Chapter 102#

Ji Yang meant it this time.

As a result, over the following two days, whether people knew him or not, they kept seeing him coming and going from Nie Xu’s tent. He was there when the dressings were changed, delivering food when it was mealtime, and when too many people came looking for Nie Xu, he would even deflect the trivial matters for him.

But he never gave anyone a friendly face.

The young master had changed into fresh clothes, leaning against the tent while making a phone call.

This time he had left Fanzhou without even informing his company. Peng Jiaying and the others had been driving themselves mad looking for him, and on the other end of the line, they were exasperated with rage. “Were you trying to scare someone to death? I’ve been calling your phone nonstop for twenty-four hours straight. I was terrified you’d run into another situation like the one on Nandao before — I was about to report you missing to the police.”

Ji Yang was still fuming over someone leaving without a word. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, he could only keep his mouth shut. After Peng Jiaying finished ranting, he finally said, “Don’t bother with the police. I’m surrounded by them here anyway.”

“You—” Peng Jiaying couldn’t be bothered to scold him any further and just said, “When are you coming back this time?”

Ji Yang glanced outside. “Shouldn’t be too long.”

The capture operation was entering its wrap-up phase, but “capture” was all it was so far. The interrogations and the building of an evidence chain that lay ahead were the real priorities. Whether they could use the laboratory as a starting point to completely unravel this criminal network that extended overseas — there was still an enormous amount of follow-up work to be done.

However, with the Ji family’s arrest and the truth about the Nie family’s maritime disaster from years ago finally coming to light, all of it had already slipped beyond the control of any single individual.

It was no longer the matter of one person or one family.

Peng Jiaying couldn’t help but sigh with emotion. “When I agreed to work with you, I never imagined we’d go through so many ordeals in such a short time. Now I feel like we really should set up an influencer company. Even doing edgy content would be better than you running all over the place like this.”

Ji Yang clarified, “I didn’t sell out back when things were at their hardest, and I’m not going to do it now either.”

“Who dares let you sell with your current market value? I was just sighing a little.” Peng Jiaying added, “Oh right — Lin Yue asked me to tell you that Xiaobai has been discharged from the hospital and is fine. He said you were really worried, so he made sure I tell you personally.”

Ji Yang froze.

The hand gripping the phone tightened ever so slightly, then slowly relaxed.

He turned his head to look at the man who had risen from the bed and sat on its edge, analyzing and breaking down the underground structural blueprints from before the collapse with someone, and said, “Got it. Thanks.”

Ji Yang hung up the phone. By then, Nie Xu had mostly finished his work as well, and the people who had come to see him left one after another.

Nie Xu stood up and walked over.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.

“Old Peng.” Ji Yang was fiddling with his phone, head down. After two seconds of hesitation, he said, “I didn’t tell you before — Xiaobai was poisoned and hospitalized. He almost didn’t make it.” Then he quickly added, “But he’s fine now.”

Nie Xu’s overcoat was merely draped over his shoulders; the shirt underneath had been buttoned by Ji Yang, and it was a bit crooked.

When Ji Yang said this, he looked at the folds of fabric around Nie Xu’s waist and frowned, wanting very much to reach out and straighten them — but he forced himself to hold back.

Nie Xu, however, moved first. He reached out and lifted Ji Yang’s chin.

“Have you been crying?” Nie Xu asked.

Ji Yang slapped his hand away with a smack, gave him an eye-roll, and said, “Who’s been crying?”

Nie Xu looked into his eyes. “What I meant is, did you cry when Xiaobai’s incident happened?”

“Not that either.” Ji Yang denied it swiftly, brushing off the fact that he had indeed had red eyes earlier along with everything else. “The word ‘cry’ isn’t even in my dictionary. Don’t spread rumors.”

Nie Xu smiled, his heart once again wrapped in a wave of tender ache.

The Ji Yang before him looked like he had returned to how he was before — lively and clean, someone who would never bow his head and concede defeat in any circumstance. But that day, standing disheveled at the scene of the explosion, the way he had looked at him — that gaze had been permanently branded deep in the depths of Nie Xu’s heart.

Ji Chengyi’s words — “Until his death, you never even got to meet” — pressed down heavily, and had continued to do so until now.

Nie Xu’s hand moved to rest on Ji Yang’s hair. He had no intention of exposing him. He could more or less guess that Xiaobai’s crisis at that time had been the primary catalyst that drove Ji Yang to take action. That careful, aching tenderness eventually became a seemingly casual question: “I received a message from Yu Qin. He said he performed hypnosis-based memory retrieval on you? Have your memories changed at all?”

