Chapter 246: Blood and Ties
Ye Zhongjue smirked. “Like Mighty Empire and Su Jincheng!”
There was a subtle change in Ming Ruoyuan’s expression as she chuckled. “Yes, but that doesn’t matter anymore!”
Ye Zhongjue laughed when he caught that almost imperceptible change in her.
“I hope you’ll be able to forget all this hatred in your next life. Don’t be tied down by it anymore!”
Right after he spoke, Ming Ruoyuan doubled over as she held her stomach in pain. She spat out a mouthful of blood.
“You actually… put poison on that document!”
Seeing Ming Ruoyuan like this, Yang Tianlong aimed his gun at the ground as he pulled the trigger before dashing towards her.
“Ruoyuan!” There was a mix of sorrow and anger in his voice, and he did not even seem to have realized that Luo Qiqi had rolled away just when he fired.
Su Jincheng was stunned at this turn of events. Everything seemed to happen in a flash, and everyone seemed to be moving at the same time.
It was Ye Zhongjue putting poison in the document, and now, it was Luo Qiqi waking up. All of this seemed planned, like it was too much of a coincidence.
Ye Zhongjue did not expect for Luo Qiqi to wake up. He expected for Yang Tianlong to rush over to Ming Ruoyuan when the poison took effect, but he never thought that Yang Tianlong would pull the trigger.
It was fortunate that Luo Qiqi woke up in the nick of time.
Yang Tianlong hugged Ming Ruoyuan, who had already collapsed. As a doctor, he could tell that the poison was cyanide, and it was instantly fatal. He never thought that he would witness Ming Ruoyuan die right before him like this.
Ming Ruoyuan had already stopped breathing.
Incensed, Yang Tianlong stood up and stared at Ye Zhongjue.
“Why did you have to do that? She’s your cousin!”
Ye Zhongjue looked at him as he placed himself between the doctor and Luo Qiqi. “Yang Tianlong, you call yourself a doctor when you’ve done all that? Just what else did Ming Ruoyuan get you to do? You ask me why I did that? If I don’t, my own sister might be the one who’s dead. Do you really think I’m that naive to believe Ming Ruoyuan when she says that she’ll let Luo Qiqi go after she obtains those documents? Qiqi has been unconscious all this while. I don’t believe that you guys will be keeping your word!”
“Really?” Yang Tianlong smirked suddenly as he shifted his gaze to look somewhere behind Ye Zhongjue.
Though Ye Zhongjue felt something amiss, it was too late when he acted.
The Luo Qiqi who was behind him shot him directly in the back. It was then that he realized he had been too flustered to even consider the possibility that the Luo Qiqi with them now is a fake!
Although Luo Qiqi did wake up, Yue Wuxin, one of Ming Ruoyuan’s partners and a special agent from Soviet Union, arrived at the scene before Su Jincheng and Ye Zhongjue reached the same location.
She asked Ming Ruoyuan to hide Luo Qiqi somewhere else since she was not much different from someone who was dead, and it was quite impossible for her to escape on her own.
Her idea was that she would pretend to be Luo Qiqi instead. She had facial prosthetics on and with everything in chaos, no one actually realized she was an imposter.
Su Jincheng came to his senses when he saw Ye Zhongjue get shot. This Qiqi is a fake.
He dashed forward, knocking the gun out of Yue Wuxin’s hands.
However, Yang Tianlong already had his gun aimed squarely at Su Jincheng. Now that Ming Ruoyuan was dead, he wanted to drag everyone else to hell together with her. With Ye Zhongjue already gravely injured, he decided to turn his focus on Su Jincheng.
Ye Zhongjue wanted to push Su Jincheng out of the way, but he had no energy to even get up as he felt the sticky blood on his back.
The only thing he could do was cry out. “Su Jincheng!”
It was all too late when Su Jincheng spotted the nozzle. He was entangled with Yue Wuxin in combat and there was no escape. The bullet lodged itself into his chest.
He felt his vision turn fuzzy and he thought he heard Luo Qiqi’s sorrowful cry.
If it has already come to this, one of us has to stay alive, or else Luo Qiqi would be devastated.
Yaya, Big Brother can no longer keep my promise to you. I’m so sorry, Yaya!
All of a sudden, Su Jincheng rushed forward with the very last of his energy to grab Yue Wuxin and Yang Tianlong. Yang Tianlong stared at him wide-eyed, shocked that Su Jincheng would make such a choice. Su Jincheng wanted to protect Ye Zhongjue by bringing them down with him.
With one last spurt, Su Jincheng drove himself into the two of them and they all fell off the cliff!
“Su Jincheng!”
The voice seemed to be buffeted in the mountainous wind, sounding like a sorrowful cry.
Luo Qiqi was not fully recovered, and Yue Wuxin had sequestered her in some cave in the mountains. She struggled her way up to the peak only to witness what just happened.
