Chapter 26: Answers

Wei Jiang stood up for a moment, hands by his sides. It was supposed to be simple: set the tray down, check vitals, report back. But seeing the boy like this — turned away, curled in on himself like something brittle — something bothered him in a way it hadn't before.

Perhaps it was the memory of the fever, of how Yao Ziyang had cried out deliriously in his sleep for a man who never came.

Perhaps it was the faint tremble in his shoulders now — not from illness, but from something else. Ache. Disappointment.

The kind of disappointment that lingered long after the fever passed.

He should have insisted. Should've reminded him of the boss's orders. Instead, he just stood up, looking down at him — at the soft curve of his mouth, the tremble in his wrist as he pulled the blanket tighter, the almost childish pout of fatigue in his eyes.

Cute.

The only words that could come to mind when describing the youth.

Utterly and dangerously cute.

Wei Jiang didn't speak again. He picked the tray back up, turned on his heel, and left.

…

Later that day, word of the untouched food reached Dong Yingming's ears before sunset.

It always did.

He always heard everything.

When Wei Jiang was summoned to the backroom-turned-office, he didn't flinch when the order came down. There were no raised voices — only silence, a long stare, and then began the interrogation

"You let him go without food?"

Dong Yingming said, tone unreadable.

Wei Jiang's shoulders remained square, posture perfect.

"He refused."

"So you accepted that?"

Wei Jiang didn't respond. He didn't have to.

A second later, Dong Yingming moved. Not fast — but with precision.

The punishment: a single, gloved strike.

His gloved hand struck across Wei Jiang's ribs, just under the bone, right where it would ache without bruising. Wei Jiang didn't so much as wince. A line of blood slipped out the corner of his mouth which he quickly wipes away.

"He needed that food."

Dong Yingming had spoken with venom dripping from each syllable.

"Don't ever let him go hungry again. Even if you have to feed him yourself."

Wei Jiang gave a sharp bow. The small corners of his mouth uplifted yet remained unseen.

"Understood."

…

Now it was evening.

The light had gone silver and soft, shadows pooling in the corners of the room.

The boy lay in bed, eyes half-lidded, unfocused. His skin was less pale now, his lips less dry — but his spirit hadn't come back to him yet. There was a quiet emptiness in the room, the kind only heartbreak leaves behind.

Wei Jiang returned and entered with the same tray, freshly prepared. This time, he didn't set it on the table. He sat on the edge of the bed beside the boy without asking.

Yao Ziyang blinked, confused by the movement.

"You're…"

"Eat."

Wei Jiang said firmly.

"I'll help. If you won't feed yourself, I'll do it."

Wei Jiang picked up a porcelain spoon, scooped a bit of the egg custard, and brought it carefully to Yao Ziyang's lips. The boy hesitated… then slowly parted his lips. The spoon passed between. He swallowed.

It wasn't much. But it was something.

It was a small thing.

But Wei Jiang felt it like a thread pulled tight across his chest.

It was intimate in a way that didn't belong to men like him — not subordinates, not guards.

Wei Jiang repeated the motion, each bite slow and measured. Each time bringing a bite to the boy's lips. Each time watching his throat work as he swallowed.

He watched the way the boy's mouth closed around the spoon. The way his lashes fluttered when the taste finally registered. The soft sounds he made — barely audible sighs. The quiet little breaths between spoonfuls. The way his fingers lightly gripped the blanket near his chest.

And somewhere between the fourth and fifth bite, a thought crept into Wei Jiang's mind like smoke under a door.

'If he were mine, I'd never make him feel like this.'

He paused mid-motion, the spoon hovering. His fingers felt suddenly too large, too clumsy. The thought was dangerous — blasphemous, even. But he couldn't stop it now that it had started.

He thought about how the boy looked when he smiled. How he'd wept for someone who wasn't there. How he clung to gentleness like it was water in a desert.

'I could be good to him…better even...'

Wei Jiang thought.

'I may not be powerful, but I'd never make him cry.'

The next spoonful was steadier. Yao Ziyang gave a small nod of thanks, too tired to speak.

Wei Jiang returned it with a faint smile — brief, barely visible, but real.

By the time the bowl was nearly empty, something in Wei Jiang had shifted.

