Controlled Experiment Chapter 45

Game of Death – 20

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Jing Mo sat with one leg crossed over the other, appearing to watch the middle-aged man before him with helpless amusement.

This man had once been a nightmare to Jing Mo in his youth, so much so that it was even more terrifying than being locked in a pitch-black room. He had spent countless nights unable to sleep, haunted by the man's ferocious face, trembling with fear but forced to endure it. Jing Mo wasn't sure if that was when he had started to change, perhaps it had been earlier. Perhaps, it had been the very second Li Yao was defeated and he was left behind, that moment had already altered him.

What was his name?

Jing Mo looked at the trembling man before him once more, sweat pouring down his terrified face. What was his name again? Ah yes, fucker, bastard, scum.

"Mr Wang, you still haven't answered my question," Jing Mo squatted down to meet his gaze, a faintly mocking smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "Why are you so scared? Seeing you again is nothing like I imagined. Don't be afraid, don't you remember the past?"

Jing Mo squatted for a while, then felt the dull ache in his calves.

Standing up, he lifted one leg to rest it on Wang's shoulder, forcing the man into a kneeling position, anything else would've been even more uncomfortable.

The man surnamed Wang looked up. In the warm, yellow glow of the candlelight, his eyes landed directly on Jing Mo's crotch. Jing Mo noticed too, and suddenly, he laughed.

"Thought I was dead, so you've been living comfortably all these years?" Jing Mo chuckled. "How interesting."

Cold sweat was streaming from Wang's body, yet he didn't feel thirsty, his entire being was consumed by fear.

"... You can't still be alive... You were clearly dead."

Rather than truly doubting that Jing Mo was still alive, it was more that he didn't want Jing Mo to be alive. All the things he had done to that boy were now flashing vividly before his eyes, every ounce of delight he'd once taken in those acts now transmuted into pure terror.

"They say Jing Mo couldn't cope after being sent to that island to be reformed by his father, and committed suicide there in the second or third year. I heard it so many times, even I nearly believed it." Jing Mo rubbed his nose and smiled at Wang. "To be honest, I don't enjoy dealing with you people personally, too much time, too much effort."

Jing Mo's grin widened and he laughed. "But you're different. Even if you weren't part of that gamble, I'm still interested. You should know why."

Wang was no longer trembling. The boy who had once been timid and weak had now become something like a demon. He stared at Jing Mo with near despair.

Jing Mo still maintained the stance with his foot pressing down, leaning in slightly and bringing his mouth close to the man's ear.

"Because you are a pae–do–phile."

Jing Mo enunciated the final three syllables slowly and deliberately. Unlike when he was a child, Jing Mo now thoroughly enjoyed the expression on Wang's face.

Only now did he begin to understand the kind of perverse pleasure Wang had felt when committing those acts.

Jing Mo sat back down in the chair and said, "After my brother was lost in that gamble, he disappeared without a trace. Later, I heard he'd been passed from hand to hand and ended up with some drug lord. My father was not a good person, emotionally cold. And as for me, I was timid and weak, too frightened to say much at all. To my father, I was always going to be a liability, even his hired thugs were more valuable than his own son, so if I wanted to stay, I had to prove myself useful. Back then, you were the one handling all the dirty work for my father, so he sent me to you. I ran home several times, but each time I was sent back because I didn't dare to say anything. I was even more timid, even more cowardly than before. And later, still useless and unchanged, I was sent off to survive on a deserted island."

"There was a stray dog on the island, god knows how it got there. For me, familial affection was a luxury. Apart from my brother, the only bond I ever formed was with that dog. Other than what you taught me about how to get laid, I had no life skills to speak of. I survived thanks to that dog. There were several times I don't even remember how I stayed alive." Jing Mo touched his own face and smiled. "I don't know how long had passed when my father came to visit me on the island. He shot the dog dead, and after that, I was completely alone on that island."

Jing Mo's eyes gazed into the candlelight, his tone so detached it was as if he were recounting someone else's story.

Perhaps it was because the way he had grown up didn't match the image his father had expected, perhaps he still wasn't useful enough to be worth keeping around, or perhaps, in his father's eyes, a son was less valuable than a thug and could never inherit what he'd built, so he shot the dog dead.

The only warmth left to speak to, that he could rely on, was gone.

Jing Mo felt that it was time for him to make some changes.

"What a long stretch of memory," Jing Mo stood up and stretched lazily. He looked down at the man kneeling beneath his feet and smiled. "In the end, you're the only one in that memory who's still alive. Sometimes, when I think about that, it really gets under my skin. After my father died, you changed your name and went into hiding, made me search for you for so long."

"... You killed your father," the man surnamed Wang said, eyes wide as he stared at the person in front of him who had long since become unrecognisable.

"I didn't kill him," Jing Mo said with a laugh. "Your first time killing someone is just as precious as your first time in bed, why would I waste that on him? He slipped and fell into the freezer all by himself. I merely... closed the lid. If he couldn't survive in there, that's down to his own poor constitution, what's that got to do with me?"

Jing Mo drew in a deep breath. It felt as though the blood in his chest had been chilled, freezing him from the inside out.

All of them deserved to die, didn't they?

Jing Mo admitted to himself that he had already become too twisted to turn back, but didn't these people deserve to die?

Parents who treat their own child like a gambling chip, who manipulate them as they please and ruin their lives, don't they deserve to die? The ones who take part in such gambling games, using children as stakes, don't they deserve to die? Paedophiles, don't they deserve to die? Murderers, don't they deserve to die? Jing Mo raked his fingers through his hair.

That's right, I should die too.

