet, carrying a faint lingering scent of disinfectant and blood.
“You planning to just stand there?” Nie Xu spoke first. His voice was rough from the surgery, his lips paler than usual.
Ji Yang: “I don’t have to stand here. I can walk right out.”
Nie Xu simply looked at him steadily.
Then he extended a hand: “Come here.”
Ji Yang said nothing. Two seconds passed.
“Why should I come when you say come?” Ji Yang shot back — but even as the words left his mouth, his feet were already moving.
Though he only walked to the edge of the bed.
Ji Yang crossed his arms, looking down from above, his gaze passing over Nie Xu’s waist with cool disinterest.
Nie Xu caught it. He deliberately lifted the jacket a bit to explain: “It’s fine now. The bullet didn’t stay in the body. It’s nothing serious.”
“Shut up!” The anger flared up instantly. Ji Yang glared at him: “Do I look that easy to fool? The bullet isn’t in your body because it was a through-and-through wound! The flesh inside was blown to pieces!”
Nie Xu frowned: “Who’s been feeding you nonsense? It wasn’t that bad.”
“Bullshit, you’re lying to me!” The more Ji Yang talked, the angrier he got. He took a deep breath, nodded: “Fine, it’s fine. It’s nothing. You lie. Just keep lying to me. One day, when you’re blown to smithereens in some place I don’t know about — I won’t even collect your body!”
Ji Yang’s emotions were like that time bomb — once they erupted, there was barely any reining them in.
He didn’t feel at all that rushing here and coming to the front lines had been a problem.
From the moment Nie Xu had left without a word, to the endless waiting in Fanzhou, to the anxiety about unknown conditions on the journey here, to the urgency and panic on the island, to the crushing despair that blanketed everything in the instant of the explosion—
He desperately needed an outlet.
But this person was lying here, having just gone through a serious debridement surgery. The network of small wounds and abrasions covering his body all testified to how grueling this operation had been. Every incremental increase in the death toll told Ji Yang the same thing: as long as he was alive — as long as he was alive, that was enough.
Countless surging feelings piled on top of each other, until finally they boiled over into something that felt like being angry at himself, his eyes completely red.
The sight of him made Nie Xu’s heart clench violently.
He reached out directly, pulled the young man down, and held him tight.
Ji Yang struggled, cursing: “Let go of me! You just came out of surgery! Do you have a death wish?”
Even in this state, restraining Ji Yang was no difficulty for Nie Xu. He held him close. Wincing slightly from the pain, he murmured low: “My fault. I shouldn’t have made you worry.”
Ji Yang went still.
After a brief pause, he lowered his head and bit down hard on Nie Xu’s shoulder. The layer of moisture pooling at the bottom of his eyes spilled over at last.
Ji Yang choked out through muffled words: “Nie Xu, you bastard! I will absolutely not forgive you for pulling a stunt like this!”
Nie Xu cradled his head, responding with a soft murmur: “Then don’t forgive me.”