Chapter 85: N. Dust Settles

Feng Cheng?

A flood of memories washed over him. Initially, he hadn’t paid much attention to the guy, knowing only that he was a student in the same department but a lower grade. Later, they met at a seminar in New York, where Su Hui had struck up a conversation with him—an encounter Ning Yixiao happened to witness, exchanging only basic pleasantries. It was only recently that he learned from Su Hui that Feng Cheng was, in fact, Feng Zhiguo’s son.

“I don’t have much time, so I’ll be blunt. I know you’re investigating Xu Zhi. I’ve collected some evidence that might be useful to you.”

Ning Yixiao stopped beating around the bush. “Where did the evidence come from? What are your conditions? Just say it.”

“I’ve learned this bit by bit while working under him these past few years. The reason I knew you were investigating is because your people left a trail, and I just happened to notice it. You should be glad it was me who found it, and not someone else.”

Feng Cheng spoke more fluently than before, though his tone remained weak. “My conditions are simple: I want a way out of this life. As for how, I’ll contact you later. Your assistant will receive an encrypted email.”

Feng Cheng reminded him, “Senior, remember that professor from our department’s computer security course? He gave us a case study that only you managed to solve.”

With that, the call ended.

Ning Yixiao recalled the elective course, but it hadn’t been about a simple encryption problem; it was about a virus.

Ten minutes later, Carl did indeed receive an anonymous email. The attachment was encrypted, and the moment he clicked on it, his laptop crashed.

Carl was dumbfounded. “What happened to my laptop? Why is the screen black?”

In the next second, a giant flashing animation appeared on the screen: a green skull. Feng Cheng had recreated the virus invasion from that case study.

“Give it to me.”

Ning Yixiao took the laptop and spent thirty minutes in the car using the exact same method he’d used back then to neutralize the virus. He found the automatically downloaded encrypted package, cracked it, and inside were reams of financial data and a vast number of images. The danger with this virus was that if it wasn’t handled correctly, everything would be wiped, leaving no trace behind.

Ning Yixiao transferred the files to Charles and returned the laptop to Carl. It had been a long time since Carl had looked at his boss with such worship; he’d almost forgotten that this elite businessman’s true trade was programming.

“Is it okay? And the data on my machine…”

“It’s fine. This attack was just a procedure, and I’ve already backed it up.” Ning Yixiao glanced at him. “Your computer has too many high-risk ports open. It’s a good thing you aren’t in a technical role—don’t log into the company server in the future.”

Carl nodded sheepishly. “Right.” It was a good thing he was just an administrative secretary.

Ning Yixiao spent time with Charles going through all the evidence. Indeed, it contained many things they could never have gathered from the outside. They also discovered that after graduating, Feng Cheng had joined Xu Zhi’s department, working in data, and he must have secretly copied and collected these files while on the job.

Ning Yixiao had been missing a person on the inside, and Feng Cheng was the perfect candidate.

On the third day, the public phone number contacted Carl again, who transferred the call to Ning Yixiao.

“You received it.”

“Yes.” Ning Yixiao countered, “We’ve discussed it. This is enough for a conviction, but you should know better than anyone that these power structures are deeply intertwined. It’s hard to guarantee that one of Xu Zhi’s people won’t pop up somewhere in the process.”

“So? Are you giving up?”

Ning Yixiao denied it. “No. I need someone to make this public, and that shouldn’t be hard for you to do.”

Feng Cheng hesitated. “Me? What do you want me to do?”

“It’s simple. There are people out there who want to get rid of him more than you or I do. As long as you get this evidence to the right people, there will always be someone eager to dig up the old cases from years ago. You don’t know this yet, but even Xu Zhi’s identity is fake. He has more lives on his hands than you imagine. When you add all that up, the accumulated sentences alone would justify the death penalty.”

Feng Cheng was silent for a moment. “You want me to pull the trigger.”

Ning Yixiao’s tone was calm. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get out safely. You won’t have to stay in the country. Wherever you want to go, I’ll help you.”

