Chapter 58: Attempted Patricide

2022-05-20

The content of Li Taida’s words felt chillingly out of sync with the bright smile on his face. What he said was cruel, yet his smile was dazzling—almost as if killing someone was nothing more than a fun game to him.

When Li Taida dropped that bomb, everyone froze where they stood.

The dean of students, standing nearby, looked like he couldn’t believe his own ears. He grabbed Li Taida by the collar and pressed urgently, “What did you just say? Say that again!”

Li Taida frowned and brushed off the dean’s hand, replying coolly, “Are you deaf or something?”

Then, with a voice loud and clear, Li Taida announced, “I said, I killed someone!”

He scanned the room like a prizefighter who’d just knocked out his opponent, a flicker of determination in his eyes.

Could this sixteen-year-old really have persuaded others to commit suicide and handed potassium cyanide to Gao Rui?

Age has never defined maturity. Sometimes, a teenager sees through things an adult never will.

I got to my feet, locking eyes with him. “Who did you kill?”

Li Taida’s gaze locked onto mine. He said, pausing after every word, “I killed my father. Li Xian.”

So we drove to Li Taida’s place. His apartment complex was clearly aging, one of those old neighborhoods that’d seen better days. Li Taida led the way, bouncing ahead of us almost like a schoolkid on his way home from class.

There was a happiness in his step that only tightened the frowns on our faces. Just what kind of father-son relationship would leave a son so excited and carefree after killing his dad? Not a trace of grief or regret—just pure, uninhibited joy.

There’s a saying: Sometimes, fathers and sons are enemies from a past life, here to settle old debts.

I never believed it. Now I do.

We headed up the stairs. Li Taida hummed a little tune, growing more and more restless—like he couldn’t wait another second. At the door, he took several deep breaths and unlocked it with his key. He leapt inside and stopped cold.

He just stood there, frozen like he’d seen something impossible.

I moved in quickly, standing beside him to follow his gaze… but there was nothing there. Nothing unusual.

Li Taida stared straight at the coffee table, unmoving.

Gu Chen and Guan Zengbin stepped in, about to speak when I motioned for silence and waved them off to check the other rooms.

That gave me a chance to take in the place.

If I had to sum up this house in one word, it’d be chaos. Two words? Utter chaos. Three? Total disaster.

Just the coffee table alone was piled high with cigarette butts and empty bottles and cans of beer. Ash and spilled booze had merged into a sticky mess on the floor—it looked disgusting. Sofa cushions were tossed around, clothes flung everywhere.

Even the TV lay shattered on the living room floor. In the kitchen, pots and pans were strewn about.

Gu Chen and Guan Zengbin came back out. Gu Chen glanced at me. “No body, just a wreck—looks like the place was robbed. Or maybe you’re just trying to pull a fast one on us, huh?”

Gu Chen waved a hand in front of Li Taida’s face. “Hey, is this kid in shock? Maybe it really was a burglary.”

Suddenly and without warning, Li Taida wailed—a raw, piercing sob, as if the world had collapsed. The sound was torn and jagged, leaving everyone shaken. No one could tell what exactly he was crying for.

Whatever happened, this wasn’t a robbery. From all those butts and empties, you could see someone was always lounging on that sofa.

Li Taida kept crying, like he’d fallen apart.

Guan Zengbin tried to comfort him. I just stared blankly at the still-unfinished beers.

Given how lively Li Taida was on the way here, he clearly thought his father was dead. The way he looked around as he walked in said it all—he fully expected his father’s corpse to be here.

So, two possibilities: Li Xian was dead, and the body had been taken. Or Li Xian wasn’t dead at all.

I grabbed my phone and called Xiao Liu, asking him to get Li Xian’s number from the dean. In less than a minute, he sent it to me.

I dialed. Half a minute later, someone picked up.

“Li Xian? You’re still alive?” I asked.

He snapped, “Who the hell are you? Even if you die, I’m not dying with you. Get lost.”

So Li Xian was alive after all. I said, “I’m your son, Li Taida…”

Li Xian sounded a little softer. “Oh, you’re Li Taida’s teacher, right? That brat claiming I’m dead again? Fine, whatever you need, don’t come to me, go find his mom. Bye.”

He hung up before I could say another word.

“Guan Zengbin!” I called out. “Take all the beer from here—there might be potassium cyanide.”

We brought Li Taida back to the interrogation room. He seemed tense, not because he’d been caught, but because finding out his father was still alive had shattered him. Some say the more you hope, the deeper the disappointment. Turns out, that’s true for murder, too.

Li Taida had planned to kill his father from the start. He’d acted innocent, but when he’d asked Zhao Erming what was the deadliest thing around, he already had a plan. Li Taida hadn’t just thought about it once—he’d tried over and over. When Zhao Erming told him potassium cyanide could kill a person instantly, Li Taida was hooked.

Zhao Erming told him it didn’t take much—just a tiny bit would be fatal. Dissolved in water, it’s totally colorless and tasteless. No one would ever know. So Li Taida plotted to steal some and used what he got on his target.

That took a kind of ruthlessness even Zhao Erming didn’t have. Zhao Erming tried it on a stray dog. Maybe he hated someone, but he never dared test it on a human.

That night, Li Taida came home in high spirits. For the first time, his house actually felt like a home. He sang, he danced, he played around. He’d never been this happy, never felt this much joy.

Li Taida eyed the coffee table, the cigarette butts, the half-finished beers.

His father was a drunk, lazing around doing nothing. He never worked a real job. Once, Li Xian was the boss of a big company, but over the years, the house got smaller, the savings dried up.

Li Xian was never going to bounce back. His company went under, his name was in ruins.

Every night, he came home, sat in front of the TV, chain-smoked and drank until he passed out. At dawn, he’d get up and gamble again. Day in, day out, year after year. In the end, even his wife left.

When he was drunk, his favorite pastime was violence.

Back when Li Taida was little, his father came home plastered every night, always beating his mother. Li Taida cried, begged, pleaded, but nothing helped. Each morning, he’d look at the wounds on his mother’s body and think, more than once, about killing his own father.

But he was just too small. Too scared.

So every night, he’d curl up with his mother, both of them sobbing softly, not daring to make a sound because if his father woke up, he’d beat her all over again.

All Li Taida ever wanted was to cry out loud.

Now, finally, he could. But what he wanted most in the world was to kill his father with his own hands.

In the interrogation room, Li Taida screamed, “Why! Why is it like this! Even fate is against me! He should be dead! He has to die! Only if he dies can my mother finally be at peace!”

As soon as he finished, Li Taida broke down sobbing again.

It turned out Li Xian hadn’t been home for three days. Coincidentally, neither had Li Taida.

That night, Li Taida poured potassium cyanide into those beers, knowing his father’s habit of coming home, grabbing whatever beer was nearby without a second thought. The moment he took a swig, he’d be dead.

After lacing the beers, Li Taida left.

He’d imagined more than once what it would be like to come home and find his father dead. He crashed at a classmate’s place, slept under a bridge—anywhere but home. He didn’t want to see his father’s corpse.

He couldn’t stand him alive, let alone dead.

That’s what Li Taida thought.

But no one could have guessed, after Li Xian walked out that night, he never came back.

The beers tested positive for potassium cyanide.

“I regret it so much. I should’ve come back to check, I should’ve made sure before running my mouth. But remember this—if he’s still alive, I’ll kill him someday.”

Li Taida meant every word.