Iris 10

Although it had only landed on his foot, the blow had at least succeeded in stopping Xu Fu from pursuing Mu Qin. Mu Qin managed to drag Han Li to the church entrance, with Qiu Zijia scrambling after him. Rain was pouring down outside. The three of them charged into the deluge, but Mu Qin could barely tell which way he was going. The rush and roar of the rain dulled his senses, leaving him to rely on a vague instinct as he pulled the stumbling Han Li into the pitch-black courtyard.

Xu Fu did not follow. The fallen candle chandelier had pinned his right leg and torn a long gash down his calf. An injury like that meant little to him, but it would still slow him down.

Xu Fu lifted the chandelier with one hand and freed his leg from beneath it. Then he looked back at the church's open doors and in the direction Mu Qin and the others had fled.

After staring for a while, Xu Fu took on a thoughtful expression. He crouched down and ripped several strips of fabric from his pant leg, then found a wooden board, braced his injured leg against it, and bound it securely with the strips.

His movements were practiced, clearly those of someone experienced at treating wounds. Once he had tended to his leg, he turned and walked over to Cheng Guoxu, who lay sprawled nearby.

Cheng Guoxu lay rigid on the floor, his head resting against the leg of a pew. He was desperately pressing his hands and clothing to the bloody gash in his throat, hoping to slow the flow, but blood continued to stream rapidly over his body, pooling in a vivid red puddle beneath him.

Xu Fu studied Cheng Guoxu for a moment, then slowly crouched in front of him.

"You charged at me awfully fast just now," Xu Fu said. "You attacked without the slightest hesitation. That proves you were desperate to kill me."

Cheng Guoxu could only stare, unable to speak. The slash across his throat had damaged his vocal cords, and the blood running back into his airway left him unable to breathe. He knew perfectly well that he was about to die, and the knowledge terrified him. His gaze was frantic with panic as he stared at Xu Fu. Again and again, he opened his mouth as if trying to say something, but each time, blood gushed out. All it did was hasten his death.

"You wanted me dead," Xu Fu repeated. Then he abruptly gave Cheng Guoxu a faintly savage smile. "Desperately."

"But why?" Xu Fu began answering his own question. "If there was no bad blood between us, why were you so desperate to see me dead? Was it because of what Han Li and I were talking about?"

At Xu Fu's words, Cheng Guoxu's eyes widened even further, his pupils contracting and trembling violently. Xu Fu noticed and smiled at him. "I guessed right. You heard my conversation with Han Li, so you tried to kill me."

"So... it was you, wasn't it?" Xu Fu leaned close to Cheng Guoxu and ran a hand over his neck, coating it in Cheng Guoxu's blood.

Xu Fu lowered his head to look at his blood-soaked hand, and his smile broadened. "I've spent years tracking down the killer who tortured and murdered those children at Iris Orphanage ten years ago. Because one of the children who died was a girl abducted by human traffickers many years before... my little sister."

"It was you, wasn't it?!" Xu Fu's voice suddenly rose. He seized Cheng Guoxu by the face, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of his cheeks. He squeezed so hard that his knuckles turned white and every vein stood out beneath his skin.

Cheng Guoxu's face warped in his grip, his eyeballs nearly bulging from their sockets. More blood poured from his nose and mouth as he thrashed wildly beneath Xu Fu's hand.

"I just can't accept it." Xu Fu's voice was calm, but his face was twisted with savage hatred. "I searched for you all those years and never found you. Along the way, I went to prison for manslaughter, then got shot dead by police after I escaped. But you got to live out here, free and happy! You survived all the way to this day! And now you even get to die so simply, so easily, right in front of me!"

Xu Fu began to lose control. He pulled out his knife and stabbed Cheng Guoxu again and again, opening more wounds across his body. But after only a few thrusts, Cheng Guoxu could endure no more. His eyes rolled back, and all signs of life ceased. That only enraged Xu Fu further. He drove the blade down even more viciously, until Cheng Guoxu was little more than a mangled mass of punctured flesh.

"Heaven truly is blind." After hacking at the corpse for some time, Xu Fu finally rose, panting, his knife in hand. Cheng Guoxu's blood had splattered all over him, and its salty, coppery stench sickened him. Seething with fury and with nowhere to vent it, Xu Fu cried, "Why must the good die young while the wicked live forever?!"

...

"Mu Qin! Wake up! Are you all right?!" Mu Qin heard Qiu Zijia calling urgently beside him. He opened his eyes in a daze, then immediately shuddered from head to toe. It was bitterly cold. The torrential rain showed no sign of letting up, streaming noisily over both him and Qiu Zijia.

For safety's sake, Mu Qin had chosen not to lead Qiu Zijia into any of the buildings. Instead, they were crouching inside a flower bed in the courtyard.

After the orphanage was abandoned, no one had tended the flower bed. The weeds had grown unchecked, lush and wild, until they stood taller than a person. Crouched among them, Mu Qin and the others were concealed behind a natural screen. There were no lights in the courtyard, and no moon was visible on this rainy night. Without the slightest glimmer of light, the place was so dark they could not see their hands in front of their faces. Hiding in such darkness was actually safer than taking shelter inside a building.