He knew Feng Cheng didn’t want to expose himself—that was why he chose such a discreet way to communicate—but Ning Yixiao couldn’t find a more suitable person. Not everyone could strike at the heart of the nest. Feng Cheng was part of the system; only he could feed this information to the right targets and bring it all down from within.

After some deliberation, Feng Cheng, desperate to see Xu Zhi brought down, was convinced. They reached an agreement.

To show his sincerity, Ning Yixiao spent a few days paving the way for Feng Cheng’s escape, preparing piles of documents. All Feng Cheng had to do was sign them to change his name and start over in another country, free from anyone’s threats. Seeing this, Feng Cheng made up his mind and followed the plan.

Calculating the final tally was far easier than building the case. It was like pulling a single vital block from a tower; the collapse was instantaneous.

Feng Cheng fired the first shot from the inside, bypassing Xu Zhi’s watchmen, and used encrypted channels to hand everything over to Xu Zhi’s biggest competitor. He kept a copy and submitted it anonymously to the relevant authorities.

As Ning Yixiao predicted, the situation unfolded rapidly.

As the tree fell, the monkeys scattered. Amidst the panic, Ning Yixiao’s people notified the police and contacted the media. Initial efforts to report the facts had faced massive obstacles, but once it was framed as a non-sensitive but highly sensational case—[Suspected Murder of a Best Friend and Identity Theft]—every media outlet was desperate for a piece of the story.

In just a few days, all the fuses were lit simultaneously, igniting a roaring fire. The situation became uncontrollable. The horrific nature of the case gripped the public eye, and the ensuing public opinion spread like wildfire across the internet, impossible to suppress.

[This is terrifying! How many more of these cases are there?]

[How could he hide for so many years? There must be more people behind him who need to be thoroughly investigated!]

[So what happened to the person he replaced? Is he gone?]

[Death penalty. I want to see this man dead, otherwise, I won’t be able to sleep.]

The fake Xu Zhi was completely exposed, and the influence he had painstakingly cultivated over the years crumbled with him. Having played his part, Feng Cheng arrived in the United States with Ning Yixiao’s help, temporarily escaping the pursuit of the fake Xu Zhi’s remnants.

As investigations into the fake Xu Zhi deepened, more and more secrets were unearthed. His criminal history went far beyond what they knew. Even Su Hui, far across the ocean, received a call asking for his cooperation.

Six years later, accompanied by Ning Yixiao, he finally returned to his homeland. The feeling was not good.

The police investigation was straightforward. In just one morning, Su Hui relayed the facts of how Xu Zhi had forcibly committed him to a mental institution and how his grandmother had been sent abroad for “elderly care,” providing all the evidence he had prepared.

“We will submit these to the relevant departments. Thank you for your cooperation. There is one more thing—regarding your mother’s car accident six years ago. Based on the confessions of those involved, it is highly likely that the accident was malicious.”

After escaping the mental hospital, it had taken Su Hui over six months, through the embassy, to learn of his mother’s death. He had struggled to face it, but in his heart, he had always suspected it wasn’t just a natural disaster or bad luck. Yet, when the police confirmed the possibility, Su Hui found the cold, hard truth difficult to digest.

“Based on several testimonies and a phone recording, it can be tentatively determined that the car your mother was in had its brakes sabotaged. The perpetrator had a prior criminal record for hit-and-run, but he had been on the run for a long time. When he resurfaced, he tampered with the car your mother drove that day. His travel route confirms this, but he eventually died in an accidental fall off a cliff.”

The police pushed a file across the desk. Su Hui looked down and saw Feng Zhiguo’s face.

“Through voice analysis, the two people in the recording are Feng Zhiguo and Guan Cheng. Based on the content, it can basically be concluded that Guan Cheng instigated Feng Zhiguo to commit the crime.”

Su Hui wasn’t surprised; he felt numb. He was only curious. “Who provided these recordings? Do I have the right to know?”

The answer was no, but even without them saying it directly, Su Hui had guessed. Feng Zhiguo was stupid; he wouldn’t have been smart enough to record calls. Such content could only have been kept by someone as calculating as Guan Cheng, likely as leverage for blackmail. The only person capable of digging up such private information was Feng Cheng.

