Chapter 108

Chapter 108

"Speak," Gu Jinglan gripped his chin.

Qi Yanyu felt that if he told the truth, Gu Jinglan might stop loving him.

Just as Qi Yanyu was about to retort—

Gu Jinglan continued, "So, you saved me twice—was it just because you didn’t care if you died?"

"Were you only with me to rebel against your brother?" Gu Jinglan said.

How could he think that?

"You think I don’t love you, that I’m using you as a tool?" Qi Yanyu stared emptily, his voice raw as he shot back.

Gu Jinglan’s voice was just as broken: "Then explain—why the charcoal?"

"I..." Qi Yanyu couldn’t answer.

"Why don’t you ever have your meds on you?"

"Why’d you bait your brother into hitting you when we met in the elevator?"

"Why do you never fight back?"

"Your brother said you poisoned him, that you stabbed him. If you did it, why are they still alive? If you didn’t, why do you never deny it?"

"You’re doing all this because you *want* to die, don’t you?"

Gu Jinglan hammered him with questions, leaving Qi Yanyu speechless.

Gu Jinglan saw him falter—just like with Jiang Tiyan—always holding back.

Was telling the truth so difficult?

Gu Jinglan’s voice went hollow: "I told you—we’re done if you won’t be honest." Without the truth, there was no way to make sense of his actions, no way for him to understand.

The silence stretched.

Qi Yanyu stayed silent, his lashes throwing jagged shadows across his face.

Time passed.

Still, not a word came from him.

Finally.

"Fine. This is how it should be. Stay away from me. Don’t jump in front of blades for me. Don’t come near me again."

Gu Jinglan was done waiting. He stood, picked up his passport, and left the apartment.

The room was left with only Qi Yanyu. Tears streaked his face, drying only to return.

He loosened his grip on the potassium chloride scattered on the floor—the pills he’d gotten back from Lin Na.

Eyes burning, Gu Jinglan’s voice echoed in his skull—

"You know your brother’s temper inside out—you’ve got him pegged, don’t you?"

"He's so against you dating someone of the same sex, yet you still did it,"

"You don’t actually like me, do you?"

"Am I just a pawn to use against your brother?"

If he just increased the injection rate of potassium chloride, his heart would stop immediately.

He found the mini syringe he carried, inserted the needle into his arm, depressed the plunger fully, and injected all the liquid into his vein.

It’s okay.

None of this matters.

It’s just a small episode before he leaves, he told himself it’s fine…

Tears pattered onto the floor as Qi Yanyu stared blankly at the increasingly blurry ground.

Soon it’ll all be over.

……

……

……

Kanbei City.

Kanbei University Affiliated Hospital.

In the VIP ward, Qi Xizhi only dropped the act when it was just him and one other person: "So you’re the one who poisoned me? Are you insane? Didn’t we agree to join forces to take down that useless bastard?"

Qi Xizhi wasn’t wrong in his suspicion—in his mind, Qi Yanyu wasn’t capable of poisoning him.

He never expected it was Qi Shaoli who had done it.

The reason? To drive Qi Yanyu out of the family as quickly as possible.

"You didn’t follow my instructions. I told you, you only do what I allow. If your memory is that bad, don’t come crying to me." Qi Shaoli’s words were at odds with his innocent, boyish looks.

"What did I do? Tell me," Qi Xizhi had been hospitalized due to chronic poisoning, and only after Qi Shaoli hinted at it did he dare accuse Qi Yanyu of administering the toxin in front of Qi Muyao.

"I warned you not to provoke him. Why did you needle him in the greenhouse?" Qi Shaoli was displeased with Qi Xizhi’s past behavior as an illegitimate son.

Qi Xizhi barked a laugh—everyone in the Qi family was insane. "Christ, you’re not my brother—you’re my keeper. The greenhouse incident was last year. What’ve I even done to him these past several months?"

"Wasn’t it you who told me to dump the blame on him? Why act innocent now?" Qi Xizhi seemed to realize Qi Shaoli wanted to teach Qi Yanyu a lesson but didn’t want to go too far.

This time, Qi Shaoli had miscalculated and dumped the blame on him instead.

"I can secure your place in the Qi family, and I can also make you a street mutt with no home." Qi Shaoli’s tone didn’t match his 18-year-old demeanor.

Qi Xizhi schooled his expression slightly but couldn’t resist mocking, "Your blood feud has turned me into collateral damage."

Qi Shaoli left Qi Xizhi’s ward. Despite his abdominal injury, he seemed leagues steadier than the toxin-riddled Qi Xizhi.