His eyes lingered longer than they should have. On the boy's parted lips. On the shadow of his collarbone. On the slight rise of his chest beneath the robe.

He imagined—for just one forbidden moment—that this was his.

That this boy, so delicate and warm in the dim light, looked at him that way.

That he hadn't cried out for someone else in the night.

That he had been the one Yao Ziyang reached for, even fevered. That his name had left those lips in a whisper, not the name of a man who hurt and haunted him.

A bitter twist curled in Wei Jiang's stomach. He knew what Dong Yingming was — powerful, dangerous, worshiped by all who feared him. A man carved from smoke and ash and control.

But what did that power do, if all it left in its wake was broken men and shattered hope?

'If he were mine…'

Wei Jiang thought.

'I'd never make him feel small. Never leave him wondering why he wasn't enough.'

He watched the boy take one final sip of tea, his lashes fluttering as his head rested against the pillow again.

"Thank you."

Yao Ziyang murmured, voice barely above a breath.

Wei Jiang set the empty tray aside and moved to sit on the chair quietly beside the bed for a long time, saying nothing.

And in that moment, as he sat beside a boy who belonged to someone else, he felt the first ember of longing flicker into something more dangerous. Something that a slightly useful grunt like him had no business carrying.

He knew this could not become anything more.

But in the quiet space between spoonfuls and silences, something had already bloomed.

Not desire.

Not yet.

But want.

Dangerous, quiet, disciplined want.

He didn't know about love.

But he knew, without admitting it aloud, that he was already beginning to fall.

And that was worse.

...

Chang Xiao worked like smoke — seen only when he chose to be. The former intelligence handler turned Underworld information specialist moved quietly through back channels, tapping into hospital records, funeral reports, even getting violent if the need arised.

By the next day, his findings began to piece themselves together.

At the farthest wing of the prison — beyond the iron scent of bloodstained interrogation rooms, past the damp chill of the cell blocks and even the administrative quarters — stood a different kind of room.

Dong Yingming's main office.

The fluorescent lights above Chang Xiao's head buzzed softly, barely audible under the weight of his silence. He'd just returned from his outing and now was the time to compile and organize.

He sat alone at the desk once belonging to Dong Yingming — a desk that now felt colder, emptier, ever since Dong Yingming had chosen to isolate himself in the small, cramped old office closer to Yao Ziyang's cell. The air here still held the faint scent of sandalwood and old tobacco, polished clean but never fully rid of the man who had once commanded it.

Here, the walls were smooth and cool, lined with tall steel filing cabinets and a single, reinforced window that looked out into a sparse courtyard. The concrete was polished, and the desk, made of dark lacquered wood, was clean but full — a tidy chaos of folders, notebooks, and a steaming cup of black chrysanthemum tea, untouched.

A soft instrumental played from a speaker near the bookshelf, the kind of music one might expect in a calligrapher's study, not the lair of a man unraveling death.

Chang Xiao sat in a straight-backed leather chair, a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside him, untouched for minutes now.

Chang Xiao's laptop screen glowed against the dark grain of the wood, his long fingers shifting slowly through file after file—digital archives, sealed reports, old prison transfer logs. His brow furrowed as the picture began to form with terrible clarity.

Of the 7 men who had once shared Dong Yingming's bed— men who had traded their bodies for favors and protection, even briefly — only one had lived past a year.

7 names.

7 men. None of them alive.

Each had, at one point, received the benefits of Dong Yingming's attention—some for weeks, some for months. Their files bore different dates and different situations, but the pattern was unmistakable:

Guo Min: found hanging in his cell. Declared suicide.

Lu Chen: stabbed in a gang fight during yard time. Internal bleeding.

Bai Rong: overdose, officially ruled intentional.

Wen Hao: beaten to death after provoking another inmate. No charges filed.

Zhao Yue: throat slit with a sharpened toothbrush. Died within minutes.

He Jian: hung himself with a strip of uniform cloth.

Chen Liang: head trauma after being thrown from the watch tower. He was attempting an escape.

Chang Xiao leaned back, fingers steepled before his lips, the screen now displaying all seven names and the manner of their deaths, listed side by side.

