The headlights of thirteen cars lit up the curtain of rain, as though forming an artificial barrier outside the Tianbao Repair Shop.
Most employees favored black clothes. On this grim, deathly silent night, they had truly turned this place into a mourning hall.
After Chang Nian went inside, everyone's gaze unconsciously shifted to that man's back, as though waiting for something.
Ji Li held his cane in his right hand, his left hanging at his side. Amid the flashing red and yellow lights, he tilted his head toward the sky, watching the raindrops strike his face one by one.
In the wind and rain, his black coat and lengthened black hair swirled around him.
His figure was tall but thin, and an indescribable sense of loneliness slowly spread from him.
In truth, he was not grieving. He was merely listening quietly.
Ever since Wei Guang had shown him the secretly taken photograph on his phone—Tong Guan's head, severed after his death and mounted on a wooden stake like a scarecrow—he had heard A Jing's curses.
A Jing had been talking endlessly about all those supposed silences, promises, and assurances from back then.
Ji Li began remembering more. He recalled that he had once made Tong En a promise, which had also been a bargain.
That grand plan fifty years ago had required this married couple's lives as stakes.
And there had been more than two lives involved, because A Jing had already been pregnant then.
So Ji Li had made a promise. He would give their unborn child an ordinary life, using some means to hide Tong En and A Jing in a future timeline.
Seven years. Tong En and A Jing had only had seven years with that child.
Afterward, Ji Li had entered that timeline and taken away