Qingshan Hospital, 11:30 at night.
Old Liu, the doctor on duty that night, had just refilled his cup with strong tea when the door was kicked open with a boom.
"What are you doing?" Old Liu shouted angrily.
"Erdao, hold him down."
"Where?"
"On the desk."
Erdao strode up to Old Liu and slammed his head onto the desk with a thud, leaving half his face stinging.
Brother Pao pushed Chen Shuo and Wang Huiling ahead of him as he strolled into the ward. "Chen Shuo confessed that you took fifty thousand yuan from him and conspired to lock his nephew up in a psychiatric hospital?"
"Help! Help!" Old Liu roared.
Hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor, but Brother Pao showed no sign of panic. He simply took off his Tang jacket and slowly rolled up his shirt sleeves, revealing arms covered in tattoos and muscle.
The instant two male nurses appeared in the doorway, Brother Pao leaned slightly to the right, dodging an incoming punch. The next second, he struck one nurse on the jaw with a thunderous hook, leaving him rigid.
Before the other nurse could react, Brother Pao darted in front of him and struck his jaw with another hook!
"Too weak."
With two thuds, the nurses fell unconscious to the floor like a pair of wooden poles.
Brother Pao turned to Old Liu, who was pinned to the desk. "Anyone else?"
"N-no one."
"Can we talk properly now?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"All right, the three of you, squat in a row." Brother Pao pulled up a chair, sat down and crossed one leg over the other. "Does Chen Ji actually have a mental illness?"
"No, no," Old Liu said. "He just has mild violent tendencies and mild depression. He isn't really ill."
Brother Pao lit a cigarette. "That's strange. If he saw what you were going to do in advance, why did he still end up getting put in here?"
"He wanted to use you to get revenge on us!"
Brother Pao shook his head. "No, that's not right. He sought me out for a loan, so he must have known what I do. He could've just paid me to buy the two of you a broken leg each. Why get himself put in a psychiatric hospital?"
Chen Shuo: "..."
Brother Pao suddenly asked, "Were you responsible for his parents' deaths?"
Chen Shuo wanted to cry, but had no tears. "His parents died in a car accident. They even found the driver who hit them. It had nothing to do with us."
Brother Pao gestured for Chen Shuo to hold out his hand, then flicked his cigarette ash into his palm. "A seventeen-year-old kid's parents had only been gone half a year, and his uncle and aunt were already scheming to get his house. You're really pieces of shit. And you, doctor, you old bastard, you've done this kind of thing before, haven't you?"
Old Liu hurriedly said, "I've never harmed anyone before. The patients I handled had all committed crimes and didn't want to go to prison. They came to me themselves for a diagnosis."
"Oh?" Brother Pao looked thoughtful. "What did those people do?"
"The most recent one was a man named Wang Long, a man in the underworld who's in the earthmoving business. Half a year ago, he ran a couple over and killed them..." At that point, Old Liu suddenly looked up at Brother Pao in horror.
With a hiss, Brother Pao, stunned, pressed the cigarette butt into Chen Shuo's palm. A scream rang through the corridor.
Brother Pao put on his black Tang jacket and dragged Old Liu out by his sparse hair. "I know why he had to get into the psychiatric hospital. Doing this to a kid like him-you're utterly lacking in virtue. Erdao, put them through some pain so they'll remember this. I'm taking the doctor up to the sixth floor. I know Wang Long. He won't be easy to deal with."
Chen Shuo trembled all over like a sieve. "This is a hospital! There are cameras! You can't assault us here!"
Erdao scratched the scar on his shaved head. "Brother, carry it out immediately?"
"Carry it out repeatedly."
Snores rose and fell throughout the ward. Chen Ji lay in bed with his eyes wide open, staring silently at the ceiling.
He had found that there was an unusual amount of sleep-talking in the psychiatric hospital, and it was especially hard to make sense of.
In a daze, he seemed to return to his childhood, hearing once more the clack-clack of a green train pulling out of the station.
As a child, Chen Ji had been frail and sickly, and he had always heard cries of battle in his dreams. His father had often had no choice but to take him to the capital to seek medical treatment.
When they had no money, the two of them bought standing-room tickets on a green train.
They would sit in the open space between two carriages. When Chen Ji got sleepy, he would lie in his father's arms and sleep for a while. When he got hungry, his father would take instant noodles from his backpack and queue for hot water, then hold the cup so Chen Ji could eat first.
When he woke, Chen Ji would lean against the glass in the carriage door and become a walking book of ten thousand whys, asking strange questions nonstop, while his father answered them patiently.
Later, when he was twelve, he recovered from his illness. His father also made money in business and bought a villa.
On summer nights, his mother taught him to use a flashlight to find cicadas that had just emerged from the ground in the yard. They would soak them in salt water, then fry and eat them.
At New Year, his mother would cut paper window decorations, put up Spring Festival couplets, and steam beautifully shaped flower buns with Chen Ji.
On the hospital bed, Chen Ji came out of his reverie and gently wiped away his tears with a finger.
At some point, Li Qingniao had come to his bedside. "Now, sell me something, and I can answer one more question for you."
Chen Ji's gaze was vacant yet profound. "What do you want to buy?"