But the game isn't finished yet.

The time to die hasn't come.

"Dying is actually quite easy," Jing Mo picked up the candle and suddenly smiled. "But I'm going to teach you how to die."

=========

When Du Yusheng stepped out of Li Yao's office, his ears were still ringing.

The sound clearly hadn't been caused by Li Yao's stammering responses. In truth, Du Yusheng had long grown used to that side of Li Yao, how he'd always clam up right at the critical moment. It had happened enough times now that Du Yusheng understood, he simply didn't want to say it.

Who doesn't have a past?

More and more signs pointed to the fact that Li Yao was involved with these cases.

But the connections all seemed peripheral, never touching the core. Du Yusheng had always assumed, at most, that Li Yao happened to know someone involved, maybe had a bit of history with them.

That was how Du Yusheng had once naïvely seen it. But now, he no longer believed it was that simple.

Back in elementary school during an art lesson, the teacher had said that the three primary colours could be mixed to create any other colour, then they'd draw three overlapping circles on the blackboard. Right now, Li Yao was standing precisely in the intersection of those three circles.

Du Yusheng considered himself a bit of a half-baked talent. He'd managed to be promoted from the grassroots partly thanks to a mysterious document from who-knows-where, and partly because the old man had died.

Du Yusheng looked at the back of Li Yao's darkened head in front of him and sighed.

He thought to himself, If you really are lying to me, I'll stab you with that scalpel you gave me. The blade goes in white, comes out red.

The ringing in his ears grew worse.

And it wasn't just his ears, Du Yusheng felt like his whole head was buzzing.

Li Yao started the car and glanced at Du Yusheng in the passenger seat. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Du Yusheng shook his head and forced a smile. "Just a bit of a headache, might be the heat in the car."

Heat?

Li Yao's car slowly merged onto the main road. He glanced over at Du Yusheng and, while they were stopped at a red light, reached out and placed a hand on his forehead.

It wasn't that the car was hot, he was hot.

"When did the fever start?" Li Yao asked.

Du Yusheng blinked, stunned. "Who? I don't have a fever, just feel a bit warm."

"You've got a fever," Li Yao pulled his hand back and calmly continued to drive. "You've fried your brain."

Dazed, Du Yusheng reached up and touched his own forehead. His whole body felt hot, so of course he couldn't tell anything from that, and he muttered to himself, "I don't have a fever..."

"It's probably because you've been running around working on the case these past few days, and the weather's getting colder too." Li Yao said.

The person in question still didn't believe he was actually ill. Li Yao turned his head slightly, looking at him with a face full of exasperation.

How has an idiot like this survived this long?

By relying on the kindness of others and self-healing?

"I can't afford to get sick right now," Du Yusheng couldn't stop touching his forehead, "I just want to solve this case. I have to solve it."

"Hasn't the killer already been identified?"

"I'm not talking about that one." Du Yusheng sat up straighter. "The controlled experiment, I'm afraid this matter isn't over."

"You've got other cases on your hands too, why are you fixated on this one?" Li Yao glanced at him. "Is it that important to you?"

Du Yusheng hesitated a little at this question.

It was a long story, and he didn't know how to answer Li Yao's question. Especially after the thoughts he'd had earlier coming out of the hospital, he wasn't sure whether or not he should say anything at all. Hypothetically, assuming that Li Yao was the one behind the controlled experiment, then the first person he should have killed would've been Du Yusheng himself. Yet here he was, alive and well, having had multiple encounters with Li Yao without the slightest sign that he was being targeted for assassination.

Du Yusheng ran through the hypothesis again in his head.

And came to a conclusion: Li Yao was connected to the matter, but he wasn't the origin of it.

Li Yao was still waiting for an answer.

Du Yusheng exhaled a faint puff of breath. In the end, he still trusted Li Yao.

"My father's death might be connected to those two words."

Li Yao feigned surprise.

"Old Master Du's dead?"

Du Yusheng nodded. "Do you want to hear about it?"

Li Yao paused for a moment without saying anything. Just as Du Yusheng was about to begin recounting the events, Li Yao cut him off.

"I don't want to hear it," he said, shaking his head. "Better think about your fever first."

"Come on, don't be like that." Du Yusheng's words were stuck in his throat, making him feel extremely uncomfortable. "I've got the story right on the tip of my tongue and you're telling me to swallow it back down, that's too frustrating."

Watching Du Yusheng's comically aggrieved expression, Li Yao's lips curled slightly at the corners. He couldn't quite say why, but something inside him felt oddly comforted.

When they got home and got out of the car, Du Yusheng noticed he had a voice message and several missed calls.

He must've accidentally put his phone on silent at some point and hadn't checked it since.

Only when he unlocked the phone did Du Yusheng realise that maybe he really was running a fever. The cold touch of the phone felt incredibly soothing in his burning hand.

The WeChat voice message had been sent several hours earlier. Du Yusheng raised the phone to his ear.

It was from Xiao Bai, and there was only one sentence.

"A large fire broke out in an apartment in the suburbs, the homeowner died inside."

Du Yusheng rubbed his eyes, his head was still buzzing.

He scrolled through his contacts, about to call back, when another message came through from Xiao Bai.

"Preliminary conclusion is the fire was caused by improper use of electrical appliances, doesn't fall under our responsibility..."

Du Yusheng snapped his phone shut and cursed, "Fuck."

Still feeling annoyed, Du Yusheng sent Xiao Bai a reply: "Bullshit, think before you say something!"

‿︵‿︵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: June 14, 2025 by Angel

Edited: July 3, 2025 by Angel