End
Li Hai released Li Yang’s hand, while Yu Xinye instinctively shielded his younger brother from the city.
“Brother!” Li Yang’s voice faded into the darkness.
Three days later.
“Cough… ” Yu Xinye’s hand had already been crushed by a massive rock, and half of his body had lost sensation.
“Brother Yu, hang in there… ” When the mine collapsed, Yu Xinye pressed him beneath him. Li Yang emerged unscathed from the rubble and fed him water from the flask he carried.
Li Hai crawled over and pulled him, saying, “Li Yang, Li Yang, little brother, there’s a light over there. Let’s go and see if we can dig through…”
Li Yang wiped away a tear and placed the water flask beside him, saying, “Okay, brother, the three of us must make it out together.”
Upon hearing this, Yu Xinye called out to them in a drawn-out voice, “Hey, what are you planning to do when you get out? I miss my wife, kid, and the warm hearth…”
Li Hai narrowly escaped unscathed, with only a few scrapes on his body. He used a stone he picked up to dig through the soil.
“Pass the medical master’s exam, the doctorate, work at a large hospital, marry a beautiful wife, make a fortune, and never have to do manual labor again. No more enduring the frustrations of being a production team leader.”
“Li Yang, what about you?”
“Well…” Li Yang paused in his digging. While Li Hai recalled the hardships of impoverished rural areas, Li Yang’s thoughts turned to the clear rivers and streams here, the blue sky and white clouds on sunny days, the freely roaming cattle and sheep on the grasslands, the simple villagers like Aunt Yu, and the blushing, shy girls.
“I… I’ll open a pig farm. I want to eat meat and help everyone become prosperous so that they don’t have to suffer anymore.”
Yu Xinye, who had been trapped for three days, burst into laughter upon hearing this.
“Great! I’ll be your assistant, and you’ll be the boss. Let’s get rich together.”
On the fifth day.
Li Hai’s water flask was empty, so he went to take Li Yang’s, but someone snatched it back.
“Brother, save that little bit of water for Yu Ge to drink.”
Li Hai licked his parched lips. “Damn it, I don’t have an ounce of strength left in my body. Without the strength to work, we’ll all die here!”
Yu Xinye lay on the ground, his face covered in dust. The other half of his body was losing sensation rapidly. He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t utter a word.
“Brother!” Li Yang rushed to snatch it back.
Li Hai uncapped the bottle and poured it all into his mouth, wiping the corners of his lips before throwing the water flask to the ground.
“Have you lost your mind, Li Yang?! I am your brother! Yu Xinye is barely hanging on! Only the two of us can still move, only the two of us can make it out alive! Let’s go! Come with me and dig a hole!!!”
“No, I won’t go! Let me go!”
“So, you’re not going, huh? Is that it?!” Li Hai swung the shovel back and forth, roaring like a fierce beast.
“Then you can stay here and die!”
Li Yang initially thought Li Hai was joking, but two days later, with supplies depleted, Li Hai finally left during the night.
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Li Yang chased after him, but they found that the hole they had painstakingly dug had been blocked by a large rock.
He ran back, crying, “Yu Ge, Yu Ge, what do we do? We can’t get out, and my brother… he doesn’t want me anymore…”
Yu Xinye, with his only functioning left hand trembling, grabbed hold of Li Yang’s wrist and spoke in broken, intermittent words, “Don’t… don’t cry… Yu Ge is… here… little brother… promise me one thing…”
Li Yang wiped away his tears and placed his hand under Yu Xinye’s head for support, saying, “Ge… Ge, tell me…”
The hand gripping Li Yang’s wrist tightened even more. “Take care of your… sister-in-law… and… and my daughter… Find time to visit… visit Aunt Yu… She’s getting old… has trouble with her legs… Take care of her for me… take care of her for your brother…”
Li Yang nodded repeatedly, tears streaming down his face.
Yu Xinye’s hand touched the sickle they had used to dig the soil a few days ago. Although Li Hai had left, he had still left them with a tool.
He held it in his hand, smiled, and clenched it tightly in his palm. Then, with a sudden jerk, he cut deep into his own wrist, blood flowing profusely.
Li Yang rushed forward, covering the wound. “Brother! Brother!”
