Chapter 99#
Ji Chengyi completely dropped the slightly forced expression he had been wearing. Shock and sudden realization surfaced on his face, genuine and unguarded.
He braced himself upright. “How did you know it was a book? Did Ji Yang tell you? I knew it — I knew it.” He murmured, hatred suddenly igniting in his eyes. “He’s the same as me. He came back — it’s him, isn’t it?!”
Nie Xu watched his unhinged state with cold eyes.
Ji Chengyi raged on, lost in his own fury. “Then where does he get off calling me fake?! Isn’t he the same? Knowing everything, yet putting on that innocent act, pretending to know nothing.” Ji Chengyi clenched his teeth. “When it comes to deception, I couldn’t hold a candle to him — not even one one-hundredth.”
Nie Xu looked into his eyes and said flatly, voice devoid of fluctuation: “He’s not like you.”
Those words struck a nerve. As expected.
“How exactly is he not like me?”
After a period of flight, Ji Chengyi — once the third young master of the Ji family, always immaculately dressed — was now just wearing a plain two-layer jacket.
Without the halo of wealth and the glamour of money, he looked like nothing more than an utterly ordinary young man.
Even haggard. Fragile.
As if the sensitivity and inferiority bred by his illegitimate-born identity had never left him, never once truly disappeared. At every critical moment, it would rear up again, twisting him, making him real.
“In that book, it says Ji Yang spiked your wine at the banquet.” Nie Xu’s voice was faint, as if reciting evidence that had long since been closed. “The truth is that Qi Yiming did it. To cement that ‘vicious villain’ label on Ji Yang, you shifted someone else’s crime onto his head. Even when fabricating a story, you have to piece it together from borrowed parts.”
Ji Chengyi’s face drained of color, gray and white.
Nie Xu continued: “You used Ji Zhonglin to get close to Lu Li, bought off Wang Weitao, then convinced yourself that was simply how things were. Taking that book and fitting it to your current behavioral pattern — it’s a script, a tool. But you failed to see that the book’s purpose for existing, layered on top of reality, is closer to a smear campaign. A self-serving work, really, dressing yourself up in the high ground to put on a show. Apart from you, I can’t think of a second person capable of fabricating this thing.”
Ji Chengyi’s face turned ashen, then he broke into a manic laugh.
He stared fixedly at Nie Xu’s face, as though looking at something he had desired for far too long. Finally, he nodded slowly and admitted: “Right. You’re right about everything. You’re still just as sharp — same as when I first met you. It’s a pity you never once looked at me properly.”
Ji Chengyi seemed to sink into a distant memory.
So distant that only he remembered.
It was shortly after he had returned to the Ji family. Dressed in old, worn clothes, he stood in the Ji family’s grand, gilded hall like a fish out of water, restless and uneasy.
The old man entered through the doors with a large entourage.
He ignored Ji Chengyi entirely, turning instead to the young man at his side. “Axu, you’ve only just returned — go learn the ropes of the business from your Uncle Zhao first.”
“Understood, Yifu.”
The young man was much taller than himself. Ji Chengyi thought: he clearly didn’t look any better dressed than me, yet he was like something unreachable on a high pedestal — from beginning to end, not even deigning to spare me a glance.
Nie Xu didn’t interrupt his reminiscence. He only dropped a single sentence into the pause: “You’ve grown accustomed to manipulating hearts, yet you forgot — the human heart is the hardest thing to control.”
Ji Chengyi snapped back to the present. He stared at Nie Xu and suddenly laughed. “But you willingly gave your heart to Ji Yang. In this life, and in the last one too. Why?! I’m also a child of the Ji family — just because I didn’t crawl out of the first wife’s belly, I deserved to be mocked by everyone? That beggar who grew up on the streets in Jinzhou — what right does he have to live more like a human being than I do?!”
When he said the word “beggar,” Ji Chengyi noticed that the fingers resting on Nie Xu’s knee twitched, tightening ever so slightly. A vengeful thrill surged through him, and so he pressed on, speaking faster.
Once Ji Chengyi started, he couldn’t stop. “After I came back to the Ji family and discovered that the Ji family’s missing legitimate grandson was the child that man downstairs from my old house had adopted in exchange for the compensation money — not only did I deliberately not say anything, I even sent someone to give that man money. Did you know that man had a gambling addiction? He was also lecherous. The people in that block of tube buildings loved nothing more than gossiping about others. At first, they said they could often hear Ji Yang’s crying — calling for his mother or calling for his brother. I used to think he was looking for Ji Zhonglin, but later I found out that wasn’t the case.”
