Chapter 124: Every Step Was a Path to His Own Salvation

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A silver Maybach merged into the traffic.

The knuckles of Zhou Yili’s hand, clenched around his phone, had turned white. Each time the call returned a busy signal, he dug his nails into his palm until it hurt.

Fu Chen saw the Zhou Yili of the past in him.

The Zhou Yili who had been without Shen Jixing.

“...Hello, Little Que.”

Fu Chen tapped his earpiece to answer the call. Sheng Que’s voice on the other end sounded as though he had just woken up—slightly hoarse, and soft.

“Where did you go, Chirpy?”

Fu Chen’s expression remained cold and aloof as he pressed the accelerator to the floor and continued forward with composure.

Yet his voice softened. “Sorry. Something came up unexpectedly. Go back to sleep.”

Sheng Que was silent for a while. In the end, he knew that Fu Chen was perpetually busy and that work came first.

He lay sprawled over his pillow, gloomy and aggrieved. “Fu Chen, my butt hurts...”

“...”

Fu Chen’s Adam’s apple shifted involuntarily.

A rare trace of discomfort appeared on his face. “Be good. Get some rest. I’ll be back soon.”

Before Sheng Que could say anything else, he hung up.

Sheng Que: “???”

How dare he?!

Meanwhile, Fu Chen calmly removed his earpiece. After hesitating, he offered a quiet explanation, partly to divert Zhou Yili’s attention—

lest he drive himself into an even more desperate situation.

“It was Little Que’s call. He... fell ill. I didn’t tell him.”

Otherwise, given the extent of Sheng Que’s temper, he would probably come running even on crutches.

Zhou Yili gave a calm hum and continued repeating the same mechanical action.

“Your Bluetooth isn’t connected.”

“...”

A deathly silence fell over the car.

Zhou Yili placed his phone face down on his lap and raised a hand to shield his eyes. “Congratulations. Explain everything when we get back. Tell us every last detail.”

Tell us.

Fu Chen nodded. “All right. I will.”

Zhou Yili fell silent and said nothing more. In that brief moment, Fu Chen had caught a faint flush across his face. After some hesitation, he asked, “How much do you know about Bo Yu?”

Fu Chen wanted to prepare him.

He had not expected Zhou Yili to have already investigated the man’s background thoroughly.

“The eldest son of the Bo family in Qinghuai City, who was once targeted in retaliation. Ruthless and vicious in his dealings, with a business empire that likes to skirt the darker edges of the law. Yet he is also a major philanthropist—a man who sees the world in absolute black and white.”

Zhou Yili said, “He likes Shen Jixing, doesn’t he?”

Fu Chen regarded him with newfound respect.

A man’s instinct when it came to a rival was indeed extraordinary.

But he said, “Actually, I don’t think that’s the case.”

The car stopped outside the villa compound. As Fu Chen pressed the safety lock, he said to Zhou Yili—

“If you loved someone, would you be willing to hurt him until he was covered in wounds?”

The words struck like a heavy hammer.

A roar went off in Zhou Yili’s mind. “What do you mean?”

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He had thought that all the suffering was finally over.

But the moment he began to investigate, it seemed that the pain had only just begun.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m asking where you’re going.”

Before them stood an obviously luxurious villa.

Yet Fu Chen did not even glance at it. He walked instead toward the darkest, most secluded corner—the only place in the entire villa untouched by light.

“Weren’t we coming to the place where he lived?” Zhou Yili seized his shoulder, his grip frighteningly tight.

Fu Chen did not get angry.

He merely stated calmly, “This is where he lived.”

“The amount of time he spent here...”

Fu Chen spoke softly. “Was longer than you can imagine.”

The pressure on his shoulder eased.

Just as Fu Chen turned around, a bodyguard came running from inside the villa, an iron rod in his hand. “Who are you? Who let you in? Get—”

A gust of force swept past Fu Chen’s side.

Before he could react, the bodyguard was kicked three meters away.

Zhou Yili picked up the iron rod from the ground and raised his long, crimson-rimmed eyes, cold and savage.

“Move.”

The several bodyguards guarding the entrance: “...”

Since they were all going to end up on the ground anyway, they decided to fall as though blown over by the wind.

Zhou Yili walked up the damp, freezing steps, clearly feeling the temperature drop lower and lower.