Yu Xinye’s face turned pale, and he forced a smile. “Don’t waste it… Drink quickly.”
The memories of those dark days gradually blurred in Li Yang’s mind, but one phrase remained etched in his memory: “Surviving by eating the roots and drinking blood.”
He couldn’t recall how long he had stayed inside, enduring hunger and cold. Instinct drove him to suck Yu Xinye’s blood. At first, it was still warm, but gradually it turned cold, and eventually, his body began to decompose.
Finally, Li Yang crawled out, barely recognizable, neither human nor ghost.
The simple villagers refused to spare even a sip of water for him. They ran away at the sight of him, exclaiming, “It’s a ghost!”
Including the girl who had feelings for him at the village entrance, he ended up killing her.
He swore it wasn’t intentional, just meant to scare her a little. But when he snapped out of it, she had already stopped breathing.
Li Yang, in a dazed state, took a few steps away but then returned to rummage through her belongings, hoping to find something valuable.
Afterward, he went to Yu Xinye’s house, but it was already deserted. The people who had relocated forced him out.
“Are you crazy?! Where did this lunatic come from? Get lost!”
He found Yu Jing from the garbage heap behind Yu Xinye’s house. The swaddled baby was in tatters, with a pale, lifeless complexion.
Li Yang used all the money he had scraped from the girl to buy formula. He sat under the bridge, using a discarded bottle he found in the garbage heap to slowly feed her.
From that day on, their lives of wandering began, Li Yang and Yu Jing, side by side for twenty years.
Eventually, Li Yang took Yu Jing to visit Aunt Yu. The elderly woman had suffered successive blows, already in the twilight of her life. She lay in bed, coughing incessantly, while the dilapidated cottage leaked from every corner, on the verge of collapse.
Li Yang left the stolen money in the corridor and carried the child away from Xiaohe Village.
Being an uneducated person without qualifications and having his ID card canceled, it was already beyond Li Yang’s capabilities to take care of a crying infant. How could he also attend to an elderly person burdened with numerous ailments?
In this world, there are many situations of unfortunate circumstances and well-intentioned but powerless individuals.
He had considered finding a decent job that could sustain their livelihood.
“Educational background?”
“University…” The person conducting the recruitment across from him lit up with interest.
Li Yang lowered his head. “I dropped out of school.”
“Get lost, get lost, get lost!”
At the construction site.
“That guy, showing up for work with a damn child on his back. He can’t do much work day by day, and we have to feed another mouth.”
By evening, he was dismissed. Clutching the meager wages that were only half of what was agreed upon, it wasn’t even enough for him to buy a can of formula.
“Let me tell you, we’re a construction site, not a charity. Giving you money is already the boss thinking highly of you!” The foreman exclaimed arrogantly. Seeing that Li Yang didn’t respond, he directly threw the money in his face.
Li Yang pounced forward, grabbing the nearby sledgehammer and viciously smashed it against the foreman’s head until the hard hat shattered, and the foreman gradually fell silent.
Throwing away the sledgehammer, Li Yang wiped the ground with his clothes and hurriedly ran back home, carrying the child, beginning another escape.
And so, from Xiaohe Village to Wuli Town, and then to Qing’an County, they went to many places in succession.
Yu Jing had been following him for two years now, reaching the age of babbling and learning to speak.
Li Yang made a living by scavenging through garbage. One night, when he returned home, Yu Jing started spitting up milk, so he carried the child and went to the hospital.
The doctor told him, “It’s likely a congenital kidney disease that can’t be cured. Prepare yourself mentally.”
After leaving the hospital, he placed the child by the side of the road. There were people passing by, and if someone kind-hearted saw and took the child, it would be for the best.
Li Yang squatted in a corner, smoking a discarded cigarette he found on the ground, waiting until the moon reached its zenith. But no one came to take Yu Jing away.
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The child might have been hungry and started crying loudly. Li Yang stood up, turned around, and walked away.
The crying of the child behind him felt like a haunting melody that couldn’t be shaken off.
Li Yang remembered the face of Yu Xinye in the darkness and his entrusted words.