He went to the doctor’s office on the 13th floor but found no sign of Qi Yanyu.

At the nurse’s station, he asked after the resident and was told, "No one’s seen him over his injury."

"Did he really go in there and take the stab for your Dr. Gu that day?"

The sharply dressed, rich kid standing in front of the nurse asked with a smile.

"Who knew he had such a big heart and guts..."

Qi Shaoli went to the 16th floor respiratory ward but found neither Qi Yanyu nor Gu Jinglan.

"Where’s Dr. Gu Jinglan?"

"He didn’t come in today."

"Is that right? How come that intern Qi Yanyu took the stab for him? Are they together?" Qi Shaoli "smiled" as he asked.

"Huh, what?"

"What shift is Gu Jinglan on today? When’s he expected back at the hospital?" Qi Shaoli pressed.

"He’ll probably be back by 1."

His smile vanished.

He waited until nightfall but still didn’t see Qi Yanyu.

He made a point of checking the garden downstairs, even scoped out the fountain, but found no trace of Qi Yanyu.

Did Qi Yanyu go home?

No—if he had, the staff would’ve told him right away.

Qi Shaoli waited by the fountain for a long time, watching the water spray, his mind flashing to the image of Qi Yanyu heartbroken in the abandoned factory. A bad feeling shot through him.

Qi Shaoli began sending people to look for Qi Yanyu.

After two days with no results, he pulled up the hospital's security footage and discovered that three days earlier, Qi Yanyu had finished his early morning shift and drove off with Gu Jinglan from the underground garage.

Checking traffic cams along the way, Qi Shaoli found that the two had gone to the airport. Surveillance showed them boarding a plane.

Upon investigating with airport staff, he found out they’d used fake names on their boarding passes—and that they had flown to Norway.

Pissed off, Qi Shaoli—a UK-educated guy—called in every favor, putting up a million-dollar reward across Norwegian Chinese communities, later expanding it to Europe, North America, and Australia:

His brother was missing, suspected to have been kidnapped by a Chinese man.

He also posted their photos and the fake passport names.

On the third day Qi Yanyu failed to show up at the hospital, Qi Muyao noticed.

Qi Shaoli told his eldest brother, “It was Qi Xizhi who poisoned himself to frame Third Brother. That’s why Third Brother panicked and stabbed me.”

Stuck in the hospital bed, Qi Xizhi faced the two Qi brothers and tried to speak—but no sound came out.

Soon after, he was sent to prison.

“Gu Jinglan has a new girlfriend. Third Brother might’ve gone looking for Jiang Tiyan. When he stabbed me, he said he screwed over Jiang Tiyan.”

Qi Muyao studied Qi Shaoli for a long moment before finally saying, “Get your ass back to the UK. Now.”

Qi Shaoli pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, his face going blank. After smoothing things over with Qi Muyao, he booked a private jet and bounced.

This was the fifth day since Qi Yanyu's disappearance.

There had been no news from Norway, so Qi Shaoli immediately alerted overseas Chinese networks in Europe, North America, and Australia, offering rewards ranging from millions to tens of millions for any information on the two.

According to Qi Shaoli’s judgment, the two would never go to developing countries.

Qi Yanyu suffered from heart disease and a rare illness that required advanced medical care. Other than those three developed continents, they couldn’t have gone anywhere else.

After landing in Norway, Qi Shaoli spent money and called in favors to access airport surveillance footage. When he found traces of Qi Yanyu and Gu Jinglan getting into a car heading toward an apartment, he rushed there—only to find it empty.

By the time Qi Shaoli checked road surveillance, the trail had gone cold.

But he knew his eldest brother, Qi Muyao, must have gone to confront the Gu family.

The Gu family would inevitably cave under pressure and secretly contact Gu Jinglan, urging him to bring Qi Yanyu back as soon as possible.

Then it hit him—something wasn't right—and he immediately returned to the hospital.

Lin Na found the stranger who came looking for him unfamiliar, though his face shared a slight likeness with Qi Yanyu.

"Who are you?"

"What did you give him?"

"What?" Lin Na was completely lost, unable to process the question.

The person before him was strikingly handsome, with a face as fresh as spring blossoms.

His features were as pure and gentle as Qi Yanyu’s, yet he radiated cold, untouchable arrogance, unaware of his own chill.

Qi Shaoli repeated, his voice like ice: "What did Qi Yanyu ask you to give him?" Over the past two months, he had hardly slept, reviewing surveillance footage from Qi Yanyu’s three months at the hospital over a dozen times, finally spotting something odd—one day, Lin Na had handed something to Qi Yanyu.