She never imagined having to bid farewell to Su Jincheng like this.
Ye Zhongjue turned at the voice, afraid to make eye contact with her. She probably doesn’t know that Su Jincheng was the very person who’d been through all that with her back in the Soviet Union. It’s best if she doesn’t find out now.
He could tell that Luo Qiqi was barely holding herself together. It would only compound her sorrow if he revealed it to her now.
Although Luo Qiqi had been unconscious for a while, she was still able to hear the conversations that occurred near her. She just felt extremely exhausted and tired, and no matter how she tried, she simply could not open her eyes.
She heard the others say that Ming Ruoyuan took her kidney, and that her heart seemed to have been damaged.
She heard Xia Zi saying that Su Jincheng had always been standing outside her ward, and she also heard them say that she was Ye Zhongjue’s younger sister, Ye Mingke.
She also felt the love from her parents.
It was only until now did she know that she was not orphaned. While she was unconscious, she seemed to recall that the Ye family home was where she lived when she was younger, which was why she found it oddly familiar.
Children did not have great memories, but she knew that the sense of familiarity could not be replicated in any way.
She had also told Xia Zi multiple times that Xiaoliu looked a lot like her, but Xia Zi did not think much of it. Now that she recalled the past, she realized that Xiaoliu indeed looked a lot like her when she was younger.
So this was all because she was related to her. She was Xiaoliu’s aunt. Though she had heard the saying that nieces are likely to look like their aunts, it was now that she really understood it.
She never understood why she felt oddly comfortable with Ye Zhongjue. There was a period of time when she even felt like she was letting Mo Suqing down, but all of it was because he was her older brother.
I’ve finally found my family... But am I going to lose that man forever…?
Luo Qiqi crawled to the edge of the peak and cried out to the heavens. It felt as if all the flora and fauna were weeping with her. If it wasn’t for Ye Zhongjue who held onto her ankle, she might have even jumped off the cliff.
The entire scene looked tragic. Pieces of the share transfer document fluttered all over while the red booklet holding the marriage certificate laid on the ground somewhere away from the two frail and weak siblings.
Everything seemed to have been stained red with blood.
This was the scene that greeted Xia Zi, Feng Liluo and Gu Yi’an when they arrived.
One of them carried Luo Qiqi while the other put Ye Zhongjue on his back. Gu Yi’an did some emergency treatment on Ye Zhongjue to help staunch the blood before they headed down the mountain.
Luo Qiqi was crying the entire journey as they sent Ye Zhongjue to the hospital. She watched Ming Jinhua, knowing how worried her mother must be feeling right now.
Her long-lost daughter had to be put through such an ordeal after she had just been found.
Luo Qiqi then decided that she should stop crying and insisted on going to look for Su Jincheng.
Unable to reject her request, Xia Zi accompanied her.
Xiaoliu and A’jiu visited Ye Zhongjue when he was in the hospital. Xiaoliu bawled loudly, and although A’jiu did not shed a tear, everyone could see those red, swollen eyes of his.
Mo Suqing felt sorry for her children. Would it be worth it if I continue fighting with Ye Zhongjue like this my whole life?
Now that Qiqi has been found, she decided that she would agree to marry him if he proposed to her.
Seeing Su Jincheng and Luo Qiqi made her realize that nothing was easy, and one had to persevere to see the light.
Luo Qiqi and Xia Zi left no stone unturned at the foot of the northern peak, but Su Jincheng was nowhere to be found. The police found one body, but it belonged to Yang Tianlong.
After some time, they found a ravaged corpse in the ditch wearing what Su Jincheng wore on the day he fell off the cliff.
The police did a DNA test on the corpse and confirmed that it was Su Jincheng.
No one actually realized that there was one more missing person, Yue Wuxin.
With Su Jincheng dead however, no one bothered to look into her.
Luo Qiqi refused to believe that Su Jincheng was dead. She continued going to Xingping Mountain to look for him, as if she was placed under a spell.
Xia Zi could only accompany her every time she made a trip there, hoping that she would be able to walk out of her sorrow eventually.
When Luo Qiqi met Feng Liluo again, she only said one thing to him.
“Liluo, you should leave A City. My heart is already dead.”
Feng Liluo thus left. A City suddenly felt much emptier now, even though it was only a few people who had left.
……
In the ward.
Ye Zhongjue woke up on the third day after his operation.
Mo Suqing was the first one he saw when he awoke.
The first thing he said was, “Mo Suqing, marry me!”
Mo Suqing was stunned at this. She did not expect for them to actually be thinking the same thing.
Seeing that she seemed to be hesitating, Ye Zhongjue continued, “Suqing, do you know that when it felt like I was about to die, there was only one thought on my mind. I promised myself that if I survived, the first thing I had to do was to marry you!”
Mo Suqing’s tears started falling…