Ji Yang could sense that extreme, meticulous carefulness beneath Nie Xu’s usual composure. His claws curled in involuntably, and he shook his head. “I remembered everything.”

“Your twenty years at the Ji family?” Nie Xu asked.

Ji Yang denied it. “No.”

What he remembered were the memories of how he had ultimately failed to reunite with Nie Xu.

They had grown up in entirely different places, with vastly different, worlds-apart experiences and environments. One of them, from the very beginning, had never known Jian Yuan — only Ji Yansong’s adopted son, trapped in the darkness and never once thinking there would come a day when he could walk out.

He had always been in the dark.

And the other — himself — had lived for twenty-odd years carrying the secret of the chip.

Because of those twenty years, when the core technology was taken away, the Blue Sea Project went dark and could never grow again.

Yet the maritime disaster of the Qiming, the Gravekeeper’s ambitions, Ji Chengyi’s covert involvement after discovering his origins early on — all these factors had compounded, and in the end, he had become the sharp sword everyone used to point at Nie Xu.

The black water was so thick that not a trace of light could be seen.

The chip self-destructed. There were no winners.

Everyone had paid a bitter and heavy price for this — generation after generation.

Nie Xu understood.

He reached out and pulled Ji Yang into his arms, held him tightly, drew a long breath in and let it out, and said, “I almost wish you didn’t remember.”

“You knew?” Ji Yang was surprised. He buried his face in the curve of Nie Xu’s neck and shoulder, his voice muffled inside the overcoat.

Nie Xu hummed softly. “I learned it from Ji Chengyi.” Including many of the details — Nie Xu had no intention of hiding anything. “Although I can’t explain why you both hold those memories simultaneously, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.”

Ji Yang didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“We can talk about that later. I don’t want you dwelling on it.” Nie Xu’s palm rested against the back of Ji Yang’s neck, his thumb brushing over the small patch of skin behind his ear. “If the memories are all bad ones — including the ones with me — then they’re not worth it.”

Ji Yang tilted his head, his nose brushing against the skin of Nie Xu’s throat. He answered honestly, “Actually, we didn’t really know each other. I don’t think those were bad memories.”

Nie Xu said, “I can’t personally feel what that version of me was like, but I know myself. If I had been by Ji Yansong’s side since childhood, that version of me finding you wouldn’t necessarily have been a good thing.”

Ji Yang let out a confused “Hmm?”

Nie Xu didn’t explain.

Every bone and sinew had been steeped in sin. From the very beginning, he had offered his soul up as a sacrifice — at any cost.

He could have saved him from a single adoptive father in Jinzhou.

He could have learned that the child he had given up all those years ago had been taken away, and staked everything to protect him.

He could have, for his sake, torn Ji Chengyi into ten thousand pieces.

But the ending had been determined from the start.

Nie Xu pressed his lips near Ji Yang’s ear. “You wouldn’t want to know what a completely out-of-control version of me looks like. He’d tear your freedom to shreds, suffocate you with pain until you couldn’t live.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Ji Yang said.

The moment the word left his lips, he felt Nie Xu begin to nibble at him, little by little.

The close distance left Ji Yang no room to retreat.

This kiss was unlike any before. It carried too many, too many intense emotions, and a separation that, even though it hadn’t even been half a month, felt as though years had passed.

After a brief moment of passivity, Ji Yang began to respond.

His hands slid up inside Nie Xu’s overcoat and wrapped directly around his neck. Their breathing tangled together, and that feeling of wanting to inflict pain on the other but not knowing what to do with them transformed into something fine and dense — an intimacy that made even a single second apart feel unbearable.

Ji Yang’s mind kept reminding himself: He’s injured. He’s injured.

But Nie Xu seemed determined to swallow down all of Ji Yang’s pretended coldness, grievances, and frustration from the past two days in one go. The lack of oxygen gradually stripped Ji Yang of his ability to think. By the latter part of the kiss, he had no choice but to lean on Nie Xu’s body for support, lest his legs go soft and he collapse.

“Boss.”

Han Biao, who had been pacing nervously outside for half an hour, finally steeled himself and charged into the tent.

The instant he entered, a military-issue teacum was hurled straight at him, accompanied by a voice that was both deep and hoarse: “Get out.”

Han Biao caught the teacup with impressive reflexes. One glance at it was enough to send him retreating head-down out of the tent immediately.

In truth, all he had seen was the back of his boss standing there.