Lin Na froze. "Are you his family?"

Qi Shaoli’s face, which should have carried a student’s innocence, was all edges, no softness. "When do you want to talk? When you’re sentenced to death?"

Improper handling of meds could lead to a maximum sentence of ten years—how could it be a death penalty? Lin Na scoffed. "I didn’t give him anything. Why are you so worked up?"

Lin Na clearly wasn’t about to be intimidated by Qi Shaoli, who was even younger than him, and continued to evade the question.

"You seem eager to sing under police questioning," Qi Shaoli suddenly raised his voice, making nearby patients jump. "Your hospital has murderers and human traffickers! I want you to pay with your life! You stole drugs and gave them to others!..."

Lin Na’s colleagues behind him froze.

Fed up with the outburst, Lin Na said sternly, "**It wasn’t harmful. It was medication for arrhythmia."

"Why would a clinical doctor ask you for that? If he really needed it for his heart, he could prescribe it himself or get another doctor to. Why come to you? That excuse is bullshit."

Lin Na thought he was unhinged. "Are you insane? He told me he wanted to live."

Qi Shaoli barked a laugh. "Live? You believed that? Then why did he ask you for that kind of medicine? Don’t tell me you actually fell for it, you idiot!"

"Has he contacted you? He definitely would." Now that he had found Lin Na, Qi Shaoli pressed him frantically. "Has Qi Yanyu reached out to you recently? Hand over your phone!"

"What are you doing? My phone!!" Qi Shaoli’s bodyguards snatched Lin Na’s phone, and tech specialists immediately slapped a tracker on it.

"Keep covering for him. Have you thought about how you’ll survive the hellish prison conditions for the rest of your life? If he calls you and you don’t report it to me immediately, the consequences will extend to your family too." Qi Shaoli’s warning was icy. "If he dies, you and your entire family will pay with your lives."

"He wouldn’t kill himself. I believe in him. Even if he considered it, he’d give up in the end." Lin Na shot back, then added defiantly, "How dare you come at me? Instead of looking in the mirror, you blame outsiders? You’re his closest family—why do you think he wanted to die?"

Qi Shaoli twisted his once-innocent face into a sneer dripping with sarcasm: "Right, you're *so* right. Sounds damn reasonable—just like how you thought giving him those drugs would bring him peace. You thought you were doing the noble thing, sticking your neck out for your friend, but you clueless idiot—you destroyed him! Trashed the hard work of someone who loved him more than life itself! Do you even know what his family did for him? What plans they laid? What moves they made? You know nothing! You thought you were being kind, but you did the worst damn thing!"

Since almost no one had ever dared to defy him—a man of such untouchable privilege—Qi Shaoli’s polite façade, already cracking since Qi Yanyu vanished from his world, now shattered completely:

"Here’s an idea—how about from this moment on, your family dies instead of you? Since you’re so hell-bent on playing hero, let’s see how you handle it when your loved ones suffer!"

"You're insane!" Lin Na had had enough of this unhinged psycho who didn’t even bother pretending anymore. "It was just vitamins! If he really wanted to die and saw the injection wasn’t working, he’d find another way!"

Lin Na kept fighting back: "If you gave a damn, you wouldn’t be wasting breath arguing with me—you'd be tearing the city apart looking for him!"

Qi Shaoli exploded, his rage white-hot: "If I could find him, do you think I’d waste my time here?! Did you know he and Gu Jinglan faked their breakup all along? That they were secret lovers? That woman by Gu Jinglan was just a decoy, right?! You were in on it too, weren't you?!!"

"The hell are you saying?" Lin Na’s mind went blank, unable to follow the onslaught. *This guy's insane!* In his eyes, Qi Yanyu had always been after Xia Yiyi—how could his rival, Gu Jinglan—the damn student council prez—be involved?

Qi Shaoli’s fury seemed to aggravate his still-healing abdominal wound, even after two months.

Not long ago, Qi Shaoli had dug up Gu Jinglan’s last living relative—the only one he still had contact with—in an old estate in Kanbei.

He exited the car, icy and cold, and ordered his men to knock on the door. When a young couple answered, he asked, “Is there an elderly woman named Fang living here?”

They replied, “We just moved in not long ago. There used to be an old lady here, but she died of sickness.”

“When?” Qi Shaoli froze.

“Not sure exactly. Her grandson—or maybe her son—some young guy sold the place.”

It clicked for Qi Shaoli then. Gu Jinglan had taken Qi Yanyu away on purpose.

The only person he cared about in this world was gone. Sold the house, took the cash, and ran off with Qi Yanyu.