"Cicadas."
"From what age?"
"The cicadas from when you were twelve."
"Not for sale."
Just then, Chen Shuo's cries of pain came from downstairs, ringing through the hospital.
There was no time.
Chen Ji rolled over and leaped out of bed. He took a dagger from the strap on his inner thigh, discarded the sheath, and ran straight to a spot in the ward.
Wang Long had driven drunk, run over a man and a woman, and fled the scene. The victims had died because their treatment was delayed. The next day, Wang Long turned himself in at the police station, but he had already obtained a diagnosis from Qingshan Psychiatric Hospital. The court had been about to review the diagnosis when Wang Long's family rallied more than sixty earthmoving truck drivers to make trouble at the courthouse. In the end, the matter was dropped, and Wang Long escaped trial and entered Qingshan Hospital.
But how could you escape trial?
Chen Ji came soundlessly to Wang Long's bedside and thrust the dagger down with all his strength.
Wang Long's eyes flew open. He seized Chen Ji's wrist with his strong, powerful hands and sneered. "Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you?"
During the legal proceedings, Chen Ji had always had his lawyer appear on his behalf, so he and Wang Long had never met. But Wang Long had wanted to settle with the victims' family, so he had naturally had someone investigate him.
So when Wang Long saw Chen Ji here, he knew what Chen Ji was planning.
He said urgently, "I can pay you more! A lot of money! Your parents are gone. You need to learn to look forward!"
Without a sound, Chen Ji kept pressing the dagger down with all his might, its tip inching closer to Wang Long's chest.
"Looking to die!" Wang Long roared, wrenching the dagger from Chen Ji's grip and stabbing it into the left side of his waist with a reverse grip, piercing through his ribs.
Wang Long had thought that blow would be enough to leave Chen Ji completely unable to fight. What he hadn't expected was that, the moment he seized the knife, Chen Ji offered no resistance at all. Instead, taking advantage of the opening as Wang Long spread his hands, he lunged like a wild beast and sank his teeth into the artery in his neck!
Blood kept seeping out between Chen Ji's lips and teeth, soaking the pillow black-purple.
Chen Ji felt the metallic sweetness in his mouth, felt the blood spray into it and flow back out.
It was his first time killing someone for revenge. He was so afraid that his heart trembled, but he clamped down with all his might and would not let go.
Wang Long felt the pain in his neck, making him shudder as if an electric current had run through him. It was the sense of danger that came with approaching death.
He pulled the dagger from Chen Ji's torso and drove it in again. "Let go!"
"Let go!"
"Let go..."
With each angry shout and each thrust of the knife, Chen Ji gave no response. His teeth only clamped tighter and tighter until he tore a chunk of flesh from Wang Long's neck.
Wang Long's pupils began to lose focus. As he twisted the dagger in his hand, he murmured, "Was it worth it? Was it worth it..."
But what Wang Long did not understand was that, for Chen Ji, his life had long since been left in the past by that car accident, endless and inescapable.
Black-purple blood spread across the white pillow, just as it had spread across Chen Ji's life.
With a click, the iron door to the ward was opened from outside. Brother Pao appeared in the doorway, wearing his black Tang jacket and holding Old Liu by the hair.
Wang Long's right hand finally released the dagger's hilt and fell limply.
Chen Ji lifted his blood-smeared face and looked at Brother Pao. Whether from fear or the aftereffects of a surge of adrenaline, his whole body was trembling.
Brother Pao sighed. "I'm too late."
Chen Ji slumped down at the foot of the bed, clutching the wound in his side. He said softly to Brother Pao, "Sorry."
Brother Pao knew the boy was talking about using him. He grinned. "It's all right. You're dying, but it's not too late to get acquainted. My real name's Chen Chong. My friends like to call me Brother Pao."
"All right, Brother Pao."
"Your first time killing someone? You gave nothing away beforehand, used all your strength when you killed him, and didn't waste a word. I like that." Brother Pao kicked Old Liu aside and lit himself another cigarette.
Chen Ji gave a bitter smile. "I'm still going to die."
As he spoke, blood continued to gush from Chen Ji’s wound.
"Want a cigarette?"
"No."
"Need a hand?"
"Doctor Liu has my phone. It should have recorded evidence of his illegal deal with my uncle. Help me send it out."
Brother Pao hadn't expected the boy to remember, even as he lay dying, to take fair revenge on every one of his enemies...
He sat down beside Chen Ji and asked, "Any other wishes?"
"No." Chen Ji's voice grew weaker and weaker. Drowsiness swept over him, but he could not bear to close his eyes. He only gazed out the window in a daze, where a crescent moon hung like a hook.
The patients in the ward slowly rose and watched in silence.
Li Qingniao came to Chen Ji's side and slowly laid a hand over his eyes. He said softly, "A sigh for the colt glimpsed through a crack, the fire within stone, the self within a dream. The Forty-Nine Heavens cannot hold you. Go, go where you should."
With that, he returned to his foolish, vacant manner and sat on the edge of the bed. Brother Pao covered Chen Ji with his black Tang jacket, then turned and walked into the darkness outside the ward. "What a pity we met so late."