But there was clearly someone in front of him — that person with disheveled hair from being rubbed against, only the top half of their head visible, buried in his boss’s chest. It wasn’t hard to guess who it was.

Han Biao’s face turned crimson as he stood outside the tent.

How am I this unlucky, he thought.

Weren’t they still giving each other the cold shoulder this morning???

Just then, Qi Songqing arrived with the medicine, only to be yanked away by Han Biao with a single tug.

“What are you doing?” Qi Songqing was bewildered.

Han Biao: “Don’t ask so many questions. I just saved your life. Treat me to dinner when we get back to Fanzhou.”

Qi Songqing wasn’t quite as brainless as him. He glanced back over his shoulder, immediately deduced what had happened, and chuckled with amusement. “Is that all the backbone you’ve got?”

“Screw you,” Han Biao griped. “I keep falling into that young master’s trap. Would you say he’s my nemesis or what?”

Qi Songqing patted him on the shoulder comfortingly. “Look at it this way — from now on, as long as you keep that young master in a good mood, your boss will be in a good mood. And once your boss is in a good mood, he won’t hold it against you for not keeping an eye on the guy.”

Han Biao thought about it. It seemed to make sense, and yet didn’t quite make sense at all.

Unable to come up with a counterargument, he simply went off to help instead.

That evening, several fires were lit in the valley.

The weather had turned cold. Even though the sun had been out all day, the breath you exhaled at night still carried a white mist.

Ji Yang sat beside the largest bonfire, surrounded by several children — none of them had been rescued too long ago, and their condition was still relatively good. Children bounced back quickly, and they circled him, calling out nonstop: “Brother Yang! Brother Yang!”

Ji Yang patted each of their heads and called out their names with pinpoint accuracy.

When the children tired of running around, they curled up and sat at Ji Yang’s feet, transforming into a living encyclopedia of questions.

“Why isn’t Brother Yang a doctor?”

“Why are Brother Yang’s legs like this?”

The adults around them laughed along.

Ji Yang was holding the youngest child in his arms and chatting with someone nearby. Mid-sentence, a shadow fell over his head.

Nie Xu was standing right behind him, accompanied by several of the officials.

“How did you come out?” Ji Yang turned around in surprise.

One of the officials said with a smile, “We had some questions we wanted to consult your brother about. Yang, I know Nie Xu is injured, but you shouldn’t keep such a tight leash on him. Getting out and moving around helps with wound recovery.”

Ji Yang’s attitude was perfectly courteous as he nodded. “You’re absolutely right.”

“Let’s go. Time to head back.” Nie Xu extended his hand toward him.

Ji Yang glanced at that hand and said, “Head back where? I have my own place to stay.”

Nie Xu said, “All the children are being looked after tonight. There’s no spot left on the communal bedding. You’re sleeping with me tonight. We leave early tomorrow.”

Ji Yang looked suspiciously to the side.

The two other people responsible for looking after the children nodded and said with a smile, “That’s right. One of the tents got taken down today, so we can only ask you to squeeze in with Captain Nie.” The person who said this gave him an apologetic grin. “Even though Captain Nie is injured, just be careful when you sleep — you should be fine.”

Ji Yang: “……”

Coincidentally, the child in his arms looked up at that moment, pointed at his mouth, and said, “Brother Yang, your lip is busted.”

Ji Yang immediately clapped a hand over the child’s mouth, an awkward laugh escaping. “Mm. I fell.”

He handed the child off to someone nearby, then stood up with crisp efficiency, grabbed Nie Xu, and pulled him away with a faintly fleeing quality to it.

The child was still calling after him: “Brother Yang, the doctor auntie said it wasn’t from a fall—”

The rest of the sentence was evidently clamped shut. What replaced it was one wave after another of raucous, teasing laughter.

Ji Yang looked incredulous. “Do they all know?”

“About what?” Nie Xu was holding his hand.

Ji Yang rolled his eyes. “It’s not from a fall. It was chewed by a dog.”

Nie Xu let out a low chuckle. “Probably. If you keep showing up with that kind of wound and don’t explain yourself, do you want people thinking you and your brother have an improper relationship beyond what brothers should have?”

Ji Yang offered a fake smile. “In this middle-of-nowhere backwater, even if I really did commit incest, who’s going to stop me?”

Nie Xu pulled the one making outrageous statements a step forward.

“Shut up.” Nie Xu’s hand settled on his shoulder, seemingly just resting his weight on him, but in truth enclosing him in a hold. “I’ll stop you. Acting out is one thing — but letting others see is not.”