Nie Xu sat in that iron chair. From the moment Ji Chengyi began describing Ji Yang’s life in Jinzhou, the man seemed pinned to the spot. Even the breadth of his breathing had narrowed.
Ji Chengyi, drunk on the pleasure his malice brought, continued: “As Ji Yansong’s adopted son — even though we saw each other all the time — even though I told you I liked you, you never once had me in your eyes. I even made a special trip back to Jinzhou. He was on the second floor at the time. Did you see him?”
He threw his head back and laughed.
The laughter hadn’t even hit the ground before Nie Xu was on his feet. Ji Chengyi’s vision blurred — the next second, he was seized by the throat and slammed against the edge of the iron frame bed. The back of his skull struck the metal frame with a dull thud. All that remained in his field of vision was the bottomless darkness of Nie Xu’s eyes.
Images flashed through Nie Xu’s mind — that night, Ji Yang’s quiet murmur to himself: “I just suddenly remembered… we actually did reunite.”
Some information has a lag.
Hearing it from another person’s mouth hits entirely differently.
The scenes Ji Chengyi described flickered through Nie Xu’s mind, image by image. The same as Ji Yang’s understated account of his upbringing — and completely unlike it.
He pieced together the puzzle, fragment by fragment.
And in doing so, pieced together a lover, covered in scars.
Nie Xu’s voice pressed impossibly low, hoarse as sandpaper scraping over rust: “And then?”
Ji Chengyi’s entire face was purple-red. The survival instinct drove him to struggle wildly.
It seemed he had finally realized — he had been baited.
His bound limbs gave him no room to break free. He could only force broken, breathy sounds from his throat.
“Later… he somehow started asking about the Ji family. Your underground forces were at their height back then. Xilemen and the Gravekeepers joined hands and caught him. I was planning to wipe his memory through the experiments, let him live worse than a dog, just like in the book…”
Nie Xu’s thumb pressed against his throat, the force still increasing. The whites of Ji Chengyi’s eyes began rolling up, but he was still laughing, his breath thin as a thread: “He lied to me — activated the chip’s self-destruct… I only confirmed it later, when I checked the records…”
Ji Chengyi stared at Nie Xu’s face, and that smile finally, completely distorted: “Do you know? Until he died — the two of you never got to see each other one last time.”
The air froze for an instant.
Nie Xu nearly crushed the neck bone beneath his fingers.
In that moment, Ji Chengyi was certain.
Nie Xu genuinely wanted to kill him.
Outside, another string of footsteps echoed down the corridor.
The primal burst of a man on the verge of death — the volume of a few words was barely a whisper — yet he smiled with certainty: “You can’t do it… You’re not who you used to be.”
The churning darkness in Nie Xu’s eyes intensified. His voice was light, slow, and cruel, the corner of his mouth curling: “What gave you that illusion? Rebirth? If I want someone dead, there are a thousand ways to make them die with unfinished business. You talk so much — seems like you didn’t meet with a good end in your last life either.”
Ji Chengyi’s pupils dilated sharply.
The fingers of his bound hands trembled faintly, as though a memory that terrified him beyond measure had surfaced.
…
Yu Qin only held a nominal position at the hospital; he also had his own private consultation room.
Ji Yang lay on the soft therapy chair, wrapped in his coat, feeling as though he were resting on a cloud.
Yu Qin drew the curtains and asked him one final time.
“Are you sure you want to go through with the memory retrieval?”
Ji Yang nodded. “I’m sure.”
Yu Qin nodded, pulled a stool over, and sat down in front of the therapy chair.
Yu Qin had said the consequences of a failed retrieval could be severe — and yet Ji Yang found himself entering a pure white space. There was nothing inside it, a profound stillness. It was unexpectedly peaceful.
He had always been troubled by the chaotic jumble of his memories, but never at any moment had he felt so comfortable.
The feeling was indescribable.
It was something like what he had felt in that dream — Yu Fei holding him, coaxing him to sleep.
Like returning to the very source of life. Never having experienced the rise and fall of the world, never having seen the fickleness of human nature, the warmth and coldness of the human heart.
Yu Fei appeared.
Unlike the dreams from before, which were separated by a hazy veil, this time she was clear.
She walked toward him with a beaming smile, her hand already reaching out from a distance.
“Baby.”
Ji Yang stood there, dazed, and let himself be hugged. He felt the warmth of that embrace and whispered softly: “Mom.”
