Qiming Chapter 84

Chapter 84

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"There's a medical kit in the back seat, with hydrogen peroxide and iodine. Next to the kit, there's a knife, not a surgical one, just a regular fruit knife."

"Any painkillers?" After the sound of rummaging through the kit, Xu Chengyue looked up and gazed suspiciously at Gu Yunfeng. The other man looked utterly exhausted, with bright red blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

"No."

"Then how will you..."

"I can bear it." As he spoke, he took hold of the fruit knife, but his hands trembled violently. In the end, the sharp blade slipped from his grip and fell to the ground with a dull thud.

"You'd better do it," he said.

When Xu Chengyue picked up the fruit knife, his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He had to grip the handle tightly, gathering all his strength into one point to control his extreme tension.

He wasn’t always like this, so full of emotions, so easily nervous. He used to be calm, never afraid, and remained unshaken at crime scenes, no matter how much blood there was.

He hadn’t experienced anything like this before, so he didn’t know what it felt like to lose something.

At that moment, sunlight reflected off the tip of the knife, converging into a beam that seemed capable of piercing their hearts.

Struggling to breathe, he swallowed hard and nervously gestured, saying, "I'm not exactly skilled enough to master all the surgical techniques on the spot..."

"Don't be afraid." After a sharp pang of pain, Gu Yunfeng bit his bloodless lower lip, grabbing Xu Chengyue's hand and placing it above his abdominal wound. "Just follow the bullet wound and take it out."

"No matter how I react, don’t hesitate."

Although Xu Chengyue's mind was filled with – this is impossible, unrealistic, this won’t work, it’s suicidal – Xu Chengyue still nodded, mechanically retrieving disinfectant and bandages from the kit to stop the bleeding.

Pressing his fingers down above the wound, he first cleaned it with saline solution, clearing the surface. Blood kept oozing out, mingling with the cold sweat pouring from every inch of skin. The skin and muscle around the wound were peeled back, exposed to the air.

At least Gu Yunfeng hadn't gone into shock yet. The situation wasn’t too dire. To still be conscious after taking a bullet to the abdomen either meant he was incredibly lucky, as the bullet had missed vital areas, or sheer willpower was keeping him awake.

Xu Chengyue cut open the shirt with scissors, revealing a bloody mess of flesh beneath. The clothes above the wound bore obvious bloodstains, likely from coughing up blood. This indicated that the bullet had hit somewhere above the duodenum, but strangely, there was no peculiar smell apart from the metallic scent of blood.

"Where exactly did it hit?" he muttered to himself.

Listening to Gu Yunfeng's weak but pained groans, Xu Chengyue was on the verge of suffocating from anxiety. He repeatedly sterilised the fruit knife, gripping the handle tightly, only to set it down again, over and over.

"When you get the bullet out, Old Qin will take Fang Xing back. Once all this is over, are you still planning to quit?" Seeing how nervous Xu Chengyue was, Gu Yunfeng tried to start a casual conversation. Sweat dripped down from his forehead to his mouth, and as he tasted it, it was so salty that it almost brought tears to his eyes.

"I'm still going to resign." Xu Chengyue hesitated for a moment, gazing out the window at the endless clouds and the deep blue sea in the distance.

"This isn’t the end."

"You're right, Fang Xing is just one part of the whole thing." Gu Yunfeng's voice was faint and his face pale, but his eyes remained bright, full of vitality as he looked at Xu Chengyue.

"Then continue to stay at my place."

"Huh?" A sudden change in topic.

"Where would I sleep?"

"Sleep with me." As Gu Yunfeng spoke, he coughed up a mouthful of blood. "Look, a man should stand tall, if I say I want to be with you, then we have to be together."

"It might be a bit cramped." Xu Chengyue reached out and touched Gu Yunfeng's nose. The two of them were squeezed into the small space, the scent of blood mixing with the heat and a growing sense of tension.

"Cramped? Neither of us is fat, you’re even skinnier."

