Chapter 401: Stories

2022-05-20

Wu Zui fixed his eyes on me, voice steady as stone. “Everyone has felt it, no matter who they are—man or woman, adult or child, no matter their skin color. So long as they’re human, everyone has that one brutal moment when they want to kill someone. The rowdy kids that ruin your lunch break, the boss who cheats you out of your wages with a smile, the lover who played you—everyone has wanted to kill before.”

Wu Zui launched into his argument. “But the truth is, most people never actually kill. They’re scared of dying themselves. But what if there were no consequences? We’re all animals—always have been. No one on this earth is inherently nobler than another. No animal is really more noble than any other. We’re animals, and animals have instincts. They size up who has the bigger fist, they kill their own kind.”

“So why do we keep pushing our true nature down?” Wu Zui went on. “Humans are just this sort of animal, that’s why I can’t stand all you people. But those who—like fireworks burning out in a flash—dare to go farther, killing for pride or profit, they live and die with no regrets. I admire them.”

When we didn’t react, Wu Zui kept going. “So I give them a little nudge, push them to let out that darkness inside. There’s nothing more satisfying. The world is already a mess. I want to build a new one from scratch.”

Madman. There was no other word for Wu Zui.

“Sorry, I’m getting off track.” Wu Zui rubbed his leg and looked at me. “Where was I? Right, the space I built. Honestly, I’ve always been trying to figure out how to rescue you, and that was never going to be easy.”

Wu Zui sighed. “When you disappeared, it was seven years ago. I was thirteen, and Zhao Mingkun was around twenty. That day, I went home but waited in vain. You once told me—if something happened, I should leave by myself. If I could, I’d come for you; if not, I should just live my life. I kept that in mind.”

“But for a thirteen-year-old, even making it day to day is hard, let alone saving someone. After I left Yuzhou, I went north. Luckily, you’d taught me so much growing up that I never starved.”

Wu Zui scratched his head. “At fifteen, I started thinking, why should I keep working under that old man instead of going my own way? Seemed like a good idea. So I killed him and set out on my own. It didn’t even take a year for my business to spread to a bunch of cities. That’s also when I found out you were in Dongxing City, but I still didn’t have the means, or a plan.”

“I knew they wouldn’t just kill you off that easily,” Wu Zui said with a grin. “This world works like this: If you kill one or two people, you’re dead for sure. But if you kill hundreds or thousands, they’re not as quick to let you die. Kill a million? A hundred million? Suddenly, you’re a hero, a savior.”

“Once the timing was right, I took my people to Dongxing City. I was eighteen then.” Wu Zui smiled. “Eighteen, and fate gave me a coming-of-age gift. I found my brother. Dad, you’d once told me I had a twin brother. I’d spent all these years searching for him. I wanted him to join me, to help.”

Here, Wu Zui sounded deeply disappointed. “But my brother… honestly, he let me down. I was furious. Some people lose their minds when they’re angry; others become stone-cold rational.”

“I heard about my lovely brother’s special gift—the profiling. He could step into the crime scene, deduce the killer’s age, gender, even their mindset at the time.” Wu Zui looked back at me. “But you need to understand, schizophrenia is hereditary.”

Wu Zui paused before saying, “One of our parents has schizophrenia, so the two of us are at high risk too. Your talent is also your greatest weakness, just waiting for the right trigger.”

“You killed a woman.” As Wu Zui spoke, I broke my silence. “You killed a woman, a young woman in her twenties. I should’ve realized there was another me in this world. When I used profiling, I was shocked—this person’s actions were exactly like mine.”

“This person acted just like me, so I figured I must’ve done it. After all, who else could pull something off so cleanly? Only me.”

I shifted my body and spoke. “So I turned myself in. But there was airtight evidence I couldn’t’ve been in two places at once. They ran a psych evaluation and found mild guilt delusion. If that got worse, I’d develop full-blown schizophrenia—impossible to think, impossible to live like a normal person again.”

Wu Zui nodded. “But I was still too young then. I thought you’d give up helping the others after that, but oh well, my dear brother, you let me down again. The next time I heard about you was two years later. You’d been released from the psychiatric hospital. And then I was stunned to realize—Team Leader Shao, the one who got you out, was the same person who’d put my adoptive father away.”

“But how did you know that?” I asked.

“Remember your very first case?” Wu Zui said. “No, to be exact, your team’s first case?”

As Wu Zui spoke, an image flashed in my mind—Team Leader Shao bringing me out of the psychiatric hospital. I remembered how, back then, I was still bursting with hope, convinced I could do it, convinced there wasn’t a case I couldn’t crack.

The first case was the railway worker’s son’s murder. It was the one I was most confident about. Fresh out of the psychiatric hospital, I identified the killer almost instantly. But as the cases grew more complex, especially after meeting Wu Zui, I started to feel like a failure.

“The Railway Woman’s Body case?” I asked.

Wu Zui snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. When you were investigating, you ran into one of my people—a beggar. That beggar tipped me off that there was someone who looked exactly like me. That’s how I knew it was you.”

“Back then, I hadn’t thought of wearing a mask yet. I didn’t really know what my plan was.” Wu Zui said, “But on my way back, an idea popped into my head. If I’m going to play, why not make it interesting? From then on, you were always under my surveillance. I knew your every move, little brother.”

“But you went dark later on,” I said, staring at Wu Zui as the pieces fell into place. “Until this case ended, you didn’t hear from me again. That night in the rain, you took me away. So you were planning to grab both me and Guan Zengbin in the labyrinth, but something went wrong.”

Wu Zui let out a big laugh. “You actually have pretty solid deduction skills, little brother—everything happened just as you said. If all those people hadn’t shown up suddenly, you’d have left that hidden river months sooner. My plans would’ve started earlier too, but in the end, here you are in my hands anyway.”

“But the truth is,” Wu Zui’s voice dropped, “even though you’re the main character, today, you’re not. Someone else is the star today. Really, all of us are pretty tragic. Nobody becomes themselves by choice. We are who we are because of our world—the people we meet, the things we hear, the books we read. All of it makes us.”

“Someone once told me, if you want to be without weaknesses, you have to… what was it?”