Chapter 141
Chapter 141
Chapter 141
"No!"
Yu Shu cried out, unable to control her tears any longer, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.
Zhang Yi laughed and lifted her chin with the barrel of her gun. "Why are you crying? You should be smiling."
"Madwoman."
"I'm the madwoman? Then what is the person who killed her own mother?" Zhang Yi gestured for her to look at Shen Youlin.
Shen Youlin still had his back turned to them, his head lowered, looking at Yu Fanxing without saying a word.
"Turn around, good boy, let your auntie see you," Zhang Yi's voice was laced with beguiling tones.
Shen Youlin turned woodenly, gazing at her with no emotion. "Let Yu Shu go, I'll stay."
"How can I be sure she's really dead?" Zhang Yi untied a dagger from her leg and tossed it to Shen Youlin. "Pick it up and stab it into that woman's heart. I taught you where the heart is."
Shen Youlin stepped forward slowly, crouched down, picked up the dagger from the ground, and moved stiffly to stab it toward Yu Fanxing's chest.
Yu Shu's scream rang out, "Shen Youlin—"
At the same moment, Shen Youlin turned and flung the dagger at Zhang Yi, who screamed and dodged. Shen Youlin ran over at top speed and kicked Zhang Yi away with his foot.
A gunshot rang out, the bullet hitting the ground near Shen Youlin's foot, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Zhang Yi seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, unable to maintain the loving smile on her face any longer.
Shen Youlin stood protectively in front of Yu Shu, between her and Zhang Yi. "Remember, throwing darts? You taught me that too."
"You really think I won't dare kill you?" Zhang Yi shouted, aiming her gun at Shen Youlin.
Shen Youlin smiled madly as he held Yu Shu, even crazier than Zhang Yi. "Shoot! Go ahead and shoot! Kill me, then kill Yu Shu. I just want to be with her, whether dead or alive, it's all the same!"
Suddenly, Yu Fanxing erupted into deafening coughs. "F**k, I was about to suffocate!"
Yu Shu felt a chill at her fingertips. While Zhang Yi's attention was drawn to Yu Fanxing, Shen Youlin had slipped her a razor blade.
Yu Shu recognized it immediately—it was the blade from her eyebrow razor.
"You see, you shouldn't have taught me so many things," Shen Youlin stood up, laughing. "Remember where the limit of suffocation is? We experimented with it over and over, didn't we, Auntie?"
"Anyway, since you don't plan on living, just shoot that old woman, then set off the explosives. We can all go together."
Shen Youlin's tone was light and pleasant, as if suggesting they go on a picnic because the weather was nice.
"In fact, the four of us could make up a full mahjong table. Oh, but you probably wouldn't want to sit with that old woman, even though you're both old ladies. But you look a generation older than her."
"That's right," Yu Fanxing couldn't help but chime in, her voice hoarse. "I remember, how much younger than me are you? You're not even fifty yet this year, right? But that face looks eighty years old. If you stood next to an old lady now, you wouldn't look like mother and daughter, you'd look like sisters, with you as the older sister..."
"You shut the f**k up!" Zhang Yi couldn't take it anymore and shot at Yu Fanxing.
Accompanied by the gunshot, Yu Fanxing's scream rang out as the bullet hit her right arm, blood gushing out as her face turned deathly pale from the pain.
Shen Youlin kicked at Zhang Yi's left hand, but this time she didn't let him succeed, stepping back and aiming the gun at him again. "Don't move!"
Shen Youlin walked forward, the gun pressed against his forehead. "If you really wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already. Who are you putting on this show for?"
"If you wanted to kill me, I would have died long ago."
Shen Youlin kept advancing, and Zhang Yi, the one holding the gun, was actually the one being forced to back up step by step, retreating toward the door.
The abandoned shelving units blocked Yu Shu from Zhang Yi's view, so she couldn't see Yu Shu's movements.
"Back then, the bodyguard who kidnapped my sister, that was your arrangement too, wasn't it?"
"Why won't you admit it? Afraid I'll blame you, Auntie?"
"Was it you?"
"Was it you who did it?"
Shen Youlin kept asking, his voice filled not with anger but with profound disappointment.
Zhang Yi's hand holding the gun trembled uncontrollably.
Too similar... too similar... Shen Youlin was too similar to the young Shen Chaowen...
The young Shen Chaowen, his face grave, questioning Zhang Yi: "Was it you who ripped Fanxing's dress?"
"How could you put a rat in her room?!"
"Was it you who pushed Fanxing down the stairs? Tell me, was it you?"
"No, it wasn't me, truly not me!" The young Zhang Yi shook her head, tears streaming down her face. "Brother, really, it wasn't me!"
"Really? Fanxing said it was you. Why won't you admit it? Afraid I'll blame you?"
Shen Chaowen's eyes were filled with disappointment. After that incident, he moved out of the Shen Family Old Mansion with Yu Fanxing and told everyone that as long as Zhang Yi was there, he and Yu Fanxing would never return.
The old lady saw through her intentions and wanted to marry her off. Zhang Yi knelt before the old lady, crying and begging until she was finally allowed to stay in the Shen family.
From then on, she pretended to have given up on Shen Chaowen, hiding her feelings and treading carefully on thin ice around everyone in the family.
She didn't remember how many years she kept up the act until everyone finally believed she had simply been young and foolish once, and some even began to blame Shen Chaowen for making too big a deal out of such a small matter.
"I was just young back then, you don't need to bring that up anymore. This old face is really embarrassed enough as it is."
"Alas, since Brother doesn't want to see me, I won't go then."
"She really did fall down those stairs herself. Brother didn't believe me, what could I do?"
"It's all in the past, let's not talk about it anymore."
...
Now, the present-day Zhang Yi seemed to merge with her younger self. She shouted fiercely, "It wasn't me! It wasn't me! I said it wasn't me, why don't you believe me? She fell down the stairs herself!"
"It was you," Yu Fanxing's voice was weak and faint, her face as pale as paper. "It was you who pushed me down the stairs back then..."
"I said it wasn't me!" Zhang Yi pointed at Yu Fanxing with her injured right hand. "It's all this vile woman lying!"
A lie repeated a million times eventually deceives even oneself.
At the SUV parked by the door, the rear window slowly lowered, and the barrel of a sniper rifle emerged from the gap.
Shen Youlin suddenly spoke softly, "Listen, I hear footsteps."
Consumed by her intense emotions, Zhang Yi froze in place, because she too heard that familiar sound of footsteps, light but unmistakable to her ears.
She muttered, "Youlin, who's coming?"
"Father has come back, Auntie."
"But how could he come back? He doesn't want you anymore, he doesn't want me either. He won't come back..." Zhang Yi talked to herself. "Anyway, since he doesn't want us, you might as well come with me... let's die together!"
Zhang Yi's hand holding the gun stopped trembling as she pulled the trigger...
Suddenly, Yu Shu rushed out in front of Shen Youlin. In that split second, Shen Youlin looked at her, his heart shattering—it turned out that when one is gripped by the ultimate terror, they cannot make a sound.
The gunshot echoed, time seemed to freeze in this moment...