All were imprisoned for different crimes. All had been with Dong Yingming for their own selfishness. All were dead.

And yet—nothing definitive. No poison. No patterns of abuse. No external enemy.

Just… men who had, for one reason or another, crumbled in the months after being discarded, transferred, or broken.

Coincidence. Technically.

But Chang Xiao's instincts—honed in quiet, precise circles of intelligence gathering—told him otherwise.

It wasn't murder. It wasn't a curse. It was something heavier.

A kind of slow emotional erosion, one no report could quantify. These men hadn't been killed by force.

They had simply been fated to… die.

He stared at the list, eyes lingering on the final row: Chen Liang, dead just six months after parting ways with the boss. A calm man with similar black hair to Yao Ziyang, once described by guards as "a flatterer, but weak-willed." He left no loved ones behind. No significant impact. Only silence.

Chang Xiao closed the laptop gently.

Beside his laptop that held the piles of dead men, in its own pile, he retrieved a small black file. It was thin, with only one name:

Yao Ziyang.

Chang glanced at the photo clipped to the front: delicate face, narrow frame, bright eyes too soft for this place.

A complete contrast to the photo inside— a surveillance shot of Yao Ziyang, feverish and frail under blankets, the name scrawled in elegant black ink across the corner.

The only one still breathing.

Chang Xiao held the file for a long time. He didn't close it—not yet. He simply stared at the boy's picture and murmured under his breath:

"Don't become number 8."

Then, in a gesture far gentler than usual, he slid the photo beneath a protective sleeve and began writing notes in a new column titled: Current Condition.

After updating Yao Ziyang's file, Chang Xiao takes a sip of the cold tea and a long drag from the extinguishing cigarette. He had taken too long, the boss is going to get antsy if he kept him waiting any longer.

He hunches slightly over the thick manila folder marked only with three Chinese characters: The Deceased Ones.

The pages and profiles he was organizing into it still left him in a daze. He began to read them again, the one in his hands was one he had already memorized. The medical report of Wen Hao. He flipped it once more, then reached for the next page beside it — Guo Min, Lu Chen, Bai Rong. Each with similar final entries.

Flu-like symptoms. Cognitive decline. Emotional instability. Sudden death.

All explained. All dismissed.

His fingers moved with clinical precision, tracing ink paths across death certificates and medical team testimonies.

He had once served in an intelligence division that unraveled people from the inside out. Psychological warfare, rumor control, silent patterns. His mind worked in webs.

And this web — this one centered around Dong Yingming — was thick with silk and blood.

A soft buzz from the encrypted phone in his pocket broke the silence. He tapped to answer.

"This is Chang Xiao."

"Report."

Came Dong Yingming's voice, low and tight, like it was being pulled through grit.

Chang Xiao's eyes narrowed slightly.

"I have confirmed documentation on six deceased individuals. A seventh—Zhao Yue—was confirmed via cross-referencing state cremation logs. That makes seven all together since you've arrived at First Prison."

A pause.

"I found no surviving partners."

Static hummed faintly on the line.

"Any pattern?"

Dong Yingming asked, voice stiff.

"None to imply an outside source. Only similar symptoms of illness then a stroke of bad luck or self induced harm that ended their lives."

Chang Xiao said. He pushed the folder forward and closed it. Inside: all past men who were used by Dong Yingming to relieve his boredom. Reduced to a simple name and date on a page or a photo.

"Each death occurred within ten to fourteen months after their 'time' with you ended. All previously in good health. Mental decline was noted before physical symptoms in four of the six. I've highlighted symptoms that match Yao Ziyang's in the case files. Three were found to have killed themselves. The rest were merely killed due to their own stupidity."

Dong Yingming didn't respond. The weight of what Chang Xiao wasn't saying pressed into the silence.

"I want to see the reports."

The line clicked dead a second later.

Chang Xiao didn't seem surprised. He leaned back in his chair, the cigarette now mostly ash. He picked up his pen, circled a word in red ink, and whispered under his breath, almost to himself:

"Is this really all for the sake of revenge? Or will I have to start referring to Yao Ziyang as Madam Dong?"

A slight shiver went down his spine. Quickly, he gathers the profiles and paper then heads out of the office door.