"I’ll cook, you wash the dishes. Who’s doing the laundry, you or me? Forget it, I’d better do it... or maybe I should just do the dishes too?" Gu Yunfeng mumbled, seemingly to himself, yet also to Xu Chengyue.

Sweat beads covered every inch of his skin and his veins bulged, creating an atmosphere thick with tension and ambiguity.

Xu Chengyue stared at a tree on the roadside for a long time before realising that it was actually two trees intertwined, their roots and trunks fused together.

In the next moment, the tip of the knife in his hand sliced into the wound, accompanied by a deep groan. The original wound was cut open, and dark red blood trickled out in a winding stream.

The bullet entry wound was small, but after penetrating the skin and entering the muscle, it spun at high speed, enlarging the wound internally several times, so the surface wound had to be cut open.

As the cold blade tore through skin and muscle, the wound gaped along the sharp edge, stimulating thousands of capillaries. Amidst the extreme pain, Gu Yunfeng felt as though his entire body had been struck by an electric current. His abdomen seemed to explode, as if his organs were being torn open, and his frantically beating heart was exposed to the air and sunlight, with blood surging through it.

In a haze between consciousness and near-unconsciousness, he wondered if the knife really cut open his chest and pulled out his heart, what would that wildly beating heart look like? What was inside it, and who was inside it?

Sweat soaked every part of his body as adrenaline surged through him. His ears rang with a sharp, high-pitched whine, and with each laboured breath, he felt like he was about to suffocate.

"You can scream if it hurts too much," The car was filled with the uneven sounds of heavy breathing, deep groans, and the tearing of flesh.

It made one's heart race, igniting a feeling of feverish impatience.

Xu Chengyue couldn't bear to look as Gu Yunfeng's face turned ghostly pale, his teeth clenched tight. He reached out and placed his hand into Gu Yunfeng’s mouth.

Gu Yunfeng’s body, drenched in sweat and on the verge of dehydration, convulsed uncontrollably. His lean, muscular arms gripped the seat cushion so tightly that his fingertips drew blood. He closed his eyes, the veins in his neck and temples bulging, but his teeth never sank into Xu Chengyue’s hand.

Once the blade had cut a sufficiently large incision, Xu Chengyue reached the white ribcage beneath the muscle. Using a flashlight to illuminate the depth of the wound, he saw tiny lacerations on the digestive tract and stomach, though these were not from the bullet.

"It seems... the ribs are broken?" Xu Chengyue took a deep breath, feeling unexpectedly calmer.

"I can see it now, the bullet hit your ribs, breaking two of them. The broken bones caused the injuries to your upper digestive tract and stomach, which is why you’ve been coughing up blood."

"Pretty lucky, really, to take a bullet in the abdomen and not have it hit any vital organs," Xu Chengyue marvelled.

Holding a pair of tweezers, he pushed aside the blood that gushed from the wound and carefully extracted the bullet lodged between the two fractured ribs.

As he placed the bullet into a small red box, a wave of exhaustion washed over him, leaving him utterly drained. After a few moments, he forced himself to sit up, stitching up the wound and thoroughly disinfecting it with hydrogen peroxide and alcohol wipes.

The bullet lay quietly in the red box, like a silent witness to the ordeal it had just survived.

—————

Soon after, Gu Yunfeng regained consciousness. Weakly wiping the sweat from his face, he tried to adjust his position, but Xu Chengyue stopped him.

"The bullet hit your ribs and broke two of them. Don’t move, sometimes broken bones can be sharper than a knife."

"No damage to the organs?"

"Yeah, you got lucky."

It really was a stroke of luck.

As Gu Yunfeng looked down at his stitched-up wound, a wave of post-traumatic fear washed over him.

The moment he realised the bullet had entered his body, his mind went blank, teetering on the edge of despair. When Xu Chengyue plunged the knife into his abdomen, the searing pain made him wish for death.

By the moment the wound was stitched up and he was told that none of his organs had been injured, all the panic within his heart turned gentle.

A red leaf drifted through the crack of the car window, landing softly on his damp hair.

The blood stains inside the car gradually dried, carried away bit by bit by the wind.