“Mm!” Yu Fei answered him joyfully, reaching up to touch his face. She sighed: “As expected of my son — you’ve grown up to be so handsome.”
She was so young — barely older than Ji Yang was now.
She sat down with him in this square, white space, pulling things out from nowhere one after another, introducing each one to Ji Yang. This was the bib he’d drooled on as a baby. This was the toy car he’d played with. She also recounted how he’d thrown a tantrum and bawled when he accidentally broke her compact mirror — she’d coaxed him for ages and he still wouldn’t stop crying.
As she described each memory, Ji Yang felt as though he could truly see the moments — every detail of his early childhood with her, playing out before his eyes.
They talked for a very, very long time.
Then Yu Fei suddenly put her arm around his shoulder and said: “I’m sorry, baby.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Ji Yang tilted his head, resting it against his curled-up knees, and looked at her.
Yu Fei gently ruffled his hair. “I brought you into this world because I wanted you to grow up safe and sound. I’m sorry I couldn’t do that.”
Ji Yang shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself.”
Yu Fei smiled again and praised him: “You’re so sensible.”
Deep down, Ji Yang knew this scene wasn’t real — what Yu Qin had awakened wasn’t the true Yu Fei.
Yu Fei was dead.
This was most likely a memory protection protocol she had planted in his mind long ago.
The emotions were real. The words were not.
But emotions like these were enough to fill the hollow, gaping void inside him — full to the very brim, threatening to overflow.
So when Yu Fei suddenly stood up and said she had to go, Ji Yang felt a moment of panic.
“Where are you going?” He grabbed her hand.
Yu Fei: “Mommy has to go to work.” A wistful sadness crept into her eyes. She looked at him, lingering: “What our generation couldn’t achieve — it can only be left to yours. Baby, if you can survive this, just remember one thing: no matter what you become, you have always been and always will be your mother’s pride. The most important person in my life was myself — I hope the same is true for you.”
With those words, Yu Fei vanished.
A heavy weight pressed on Ji Yang’s chest.
Just as he sat there in a daze, he heard Yu Qin’s voice.
“Xiao Yang. Xiao Yang.”
It was the signal to wake him.
Ji Yang was just beginning to surface when, at that very instant, his body was seized by a sudden sensation of weightlessness.
As if he had been pulled into a maelstrom of memory, unable to break free.
He found himself lying on an operating table.
Blinding white light assaulted his eyes. His body was weak and limp.
Seven or eight people in white coats moved to and fro around him, their voices blurred and indistinct.
“Subject 0710, can you hear me?”
“He can’t — if we continue, he’ll die.”
“We’re out of time. That lunatic the Ji family adopted has cut off every escape route for us. It seems like his whole purpose is to find him.”
In that instant, every missing piece of Ji Yang’s memory suddenly connected.
He remembered growing up in Jinzhou in his last life.
Later, by chance, he learned from his adoptive father that something was wrong with his background. He took part-time jobs while keeping a constant watch on the Ji family’s movements.
He learned, for instance, that the Ji family’s direct line consisted of three branches.
According to rumors, there should have been a fourth — but the last one was Ji Yansong’s adopted son, and he had never married.
He heard that this adopted son was ruthless and vicious, feared across the seas centered around Fanzhou.
At seventeen, he led men to wipe out several major halls of Xilemen in a bloodbath. At twenty, he took charge of the Ji Group’s core shipping industry. In the years that followed, his power and status grew by the day. The turning point came the year he turned twenty-eight.
Outside rumors claimed he had forced Ji Yansong to abdicate and taken control of the entire Ji family.
True or false, real or fabricated — Ji Yang had no way of knowing the truth.
He only knew that the young man who had walked through the doors that year hadn’t just blocked the stool his adoptive father had thrown at him. Afterward, his adoptive father didn’t dare cause him trouble either — all because of that casual, offhand act of assistance.
Until Ji Yang realized he was being followed, again and again.
Laboratory documents. Xilemen. The Ji family’s underground business.
He had caught a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg.
And in the middle of it all, he himself was actually a rather important figure.
So important that it seemed like everyone was searching for him.
But what did they want from him? The thing inside his body?
Ji Yang played his part very well.
Like a failed experiment.
Through the massive one-way glass wall, Ji Yang watched the figure in the distance — leading a group, breaking through the encirclement, drawing closer. A sniper in the distance aimed at him. The absurd part was that the bargaining chip was Ji Yang himself.
