Chapter 76: The Cannon Fodder in a Dogblood Novel (76)
On the other end of the line, Fu Sizhao dropped his usual nonchalance. His voice appeared calm, but the tightness at the end of his words betrayed his emotions.
Jiang Qingyan opened his mouth, but his throat felt blocked, unable to produce a complete sound. It took a long while before he squeezed out a broken, breathy sentence, “How do you… know?”
“The news of his accident is everywhere. How could I not know?”
After Fu Sizhao spoke, the air remained silent for several seconds before Jiang Qingyan’s raspy voice came through again. “Is it… true?”
Jiang Qingyan leaned back against his chair, his unfocused gaze staring blankly at the end of the corridor. After a long silence, he spoke slowly, his voice so light it seemed as if it would drift away in the next second.
“It is… The surveillance captured it clearly. He was driving the sports car I gave him. He hit the guardrail, and both the person and the car…” He choked up for a moment. “Both the person and the car fell off the cliff. He died on the spot…”
Neither of them spoke again. It was as if they were trying to digest this news they were unwilling to accept. Only the electric current buzzed softly in the receiver, accompanying them as they processed the unacceptable truth.
After a long time, Fu Sizhao finally spoke, his voice sounding as if he had suddenly lost his voice. “Where are you?”
” The police station…”
After hanging up the phone, Fu Sizhao had just changed his clothes when Lu Yanli called. Usually a man of few words and ruthless action, his voice now carried a rare panic.
“Fu Sizhao, did you see the news?”
The moment Lu Yanli saw the news, he had called Shen Tangqing. It was the first time he had ever called him, but the phone only gave a powered-off notification. His heart felt like it had fallen into an ice cellar. He didn’t have Jiang Qingyan’s contact information, so he could only contact Fu Sizhao.
“I saw it.”
“Is it fake?” His voice remained as cold and hard as usual, but it carried a trace of tension that was hard to detect.
Unfortunately, he was destined to be disappointed. He heard Fu Sizhao say, “It’s true…”
So… Shen Tangqing is really dead?
The phone in his hand crashed to the ground, the screen cracking into a spiderweb of fractures. Lu Yanli stood there in a daze. How could he die? He was still so young, how could… how could he just die?
I haven’t even had the chance to confess to him…
Qin Yizhou had been very busy recently. The group’s newly developed project required his supervision, leaving him with absolutely no free time. It wasn’t until the evening that he saw the news of Shen Tangqing’s “death.”
He froze for a moment, suspecting it was just someone with the same name. He immediately ordered his assistant to investigate, but the results confirmed that the Shen Tangqing in the news was indeed the one he had been thinking about.
Qin Yizhou sat in his large leather chair, holding a glass of wine, his eyes sinking with a cold chill. Although the information sent by his assistant was complete, and the accident appeared perfect, as the heir to the Qin family, he had grown up seeing all sorts of treacherous schemes. He maintained a skeptical attitude toward any death where no body was found. Even if the police issued a death report, there were times when Qin Yizhou didn’t even believe what he saw with his own eyes, let alone a surveillance video, a so-called eyewitness, and a car Shen Tangqing often drove…
“Meow!~” A cat’s cry interrupted his thoughts.
A round-headed Ragdoll cat stood at the door, peeking inside. Qin Yizhou placed the glass, still half-full of wine, on the table and beckoned to Xiao Tang.
“Come here.”
Qin Yizhou had personally picked out this cat. He originally didn’t like these fragile and delicate small animals, nor did he have the time to raise them, but he guessed that Shen Tangqing liked cats, so he had taken the time to buy one.
The first time he saw this cat, he felt its eyes looked very much like Shen Tangqing’s; they even looked somewhat alike in appearance. Round-headed and round-brained, looking at you with innocent and cute eyes. Shen Tangqing was like that too—beautiful features, red lips, and white teeth. His eyelashes were long and thick, and when he looked at you, he was extremely pretty. It made one just want to hold him in their arms.
Although he had only had the cat for a month and saw it rarely, it seemed to know who its master was and was very good at ingratiating itself with Qin Yizhou. It jumped onto Qin Yizhou’s lap, rubbing its small head against his chest.
“Meow~”
Qin Yizhou stroked its small head. After a few seconds, he said to the kitten, “Xiao Tang, your mom is gone…”
After speaking, he lowered his eyes. Staring out the window at the pitch-black night sky, his expression was thicker and darker than the night itself.
For him, if alive, he wanted to see the person; if dead… he wanted to see the corpse.
At Shen Tangqing’s “funeral,” Zhou Geng and Lin Mu cried until they were out of breath, wishing they could cry a river of tears. Those who didn’t know better would have thought their wives had died.
Zhou Shuli did not go. He locked himself in his room, from daylight until deep into the night…
The curtains were tightly closed, leaving the room in pitch darkness. He seemed to have melted into the dark. Unknown how much time passed, he finally moved, but maintaining one posture for too long made his body stiff and painful.
He fumbled in the dark to pull a cigarette from the box and held it in his mouth. His hand holding the lighter trembled so much that he had to press it twice before it ignited.
In that instant, the flame illuminated his brow and eyes. His expression was desolate, like a lifeless statue.
He took a deep drag and didn’t exhale smoke rings, but swallowed the smoke directly into his lungs. The acrid taste choked his throat, causing pain, yet he seemed to feel nothing. His jawline was tensed tight, and his brows didn’t even twitch.
One after another.
Unknown how long passed, he suddenly buried his head between his legs, trembling.
A tear fell on the floor, smashing into a shallow water stain. Immediately after, two drops… three drops…
Suppressed whimpers came from the pitch-black room. The sobbing sounded like a kite with a broken string; once out of control, it was hard to pull back. He slid from the sofa onto the floor, curling up into a ball, his hands tightly covering his mouth. The gasping sounds leaking through his fingers mixed with the tremors of his chest; every jerk felt as if he was going to cough up his internal organs.
His usually straight back bent into a fragile arc, as if a gentle touch would cause him to collapse completely.
A small half-box of cigarette butts had accumulated on the floor. The air was filled with the choking smell of nicotine, but he seemed unaware, fishing out another cigarette to light.
When the flame lit up again, one could see his red, swollen eyes and the dense web of red veins at the bottom of them. His brows, usually carrying a hint of alienation, were now filled with heavy grief.
Only when the cigarette burned to the end, scalding his fingertips, did he violently snap back to reality.
Meanwhile, Shi Jingnian was curled up on a bed—Shen Tangqing’s bed.
He wrapped himself tightly in the quilt, burying his entire face in Shen Tangqing’s pillow. It was as if by doing this, he could still feel Shen Tangqing’s existence.
He usually watched the news… but he had been immersed in the laboratory all weekend and hadn’t touched his phone much. By the time he learned the news of Shen Tangqing’s “death,” it was already three days later.
He hadn’t even been able to attend Shen Tangqing’s funeral…
His usually indifferent and distant face was now dead silent, pale without a trace of blood. He shrank deeper into the quilt, but his body couldn’t stop shaking. His teeth bit into his lower lip, tasting a faint metallic sweetness.
He thought he had a chance… Just like solving a difficult problem, as long as he was given enough time, he would definitely be able to work out the correct answer.
But he hadn’t expected—he had long since run out of time to solve it.
After a long time, Shi Jingnian’s hoarse murmur came from the silent room.
“It’s so cold!”
“How can the weather… be so cold?”
“In this season… it shouldn’t be this cold.”
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