Ignoring the sharpness of the fractured bone, Gu Yunfeng suddenly pulled Xu Chengyue into his arms, pressing his right hand against the back of his head and kissing his parched lips. It was the most intense kiss of his life, filled with the taste of blood. There was nothing domineering or tender about it, only the restless aftermath of narrowly surviving death.

Had he not been so seriously wounded, he would have done everything he desired.

He kissed the man who had just crossed the threshold of life and death with him, from his lips to his mouth to his teeth. Blood still oozed faintly from the wound on his abdomen as Xu Chengyue’s body pressed tightly against his, and the blood from the wound stained Xu Chengyue’s shirt, leaving a slight red mark that didn’t look garish, but soft and noble, like a flower blooming on his chest.

His teeth gently nipped at Xu Chengyue’s ear, causing the man in his embrace to tremble all over. The reddened earlobe was soft and sensitive as Xu Chengyue wrapped his arms around Gu Yunfeng’s neck, his slender fingers clinging to his back.

Gu Yunfeng lightly bit Xu Chengyue’s delicate collarbone, his scarred palm caressing the back of his neck. For two people who had walked the edge of death, this touch was enough to ignite every cell in their bodies.

His hand slowly moved to Professor Xu’s waist, but when he looked up, he saw tears streaming from the other’s dazed eyes.

"Why are you crying?"

His voice was like a magic spell, breaking Xu Chengyue from his trance.

Xu Chengyue quickly pushed him away and sat back in the driver’s seat, his eyes clear yet filled with panic.

"I survived, didn’t I? Heaven was kind, letting me have a future," Gu Yunfeng said with a weak smile. He had already lost a lot of blood, and his voice was low and frail, but his eyes still shone with light.

"Yeah, I’m really happy." Xu Chengyue lowered his head, unsure of what to say. As he straightened his shirt and jacket, his eyes became hollow and filled with despair.

"In that moment just now, did you ever wonder... who exactly the person you were being intimate with was?" he asked quietly.

"Huh?" Gu Yunfeng looked at him with a blank face, bewildered and confused.

"Just now, in that moment, I felt so happy, so joyful. But then I quickly began to deny myself–"

"Was it truly me who was feeling that joy, or was it the original Xu Chengyue?"

In an instant, his eyes turned red, and he closed them, struggling to lift his head.

"I desperately want to be close to you, whether it is kissing, hugging, or even going further." He opened his deep, dark eyes. "Yes, every cell and every pore of my body tells me that I long to be even closer to you."

"No distance, the closer, the better." So that they could be skin to skin, ear to ear.

"But this was never my body, I’m just a soul with nowhere to go. When I felt your kisses, your touches, our intimacy, I was jealous of myself, hating myself, so jealous I could go mad, so hateful I wanted to destroy myself."

Gu Yunfeng must have been shocked to hear such words.

He didn’t know when he had started feeling this way, was he manipulated by someone? Or was this wound in his heart always there, a deep denial of his own identity?

He didn’t know.

All he knew was that it was a terrible situation, jealous and angry yet timid and self-loathing. His emotions were spiralling out of control. He never dared to fully accept his identity, never dared to confront his past.

Was he a human or a machine? Should he accept everything fate had thrown at him, or should he return it to its original owner?

He bowed his head in silence, unwilling to speak. The sunlight was blinding, and it was nearing noon. The surroundings were eerily quiet, broken only by the sound of the wind rustling the leaves.

"Did you hear that sound just now?" Gu Yunfeng listened to him and, after a long pause, his voice breaking the stillness.

"A sound?"

"Yes, listen carefully." He grasped Xu Chengyue’s wrist, pulling it towards his chest.

Thump, thump–

"Isn’t this the only sound that matters?"

Just as he spoke, his phone buzzed with a message, interrupting their conversation.

It was from Lin Xiangrong.

– Fang Xing has gone to Jinsha Beach, he’s probably planning to escape, you’d better catch him quickly~

Jinsha Beach?

It's the beach right ahead, right?

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: September 11, 2024 by Angel

Edited: December 5, 2024 by Angel