Gritting his teeth, he ran back and picked up the child from the cardboard box. As she made contact with the familiar warmth and scent, Yu Jing instantly ceased crying, grinned widely, and with bubbles of snot, nestled into his embrace. She held onto his finger and uttered her first word, “Ba… Ba Ba…”
That year, Li Yang was twenty-four years old. He hadn’t married or had children, nor had he experienced love, but he had welcomed his first child into his life.
* * *
“What do you understand?! What do you understand?! Yu Xinye made the choice willingly! Willingly! I didn’t harm him! I didn’t harm him! You all deserve to die! People like you, who have never been abandoned, think you know everything?! Stay away! I’ll kill her!”
Li Yang held Lin Yan’s neck tightly, dragging her backward, nearing the edge of the rooftop.
Song Yuhang pushed the girl forward, saying, “Don’t get agitated. Let’s make a deal. You give her back to me, and I’ll give you the child. I promise not to harm her. How about that?”
The handcuffs that Song Yuhang had just handed her were still clenched in Lin Yan’s hand, hidden in her sleeve. Even in extreme pain and confusion, she never let go.
She retreated with Li Yang, saying, “Who says I’ve never been abandoned? Li Yang, I don’t know what kind of life you’ve lived, but as for me, I’ve never been the one firmly chosen.”
“My name is Lin Yan, and my brother is Lin Cheng. Just by hearing our names, you can tell who my father chose.” Despite losing a significant amount of blood, Lin Yan spoke this long passage while gasping for breath, her breathing as heavy as a wind turbine.
“I’ve lived… a life in the shadows too, but…” She tilted her head slightly, her gaze determined and fiery. “I have never harmed anyone. When a brave person is angry, they draw their sword against a stronger opponent. When a coward is angry, they draw their sword against a weaker one. Can you call killing someone a damn skill?!”
As soon as she finished speaking, the child started calling out, “You’re talking nonsense! You don’t understand him at all, don’t understand the life we’ve lived. What right do you have to judge us?!”
“When I was six years old and wanted to go to school, we didn’t have identification cards, so we couldn’t be registered. My father went to beg the teacher, kneeling at her feet, pleading…”
“After I fell ill and couldn’t go outside, he was afraid I’d be bored at home, so he used all his savings to buy an old computer from the recycling station…”
“We were very poor, extremely poor. Often, we couldn’t have a proper meal in a day…”
“We lived under bridges, slept on the streets, hid in restrooms… And what about you?” The girl’s eyes filled with a venomous and disdainful light. “You live in luxury, yet you still complain about how unfair the world is to you. On what basis?”
“Those children who wanted to die, they never knew how hard others had it, how easily they lived.”
Song Yuhang lowered her head and glanced at the girl. Rainwater trickled down her chin.
“You’re still young, and you don’t know. Living in this world, no one has it easy.”
Others only see Lin Yan’s wealth, but they cannot see her precarious situation.
Others only see her calm wisdom and happy family, but they cannot see the deep regrets hidden behind this happiness.
Perhaps others can only see Li Yang’s ruthlessness and madness, but they cannot see the intense and challenging life shared by two interdependent individuals.
Every person in this world stands by their own well, gazing up at their own piece of sky.
Without experiencing it firsthand, one can never truly understand and empathize.
However, everyone should have a moral and legal bottom line.
Regardless of the reasons behind your actions—for love, for money, for revenge—once you cross this line, it becomes a crime, a destruction of humanity.
Therefore, Song Yuhang simply said, “You have a father. Have you ever thought that those children you deceived and killed also had fathers and mothers? They, just like your father, relied on their own parents.”
The girl froze, her lips trembling. She had been soaked in the rainwater for too long, and end-stage uremia had weakened her body to the point where she could barely stand.
Li Yang sensitively noticed this change. He pulled Lin Yan back a step, pressing against the railing. He glanced downward, where the street was filled with police cars, ambulances, and heavily armed special forces. In the darkness, they appeared as tiny ants.
A drone hovered above his head, and he knew that today, even if he had wings, it would be difficult for him to fly.
Song Yuhang took a step forward, pushing the child along. “You see, even after all the wrongs you’ve done to this child, manipulating her to kill, hitting her, insulting her, she still remembers the good in you.”
“Children are such tender and miraculous beings, Li Yang. Don’t let her down for the kindness she has shown you, and don’t betray the trust that Yu Xinye placed in you. I believe if he were still alive, he wouldn’t want to see his beloved daughter and his closest brother end up like this.”
