At five in the afternoon, Ji Qikun took a moment during a break in his meeting to send Wei Zhi a message.
"Wife, there’s a dinner gathering tonight, so I won’t be home for a meal. If you’re tired, go to sleep first; don’t wait up for me."
After sending the message, he turned and walked back into the conference room.
"Reporting in to the wife, are we?" the deputy general manager teased, clutching a teacup in his seat.
"Yes, better to let her know early so she doesn't go to the trouble of preparing dinner for me." Ji Qikun sat back down, wearing a refined, elegant smile.
"Young Mr. Ji really is Mr. Perfect. Not only is he handsome and capable, but his devotion to his wife is in a league of its own—he leaves the rest of us in the dust!"
"This love for one's wife might be hereditary. Look at our Chairman Ji; in all these years, we’ve never seen the couple even turn red in the face! That’s what it means to have a firm grip on both work and family."
"To find a husband like Mr. Ji, Mrs. Ji must have been blessed across three lifetimes," an elderly female shareholder sighed. "It’s a pity not every woman can meet a good man like Young Mr. Ji."
The compliments flowed incessantly, many of them carrying a note of genuine admiration.
Ji Qikun responded to each one with a humble expression.
If life were a massive amusement park, then Ji Qikun held a VIP pass. He could play whenever he wanted and stop to rest whenever he pleased. Everything was effortless. He loved life; he loved this playground of infinite surprises. He was convinced that this life would continue, and that his VIP pass would remain valid until his very last breath.
Fifteen minutes passed, and he still hadn't received a reply from Wei Zhi.
Looking at the empty notification list, he opened a GPS tracking app. Wei Zhi’s location wasn't at home; she was on a street less than a kilometer away from their residential complex.
He knew exactly what that place was—the "surveillance tower" Weng Xiuyue and her accomplices used to monitor him.
The meeting continued. He set his phone aside, leaving the screen active.
For the next two hours, the location marker did not move.
When the meeting finally ended, everyone stood up to pack their things, preparing to head to the dinner venue. Ji Qikun was forced to temporarily put away his phone, maintaining a polite smile as he responded to the chatter around him.
Even after arriving at the restaurant, Wei Zhi still hadn't replied. Her location remained fixed at that water station.
Ji Qikun couldn't help but dial Wei Zhi’s number. He placed the calling phone on the table, chatting and laughing with the others as usual, though his smile was somewhat distracted, and his eyes frequently flickered toward the screen.
After forty seconds, the call automatically disconnected because no one answered.
He dialed again. Automatic disconnect. Again. Automatic disconnect. Again. Automatic disconnect.
The messages he sent to Wei Zhi shifted from an initial "Wife, why aren't you replying or picking up?" to a simple "?".
Ninety-three oppressive question marks, one per line, occupied the long chat log between Ji Qikun and Wei Zhi.
***
Inside the dimly lit water station, the rolling shutter door blocked out the noise and prying eyes of the outside world. Wei Zhi tucked her vibrating phone back into her pocket and took down a deep blue work apron that Tan Mengyan usually wore.
She slowly and meticulously tied the apron strings into a bow behind her back, then carefully secured her chest-length black hair with a hair tie.
Next, she leaned over and lifted a pair of thick arms from the floor. Gripping the blood-stained wrists, she avoided the puddles of gore on the ground and dragged the body toward a large suitcase. Simply hoisting the massive frame into the suitcase exhausted a great deal of her strength.
She had to stop and rest for a moment.
Only then did she begin adjusting the limbs of the corpse, forcing it to curl completely into the thirty-inch suitcase.
There was still much to be done; she couldn't afford to rest for long.
***
In the high-end Chinese restaurant, Ji Qikun could barely suppress the urge to smash his phone in rage.
When Wei Zhi’s location finally began to move away from the water station, he handed off the remaining social duties to the deputy manager and left the dinner early.
He loathed the feeling of losing control; it brought him a visceral fury. On the drive back, as he floored the accelerator, he envisioned a hundred ways to punish Wei Zhi.
He would make her slap her own face; he would make her drink coffee brewed with scalding water; he would make her hold her breath in the bathtub, and if she dared to surface without permission, he would use a stun gun to conduct electricity through the water.
Everything would be performed by her own hand.
He would merely assist and guide from the sidelines, ensuring the severity of the punishment skirted the edges of the law. He wouldn't dirty his own hands—that wasn't elegant, it wasn't clever; it was stupid.
Amidst her tears and remorse, she would feel his burning love and gradually convert, viewing his every word as a divine oracle from then on.
Fifteen minutes later, he pushed open the ebony-colored door to his home.
The lights were off. The dim night shrouded the silent, sprawling luxury apartment, making it feel like a massive tomb. The leaden-gray walls stood like cold, hard tombstones, looming silently. The minimalist furniture looked like forgotten funerary objects, icy and lifeless.
The mirrors scattered throughout the rooms caught what little light remained, tearing it into fragments and reflecting an endless void, making the space feel even more desolate.
Wei Zhi sat motionless on the black sofa. Outside the window, the night wind pushed around gray clouds; inside, an ominous scent of blood hung in the air.
An open suitcase lay before the floor-to-ceiling window, both sides of the interior stained with dried, dark-red blood.
"...What did you do?"
The stunned words escaped him. His rage, which had been like a volcano on the verge of eruption, suddenly sank into the depths of the sea.
A premonition of doom surged from his chest.
"Wei Zhi, what have you done?" he asked again.
He walked slowly toward her, his heart filled with unease. His rapid breathing betrayed his internal panic, despite his efforts to hide it.
She was facing him, but her pupils weren't focused; her mind seemed to be wandering somewhere far away. Following the line of her pale cheek downward, he saw her hands, which were covered in blood.