From them, Su Hui learned that over the years, Guan Cheng had hollowed out the Ji family’s assets, including the company his biological father had built and passed to his mother. All these illegal assets were seized.

But Su Hui had never cared about these worldly possessions, not then, and not now.

Facing the mounting pile of evidence, Guan Cheng confessed to everything. He even provided the specific location where he had buried the real Xu Zhi’s body—a desolate mountain that had long served as a mass grave. The Xu Zhi who had been usurped had lain there, alone, for decades.

“Thank you for your investigation.”

Leaving the police station, Su Hui saw Ning Yixiao standing on the street corner, smoking. He was dressed in a simple black t-shirt and jeans, wearing a baseball cap, looking like a college student—no different from the man he was six years ago.

Su Hui’s heart was complex. Though the truth was out, a moment to be celebrated, the realization brought no joy. Everything that had been lost—his mother, the six years he and Ning Yixiao had spent apart—could never be recovered.

Ning Yixiao turned around, saw Su Hui standing a few meters away, stubbed out his cigarette, walked over, and gave him a hug.

“Are you okay?” He ruffled Su Hui’s hair, his eyes full of concern and comfort.

Su Hui nodded, feeling too weak to speak. Seeing his face white as a sheet, Ning Yixiao worried about his state and suggested, “I’ve arranged for people to handle the aftermath. If you’re tired, we can go back.”

But Su Hui refused.

“I want to request a meeting with Guan Cheng.”

Ning Yixiao understood. For Su Hui, this man had always been an inescapable nightmare. Since they reunited, Su Hui had avoided mentioning the name, not because he didn’t know who caused it all, but precisely because he knew all too well. He had loathed this man for six years, but six years ago, he hadn’t been able to change a thing. The entire Ji family had been stolen, and he had been locked away by a fake psychiatric certificate, powerless.

Just hearing the name made Su Hui feel physically ill. That was why he needed to face him one last time.

“I’ll go with you.”

The afternoon sun was intense, a sharp blade cutting through shadows, exposing every lie, every bit of greed, and every dark corner of human nature to the scorching light. Nothing could hide.

Through the glass, Su Hui sat on the stool and watched Guan Cheng walk out from the back room. Six years later, he hadn’t changed much, just aged—gray hair at his temples, his face increasingly hideous in his uniform, as if the word “prisoner” were branded onto his forehead.

Sitting face to face, Su Hui looked at him and thought of his mother. Every pore in his body trembled.

He picked up the phone, watching Guan Cheng do the same.

Su Hui was expressionless, but Guan Cheng smiled.

“I never thought you’d be the one to come see me.”

Su Hui curled his lips, his tone icy. “I like seeing evil get its due. If I miss this chance, I won’t see you again.”

Guan Cheng stared at him with cloudy eyes. “Su Hui, I’ve always wanted to say: you were born with everything. It’s a pity your brain is broken, so you deserve to end up with nothing.”

“If this were six years ago, those words might have gotten to me.” Su Hui was calm. “But not anymore. I still remember the boot-licking face you had the first time you came to my house. You probably don’t even remember it yourself.”

“So what?” Guan Cheng laughed, entirely unrepentant.

“When you sleep at night, don’t you ever think of your friend, the real Xu Zhi?” Su Hui stared into his eyes, his voice steady. “He was the only friend you had in school. He knew you were at a dead end, he came to visit you, helped you, brought you good news—and in return, he got your jealousy and your malice. You never once felt happy that he’d gotten into an ideal school. You only hated why, even though you were similar people, it wasn’t you.”

Hearing Su Hui’s dissection, Guan Cheng’s expression shifted slightly. He clenched his teeth, his muscles tensed.

He let out a cold laugh. “He showed off his future in front of me, gave me charity I didn’t need. He thought he was going to fly high from that night on? As if it were that simple. On the contrary, with a flick of my finger, I could make him disappear from this world entirely, even when I had nothing.”