It was *him*. He’d pushed too hard at the factory, driven Qi Yanyu to desperation.

If he hadn’t pressed so relentlessly, would Qi Yanyu have left so suddenly?

No.

So there was still a chance to fix things.

·

On the screen, a man endlessly replayed the security footage: Qi Yanyu buying charcoal from the hospital convenience store.

Footage of Qi Yanyu and Gu Jinglan getting into the same car in the underground garage.

Their images appearing together at the airport in Kanbei before boarding.

Qi Muyao’s gaze was always cold and unfeeling—but now, even he looked frozen by the chill of the images.

Especially the clip of Qi Yanyu alone, buying charcoal.

Every time Qi Muyao reached that part, his strong, youthful body would shake uncontrollably, as if he’d aged ten years on the spot.

He’d racked his brain trying to understand: If Gu Jinglan followed him to the supermarket and saw him buying charcoal, why take him overseas?

Possibility one: helping Qi Yanyu kill himself. Possibility two: them running away together. But that seemed unlikely—because Gu Jinglan’s father once mentioned the obsession that drove him:

Solving the mystery of his mother’s death on the operating table.

No way would he throw away his future over some guy.

Qi Muyao found himself quick to fly into a rage, blowing up at the slightest provocation.

Eight months later, word finally came through. Someone claimed to have seen Gu Jinglan in Spain, but there was no trace of Qi Yanyu.

Fearing Qi Yanyu might have already committed suicide, Qi Muyao immediately flew over to find the witness and checked surveillance footage along the mentioned route, only to discover no one resembling Gu Jinglan as described.

Later, the guy confessed he'd made it all up just for the money.

Fed up with hundreds of wild goose chases, Qi Muyao turned his attention to Qi Shaoli.

"You better hope to God I don’t hear news of Qi Yanyu’s death."

Not long after, Qi Shaoli went to visit Jiang Tiyan.

Having taken over the family business, Jiang Tiyan was now dressed in a suit, his demeanor and speech the spitting image of his father. Upon seeing Qi Shaoli, Jiang Tiyan sneered, "You and I are in the same boat—though you waited longer. But soon, Qi Muyao will put you six feet under, just like he broke my leg back then."

Qi Shaoli had become numb and cold on the outside. A year had passed since Qi Yanyu’s disappearance, and his exterior had grown indifferent. "If it weren’t for you, he and that Gu bastard wouldn’t have been torn apart so quickly, and he wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to die. You pushed things forward—our genius Mr. Jiang."

Jiang Tiyan’s face twitched slightly.

Noticing this, Qi Shaoli smiled faintly. "You’re worse off than me."

"Then why come to me? Mocking each other?" Jiang Tiyan forced a lazy drawl into his voice. Ever since Qi Yanyu’s heart ruptured after the Ferris wheel incident, he had been forced to swear on his life in front of Qi Muyao and his own father: he would never see or disturb Qi Yanyu again in this lifetime.

But Qi Shaoli stopped taunting. Instead, he said quietly, "If he comes to you, let me know."

"Why would he ever come to me?" Jiang Tiyan laughed.

Qi Shaoli didn’t know the first thing about Qi Yanyu.

But if the Qi family had truly driven Qi Yanyu to that point, he might actually seek Jiang Tiyan’s help.

Yet, would Jiang Tiyan ever get the chance to see Qi Yanyu again in this life?

"If he wakes up and realizes you were trying to help him, he’ll naturally come back to you," Qi Shaoli said with conviction.

But Jiang Tiyan thought Qi Shaoli was out of his mind with desperation, grasping at straws.

"Even if he does come to me, I won’t tell you," Jiang Tiyan smirked.

"His heart condition and rare disease—without proper medical care, he’ll only die sooner out there. That Gu guy has some money, but selling his house would leave him with maybe six or seven mil tops. He could never cover Qi Yanyu’s long-term treatment." Qi Shaoli had thought it through. His urgency in forcing Qi Yanyu to leave the Qi family for the UK was precisely because he knew the sky-high costs of future treatments and the need for a highly specialized medical team. "If he undergoes further surgeries and requires the best medical care, it’ll cost at least ten billion yuan. Gu can’t afford that."

Qi Shaoli had already secured the best medical team in Australia.

All he’d meant to do was push Qi Yanyu to leave the Qi family and go with him to the UK or Australia. He never imagined he would break Qi Yanyu’s heart for good.

"He’d rather die out there than come home. Do you really think you’ll ever see him again in this lifetime?" Jiang Tiyan finally delivered the words that hit Qi Shaoli like a death sentence.

……

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