noffsinger Chapter 1064 Who are you?
Chapter 1064 Who are you?
In those cloudy eyes burned a flame that bordered on madness.
Like two glowing embers, they were about to burn the car and everyone inside to ashes.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The old man's withered hand slammed heavily on the hood of the car, producing a dull thud.
"Get off! All of you get off!" His voice was hoarse, like worn sandpaper.
"Give me back my child! Where did you take Koizumi and the others?!"
The atmosphere inside the car instantly plummeted from an eerie calm to a chilling abyss.
Wu Quan, sitting in the back seat, stiffened, his unfocused pupils suddenly contracting.
He sat up abruptly, staring intently at the familiar yet aged figure in front of the car.
It's Dean Liu.
Lin Qiye frowned, and the nonchalant expression on his face completely disappeared.
Wu Hen adjusted his glasses, his gaze sweeping across the old man's face behind the lenses.
He glanced at the rearview mirror again and calmly said, "There were no other cars behind him; he came alone."
"Nonsense, I saw it." Lin Qiye unbuckled his seatbelt.
"This old man is interesting."
As he spoke, he pushed open the door and got out of the car.
Wu Hen followed closely behind.
The two men stood on either side of the car in front of it, facing the emotionally agitated old man, but their expressions remained as calm as two mountains.
"Dean Liu, right?" Lin Qiye spoke first, his tone very calm.
"It's getting late, and it's dangerous to be in the middle of the road. If you need to talk, let's go to the side of the road."
Dean Liu wouldn't listen at all; his eyes were bloodshot, like an old wolf driven to the brink of despair.
He stared intently at them: "I don't care who you are! Give me back my child!"
"Xiaoquan! Xiaoyan! Chengcheng! Can you hear that? Grandpa Dean has come to take you home!"
His roar was choked with sobs, filled with despair and resentment.
The sound pierced through the night and through the carriage, striking straight into Wu Quan's heart.
Wu Quan's lips trembled, but he couldn't utter a single word.
"Go home?" A cold smile curled at the corner of Lin Qiye's lips.
"Which home should we go back to? The orphanage that's already burned to the ground, or your little shack where you can barely support yourself?"
These words were like a knife, precisely stabbing into Dean Liu's soft spot.
The old man trembled, as if all his strength had been drained away, and staggered back a step.
"Who...who are you people?" His voice was filled with fear.
"You don't need to know who we are."
Wu Hen stepped forward, his tone as cold and hard as iron.
"All you need to know is that we are carrying out a state secret mission."
"Your current behavior constitutes obstruction of official duties."
"State secrets?" Dean Liu gave a bitter laugh.
"Using a few kids to carry out some damn secrets? You're in cahoots with those people!"
Lin Qiye and Wu Hen exchanged a glance.
Those people?
"Sir, we are not your enemies." Lin Qiye's voice softened somewhat.
"We know about the fire four years ago, and we also know about Shen Qingzhu."
"Everything we do is to protect them and to complete what Shen Qingzhu was unable to do."
When the name "Shen Qingzhu" was mentioned, the madness in Dean Liu's eyes visibly faded, replaced by endless sorrow.
"Qingzhu...is he still alive?"
"Alive." Wu Hen said succinctly.
Dean Liu remained silent.
His cloudy eyes scanned back and forth between Lin Qiye and Wu Hen's faces, as if trying to discern the truth or falsehood in their words.
After a long while, he hunched over, walked past the two men, and stepped by step to the back seat window.
The car window slowly lowered.
He saw it.
He saw the boy he had watched grow up, Wu Quan.
That child who used to love to laugh the most, but now has a deathly pale face.
He then saw two other "children" sitting side by side next to Wu Quan.
Li Xiaoyan and Qian Cheng.
They sat ramrod straight, their faces bearing an eerie calm, their empty eyes staring straight ahead, as if they didn't see him at all.
Dean Liu's body began to tremble violently.
He had noticed something unusual.
For the past four years, the two children have never spoken, walk with a stiff gait, and always have a strange, lingering odor.
He asked Wu Quan, who only said that they were terrified in the fire and had burned their vocal cords.
He believed it.
Or rather, he forced himself to believe it.
Because he dared not think about the most terrifying possibility.
But now, seeing those two lifeless faces from such close range...
When his face turned like a wax figure, the truth he had been avoiding for four years, like a rusty saw, cruelly ripped open his heart.
His anger and resentment transformed into boundless desolation at that moment.
“Xiaoquan…” The old man reached out his trembling hand, wanting to touch Wuquan’s face, but stopped in mid-air.
Wu Quan's tears finally broke through the dam.
"Grandpa Dean..."
"Don't cry." Dean Liu withdrew his hand and wiped his dry eyes with the calloused back of his palm.
"Grandpa... is no use."
He didn't say another word, only deeply...
He took a deep look at the three children in the car, as if trying to etch their images into his very bones.
Then, he turned around and walked back to Lin Qiye and Wu Hen.
To the astonishment of the two men, the elderly man, well past seventy, suddenly bent down and bowed deeply to them.
Ninety degrees.
His head almost reached his knees.
"please."
Three hoarse, choked words came from his hunched back.
"Please... take good care of them."
After saying that, he straightened up and didn't look at anyone again.
Dragging his even more hunched figure than when he arrived, he disappeared step by step into the darkness by the roadside.
That lonely figure was like a heavy hammer, striking everyone's heart.
There was deathly silence in the carriage.
Lin Qiye silently returned to the driver's seat and started the car.
The vehicles rejoined the traffic and headed towards the airport.
Wu Quan sat back down in his seat, stopped crying, and just turned his head to look at the rapidly receding night view outside the window, without saying a word.
He knew that from the moment Dean Liu turned away, he could never go back.
The Hanshan Orphanage became a tombstone in his memory that he could never touch again.
Wu Hen looked out the window, his glasses reflecting the city's neon lights, making it impossible to see his eyes.
"You knew he would come all along?" Wu Hen suddenly asked.
"guessed."
"There's only one road to the airport after leaving Hanshan City," Lin Qiye said calmly.
“That old man has been secretly protecting Wu Quan; he couldn’t have just stood by and watched us take him away.”
"So you deliberately stopped the car, letting him finish speaking, and then entrusted the person to us," Wu Hen said.
"You want to make him give up completely."
Lin Qiye neither admitted nor denied it, but simply tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Sometimes, cutting ties with the past takes more courage than facing the future.
The conversation inside the car was interrupted again.
As night deepened, the road ahead was illuminated by streetlights, casting long, dim yellow streaks of light that were quickly swallowed by darkness.
As the vehicle drove onto the highway leading to the airport, the surrounding buildings became increasingly sparse, replaced by vast expanses of darkness.
Looking at the night sky that seemed to swallow the highway, Lin Qiye felt a sudden unease rise in his heart.
This mess seems to be deeper than he anticipated.
He turned to look at Wu Hen and found that the other man was also frowning and looking in the same direction.
"The fasting place..." Wu Hen seemed to be talking to himself, yet also seemed to be asking Lin Qiye.
"Don't you think this name sounds really off?"