“You’re also a waste of space. I could have locked you up with a flick of my finger. So, everything I’ve done to this day, I don’t regret. From a bottom-feeder with nowhere to turn, to the position I held… my life has been complete. Honestly, I only have two regrets. One, Feng Zhiguo was useless—he didn’t know how to kill. If he hadn’t been too scared to strike a second time, if he’d just finished off Qin Yue’s son in one go, there wouldn’t have been so many headaches later.”

Guan Cheng curled his lip, baring his true, vile self. “The other is you. Yes, I admit I underestimated you. I thought a pampered little young master with mental issues like you, once thrown out of your greenhouse, wouldn’t last two days—I wouldn’t even have needed to do anything. You never really lived a day when you were in the Ji family anyway; you were always trying to find ways to die. How did you learn to value your life once you were thrown out? What did you survive on? Begging with that pretty face? Or selling yourself?”

Su Hui felt nothing at the insults. He even realized that this heinous man had no psychological resilience at all. The more he tried to humiliate Su Hui, the more he exposed his own insecurity.

“You really think your total defeat is all because of us?”

Su Hui smiled. “It seems that the higher you climbed over the years, the blinder and greedier you became. You thought you could cover the sky with one hand, but in reality, no matter how high you climbed, you were just a clown. The more audience there was to watch your ugliness, the more people you offended, and there were far more people who wanted you gone than just us.”

“Guan Cheng, the life you’ve lived was borrowed. It’s a debt you owe to Ning Yixiao’s mother and the real Xu Zhi.”

Su Hui’s face was serene; there was even a faint smile in his eyes as he looked at Guan Cheng. “All that wealth and glory? You might have had it, but in the end, it all has to be returned. You spent your whole life maneuvering, only to go from nothing back to nothing. Of course, a pathetic life like yours isn’t enough to repay the debt, and I know you don’t care, that you won’t truly repent. But it doesn’t matter. I heard that no matter how atrocious a death-row inmate is, the moment death approaches, they are terrified. That is the weakness of human nature.”

“Enjoy that moment.”

Su Hui offered a small smile and pointed at the sky. “Everyone you’ve harmed is watching you.”

He set down the phone and rose to leave. As he walked away, Su Hui finally conquered the fear in his heart. He hadn’t been that afraid of “Xu Zhi,” nor had he been that afraid of the truth. What he couldn’t accept was that everything lost could never be recovered.

But in that moment, Su Hui understood what Ning Yixiao had said: Life is what you can’t get back.

Su Hui stayed in the country for a week to handle the paperwork, ending Xu Zhi’s guardianship and resolving the issues that had kept him from returning home. He didn’t intend to stay long; he had an exhibition to prepare for. Even if he wanted to stay, he couldn’t bear to watch Guan Cheng die; he didn’t want to waste any more time on a man who should have been in hell long ago.

On his last day, he took Ning Yixiao to his mother Ji Yanan’s grave.

“Mom, I used to wonder if I’d fought hard enough to make you leave him, maybe things would have turned out differently.” Su Hui’s voice choked up. “But I know neither of you would have listened to me. It seems there are no ‘what-ifs.’ This is what adults call ‘fate.’ So, I’m not resentful anymore.”

“Let’s not talk about that.” He grabbed Ning Yixiao’s hand and said to his mother, “I brought him to see you. We took a long, winding road, but we’re together now.”

Su Hui turned to Ning Yixiao, smiling. “Actually, my mom let me go see you that day on purpose. I know she made an opening for me to slip away, otherwise, I never would have made it back to our place.”

Ning Yixiao just listened, at a loss for words. Facing such a distorted and oppressive family, he could only truly empathize with Su Hui—Su Hui, who had been crushed to the point of suffocation. As an outsider, he found it hard to understand Su Hui’s mother, just as he didn’t understand his own mother’s paranoid love, even though he knew they hadn’t meant any harm—it was the pressures of their world that led to such tragic ends.

Su Hui rambled on about recent events, disjointed and aimless, unable to find a closing remark, so he simply said, “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll keep treating my illness, and I’ll live well. I’m very happy now, and I’m free.”