“Li Yang, come back. Let her go. Like me…” Song Yuhang loosened her grip on the girl’s arm slowly. “I promise you that before you get arrested, you can have a final conversation with her.”
“Oh, and Aunt Yu. I visited her in Xiaohe Village. She’s doing well physically, except for her legs. I know that you’ve been sending her things all these years, right?”
“Aunt Yu said she misses you and hopes you can go back and visit her. If she knew that Yu Xinye’s daughter is still alive, she would be very happy.”
The muzzle of the gun pressed against Lin Yan’s temple slowly slid down, and Song Yuhang breathed a sigh of relief.
Lin Yan quietly swallowed her saliva, her Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
Li Yang took a step back, but this time he didn’t pull Lin Yan back. Instead, he looked at Yu Jing, slowly raised the gun, and pressed it against his own forehead.
“Yu Jing, in the next life, don’t follow me anymore.”
Tears welled up in Yu Jing’s eyes, and she exclaimed, “Dad!”
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She abruptly opened her mouth and bit down on Song Yuhang’s wrist. Song Yuhang cried out in pain, already weakened and caught off guard, allowing her to escape.
She didn’t have time to stop her, it was just a split-second move.
The bullet whizzed through the air.
“Lin Yan, get down!”
Like countless times of seamless coordination, as soon as she spoke, Lin Yan instinctively lunged forward. But she didn’t expect Li Yang’s face to instantly turn cold and terrifying as he tightly embraced her waist.
He heard the sound of a gunshot, but it wasn’t his own.
“I told you, if I die, I’ll bring someone with me!”
“No!”
Song Yuhang rushed over.
But in the end, it was all in vain. She couldn’t save anyone.
The dilapidated railing in front of her shattered, and blood blossomed before her eyes.
In Li Yang’s gun, there was only one bullet, which just grazed Lin Yan’s shoulder.
Song Yuhang knew.
But what she didn’t know, and couldn’t anticipate, was that Yu Jing would rush over to save Li Yang. The sniper’s shot was only meant to prevent Li Yang from committing suicide.
Yu Jing rushed over to prevent her father from committing suicide.
But that bullet ended up hitting her instead.
Under the force of gravity, Li Yang held onto Lin Yan, his eyes wide open, watching as blood spurted from the hole on Yu Jing’s head. The three of them tumbled off the rooftop together.
“Lin Yan!!!” Song Yuhang bellowed at the top of her lungs, rushing to the edge of the railing.
“Bang—”
“Crack—”
Ambulance sirens and police sirens blared.
Song Yuhang knelt in the rain, hysterically calling out her name.
She was on the verge of crying so hard that she was out of breath, drenched like a drowned rat, with a faint red blood seeping from under her.
Several SWAT team members approached to pull her away, but Song Yuhang forcefully pushed them away, shouting, “Get lost! Get lost!”
She looked at the railing, even feeling an impulse to jump off.
“Captain Song, Captain Song, calm down…” Several people approached to pull her away, while Song Yuhang crawled in the rain, inching closer to the edge of the rooftop.
As she reached the edge of the rooftop, their eyes met.
Lin Yan had one hand handcuffed, and the other handcuffed to the protruding steel reinforcement of the beam, swaying perilously in the wind.
She smiled gently and said, “What’s this, Captain Song? Are you ready to die for love?”
LP: Too much death, too much suffering! I don’t excuse Li Yang’s wrongdoings with his past but it does explain him, I’ll go insane too if that happened to me, trapped in that mine, left behind by your biological brother and having no choice but to drink your found brother’s blood to survive :((
that is exactly why i don’t finish my day on an angst novel
I believe that there are people who are born evil.. and there are those who turn evil because of the people and circumstances surrounding them. Man, this chapter was such a hard read. Li yang’s past doesn’t justify all the murders that he had committed but at the same time I cannot blame him for turning the way he did. And Yu Jing, Yu jing is just a child.. My heart breaks for all these characters, fictional they may be but somewhere around the world, I know that there are people who are going through the same thing. Being forced to do these evil things just ro survive.
Pain is as such, no ones win.
I’m crying so hard rn q