He took a large step back, unable to hide the alarm on his face any longer.
Ji Qikun pulled out his phone, deciding to call the police as he backed toward the door. This had nothing to do with him. He had just returned home; he hadn't touched anything except the doorknob. He was safe. He had to report this.
Just then, a ghost-like voice drifted through the wide room.
"Weng Xiuyue won't disturb our happiness anymore."
He looked at her in shock.
Wei Zhi slowly stood up. She stood against the light, her blurred face looking as though it had been smeared with black ink. Step by step, she swallowed the distance Ji Qikun had created by retreating, and a moment later, she stood right in front of him.
It wasn't until his back hit the cold front door that Ji Qikun realized he was still backing away.
"I listened to you and took care of that annoying woman."
Wei Zhi leaned against his chest. Her black hair left faint red stains on his crisp white shirt. Her blood-streaked hands wrapped around his waist, leaving serpentine marks on his expensive suit.
"As long as it's your command, I'm willing to do anything." She pressed her ear to his chest, listening to the terrified pounding of his heart, and spoke softly and sweetly, "Because I love you. I love you more than anyone else in the world."
A dry sound escaped Ji Qikun’s throat. He struggled to remain calm, but the terror in his heart was like a wild beast, stampeding beyond his control. His hands trembled as he tried to dial the emergency number, his fingers sliding clumsily across the screen as if they had lost all sensation.
"I didn't tell you to kill Weng Xiuyue... I never made such a request..."
"You told me to make her disappear, and I did," she said with a hint of petulance. "I told you so many times that the previous accidents had nothing to do with me, but you wouldn't believe me. Since you wanted me to kill her, I had no choice but to brace myself and do it."
Ji Qikun pressed himself tightly against the door, wanting to escape Wei Zhi’s body, but he couldn't move. Only a difficult swallowing sound came from his throat.
"But don't worry, I'm not stupid," Wei Zhi said. "After I killed her, I wrapped her in over a dozen layers of plastic wrap and activated carbon. That way, the stench of decay won't be smelled outside for a while."
"You hid the body in the house?" His vision nearly went black.
"How could I?"
Wei Zhi’s words allowed his heart, which had jumped into his throat, to drop back down—only to be caught mid-fall by a slender hand and squeezed right out of his throat again.
"I hid the body in the trunk of the car you gave me," she smiled.
Ji Qikun felt a dull ache in his chest and throat. He could taste the metallic tang of blood where he had bitten his tongue.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. It had to be a trick. It had to be a lie from Wei Zhi. She couldn't possibly be so stupid as to murder Weng Xiuyue. There had to be a catch, there had to be—
Wei Zhi lifted her head from his chest, her expression possessing a maiden-like innocence mixed with a touch of pride. "The car is in the underground garage. Do you want to go see?"
It had to be a trick.
This was fundamentally impossible.
With Wei Zhi’s intelligence, how could she use such a clumsy method to kill someone?
Unless... those three accidents really were accidents.
Were they truly accidents?
Could three accidents really happen in such quick succession?
In the underground garage, an electronic rolling door slowly rose. The black Mercedes-Benz S-Class sat side-by-side with Ji Qikun’s black Bentley Bentayga. Just a few minutes ago, when he had parked the Bentayga next to the Mercedes, he never could have imagined there was a corpse in the Mercedes' trunk.
He stood before the open trunk, looking at the human shape wrapped in layers of plastic wrap and activated carbon. Two voices in his mind were clashing violently.
It was a massive object, barely recognizable as human. The thick plastic and carbon obscured most of the figure. Through a gap in the plastic wrap, a lock of greasy black hair peeked out—the unmistakable shadow of Weng Xiuyue.
He didn't believe it.
One voice in his head screamed that this was some kind of ruse, that perhaps Wei Zhi had teamed up with Weng Xiuyue again, because Wei Zhi was incapable of such a foolish act.
Following that voice, he reached out a trembling hand and slowly peeled back the plastic wrap.
Wei Zhi did not stop him.
As the layers were peeled back to reveal a small opening, he saw the blood-drenched face and the mangled, gaping wound on the head, nestled amidst the plastic and carbon.
No makeup technique could create a wound so realistic.
With just one look, he jerked his hand back. The coldness of the corpse seemed to transfer to his skin through the blood-stained plastic.
As if seeking praise, Wei Zhi added pointedly, "It’s hard to handle a body once rigor mortis sets in, so I didn't wait for you. I took care of things first."
Unused activated carbon and large rolls of plastic wrap were scattered on the garage floor. Clearly, the "processing" of the body had taken place right here.
He wanted to vomit, he wanted to scream, but in the end, he only managed to squeeze out a raspy question:
"...Why..."
His words were incomplete, but Wei Zhi knew what he was asking. Why hadn't she destroyed the evidence? Why leave the body here?
"To show you, of course." The smile on Wei Zhi’s face carried the ease and comfort of someone who had overcome a great difficulty. "Otherwise, how would you believe that I really killed someone for you?"
Intense fear and panic triggered a physical reaction. Ji Qikun fled from the shocking sight, turning away to lean against a stone pillar in the garage, retching.
That spine, which was always held perfectly straight, was now bent, shivering visibly beneath his well-tailored suit jacket.
Would he be considered the mastermind?
No, there was no evidence to prove he had ordered it.
But Wei Zhi’s accusation would undoubtedly cause a massive uproar in society. Ji Zhongyong wouldn't give him a third chance.
His fingerprints were already on the plastic wrap and the activated carbon. Would the police believe his plea of ignorance?
His playground was swaying in the wake of an unprecedented earthquake.
To report it, or not?
Just then, both of them instinctively looked toward the garage exit.
The piercing wail of a police siren shattered the silence, rising from the distant streets and—
Rapidly approaching.
***