Driving away from the cemetery toward the airport, Su Hui suddenly received a call from a lawyer representing Ji Yanan, asking to meet. They had to change their plans.

The meeting place was private. After greeting the man, Su Hui asked, “Hello, may I ask your name?”

“Chen. I am your mother’s lawyer.”

Lawyer Chen was efficient, handing over a file. “This is the will your mother, Ms. Ji Yanan, signed before her death. You can look at it. It contains a trust fund and several domestic and international real estate holdings. Because of your health, there is a special clause regarding guardianship. It explicitly states that the will only takes effect if your only remaining guardian is your maternal grandmother or if you have no guardian at all. You meet those conditions now.”

Su Hui flipped through the documents and locked eyes with Ning Yixiao.

Ning Yixiao asked, “When was this will signed?”

“Five years ago. To be more precise, three months before Ms. Ji passed away.” Lawyer Chen adjusted his glasses. “Actually, she had a very strong desire to bring you back from abroad, and she had many arguments with her husband over it. Because of those arguments, she wanted to add another layer of protection for your future, which led to this new redistribution of her assets.”

Ning Yixiao frowned. The distribution of wealth might have been the very thing that triggered her death.

Su Hui’s vision blurred. He bowed his head, looking at everything his mother had fought so hard to leave him, unable to speak. Only now did he realize that he hadn’t been an unwanted child—someone had fought for him. Even though it was too late, his mother had been thinking of his future until the very end, working and planning for him. He could almost imagine her agonizing over the conditions, drafting and revising them—all unspoken love.

“Thank you, Lawyer Chen.”

“You’re welcome. It was my duty.”

During the long flight, Su Hui had a long, near-perfect dream. In the dream, his father hadn’t died, his parents lived together lovingly, they won his grandfather’s approval, and he wasn’t sick—he was just a normal kid who didn’t have to spend years in psychiatric wards. The trivial details of that life felt as real as if they had actually happened. In that dream, he met Ning Yixiao on the most ordinary day—not in a cafe before an attempted suicide, not in a projection room after being late, but in the school library, where their eyes met for a moment across a table.

When he opened his eyes and landed in New York, Su Hui still couldn’t distinguish between the dream and reality; everything seemed blurred by his own desires.

The lights at the airport blurred every face at the arrival gate. He thought he saw his mother, then his grandfather, but a second later, they were just strangers vanishing into the crowd.

Only the hand Ning Yixiao held was real.

“Let’s go home.”

Unexpectedly, as he walked out, he heard someone call his name. Following the sound, he saw Jingming, as flamboyant as ever, along with Bella and Chloe. They were rarely all together, but they’d come to the airport at the crack of dawn.

Su Hui was stunned. “You guys…”

“We’re here to pick you up!” Bella grabbed Su Hui’s arm, beaming. “How about that? Surprised?”

“You must be exhausted. You’ve been through enough.” Jingming threw an arm around Ning Yixiao’s shoulder. “Come on, I’ll take you guys to unwind.”

Chloe sounded skeptical. “Are you sure they have the energy to unwind?”

“Then let’s find a hot spring resort? That should be relaxing enough.”

“Don’t give them bad ideas—why not suggest skiing?”

“It’s what month, and you’re talking about skiing? Let’s organize a group trip for winter!”

Listening to them bicker, Su Hui felt a spark of life returning to his stiff body; he finally didn’t feel so cold. He looked up at Ning Yixiao, who happened to be looking at him, and they shared a smile.

“You guys are so noisy,” Ning Yixiao said intentionally.

Jingming clicked his tongue. “How can you say that? We’re being so thoughtful!”

Su Hui smiled, but then he heard Ning Yixiao’s phone ring. He tugged his hand. “Your phone is ringing.”

Ning Yixiao nodded. Seeing an unknown number, he answered, “Hello.”

“I’m Feng Cheng.”

Hearing Feng Cheng’s voice, Ning Yixiao relaxed a little. “How is it? Is there anything else you need me to help with?”

“I… I have one more small request.”

“Go ahead.”

Unexpectedly, Feng Cheng started stuttering again. “I—I want to see Su Hui… is that possible?”