At a slippery step around the corner, his stride faltered.

Fu Chen asked, “Are you all right?”

“You didn’t lie to me?”

Fu Chen knew what he meant, but he had always believed that even a well-intentioned lie was meaningless.

“I never lie. Neither did Shen Jixing.”

It was simply that Shen Jixing had never told him.

Shen Jixing had thought it unnecessary.

If he had not needed Fu Chen’s network of connections, he would probably have crushed these matters down and swallowed them alone. No one would ever have known.

At the end of the darkness, Zhou Yili saw no one.

And yet he seemed to see Shen Jixing sitting there in silence.

“Where were you during the month after you left me?”

“Thinking of you.”

Fu Chen saw him walking toward a piece of machinery and hurriedly called out, “Don’t touch it!”

A fine current of electricity shot into Zhou Yili’s hand. The iron rod fell from his grasp, and the skin of his arm split open in an instant.

Even Fu Chen was startled. “What the hell is this—”

His voice broke off, as though he had realized something.

“Zhou Yili, calm down. The most urgent thing now is—”

He had thought that this reckless young lion would lose control.

But he did not.

Zhou Yili merely shook his hand, flinging away every drop of blood, then took out his phone and made a call.

“Hello.”

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A deep, stern voice came from the other end. “You little bastard, so you do know your old man has been—”

“I agree to your terms,” Zhou Yili said. “But I have one condition.”

Zhou Hengyang’s voice paused, then softened considerably. “At least you have a conscience. You know I’m old now, and my health isn’t—”

Zhou Yili interrupted impatiently. “Investigate a man named Bo Yu. Ground every flight bearing his name.”

“...”

Fu Chen’s eyes flickered.

Someone who had fought his way up from nothing truly could not compare with the power of an heir from an old family.

He simply had not expected that even someone as stubborn as Zhou Yili would set aside his resentment and reconcile with his father.

“What kind of nonsense are you spouting, you little brat? Those are international flights! Do you think I can ground them just because I say so? Does your father look like a god?”

Zhou Yili was silent for two seconds before saying, “Isn’t Father as good as a god?”

Zhou Hengyang fell silent.

After a moment, he said coldly, “You had better do as you say.”

The call ended.

Zhou Yili took one last thorough look around the basement. Blood from his fingertips dripped onto the damp floor.

“Let’s go.”

“We haven’t searched the villa. How do you know he’s already gone?”

“Most of Bo Yu’s power has been transferred overseas. I thought he was planning to leave, but I failed to pay attention in recent days...”

Zhou Yili simply had not imagined that Bo Yu would become so utterly deranged.

“The villa’s alarm system is switched off, and the bodyguards are only here to put on a show,” Fu Chen said. “You’ve grown up. I thought you would panic and lose your way as you did before.”

But he had not.

From the moment Zhou Yili failed to find Shen Jixing, he had methodically searched the surveillance footage, the cemetery—searched for his Shen Jixing.

“I have one question, too.”

Standing in the cold, damp basement, Zhou Yili looked toward the only patch of light above his head.

“The door is permeable to water. The month he disappeared was during the rainy season, and there were even unusually severe storms. How did he get out in the end?”

Fu Chen lifted his eyes toward the basement door.

They had come in such haste that even Fu Chen had failed to notice that the door let in water. He had only heard Shen Jixing describe it...

This was the first time Fu Chen had ever wanted to lie.

“Perhaps someone—”

“Uncle,” Zhou Yili interrupted him. “Tell me.”

Fu Chen’s Adam’s apple moved. Suddenly, he could not utter a single word.

He watched Zhou Yili climb the steps one by one.

The damp, icy stairs had been washed by rain, drowning the entire world in black. A pair of cold, pale hands clung desperately to the stone steps, using every ounce of strength to wrench free of the shackles and crawl upward.

“Every step you take is part of the path he once used to save himself.”

That was what Fu Chen told him.

Zhou Yili had never shed a tear in front of outsiders—not even one.

Fu Chen watched him reach the basement door, about to push open the door that blocked out all light.

Zhou Yili grasped the handle but did not move for a long time.

At last, as though he could no longer hold himself upright, he lowered his head onto the back of his hand and began to sob, his voice trembling with pain.

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