Even more absurd — Ji Yang actually watched, with his own eyes, as the man set down his weapon, willingly accepting his fate like a caged beast.
Ji Yang wondered: was the thing inside him really that important?
So important that from that great distance, he could see the other man’s sleeve stained red with blood, see that posture of willing surrender?
So that half an hour later —
When Ji Yang was locked inside the glass-roofed room, unable to let the man see him — he suddenly blew three short, sharp whistle blasts.
The whistle pierced through the chaos of the battle and the haze of gunpowder, through the swaying brush and the forested hills.
He remembered the chip self-destruct trigger protocol he had overheard a researcher mention a couple of days ago. When the man in the distance raised his head and looked in this direction — knowing he couldn’t see him — Ji Yang still stared for a long, empty moment. Then he silently toppled backward.
The height of the cliffside wasn’t inherently dangerous — but the terrain not only blocked all approaching firepower, it also made the place feel like an isolated island.
When a person fell in free fall, it was the most freeing feeling in the world.
The sky was so blue.
The wind was so pleasant.
Ji Yang thought: Brother.
It’s you, isn’t it?
They said, with the strength you possess now, coming here to die is hardly a wise decision.
They said, you took a bullet to the heart — this time, you’re sure to die.
They said, you lost your standing somewhere between black and white long ago. No one ever imagined that taking your life would be as simple as trading one life for another.
If it was you who taught me that whistle —
Then this signal telling you to leave —
You should understand, right?
“Thank God, he’s awake.” Yu Qin helped him up with a worried expression. “If you hadn’t woken up soon, I was going to suspect something had gone wrong somewhere.”
Ji Yang first swung his right foot down, then reached up to touch his forehead.
It was cold, beaded with a thin layer of sweat.
Yu Qin poured him a glass of water. “How do you feel?”
“Not good,” Ji Yang said directly.
Yu Qin frowned. “Did you remember something unpleasant?”
Ji Yang didn’t answer. Instead, he asked: “Does chip self-destruct delete specific memories?”
Yu Qin paused, thought for a moment, then said: “Of course. Biomedical neural research is fundamentally the study of the brain. The self-destruct program doesn’t format the brain — it’s more akin to the destruction of a confidentiality mechanism. It deletes everything related to a specific set of information.”
Ji Yang couldn’t help but press his fingers against his temples.
Yu Qin: “Didn’t Nie Xu say there’s no chip in your body?”
Ji Yang: “Yeah. There isn’t.”
Ji Yang truly didn’t know how to explain that he was himself, yet also not the current himself. And right now, he had no heart for explanations.
He paused for only a few seconds, then stood straight up.
“Where are you going?” Yu Qin asked.
Ji Yang didn’t answer.
At the door, he nearly bumped into Han Biao, who had been waiting.
Han Biao hurried after him. “Where to?”
Ji Yang stopped.
He gazed into the void of the night ahead.
What flashed through his mind was the image of Nie Xu standing atop a field of ruins.
Behind him, ship compartments burned. Beneath his feet, people knelt — every one of them weeping bitterly, begging for mercy on their knees. Nie Xu was unmoved. It was as though he had left the last thing inside him that could be called “human” behind, somewhere far away.
Dragged down by the darkness.
Until the end.
Ji Yang’s heart began to tremble.
He turned to look at Han Biao: “I don’t care what method you use. I have to find him.”
“Have you lost your mind, Young Master?” Han Biao was completely bewildered. He had no idea how one therapy session could result in such a sudden demand.
Ji Yang murmured: “It’s not me who’s gone mad.”
It’s Nie Xu who’s gone mad.
In essence — Ji Chengyi had been reborn, and he was still Ji Chengyi.
He had been brainwashed, and with the chip self-destruction from his last life, that was why he had forgotten all memories related to the matter itself — and had instead mistakenly believed he had transmigrated into a book.
Then Nie Xu was also Nie Xu.
A Nie Xu capable of dragging everyone down with him — and a Nie Xu who had left without telling him — was there a fundamental difference between the two?
No.
Ji Yang’s voice was so light it carried no weight, yet impossibly serious: “If your boss dares to break the law and go to prison, I’ll dump him.”
Late night, the roadside. The cold wind of early winter was beginning to cut to the bone.
Han Biao couldn’t say a single word.
He thought the Young Master was about to cry.
But it wasn’t the kind of crying brought by parting. It was more like — they had once been within arm’s reach, and in the end, they had still been torn apart by death.