Rows of large trees had also been planted beside the flower bed. Some had withered, but others had continued growing naturally, their dense branches and leaves forming broad canopies under which Mu Qin and the others could shelter from the rain. Fortunately, fierce as the storm was, there was no thunder. Mu Qin figured they were unlikely to meet the grim fate of having lightning strike a tree and set them ablaze.

But it was cold outside, without the warmth of the buildings to shield them from the wind and chill. Mu Qin estimated that the temperature was below ten degrees Celsius, cold enough for the human body to feel it keenly. Combined with the damp, icy rain, it had apparently caused even Mu Qin, who had always considered himself strong and fit, to black out for a moment.

Qiu Zijia, on the other hand, had managed to remain conscious. He clutched Mu Qin's arm and pressed close to share their warmth, unable to keep the fear from his voice. "You can't let anything happen to you!"

Mu Qin raised a hand and wiped the wet hair from his forehead. "I'm fine. Maybe my body's starting to give out. I actually lost consciousness for a few minutes just now."

Hearing this, Qiu Zijia wrapped his arms around Mu Qin's shoulders, trying to give him as much warmth as possible. "Are you cold? If we huddle together, we won't be."

Mu Qin patted Qiu Zijia's arm, then asked, "Where's Han Li?"

"I moved her over beside the tree and propped her against it," Qiu Zijia replied. "She's still alive. She's just unconscious."

Mu Qin thought for a moment, then said, "We can't stay here long. We need to find somewhere safe."

"Wh-where would be safe?" Qiu Zijia was at a loss. The succession of terrifying encounters and the relentless pressure from the killer had pushed him to the brink of a breakdown. He looked frightened and vulnerable, plainly lacking Mu Qin's mental fortitude.

"I don't know either... I don't know where would be safe." Mu Qin sighed softly. "Forget it. Let's not think about that yet. We'll rest here for a while."

After that, Mu Qin fell silent, and Qiu Zijia did not know what to say either. The two of them sat quietly beneath the shelter of the trees, enduring the raindrops that occasionally slipped through gaps in the leaves, enduring the cold wind that blew unpredictably from every direction, and watching the lights flicker in the various buildings nearby.

After waiting quietly for a while, Mu Qin suddenly said, "Qiu Zijia, you were right about one thing."

Qiu Zijia looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Didn't you say earlier that everyone here had some connection to this orphanage?" Mu Qin asked.

Qiu Zijia nodded. "I did say that."

Mu Qin smiled, then laughed aloud. "We're not just connected to the orphanage. I'm even starting to think that every last one of us has a criminal record."

Mu Qin's words stunned Qiu Zijia. More than that, his entire body went rigid. After a long moment, he asked, "How can you be sure we all have criminal records?"

"Think about it. Didn't Xu Fu say he was a murderer? And Han Li admitted in the church that she had abused children." Mu Qin took a deep breath and slowly moved his hands and feet to bring his body temperature back up. "Then I realized that Cheng Guoxu is a piece of filth who serially tortured, sexually assaulted, and murdered children."

"Wait!" Mu Qin's words made Qiu Zijia jump, his hands trembling in shock. "You're saying Cheng Guoxu... he... he?!"

"Yeah, that's right." Mu Qin patted Qiu Zijia's arm again, signaling for him to release the arm he had around his shoulders. Then Mu Qin began explaining what had led him to that conclusion. "Something about the way he behaved struck me as odd. And when he rushed out so recklessly to attack Xu Fu just now, it made me even more certain."

The first time Mu Qin saw Cheng Guoxu, he had sensed that the man had killed before.

Mu Qin could tell. After spending so long in the military, he could easily distinguish which veterans had taken lives.

He had once met a group of soldiers stationed along the border, men who had spent years fighting terrorists and roving drug traffickers. They remained on the front lines, safeguarding the peace of the borderlands, and nearly all of them had taken a life at one point or another. After spending some time with them, Mu Qin had gradually come to sense that a killer's gaze was different from an ordinary person's.

Mu Qin could not find the words to describe this keen sense of his, but he truly could tell the difference.

That was why, the first time he saw Cheng Guoxu, he had found something strange about him. Why would Cheng Guoxu, a man who claimed to be an ordinary factory worker, have that kind of look in his eyes?

Maybe it was just his imagination.

That was what Mu Qin had told himself at first. He could not be certain this strange sense of his was completely reliable. Perhaps his eyes had deceived him; perhaps he had simply misjudged the man. In any case, Mu Qin had chosen to remain silent and wait to see what happened. But everything that followed only made him increasingly certain that he had not imagined it. That man, Cheng Guoxu, had indeed killed before.

The first clue was Cheng Guoxu's reaction upon seeing the dead body in the stairwell. A normal person... at least, a normal person who had never encountered a corpse, who was not a doctor or forensic examiner, and whose work did not otherwise require them to face dead bodies, would commonly experience nausea or some other physical discomfort upon suddenly seeing the bloodied, mutilated corpse of another human being. Even if it was not Cheng Guoxu's first time seeing such a gruesome body, a person in a normal state of mind would instinctively look away or let their gaze wander. That was true regardless of gender.

Cheng Guoxu, however, had been remarkably calm. Aside from his face turning slightly pale, he showed no unusual reaction at all. Mu Qin had even noticed him staring at the body for a long time.

He had studied the corpse as though investigating something.

Once Mu Qin noticed that, he began to doubt Cheng Guoxu's claim that he was merely a "worker."